He had everything packed in a small cooler and stowed in the truck with two minutes to spare when he heard one of the painters yell down from the third floor.
“Has anyone seen Maggie? Cats got in the paint again. We got yellow paw prints all over up here.”
One of the cats in question ran past him on the stairs, feet and tail streaked yellow. Silas found Maggie, sledgehammer in hand and a wild look in her eyes, still standing in the ruined sitting room on the second floor.
“I’ll take that,” he said, plucking the hammer out of her hand. “Your presence is required outside.”
“I don’t have time to deal with another crisis right now,” she said slowly, carefully.
“Is Maggie in the house?” someone else yelled. “We got a problem.”
She reached for the hammer, murder bright in her eyes.
The window had closed. On yet another toddler howl, Silas dropped the sledgehammer on the ruined carpet and dragged Maggie down the stairs. They made it out the back door without being spotted, and he skirted the side of the house at a run with her in tow.
“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger door of his truck.
“I can’t leave. I’ve got fifty-seven emergencies happening at the same time in there,” she insisted, pressing her fingers to her temples.
He picked her up, dropped her on the seat, and shut the door.
She was pissed, but not unhinged enough to jump from a moving vehicle, so he started the engine and took off down the drive.
“Silas, I don’t know what you’re cooking up, but I have shit I need to take care of. In case you didn’t notice, we’re officially two days behind schedule.”
“Oh, I noticed. But how many days will you end up behind if you start swinging at painters with a sledgehammer?”
“I wasn’t going to hit anyone with it,” she scoffed. “Maybe I thought about how good it would feel, but I wasn’t going to actually do it. Probably.”
“I sure wouldn’t blame you for it, but you going to jail and all would really put the job behind.”
“Why do kids scream like that?” she asked, still wearily rubbing her temples. “Keaton sounds like his arms and legs are being ripped off, and when you go running in to find out which body part was severed, he just smiles like it’s all a game.”
“Kids are jerks.”
“And Cody showed up half an hour after curfew last night and then acts like I don’t know exactly what he was doing in the backseat of the car we bought him,” she continued.
“Get it all out, Mags,” Silas advised. “Otherwise you’ll go geyser on someone or decide to add French doors to nowhere on the third floor.”
“I’ve got two weeks to finish and stage this place for the damn party.”
He wisely chose not to point out that she was the one who selected the date and could probably just as easily change it.
“I still don’t have a kitchen. How many things can go wrong in one room?” she railed. “I mean, are the ghosts of the Campbells mad at me? Am I cursed?”
“Probably not, but I can see how you might feel that way,” he said, navigating into town.
“I should have my next project lined up by now. Or at least I should have an idea of what I’m going to do next. I was supposed to squeeze in another house by Christmas.”
Silas bit his tongue. If he called her out on talking about moving on, when he felt like it was a team decision at this point, she might hit him with a shovel. And if he pointed out that maybe she wasn’t real estate shopping because part of her was thinking seriously about staying, he couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t pack a bag and be gone by morning just to prove him wrong.
“Why are we at your house?” she asked as he pulled into the driveway and drove around the back of the house to the garage. “Silas Wright, if you try to get me to take a nap or have sex with you right now, I will post your phone number on my next episode.”
“I’m just picking something up,” he promised. “Stay put.”
He left her in the truck with the engine running and picked up the kayak and paddle.
“No. Nope. No way,” she said when he threw it in the bed of the truck and strapped it down.
He climbed in behind the wheel and threw the truck in reverse.
“I’m not getting in that thing. Not when I have a thousand things to take care of.”
“You’re getting in it if I have to tie you to it,” he said cheerfully. “You have one thing to take care of today. That’s yourself.”