A COMMON BOND - FREE SAMPLE!
This is a free sample of my debut lesbian romance novella, A Common Bond, which comes out November 7, 2023. Please enjoy :)
Note: There may/will be some typos in this sample. We like that, it confuses the Overlords of Zon so they don't strike me for contract infringement. I promise in the final, purchased version the typos have been fixed :)
Now, on with the sample!
RFI 1
To: Josie Basurto (May 3, 5:34PM)
From: Carneline Triana
Subject: Site Visit for Mobilization
Josie,
I will be on site with my management team most of Monday morning. I’m sure we will run into each other at some point.
Carneline
***
From: Josie Basurto (May 3, 5:39PM)
To: Carneline Triana
Subject: RE: Site Visit for Mobilization
Looking forward to it!
J
***
Carneline had known Clover Hill’s old town hall was in bad shape from the bid documents. On her walkthrough with Rio a few weeks ago, even more suspicions had been raised. But now, the disintegrating chunk of limestone that had fallen off the cornice and into her hand confirmed it: she was going to be spending a lot more time in Clover Hill than she had initially planned. “Jesus Christ.”
“I’ve never seen limestone this bad,” Bruno murmured. Oceanic’s chief masonry superintendent carefully set the piece of stone down on the scaffold. “This whole cornice is going to have to be checked.”
Checking the structural integrity of a city block’s worth of limestone was definitely not covered in their contract. Carneline chewed on the inside corner of her mouth as she ran a hand across the sugaring stone and watched millennia-old sand crumble into her palm. “Is this the only bad news?”
“Oh no,” Bruno said in a voice far too cheery for her liking as he pushed to his feet. “This mortar is definitely hot.”
Asbestos remediation was also definitely not in their contract.
She cast a desperate glance along the joints. “Are you sure?”
“Yup.” He pointed to an area where the mortar was exposed. “Look close. You can see the fibers.”
Carneline looked and, sure enough, there were the telltale threads amongst the cement, lime, and sand. Fuck. “Does Rio know?”
Bruno shook his head.
She snapped a couple of photos on her phone and turned for the scaffold stair. “Are xe still documenting in the lobby?”
“I think so.”
“Good. I’ll send xem up.”
The metal stairs squeaked as Carneline made her way down them, eyeing the brick and stone of the Romanesque Revival building with far more suspicion than before. The facade clearly hadn’t been washed in two decades. The window sills were covered in black atmospheric discoloration, and the blue-green haze of cupric staining streaked down major crevices. On the brick and stone walls, there were long stretches of jointing completely devoid of mortar and one of the brackets was missing entirely.
She stopped two decks down and took a moment to admire the town. This was Oceanic’s first project this far south. They mostly stuck to projects in Baymill, but her dad had wanted to expand into other markets, so here she was forty feet in the air above a town she could see the other side of from the scaffold. The five-story town hall towered over most of the rest of the buildings, but fit in perfectly amongst the clusters of various historic structures downtown. Its renovation was long overdue, but Carneline hoped Clover Hill would find it worth it in the end.
From her perch, she could see the expanse of the park, with its quaint little gazebo and beautifully kept grounds. A bit farther she spied the currently unlit marquee of an old movie theater and a neon sign belonging to local diner. It was a beautiful town, and as much as she could lean on the scaffold railing and look out over the little town covered in the fresh leaves of spring for hours, she had a job to do.
She tore herself away from the view and continued down the scaffold to the lobby. The first time she’d seen it, Carneline had been struck almost speechless by the beauty of its wrought iron doors, scagliola-clad pilasters, and massive crystal chandelier. Now it barely registered. She hurried through the plywood-covered lobby until she found her assistant project manager sprawled indelicately across the floor.
Rio was an acquired taste Carneline wasn’t quite sure she had acquired yet; mildly competent, incredibly anxious, and graced with the aggravating tendency to lose the plot at the slightest provocation. Still, xe tried, which was more than Carneline could say of half of Oceanic’s field staff.
“Good morning, Rio.”
Rio startled, and practically levitated off the floor in a cloud of dust almost definitely from the plaster demo. Xe was absolutely covered in the stuff, and Rio hurriedly stuffed xemself back into xyr gloves and sheepishly brushed down xyr front. “Good—good morning, Carneline. I—I didn’t know you were on site.”
“I was walking the cornice with Bruno.”
“Oh.”
“How is it going down here?”
Xe grimaced and gestured at the ground. “It’s—uh. The stone’s really cracked.”
Bits of torn painter’s tape crawled across the marble below them like blown blue cherry blossom petals. Carneline crouched, and Rio angled the beam of xyr flashlight so she could see the spidery lines coursing through. Great. “These are going to shatter the second Bruno tries to take them out.”
“That’s what he said, too.”
Another expensive change order for the growing pile, I suppose. She stood, dreading the prospect of the unending raft of paperwork in her future. “I’ll speak with the NCK team. Have you been up to the cornice yet?”
Rio shook xyr head.
“When you are done down here, I need you to go up and document everything before we touch it. Do you have your profile gauges with you?”
“They’re in my car.”
“Good. Bruno will be up there for a little bit. Find…” She hedged, thinking of the worn-down status of the cornice. “Find the least broken stone and take a profile.”
Xe nodded. “Okay.”
“And wear an N95. The mortar is hot and everything up there is crumbling.”
Rio’s dark eyes got comically wide behind xyr safety glasses. “Oh shit.”
Her sentiments exactly. “Do you have any questions?” Xe shook xyr head again. “Alright. Call me if something comes up.”
“Will do!”
Carneline left Rio to xyr marble documentation and slipped out the west entrance to find the jobsite trailer. When she pulled the door open, she found Josie bent over the conference table—which was really just four folding tables pushed together in the center of the room—studying the reference drawings.
“Good morning,” she greeted as the door snapped shut behind her.
“Good morning,” Josie replied as she turned the page of the drawings. “Headed out? Help yourself to some coffee before you leave.”
Carneline startled at the kind, but unexpected offer. “Oh. Thank you.”
“To-go cups are on top of the fridge.”
“I actually don’t drink hot coffee,” she replied sheepishly.
“Don’t drink hot coffee?” Josie asked, looking up from her drawings with a grin that Carneline had discovered seemed permanently glued to her face. “Don’t tell me…you’re like Baylee and only drink cold brew.”
Carneline gave an awkward little laugh, not liking the familiarity with which Josie talked to her about her sister. People always did that, acted like they knew her because they knew her sister or father. Another one of the ‘perks’ of a family business. “Guilty as charged.”
“Well, I’m one step ahead of you. There’s cold brew in the fridge.”
The offer was tempting. Carneline considered for a moment, but finally decided against it. If she got caught in traffic, which was likely considering the time, she would definitely have to stop and pee. “Not today. I have to drive back to Baymill after this, but thank you.”
“Any time.”
Josie finally straightened up fully and leaned casually on the white plastic folding table, hooking her thumbs into her jeans. She was an unreasonably attractive figure, taller than Carneline, with kind brown eyes and a sharp fade that put every short-haired worker on the site to shame. In some universe she might have been Carneline’s type—if Josie hadn’t worked for the general contractor paying them to fix Clover Hill’s historic town hall.
Carneline hedged. “I…actually wanted to talk to you about something.”
Josie’s voice remained impressively neutral. “Oh?”
“Yes…” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “We have some problems.”
“Define ‘problems.’”
“That depends, do you want the least expensive issue or most expensive issue first?”
“Least expensive.” Josie flashed a luminous smile. “Warm me up.”
Carneline pulled up the photos she had taken of the floor and passed her phone over for her to see. “The marble in the foyer is full of cracks. It’s going to shatter when we try to take it out.”
“Architects were ridiculous to think we could salvage the whole floor,” Josie said with a disbelieving scoff. “A-hundred-and-twenty-year-old marble doesn’t come up like that.”
“No, it does not,” Carneline confirmed.
Josie handed her phone back, her face suddenly all business. The shift was jarring, to say the least. “How much is this going to cost?”
“I can’t say for certain, but it will be a decent amount.”
Josie sighed. “Great. You submitted replacement marble, right?”
“A few weeks ago.”
Josie ran a hand through her hair. “Submit an RFI and we’ll see what the architects have to say.”
“Was planning to.”
“Thanks.” She took a sip from a nearby thermos. “What’s the bigger, badder bill?”
Carneline gave Josie a significant look. “Have you been up to the cornice?”
“Recently?”
“Yes.”
“I walked it at the beginning,” she replied with a frown. “Is there something wrong with it?”
If only. “The mortar’s full of asbestos and the stone is crumbling. A piece fell off in my hand.”
Josie inhaled in shock. “Oh fuck.”
“I don’t want anyone from my crew touching it until the town knows.”
“Understandable. Do you think it’s going to need to be replaced?”
Carneline glanced around the trailer to make sure they were alone. “Off the record, I think you might want to figure out where Clover Hill has a million dollars stashed for a rainy day.”
“It’s that bad?”
“The building is a hundred and twenty years old,” she said with a shrug. “I’m surprised it lasted this long.”
Josie’s face went grim. “Got it. Thanks for the heads up.”
“Not a problem.” She hesitated, not sure if Josie could handle a third thing on her plate. “There is…one more thing?”
“If there’s a massive structural issue that means we need to evacuate the building, please turn around and leave now,” Josie joked weakly. “Let me die in the collapsed building in peaceful ignorance.”
Carneline gave a dismissive snort. “Nothing so drastic.”
Josie brightened considerably. “Great! What’s up?”
“You need to have someone go into the main hall and put down sweeping compound. Rio’s rolling around on the floor in there looking like the Ghost of Christmas Past. To say nothing of the silica hazard.”
Josie was already grabbing her hard hat off the table. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
“See you then!” Josie trotted off out the door, Carneline close behind her.
She checked her watch: three-o’clock. Plenty of time to make it back to the city without hitting traffic. She pulled her hard hat off the second she hit the parking lot, shaking her curly red hair out so she could tie it back up once in the car. She’d get out of town, update her dad on the way home, then spend a quiet night with her plants before she had to go to bed.
Her phone rang. The song barely got four notes in before she picked up. “You’re psychic. I was just about to call you.”
“Are you done at Clover Hill?” Warren Triana asked gruffly.
“About to head home now, just have to throw my stuff in the ba—” She stopped dead a few paces from her trunk, eyes taking in the noticeable sink to her right rear bumper. “Fuck.”
Her father’s business tone instantly switched to fatherly concern. “What? What is it?”
She scowled and threw her hard hat in the back a tad more aggressively than was necessary. “It’s nothing,” she sighed. “I just have a flat.”
[END RFI 1]
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