Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 113741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113741 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 569(@200wpm)___ 455(@250wpm)___ 379(@300wpm)
As far as he cared, the place looked great, even with the walls newly taped and bedded, scaffolding laying everywhere, broken trim pieces, nails, screws, boxes, and dust covering everything… Yeah, but they were right on schedule. It was all going to be fine. The Art Gallery’s grand opening loomed only a week away. The invitations had already been sent with RSVPs coming in daily. And regardless of how it all looked at the moment, this place would be complete and dazzling within the next seven days, ready to welcome the world.
Remarkably the only complication in the remodel came with the electrical contractor. He’d fired him to keep the fast moving, steady pace he’d paid both his arms and a leg to achieve. The schedule didn’t allow for anyone to put them behind. It took less than a few hours to find a new electrical contractor, and this new contractor was young and eager, ready to put the time in to finish this remodel on schedule, starting today, or so he’d been assured.
Since Gage grew up in a family of construction workers, he knew firsthand how shady subcontractors could be with their empty promises of timeframes and deadlines. It was the main reason he spent every single day and night here, pushing and threatening every worker who came through his door. He required them all to be accountable to him for their portion of the rebuild and he rewarded them when they achieved each deadline. He never lived his life on empty promises and he wasn’t going to allow his art gallery modifications to turn out the same way. At thirty-three years old and already retiring from the only job he’d ever wanted to do, Gage demanded things run on time in order for him to have some semblance of a normal life in his future.
This gallery was a little risky. He’d chosen to locate in Chicago’s South Side, his hometown, rather than in some trendy part of New York City. The opening of his gallery fell strategically close to the breaking news of his final investigative report. It’s why the push to finish this remodel came so quickly. Both his gallery debut and the airing of his last report were designed to catapult him into regular reporting on CNN or 60 Minutes, but from behind the desk, not in the field. Having the gallery to run and a desk broadcasting job to anchor would be monumentally easier jobs than running through the underbelly of every third world country, trying to piece together how crappy people truly were to one another.
Gage jogged back upstairs to his personal living quarters to prepare for the day. He took a quick shower and wiped the mist from the mirror with his wet towel. Always comfortable in his own skin, Gage stood completely naked, looking at himself in the mirror.
His eyes resembled those of a much older man. He’d seen too much in his need to stand on his own two feet. He’d also spent a lot of time trying to make his facial features more rugged to hide the feminine features he’d been born with. In the beginning of his career, no one had taken him seriously, discounting him, time and time again, because of his pretty boy good looks. He grew past tired of always being told he would be better off modeling or acting than trying to be taken seriously as a photo journalist.
Inner personal drive and nothing more forced him to make people take notice of his work. Ten years later, he had a dark tan from years of working in the sun and blond sun streaks running through his sandy blond hair. He’d always kept his hair length close to a buzz cut. It helped with the itching when there wasn’t a bath readily available for days at a time, but now that he was back to being a regular citizen again, he’d decided to let it grow. He kept it a little longer in order to do some of those cool, slightly disarrayed hair styles so popular today.
Moving his hands through his hair, he got the look he liked with a little bit of gel and a little bit of the blow dryer’s help. He decided to keep the five o’clock shadow, which always made his features look more masculine, and he did a quick trim job on the growth to keep it neat. His nose seemed a little too wide to him, but no one else ever seemed to notice, and there was just nothing he could do to hide his lips. They were big, full, and wide, spreading easily into a smile. Gage’s reputation categorized him to be no nonsense, a total hard ass. That irony meant that most people in his life didn’t know how much he loved to laugh and smile.
He decided on jeans and a white with blue plaid, lightweight button down. Gage flipped on the lights to his bedroom, dressing in front of his mirror. He left the shirt untucked and unbuttoned at the top and at the bottom. Gage stood tall and muscular with a solid six pack. One he got from real work, not the gym. He’d carried his own equipment during every report throughout all the years, but his body looked more like a swimmer’s body, lean and long. Nothing about gallery or desk work gave him the workout necessary to retain any sort of muscle, anywhere along his body. If he intended to maintain this body, he needed to reconsider the gym option.
He added a few accessories to finish off the look before checking his reflection one last time in the mirror. He liked real clothes and spent a fortune on them once he’d gotten back in town. He packed his closet full of casual, easy wearing clothes. He loved the surfer guy look of today, but he also grooved on Prada’s spring collection, buying every piece shown to him. The khaki shorts, T-shirts, and work boots he wore in the field were never going to find their way back into his wardrobe again. He liked color and style, something he didn’t know he liked until he’d done without it.