Sweetheart Cottage (Cranberry Bay #1) by Mindy Hardwick Read Free Book Online Page B

freshly washed curtains. In the last three days, she’d been able to make a good deal of progress on the home. The utilities were all in her name. The gutters were clean. She’d even found an old mower in the garage and trimmed the front and backyards on a cold, but sunny afternoon. Once the ceiling plaster was fixed, she’d get the home on the market.
    The only problem was getting someone to look at the leak in the ceiling. She’d placed calls to four different plumbers, and it’d taken over two days for anyone to return her call and schedule a time to come out to look at the house. This morning, when Jim arrived, he took one look at the plaster and shook his head; for the last two hours, he had been scouting around the house, checking the pipes in the two upstairs bathrooms, the kitchen, and under the home.
    Jim stepped down from the ladder and jotted a few more notes on what looked like a full yellow tablet.
    “How does it look?” Rylee smiled brightly.
    “Not good.” He shook his head. “You’ve got a serious water leak, and these can be complicated.”
    “How much is it going to cost?” Rylee set her teacup down on a colorful fabric coaster. She’d made the coasters with a small plastic loom. The loom was probably still tucked away in a box in the attic; it was one of the places she hadn’t been able to face yet.
    “I’m still working out the cost,” Jim said, looking at the paper and frowning. “But I think we’re easily into a couple thousand dollars.”
    “A couple thousand dollars.” Rylee gasped, running her hand through her hair.
    “Sorry for the bad news. But water leaks in the plaster don’t just come from where they are dripping. In your case, it’s actually coming from the roof, but the water ran down the upstairs floorboards before it pooled in the corner over there and caused the plaster damage that you see.”
    “The roof needs to be repaired too?” Rylee could barely find her voice.
    “It looks like it.” Jim said. “At least on the left-hand side of the home.”
    “How soon can someone start work on all of this? I’m hoping to get it on the market as soon as possible.”
    Jim frowned. “I’ve got a couple great guys who can do the work, but they’re pretty backed up right now. The new beach grocery superstore is trying to open for the holidays, and the guys are working twenty-four seven. It’ll be at least early December before I can get anyone over here.”
    “You’re telling me the work can’t even start until after Thanksgiving?”
    “We can patch things up for you,” Jim said. “We want to get the roof fixed first, so you don’t have any more leaks. But the bulk of the interior work, tearing out the ceiling and taking care of the damage, yes, that will all have to wait until the first week of December.”
    “I see,” Rylee said, trying to keep herself calm and her nerves steady. “And how long will everything take?”
    Jim looked up to the ceiling. “As long as we don’t have any big storms that cause roof damage to people’s homes and pull the guys off the job here, I’d say we’re looking at about a two- to three-week time frame.”
    “Two to three weeks.” Rylee mentally ran through the dates. “The work won’t be finished until just before Christmas.”
    “That’s right, but,” Jim said, and smiled at her, “that’ll be perfect because people aren’t really looking to buy a house in the holiday season. You can get a good jump on the spring listings in January.”
    “Yes,” Rylee muttered. “Perfect.” She had wanted to be out of Cranberry Bay by the end of the month; now it looked like she wouldn’t be able to even get the house on the market for two months. Her savings account would never stretch, let alone cover the repairs. She’d have to find a job and, most likely, take out a small home-equity loan to cover the repairs.
    “Do you need some time to think about it?”
    “No.” Rylee shook her head. The last thing she wanted was