“Driveway gate operating.” The voice alarm inside the house signaled the end of her peace.

She looked outside and saw two white trucks, the kind Colin and his men drove, pull inside and park. Scout put his nose up to the sliding glass door and barked. “I know, right?”

Parker watched the first semitruck pull in with a tractor on a flatbed. “Here we go.”

She brushed her hair, pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and walked out the door. Scout tried to follow, but she brushed him back inside.

By the time she made it down the driveway and across the wash, no less than a dozen men with an equal number of vehicles were buzzing around. Everyone wore hard hats and vests. All of them were men.

Colin met her in the driveway, a smile on his face. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” She tried to smile.

The intermittent beep of a tractor backing off a truck filled the air. “How many tractors are you bringing in?”

“They’re actually called skip loaders. And quite a few. We’re throwing a lot of people on this project to knock it out as fast as we can.”

“Before it starts to rain.”

“Right.”

Colin pointed to one of his men at the gate. “That’s Ray. I have him on the gate. The first few days on-site we get a lot of lookie-loos wanting to see what we’re doing.”

“Good. I’ll introduce you to my immediate neighbors since they’re going to be impacted the most. Everyone else I’d just as soon keep outside the gate. I’ll invest in some ‘No Trespassing’ signs.”

“Good idea. I already met the De Lucas and the Sutters.”

Her neighbors were all decent people. “We’re a little concerned about the runoff from the canyon above their homes.” She pointed out a flash point that often caused runoff during heavy rains.

“It’s already been brought to my attention.”

“Any mud flow from that direction might keep you guys from getting in here.”

Colin smiled, all dimples and charm. “We have big toys. We’ll get in. And more importantly, we’ll make sure you and your brother and sister can get in and out.”

She liked the sound of that.

Two men started unrolling heavy sheets of plastic and laying it down. “What are they doing?”

“Laying the foundation for the trucks.”

No sooner did the words come out of Colin’s mouth than a dump truck started backing up, and tons of tiny rocks released from the back. “Oh.”

Everything moved at a breakneck pace from that point on.

“I have an arborist on-site today. The heritage oak trees need special attention.”

“Those trees have more rights than people,” she said. According to her father, back when he was alive, they were supposed to get a permit for trimming a branch more than three inches thick. Not that her father played by the rules.

He laughed. “Tell me about it. While he’s here, I’m going to have him look at the other trees on your property.”

Parker swatted at an ant that had crawled up her leg. “I trimmed most of them down hoping to save them. A couple of the cottonwoods have been struggling from the drought.”

“You trimmed them?”

She rubbed the back of her neck and thought of Jennifer and Sam. “Me and a few friends. We rented one of those chippers and made a weekend out of it during the summer.”

“That’s a big job.” He looked impressed.

“What, you don’t think I have it in me?” she teased.

Colin lifted both hands in the air, his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Everything I’ve seen so far says you are capable of just about anything.”

She lifted her chest a little higher and teased, “You’d do well to remember that.”

He laughed.

“Besides, renting the chipper was cheaper than hiring it out.” It had been a bitch of a weekend, but they’d managed to get a lot done for a fraction of the price.

Colin kept nodding, then pointed to what was once a thriving manzanita that framed the entry of the driveway. “How do you feel about that?” It had been reduced to blackened wood with only a few green leaves at the very top after the fire. She’d trimmed half of it away, hoping it would come back.

She watched the trucks trying to maneuver around the dying plant.

“It’s in the way, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “The arborist already confirmed it was past saving.”

She moaned. “Okay, fine. Take it out.”

Without delay, Colin signaled someone over. “Let’s get this out of here.”

“You got it.”

Parker didn’t catch any names. She stood back and watched as three men worked together to guide the driver of the skip loader. The beep of the machine made it hard to hear. The driver kept backing up, his eye on the tree and not the chain-link fence behind it.

The fence started giving way while three men yelled at the driver to stop.

Parker’s heart leapt in her chest, her mouth opened.

Colin leaned over and calmly said, “We fix fences, too.”

She backed up and bit her lip while activity exploded around her. Within minutes, the base of the manzanita was pulled out by its roots and taken to a pile.

“Walk with me,” Colin told her. He pointed to several pepper trees that were completely charred.

“I know they’re dead. But the tree guy wanted three hundred bucks a tree to cut them down.”

“They’re in our way so we will take care of them. We’re going to pull this fence back and put in a gate to give our trucks room to get up into the wash.”

“Okay.” Her head was spinning.

“Hey, Colin?”

Someone called to him from across the wash. He looked at her. “I’ve got to . . .”

“Go. I’m around all day. If I have questions, I’ll ask.”

He patted her shoulder, looked her in the eye, and then turned and left her side.

As she headed back toward the driveway, the Porta Potty truck arrived and unloaded one big blue toilet next to her garbage cans.

“Oh, God . . .”

CHAPTER NINE

Austin came home from school and brought a friend so they could gawk at the scene in the front yard.

The crew had set up an E-Z Up canopy with park benches under it to take their breaks and kept any trash they created cleaned up.

Still, it was chaos. Organized chaos, but madness nonetheless. One by one, the loaders, backhoes, long reach excavators, water trucks, and graders were lining up and had parked for the night. They’d managed to take down no less than a dozen dead trees, two of which were cottonwoods that lined her driveway and had died prior to the fire because of California’s lack of rain. Colin asked if she wanted them gone and she couldn’t nod fast enough.

Now she sat on a rock and held Scout by his leash while the men slowly peeled off for the night.

She watched as Colin shrugged out of his safety vest and tossed his hard hat inside the cab of his truck. He closed the door and angled her way.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I think I’m in for a crazy ride.”

He leaned against the remains of a split rail fence that was charred but not destroyed by the heat of the fire.