Claire let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Dean walked over and picked up the coffee. He took a sip. It was good. He set it down on the mantelpiece and picked up a soft rag and a tin of finishing wax.
"Rotterdam is still striking," Claire said to the room, not looking at Dean. She kept her eyes on Leo's crayon. "I called the board at midnight. I told them to give the union the safety concessions they asked for. We take a 4% hit to the quarterly margins.
The stock will drop Monday morning. " Dean began applying the wax to the oak, working it into the grain in slow, tight circles. "Why? Because starving people out is a terrible way to build something meant to last," Claire said. The words tasted strange in her mouth, completely foreign, but undeniably true. Dean didn't stop moving his hands.
He rubbed the wax into the burl, the dark, twisted knot in the wood. "Stockholders aren't going to like that. " "I don't care," Claire said. And to her profound shock, she meant it. "I have enough money to live 10 lifetimes. I have a penthouse in the city that I hate.
I have a board of directors who would step over my dead body to get my parking spot. I spent yesterday yelling at a man 3,000 mi away because I was terrified of sitting in a quiet room. " She finally looked up at Dean. "I don't want to yell anymore. I just want to fix the house. " Dean stopped rubbing the wood. He turned his head and looked at her.
He studied her face, cutting through the fatigue, searching for the manipulation, the angle. He found none. Just a hollowed-out woman asking for a baseline of humanity. "The library is done today," Dean said, his voice flat. "Contracts fulfilled. " Claire stood up, brushing the dust from her jeans.
"The kitchen needs custom cabinetry. The stairs need the banister stripped and reset. The master bedroom needs crown molding. The job isn't done. The house is entirely broken. " "I'm a carpenter, Ms.
Montgomery," Dean said. "I fix wood. I don't fix people. " "I know," Claire said. She walked over to the fireplace and ran her fingers over the smooth, flawless finish of the oak. It was warm to the touch.
"I have to fix myself, but I would like to pay you to fix the wood, not as a subordinate, as a craftsman, at whatever rate you dictate. " "And" she paused, looking down at Leo, who was meticulously coloring the wheels of a tractor trailer. "And I promise, the only thing he will hear from me is the quiet. " Dean stared at her for a long, heavy minute. The silence stretched between them, but this time it wasn't a weapon. It was an assessment. It was the space required to measure the weight of a person's word.