CEO’s Dirty Vacation

Chapter2

Charlotte POV

The front yard looked like a construction site that had given up halfway through. Overturned earth, shallow trenches, bare soil where grass used to be. I’d been here three days and the slope was already beginning to take shape in my mind, even if it didn’t look like much to anyone else yet. Landscaping always had this ugly middle stage, the part where you had to destroy something before you could build it into what it was meant to be. I’d made peace with that a long time ago.

I was brushing the worst of the dirt off my jeans when Brier appeared in the doorway, holding a glass in each hand.

“Iced tea. Come sit for a minute.”

I did not need to be told twice. I made my way carefully across the broken ground and dropped onto the bench at the wooden table on the front porch. Brier set the tray down and slid one glass toward me. I drank half of it in a single pull. It was the kind of heat that didn’t ask nicely, thick and still, with no breeze coming off the water because there was no water anywhere near this part of the city. The northwestern side of LA had its own particular brand of summer punishment.

“This is the best thing that has happened to me today,” I said.

Brier laughed. “High bar.”

“You’d be surprised.” I tilted the glass against my chin. “I’m nearly wrapped up for the afternoon. Still waiting for the timber delivery, I spoke to the driver about forty minutes ago. He said ten minutes. He’s a little optimistic about LA traffic.”

Brier swept her gaze across the yard, and I watched her work out the logic of it the way clients sometimes do, trying to see the finished thing through all the mess. She’d commissioned me to terrace the entire sloped property, multiple levels stepping down from the house to the gate. Right now, it looks like nothing so much as an ambitious disaster.

“Christian’s on his way from the airport,” she said, turning back to me. “And everyone’s coming to dinner tonight. You should stay.”

I’d met Lori and her son Milo the week before when I’d come to finalize the project details. I’d even caught a glimpse of the wider family arriving for Friday dinner, a whole wave of them, loud and warm and clearly delighted to be in the same room from the driveway as I was leaving. They were the kind of family that made you feel the absence of your own.

There was leftover pasta waiting at my apartment. No one to eat it with. The math was not difficult.

But I shook my head. “Another time. This is his first night back. You don’t need an audience.”

Brier looked like she wanted to push back, but before she could, a faint sound carried up from the bottom of the slope, a car engine cutting out, then quiet. She was on her feet before I finished registering it, practically flying down the patchy incline toward the gate, her dark hair swinging. I’d never seen a woman in a pencil skirt move that fast.

I stood, intending to give them space. My bag was inside a change of clothes, phone charger, and a folder of sketches for my next project. I could check in on those and stay out of the way until my delivery arrived. I headed through the front door and into the cool of the house.

My phone had died sometime between calling the driver and now, which meant the charger was no longer optional. I plugged it in at the kitchen counter, then pulled out the project sketches of the Henderson’ property in Silver Lake, a courtyard redesign I’d been refining for two weeks. I laid out the pages on the counter and stared at them, though my brain was still half outside in the heat.

I’d considered changing out of my work clothes while I had the chance. Brier had been generous enough to offer use of one of the spare bathrooms since we started, and I’d taken her up on it every evening. But the timber delivery was still coming, which meant I’d be lifting poles and rolling them off a truck bed. I checked the clock, who knew, with Johnny’s track record. There was no point putting on clean clothes yet.

I heard footsteps on the porch, then voices, and then the front door swung open.

I was still looking down at the sketches when I heard Brier say my name.

I turned around.

Christian Hendrick was tall in the way that reorganized a room. Not aggressively, so he wasn’t doing it, but he took up space in a manner that made you aware of it immediately. Dark brown hair, not as warm as Briar’s, cut close and neat. A suit that clearly had not come off the rack, slightly creased from the flight, which somehow made it look better rather than worse. His eyes were the same sharp green as his sister’s, but the quality in them was different, steadier, more contained, like he was always taking stock.

I was suddenly aware of every grain of dirt on my jeans.

“Christian, this is Charlotte Kaelions.” Brier gestured between us. “She’s the one I told you about. Charlotte, this is my brother.”

“The person responsible for all of this,” he said, nodding toward the window and the wrecked yard beyond it.

“Temporarily responsible,” I said. “Give it six weeks.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. It was a small movement, barely a smile at all, but it registered somewhere in the region of my chest like a minor inconvenience I would deal with later.

I had dirt on my collar. I could feel it. I resisted the urge to check.

Before either of us could say anything else, a phone rang somewhere inside the house. Briar’s expression shifted to recognition, then resignation.

“That’s the lavender supplier. I’ve been chasing him all afternoon.” She was already moving. “Two minutes. Three at most. Don’t do anything interesting without me.”

She was gone before either of us responded.

Christian looked at me.

I looked at him.

“Lavender supplier?” he said.

“She runs a cosmetics company. Lavender is apparently a recurring crisis.”

He nodded slowly. “I could reach out to a few people. I have contacts in the agricultural supply space.”

I raised an eyebrow. “She’ll tell you that’s work, and you’re not allowed to work.”

He looked faintly amused. “You just met me.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you. The workaholic thing features prominently.”

He tilted his head. “Is that how she described it?”

“Those were my words. Hers were more diplomatic.”

The amusement solidified into something more genuine, and I felt a second small inconvenience register in my chest, adjacent to the first one. I turned back to my sketches on the counter and started gathering them up.

Outside, a truck engine rumbled up to the gate.

“Delivery?” Christian said.

“Timber poles. I’ve got it. You don’t have to. ”

He was already unbuttoning his cuffs.

Johnny was exactly as late as I’d expected and exactly as apologetic, which had become its own reliable rhythm over the six projects we’d worked on together. He backed the truck through the gate with practiced ease while I directed and Christian stood slightly to my left, watching with his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, looking like someone had assigned a very expensive piece of machinery to a manual labor task and the machine had not complained.