Her stomach jumped. Her eyes opened. And he was gone. Out of the doorway and striding through the main bar area. Delaney, however, couldn’t move. She was so light-headed her vision was blurry. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears and thudded between her legs, and it took excruciatingly long moments for that little rush to subside.
Thankfully—or not—Ethan’s relentless barrage on the building’s every last goddamned flaw sped up her recovery. He pointed out venting problems and cabinet, countertop, appliance, and electrical code violations. Noted several nonpermitted structures and cited width, height, head clearance, and exit violations.
“You’ll have to bring the entrance and the bathrooms up to handicap codes. And this whole place needs sprinklers. The entire interior—bar, seating areas, bathrooms, kitchen—everything. That’s a big, big chunk of cash right there.”
He paused, exhaled heavily, and glanced toward the stairs leading to the second floor. “I’m ready to hit the brothel if you are.”
She huffed a laugh. At the turn of the century, The Bad Seed was reputed to have been a bar and brothel. Quite the hot spot. Before the bar had deteriorated into a biker bar, the history had been a common draw for tourists, and it had fascinated Delaney as a kid. But she wasn’t going through any more of this with him. She’d seen enough of his inspection style to know what she had to do next. And if she spent another minute tortured by his unbearably sexy presence, she didn’t completely trust herself not to jump him.
Honestly, sometimes her ability to separate sex from other parts of life was a pain in the ass. This would be a lot easier if writing him off as a jerk guaranteed her desire would follow.
But no. For her, sex was sex. Work was work. And she still wanted him.
Dammit.
He shrugged and gave her that a-freaking-dorable half grin. “Kinda always wanted to see it.”
That little glimmer of the Ethan she’d spent the night with wasn’t helping. “Maybe another time. I think I’ve had all the walk-through I can take today.”
He faced her and pressed his palm against the wood. His expression was open, and what looked like sincere concern floated in his eyes. “I know a guy in Santa Rosa. He’s a contractor, went through a rough patch a few years back, and he’s still trying to recover. If you want, I’ll call him. See if I can get you a good deal on the demolition. The disposal will still cost the same, but you might save ten, fifteen grand on the demo.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She straightened and pushed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. The position pushed her chest forward, drawing Ethan’s gaze. Heat flared in his eyes, the kind that made him look like he wanted to pin her to the nearest table. Of course, her traitorous body responded. “Before you leave, we should get your agenda out in the open.”
That brought his gaze back to her face. “Agenda?”
“There were quite a few discrepancies between reality and the information you just delivered. You’re an intelligent guy, and you obviously know your job, which rules out ignorance or mistakes and leaves me with one conclusion: you deliberately misled me. I need to know why.”
He shifted on his feet, resetting his stance as if readying for a fight. “Excuse me?”
“Discrepancies,” she repeated. “Like the electrical service panel outside. It’s completely up to code. Half of the panel was covered because it isn’t being used, but it’s there, powered up, and available to supply electricity to a building twice this size. It’s a little hard to believe you missed that.”
Ethan’s mouth went slack.
“And if you’d looked a little closer at the interior electrical instead of opening up just one box, you’d have figured out pretty quickly that the whole bar, including the kitchen, has superior wiring except for the ten feet along that one outer wall. My guess is that my dad had some planned renovation for that area that he didn’t get around to implementing.”
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Delaney—”
“As for the kitchen, you must not have noticed the exhaust hood is a Viking Pro model, which can easily handle the double duty needed for both the fryer and the grill. And you got the exit requirements wrong for the building’s occupancy—I only need two exits, not three, which I already have.
“As for the foundation, you should have been able to see with one look that only a few of the pilings beneath the building are failing, not the entire foundation, which is actually a pretty easy fix with a few hydraulic lifts for support while the bad ones are being repaired and reinforced.”
Ethan squeezed his eyes shut as if he had a headache and ran a hand over his forehead, then scraped it through his hair.
“As for unpermitted construction,” she continued, “there is only one area that’s been added on to the original structure, the back porch, which—”
“Delaney,” he said sharply, cutting her off. “It’s great that you know construction.” He gestured to her clothes. “It looks like you’ve done your share of labor. But in this situation, a little information could be a bad thing. People with a casual working knowledge of construction try to take on bigger jobs than they should all the time. I see it almost every day. Simply working in construction does not qualify anyone to take on a renovation of this size or depth. And if you sub out the work, you’ll be spending as much as you’ll ever get for the place, which, in essence is a waste of your time and effort.”
“My concern isn’t a lack of knowledge, skill, or ability on my part.” She held his gaze. “My concern, based on the information you gave me over the last twenty minutes, is a lack of objectivity and integrity on your part.”
That honest truth hit its mark, and by the frustration rolling across his handsome face, Ethan was trying just as hard to rein in his temper. “Renovating isn’t just about fixing code violations—”
“Here’s the thing.” She was done with the push and pull. Time for her line in the sand. “You may be the only game in town, but you’re not the only inspector in the county. And if I catch you in one more lie—just one—I’ll not only file a formal complaint with the city, I’ll go over your head and demand the city manager bring in an inspector from one of the cities nearby. If I have to, I’ll go over the city manager’s head and bypass the mayor by going to the city council, because we all know how tight the Hayes and Ryan families can be when things go bad. And this time, I’m not leaving until I decide I’m leaving.”
She stabbed her index finger toward the floor. “This is more than a building renovation. This is my entire life savings. This is money I’ve worked the last decade of my life to put away. This is my future, Avery’s future, Chloe’s future. This, Ethan, is business. And in business I play straight, clean, right up the middle. I’m good at what I do, so I don’t need to play dirty. But even better, I know how to beat dirty with good business. So I’m more than happy to take dirty and meet it head-on, and I can guarantee those on the dirty side won’t like the outcome.”
When she stopped and took a breath, Ethan looked both shocked and awed. For a long moment, Delaney didn’t think he was going to say anything, but he finally said, “All this arguing is useless. You’ve only got twelve days to start renovations. There’s no way any architect is going to be able to get all the required documents together for the building permit by then, let alone begin working on this place.”
&nb