Christine Rimmer - Donovan's Child

“I’m so looking forward to that.”

“And we have to be quick about it. I told the Foundation we’d be ready to bring in the whole team in six weeks.” He meant the builder, the other architects and the engineers.

“Did you just say that we’d be ready?”

“I decided it would be unwise to go into how I won’t be involved past the planning stages.”

“Good thinking. Since you know exactly how that would go over—it wouldn’t. It won’t. They’re counting on you .”

“And they will learn to count on you.”

“So you totally misled them.”

He looked down his manly blade of a nose at her. “Better that they see the design and the scale model and love it first, meet you at your most self-assured and persuasive. You can give them a full-out oral presentation, really wow them. Make them see that you’re not only confident, you’re completely capable of handling the construction on your own.”

“Confident, capable, self-assured and persuasive. Well. At least I like the sound of all that.”

He granted her a wry glance. “You have a lot of work to do. Don’t become overly confident.”

“With you around? Never going to happen.”

Loftily, he informed her, “March one is the target date for breaking ground.”

She put up a hand, forefinger extended. “If I might just make one small point.”

“As if I could stop you.”

“I can’t help but notice that suddenly, you’re all about not wasting time. What’s that old saying? ‘Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.’ ”

“The tight timeline has nothing to do with my planning, poor or otherwise.”

“Planned or not, you’re the one who kept us from going ahead months ago.”

“Since you seem to be so fond of clichés, here’s one for you. Can we stop beating the same dead horse? Yes, I put the project on hold. Now I’m ready to get down to work.”

“And the timeline is impossibly tight.”

“That may be so.”

“How generous of you to admit it.”

“But in the end, Abilene, there is only one question.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Do you want to make a success of this or not?”

Okay. He had it right for once. That was the question. “Yes, Donovan. I do.”

“Then go back to your work area, get out your pastels, your charcoal, your fat markers. And stop fooling around.”

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