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to a point, especially when it was not a serious issue. 
     
                  "I'll see you at --" he started, a twinkle in his eye, as he reached the front porch. The phone rang. It was Ms. Elliott again. "Yes, yes ma'am, I'm on my way. Less than five minutes. No, don't touch the lever anymore. Yes, yes, on the way." 
     
                  When he turned back around to confirm the meeting time to finish the inspection work for later that day, Miranda let the door slam in his face. 
     
                  Hamilton looked at the red door, inches from his nose, and smiled, fully realizing why she'd gotten so upset.  He sighed, hopped in his pickup truck, and backed out. He fully intended to keep his appointment with her that evening.
     

 
    Chapter 5
     
     
                  The nerve of him!  Miranda tried to calm down and place the company name. 
                 
                  Steele Development, Steele Development, Steele Development. After a little while,  she finally placed the company's familiar hammer-house logo. But that was a firm in downtown Atlanta. She knew they were known for transforming older neighborhoods; buying up properties and rehabbing them. Before the market turned, they were making headlines with their strategy. She did not like the concept of this developer. It was the direct opposite of what she was trying to do in her business.
     
                  Colbert and Company could have grown faster -- if she'd taken big investor money and gone to hot zip code areas and put seniors on the street. But she refused to bid on foreclosure properties in certain zip codes, because they were owned by mostly elderly men and women who were victims of unethical lending practices.  Time and time again, she'd seen on the news an elderly woman or man lose their once paid-for home due to an ARM or quick balloon payment.
     
                  As areas were being transformed under her nose by greedy developers, zooming in to tear down older bungalows to slap up mega-mansions, she did the opposite. Colbert and Company invested in smaller, affordable housing, that sat on separate lots, in quiet communities.  That was her investing style.               It might not have paid as much, as quickly, but she felt good about her work. Of the four tenants she had, two were outpatients widows who could live on their own. They were on fixed incomes, but the rents were low and the neighborhoods in which the homes sat were nice, quiet, and peaceful.  A senior citizen bus would come by to provide their medicines, meals during the week, and to take them to social outings. Miranda made a habit of calling or stopping  to visit and to see if they needed anything.
     
                  Another of her tenants was a single mother with a toddler. Miranda was paid via Section 8. The home sat in a middleclass neighborhood on the bus line.
     
                  The final set of tenants was a working class family of four who had an expressed an interest in buying the home one day, if she ever wanted to sell. 
     
                  She took pride in providing affording housing in nice neighborhoods. Big investors rubbed her the wrong way. She didn't like their make-money-fast, get-in-and-out, flipping mentality. Now, right down Magnolia Lane, she was witnessing the result of big  development pushing seniors out on the streets.
     
                  Steele Development , she spat. But this could not be the same company. Hamilton Steele was little more than a one-man operation, a handyman, with a truck.
     
                  She dismissed the thought. It didn't matter. She couldn't give her work to a man who didn't respect her enough to believe she could sit down and have a conversation about repairs because she was a woman. 
     
                  Miranda kept unpacking, cleaning,