“Why am I here?” he demanded, sounding a bit more gruff than he’d intended, but those damn lips stretched into a grin.
Hell, he’d thought that she couldn’t get prettier but that smile lit up her features and…
He was a gonner. Better to get out of here before he got any deeper. One night of hot and heavy dreams was about all his libido could take. It had been too long since he’d had a woman in his bed.
“Follow me,” Daisy-Barbie invited.
If it had been anyone else, he would have just gotten back into his truck and driven away. But one other feature he hadn’t noticed yesterday, besides her height, was her amazing butt! In jeans, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from that enticing feature. It wasn’t even that the jeans she wore were tight. Just the opposite in fact. But if she was trying to hide her figure in those baggie clothes, it wasn’t working!
So instead of getting into his truck and driving off, as he should, Rocco followed her up the weed-choked lawn and into the dilapidated house, shaking his head. He was following a woman, ignoring his instincts, just because she had a nice ass.
Daisy pushed open the door and stepped into the dark interior of the house. “This is the job,” she announced, spreading her arms wide.
He looked around, still thinking about her lips and her ass. “Tearing down the house?” he asked, trying to make sense of everything.
Daisy laughed, shaking her head and moved deeper into the room. “No, silly! I need a team of people to remodel the houses.”
He frowned at her and it took all of her concentration to keep from squirming. What was it about his blue eyes that unnerved her so completely? She’d thought she’d just been nervous yesterday about confronting him since he was so big but…maybe there was more to it.
“Houses…plural?”
She couldn’t hide her eagerness, even in the face of this man’s derision. This was her passion. Fixing up LowPoint, renovating each of these houses so that people could move in and find a safe place to raise their families. After gaining such incredible wealth with her lottery winnings, her life had changed dramatically. This was her way of giving back to the world.
“Yes. LowPoint’s population dwindled to about two hundred families several years back. The town was kept going only through low paying jobs. But it wasn’t alive,” she explained, seeing the surprise in his eyes and taking that as a positive sign. “I wouldn’t even say that the town was on life support. It was dying. There were no jobs, no true source of employment, other than commuting to Louisville but many people couldn’t even afford that. Most families left the area for cities that offered more jobs. As you can see from driving down any of the streets, most of the houses haven’t been lived in for about ten years, some longer than that. The owners simply abandoned them when they couldn’t sell them and moved on.”
He was looking around at the interior now instead of staring at her as if she were a lunatic. That was a positive sign.
She watched in fascination as he moved over to one of the walls and knocked on it. When it didn’t crumble at his touch, she breathed a sigh of relief.
“And your company is renovating these houses…why? There still aren’t jobs in LowPoint. Everyone I know lives in Louisville.”
She laughed, relief surging through her since he hadn’t outright rejected the job or laughed at her dream of revitalizing the town. “LowPoint has two things going for it and the company I work for is banking on that to put this town back on the map.”
“What are those?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He moved into the kitchen now, opening and closing the cabinets. One of the cabinet doors fell off in his hand and Rocco jumped back so that the heavy wood didn’t smash his foot, causing a loud clatter to break the tense silence.
Daisy tried to ignore the tug of something deep inside of her as she took in the lovely view of those muscles flexing underneath the plaid flannel of his shirt as it pulled tight across his broad shoulders. Every time he moved, her eyes were drawn to those shoulders or his trim waist, the impressively tight butt revealed by his soft, well-worn jeans that hugged his butt and strong thighs. Yummy!
She jerked slightly when he turned to look at her over his shoulder, obviously waiting for an answer. Daisy stepped back slightly, as if that could somehow keep her eyes from roaming. Focus, she admonished herself firmly.
Blinking, she pulled her eyes away from his butt and focused on his eyes. Okay, actually, she was now looking at the scruff of his jawline. The man hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. It was probably a sign of disrespect, but she loved the rough look.
His dark eyebrows lifted when she forgot to answer him. Daisy turned away and walked towards a sliding glass door that used to be clear, but was now covered in so much dust, it was just a filmy, cracked piece of glass. “First of all, Ivy Taylor’s studio is here. Ever seen her photos?”
His expression didn’t change in any way. “Everyone knows of Ivy Taylor’s photos. Every time she comes back from one of her trips, everyone talks about nothing else.” He shrugged. “I saw her gallery when I drove through town.”
Daisy laughed. “Yep. That’s the one. You can only buy her prints from her gallery on Main Street.”
He watched her for a moment before one of those massive shoulders shrugged. “Okay, so you got that going for you. What else?”
“Ever eaten at one of Tony Itola’s restaurants?” she asked.
Another delicious shrug. She wondered what his shoulders would look like without the flannel covering them.
“Can’t afford to.”
She brought her eyes back to his and clapped her hands together. “Well, Tony’s gourmet restaurant is on Main Street, about a block from Ivy’s gallery. In addition to his flagship restaurant, he has a sandwich shop located right next door to Ivy Taylor’s studio. Most people don’t know that the shop is owned by Tony, but it is and people love it. He also owns the diner right off of the highway, but that’s also not a well-known fact.”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay, so the town gets art snobs and foodies coming through occasionally. What’s your point?”
She rolled her eyes. “We don’t just get art snobs and foodies coming through, but those people make special trips out here for the experience. With the help of another foundation, the other shops in town have been refurbished and are filling up with artisans and artists. LowPoint is becoming known as a quaint enclave for artists and dealers. Plus, there’s the warehouse district on the west side of town and the shipping industry is starting to realize that LowPoint is a good midway point for transitioning products.”
Daisy watched the giant man carefully and she realized that the last point really got to him. Rocco Barnes might not understand art and gourmet food, but he grasped the financial implications of easy highway access and storage facilities, distribution hubs and transition points. He dropped his arms and started looking around the house with renewed interest.
“Okay, so LowPoint is going to eventually become a thriving metropolis,” he drawled but she heard the sarcasm in his voice.
“I don’t think anyone in town wants a huge metropolis, Mr. Barnes. The goal is for LowPoint to retain its small town flair. But in order for people to come back and live here, these houses need to be renovated and cleaned up. That’s where you come in.”
“Your company wants me to renovate this house?”
She grinned, suspecting that he was starting to understand her dream. “Not just this house. My company has been hired to renovate all of the houses here in town. There’s a financial team working with the owners of the mortgages on many of the houses. We’ve bought up most of them,” she explained.
His eyes widened slightly as he took in this new piece of information. “How many?” he asked, stopping his tour through the dingy house to stare down at her.
She laughed, almost clapping her hands with excitement now that she could see the interest in his eyes. “Well, my company bought up about two hu
ndred houses. Originally, the idea was to tear them all down and build new ones, but we discovered that these houses were made back in the fifties and are surprisingly solid. They just need to be updated, fixed, cleaned, and…well, decorated.”
He stopped and turned back to her, his hands fisting on his hips. “I don’t decorate.”
She grinned, trying to avoid another chuckle because he seemed to give her an odd look whenever it happened. In a “tough-guy” way, his disdain was charming. “You don’t need to decorate. That’s my job. You and I will work together to make each house unique. The inside and outside have to be as different as possible, while still buying materials and furniture in bulk to cut down on costs.”
There was a long silence as he continued to look down at her. It took all of her self-discipline to not squirm or fidget with those intense, blue eyes looking down at her like that. “Two hundred houses, each looking different?”
“Yep,” she confirmed, smiling again at his astounded expression. “You’d be in charge. You’d have a budget and could hire as many workers as you need. We have an accountant who helps with the budgeting. There’s an admin assistant who orders supplies for you and ensures that the orders arrive on time. Once we have more houses ready for sale, we’ll hire a realtor or a sales team. I don’t know the exact plans for that area, but they will be in charge of finding buyers for the houses, once they are complete.” She paused, wondering what else she could say to convince him to take the job. “One of the downsides to this project is that we need to get several houses, maybe all the houses on a block or a street, fixed up before potential buyers would feel safe enough to consider moving to LowPoint. So it’s a pretty big job.” Daisy recognized the wary look he gave her. “The foundation is well funded. There is funding aplenty, so you don’t need to worry about taking on the project and then having it fold up in just a few months.”
Rocco rubbed the scruff on his jaw, thinking he should have shaved this morning. But he hadn’t really thought that Daisy-Barbie was for real. So he’d fully expected to show up this morning and have a chuckle, then head back to Louisville to search for a job.
But this…looking around at the house that was pretty much in shambles, he started to think through the process. If this was for real, he would really enjoy renovating something like this. It was one thing to build an office building. There were challenges and obstacles that made the work interesting. But the job he’d lost yesterday had been a square building, ten stories high. It would be pretty much the same kind of work he’d been doing on for the past several years. It was a job, paid the bills, but it hadn’t really excited him.
Renovating something like this? Two hundred houses? And all of them needed to be different. Yeah, he could really get into something like this. He reached out and opened the pantry door off the main kitchen area, then jumped back, wrapping an arm around Daisy to make sure she wasn’t hurt as the whole door crashed to the dusty floor.
“Sorry,” he muttered, but he wasn’t really sorry. Slowly, his fingers uncurled and he released her, moving away so that he could get back on track.
He thought frantically, listing out all of the issues that would need to be fixed, glancing down at the beautiful woman with the gorgeous smile and mind-blowing curves. He was thinking about her soft figure pressed perfectly against his own. With a grunt, he moved away. Far away. The opposite-side-of-the-room-away. And still, that wasn’t far enough to stop his mind from replaying how good it felt when his hand curved around her tiny waist.
Focus on the job! “What exactly do you want this place to look like when it is all finished?”
The slender beauty’s smile widened and he almost groaned out loud. She really needed to stop doing that if they were going to work together. Maybe he’d make that a part of his contract. No smiles. No grins. And definitely no giggles. Oh – and no jeans. That woman’s butt was amazing! Firm and round, filling out those jeans better than any woman’s he’d ever seen! Unfortunately, that wasn’t even her best feature!
He glanced at her ring finger, just to make sure. Empty, he thought. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t into women that looked like Barbies. He liked his women a bit more down to earth. More real.
So why the hell was his body reacting to the scent of her strawberry shampoo?
“Here’s my plan for this house,” she turned, pulling out a rolled up sheet of paper from a leather bag he hadn’t noticed before.
As she leaned over, spreading it out over the dusty kitchen island, he had trouble focusing on the details because the scent of her shampoo was even stronger this close up. And she smelled incredibly good…all over. He tried to concentrate on what she was explaining, but her finger was pointing towards something on the paper and all he could think about now was what it would be like to be touched by those soft, pretty hands. Her nails were smooth and the bubblegum pink manicure wasn’t chipped in any way. Rocco could easily picture those pink nails sliding down his chest. Or…other places.
“So, what do you think?” she asked eagerly, turning to look up at him. The gesture caused his eyes to focus on her lips. Her full lips. With pink, strawberry flavored lip gloss. This close up, he realized that she had freckles. Very slight freckles. And she didn’t wear a lot of makeup. In fact, her eye lashes were the same color as her hair. He hadn’t noticed that before because those chocolate eyes just…overwhelmed the rest of her face. But this close…yeah, he noticed. He noticed everything.
To Order this story, click HERE
Excerpt from “Rescued” – Now Available
Ivy’s story in The Lottery Winners Series
To Order this story, click HERE
(There are a few things that happen before this scene – but I loved this one so I’m offering it to you as a sample of what’s to come in Ivy’s story.)
Ivy wiped the sweat from her forehead, looking at the compound. This wasn’t good, she thought.
After losing the bandits in the jungle, she’d eventually circled back, finally finding the area where the truck had been parked. Because of the wet ground, it was an easy task to follow the tire tracks back to the compound.
In an ideal world, she would have found civilization, reported the bandits to the authorities, and gone home. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an ideal world. Not by a long shot. After running for about five miles, she’d turned and circled back. Thankfully, the truck hadn’t gone far, maybe only another three miles. So in total, she’d barely traveled a total of more than thirteen miles today. On a slow morning, she ran that before breakfast.
But this wasn’t Kentucky and her jungle boots weren’t the best for long distance running, although they’d done an excellent job of protecting her feet. If she could have walked out of the jungle, she would have done so. No pathway to civilization appeared, so Plan C…or was she on Plan D now? She wasn’t sure …but her current plan was to steal one of the small trucks and drive out of the jungle.
That had been her plan, at least. But as soon as she’d arrived, she’d seen others prisoners. In good conscience, she couldn’t leave them. Not when it appeared that these people had been held here for a while. Their clothes were tattered, filthy and, even from a distance, she could tell that the people hadn’t been treated well.
She needed to go back, find help. But she had no idea where she was. Her camera bag contained her compass, emergency satellite phone, and the smaller emergency supplies she always carried on her when she traveled.
On the upside, she’d gotten away from her would-be captors. On the downside, there were others in the compound and she was determined to help them while she figured out how to get everyone out of this area.
Leave, she thought. Go find help. She wasn’t trained to save these people. Unlike…
No! Gunner was thousands of miles away and he made her crazy anyway! Besides, she’d never had to rely on another person for help in her life. Emotional support? Yeah, absolutely! Ivy considered Marilee, Daisy, and Tony her family and loved them as much.
If she could sneak her bag away, she might be able to call Gunner’s commanding officer, or someone else, to let them know that there were Americans being held captive here, but she wasn’t sure they would come. Ivy wasn’t even sure if the Indonesian authorities would step in to help. She suspected it was a way of life here. In some parts of the world, ransoming off tourists was a steady income. There were some areas of Indonesia one didn’t go into for that reason. It was a bit like New York City or Chicago. Or any big city. There were some places one didn’t go because they were too dangerous.
Ivy fully acknowledged that she shouldn’t be here either. But the flower!
No, Ivy knew that not even pictures of that stupid flower were worth what she was dealing with now.
Biting her lip, she looked around, wondering if she could hot wire one of the vehicles, use it to get out of here to find help. Hot wiring was one thing she hadn’t needed Gunner to teach her. She’d learned that skill from one of her teenage boyfriends and was an expert on how to hotwire cars. Of course, he was in prison now due to his youthful enthusiasm for his trade. In fact, that little journey into the criminal world had convinced her to take the waitressing job at Janice’s years ago. It had been a horrible job because Janice, the owner, was one of the most unethical people she’d ever met. But working as a waitress had kept her out of prison. And it wasn’t as if she’d had a whole lot of options back then. Now, she had millions of dollars in a bank, earning interest. Now, she had options.
Well, her present predicament sort of negated that statement, she thought as she munched on a protein bar and watched from her hiding place. Janice had stolen their tips, docked their pay for bogus reasons, and denied them overtime pay.
Craving Him (Sinful Nights Book 6) Page 13