by Jen Peters
“What in the world do you think you’re doing?” Cat demanded. “Or do you have a history of breaking and entering?”
Justin stared back at her, hands on his hips. “I’ve been here an hour, ready to work. And you weren’t. And you have the only key…” So maybe it hadn’t been a full hour, but she didn’t have to know that.
Cat shook her head, her ponytail swishing. “I was putting in the order over at Mac’s. I don’t care what time it is or what Mitchell Blake set up with you—I’m in charge at my worksites. You don’t work unless I’m here or I’ve approved it.”
Of all the ridiculous, childish, demanding … his Cooper stubbornness rose fast. “So you’re the boss, are you?” Justin crossed his arms and lowered his chin. “And what if I don’t see it that way? Just because you got here a half day early doesn’t put you a rung higher up the ladder.”
She dropped a bag on the porch and came nose to nose with him. Or nose to chest, rather, but she glared as fiercely as if she were his height. “Doesn’t it?”
He cocked his head. Those blue eyes were flashing with impatience and determination. The inviting mouth from yesterday was clamped shut. Her muscles flexed with her challenge, but that only firmed up her shape and enticed him more.
He shook the inappropriate thoughts away and counted to ten…slowly. He needed to get along with her. He needed the money from this job, and no way did he want any distractions. But he didn’t want to be bulldozed for two long months either.
He set his own mouth. “You’d be quite happy to see me go, wouldn’t you? It’s not going to happen. And neither am I rolling over for you. Equals, and let’s get to work. Now do you have a key or not?”
He reached down for his toolbox without watching to see what she did. Her exasperated sigh came loudly, but by the time he stood, she was inserting the key into the deadbolt.
Justin left Cat talking to herself and making notes, and headed for the quiet of the second floor. His phone dinged—Pete was calling back from the message he’d left last night.
“What is up, O Master of the Jobs?” came Pete’s voice.
Justin laughed at the title, especially the way it sounded with Pete’s Guatemalan accent. He’d been in America for a decade now but Justin didn’t think he’d ever lose it. “Hey, Pete, you’re on furlough from the mill for a couple days, right? Want to help demo a house?”
“Sure, when?” came the reply.
“Soon as you can. At the old McCormick mansion—we’ll be tearing out the plaster on the upper floors. And if Mike and Sandro are around, I could use them too, once we’ve got a place for all the debris. There’s a lot of fine woodwork we don’t want to damage in the process, so I need guys that’ll be careful.”
They said goodbye and Justin smiled. He could still hear Cat muttering to herself downstairs. He slid his face mask and goggles on, picked up the crowbar, and started prying hunks of plaster off the old walls.
Pete arrived in an hour, and they smashed and pried and demolished until the big dumpster arrived. Justin opened a bedroom window and started chucking plaster pieces and broken laths down to the ground.
He watched a load of debris land with a satisfying thunk as the first of Mac’s deliveries showed up. Cat supervised the unloading and Justin leaned against the window frame, watching. His own need for control didn’t have anything on hers. She checked each item, stock number and all, and made the driver move the first few boards until they were precisely where she wanted.
She helped unload the rest of the lumber into a tall stack in the backyard and rolled the oversized spool of wire into the old shed. He didn’t know why she spray-painted a red stripe on the stack of lumber, but he sure enjoyed the flex of her muscles and the twist of her waist as she did.
“Hey, Earth to Justin,” Pete said, grinning.
“Just admiring the view, Pedro,” Justin said before chucking another piece of plaster down to the ground.
Chapter 4
Once the guys knocked off work the next day, Cat took a much-deserved rest behind the mansion while Bella nosed through the trees scouting out squirrels. Despite the chill as the daylight faded, she dabbled her toes in the rushing creek, icy with snow melt. She didn’t care. There seemed to be something freeing in the action, something that took her back to the safety of being a young child. The joy and anticipation of good things happening.
Or maybe it wasn’t the water tickling her toes that sparked her feelings. Maybe it was the memory of a calloused hand brushing against hers, of the sparkle in a pair of forest-green eyes despite their disagreements.
No, she couldn’t go there. Justin Cooper was great eye candy and actually was turning out to be a good work partner, but not someone she wanted to get involved with. That guy didn’t exist—she couldn’t conceive of anyone she’d want to mold her life around. Her life was her life, and she wouldn’t have anybody tell her what she could and couldn’t do. If she wanted that, she may as well have become a kindergarten teacher like her mother had wanted her to do.
“You’re great with kids, Cathy, it would be perfect,” Mom had said. Over and over until Cat was sick of it. She might get along with her half-siblings okay, but a whole class of runny-nosed munchkins at once? Not for her. And to go to the same room and deal with the same people day in and day out—no way. Not in a school, not in an office.
So now she was her own woman, strong and capable and proud of it. And she wasn’t going to let any man take that away.
The sun lowered and sent a golden sheen across the dappled water. Cat took a deep breath, reveling in the crisp air and scent of pine. She really couldn’t tell which were pines and which were firs, except for the grove of 200-foot Douglas Firs towering over the library, happily discoursed upon by Mrs. Vanderhoof. Mostly she just knew they were gorgeous and a delightful change from the exhaust fumes and asphalt stink of a city.
A few minutes later the golden light was gone, replaced by a lavender sky which quickly deepened into violet. Stars winked into existence above her. A motorcycle roared past on the main street. Laughter floated through the air, some teenagers giggling from the sound of it. Going to a movie? Going to a friend’s house?
She shrugged and dragged her frozen feet out of the creek. She’d never had many friends, spending high school mostly minding her own business and avoiding both the popular kids and the druggies. There had been one guy she had kind of connected with, thought might be a friend, until he’d groped her in the hallway and she’d slammed her fist into his face.
She shook off those memories—she’d been lonely and hurting all those years. Now she had work she loved, a dog who loved her, and she didn’t need anybody else. Especially not a certain co-contractor.
Time to check out the restaurant, she thought, calling Bella out of the trees and squeezing her damp feet into her work boots.
The Wood’s Edge Restaurant wasn’t particularly busy. She took a booth by the window, ordered meatloaf from a quiet college-aged waitress, and watched a young mom outside try to corral three kids. The mom managed to get them buckled into the minivan as Cat’s salad came—pretty basic ingredients but with a scrumptious house dressing. She savored a bite and smiled at an elderly couple holding hands as they ambled down the sidewalk.
“Mind if I join you?” came a familiar voice.
She looked up into Justin’s green eyes, trying to ignore the cute curl of hair behind his ear. The odd sensation rising inside her was only the unexpectedness of seeing him, right? She took another bite of salad and motioned to the other side of the booth.
“Hey, Justin!” the waitress called, brightening at the sight of him. “Didn’t know you’d be in . Mom’s got meatloaf on the menu tonight.”
Cat frowned. Not so quiet after all, but wasn’t she a little young for Justin? She shook her head. None of her business.
“Sounds good,” Justin grinned back at the girl.
Maybe he had a thing for girls barely out of their teens. “Hometown restaurant?” Cat as
ked. “Is her mom the cook?”
Justin’s eyes twinkled. “Yup. Best cook in the Willamette Valley, even if we aren’t quite in the valley. And her meatloaf rocks.”
“Good,” Cat said, “because I ordered it, and I’m starving.”
Justin nodded. “I didn’t plan on barging in, but since you’re eating here too … I’ve got the electrical bid worked up.”
“No problem.” Cat took another bite of salad, groaning with pleasure. “I have got to find out what’s in this dressing.”
“Oregano and garlic and a secret ingredient,” he murmured, digging in his pocket and passing a crumpled paper to her.
“Huh?”
“What’s in the dressing,” he said. “You just said you wanted to know.”
“Oh.” How did he know what was in the dressing? And why didn’t he look away? Surely it wasn’t polite to hold someone’s gaze this intently.
He finally nodded toward the paper.
Right. Business. She scanned the numbers, although it didn’t really matter how reasonable his estimates were—Mr. Blake wanted him on the job. It was a good thing Justin cared about a job well done, though, or she’d be arguing with Mr. Blake.
“Looks good,” she said, back in business mode. “What’s the time frame look like?”
“That depends. What are our work hours going to be like? Just days, or evenings too?”
She furrowed her brow. “Nine hours a day, maybe ten if we can stagger the crews. Sundays completely off. Constant pushing will burn out a team fast, not to mention the budget problems with overtime pay.”
“I may need to take an hour or two away if someone in town has an electrical emergency, but other than that, I need…” He shook his head quickly, making that curl spring a bit. “Anyway, I want to work as much as I can.” He looked away as his voice trailed off. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he took a few long swallows of his water.
Cat couldn’t think of much of anything this guy needed. She toyed with the idea of asking, but she decided it wasn’t polite to butt into his business. “That’s up to you, I guess. The generator’s there so you can work as late as you want.”
He glared at her. “A key?”
“Oh, right.” She furrowed her brow. She couldn’t think right now why she had been so belligerent about it. “Of course you’ll need a key.”
Justin sat back and smiled. “Glad you’re seeing reason. And if you want—”
“Justin Michael Cooper, if you’d have let me know you’d be coming in, I would have baked your lemon pie!” A soft, round woman bustled up. “Here’s your meatloaf, sweetie,” she said to Cat, setting an overflowing plate in front of her.
It looked and smelled scrumptious, but Cat didn’t know if she’d ever eaten that much at one time. “Thank you, it looks delicious.”
“Oh, it is, if I do say so myself,” the woman said. “I’m Ruth Anne Cooper, resident chief cook and bottle washer, and mother to this big lug.” She waggled a thumb toward Justin.
“Mom!” he protested.
“Now you shush,” she said. “I haven’t seen you in here with a young lady since, well, since I don’t know when.”
Justin was turning a luscious shade of pink. “That’s enough, Mom. Let her eat. She’s starving!”
Cat grinned. He blushed nicely, thank you very much. And this was Justin’s mom? “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cooper. Justin didn’t mention—”
“He never does,” she said, shaking her head, a mass of steel gray curls bouncing around her head. Cat could see where Justin got his wavy hair. “He hasn’t mentioned you yet—you two been dating long?”
“Mom!” came Justin’s near shout.
Cat shook her head. “Not ever. This is work.” And it had better stay that way, she thought, no matter how handsome her new electrician was. She sure didn’t need anything—or anyone—tying her down.
Chapter 5
Justin escaped the restaurant as soon as he could and grumbled as he drove up the hill to his house.
His mother. You’d think that after almost thirty years, he would have become immune to his mother’s ability to embarrass him, but somehow she still had the knack. She’d probably still have him turning red another thirty years from now.
Not that he wouldn’t enjoy taking Cat on a date. She did something to him, something no girl had done in years. Her sparkling eyes, that sassy ponytail, the gleam in her eyes when she had a saw in her hand. Not a lady to mess with!
No, Cat was someone who, six months ago, he could have seen himself asking out. Dinner, a walk in the woods, picnic by the creek—the casual, outdoors type of date he liked, and he suspected she would too.
But that was last year, before he’d taken on a set of problems that meant keeping his head down and working as much as he could. The end was months away, and he still couldn’t afford to get involved with anyone.
Shaking his head ruefully, he flipped his jacket over the couch as Pip came roaring in from the bedroom. The fuzzball leapt and twisted and barked until Justin sat down and offered his lap. He petted the dog, absentmindedly avoiding Pip’s frantic licks, and stared out the front window. Below, the town lights twinkled through the tree branches and teased him with thoughts of comfortable homes and happy families.
By Saturday, most of the demo was done, and the rest of Justin’s wire had arrived. He hadn’t managed to beat Cat to the mansion since that first day, and this morning they’d slammed their truck doors in tandem. He grinned—how could those freckles do anything but make him smile? It was rather fun sparring with her, too, and he liked finding something to get her feisty up.
Together they made their way up the steps and into the house. “I’ve never seen someone so excited about demo work,” Cat teased.
He loved the way her eyes crinkled up when she smiled. “It’s just Pete and me today, and we’ll finish up the third floor and actually get started with new wiring. How could I not be excited?” He glanced through the studs to the parlor with its massive hearth. “Besides, I’ve never seen someone look at a fireplace with such a gleam in her eye.”
“What can I say? Specialty woodwork is a lot more enticing to me than framing or, say, wiring a house?”
“Hey! If I don’t wire the house, your fireplace will be the only light in here!”
She gave him a good-natured shove and headed to the backyard for more lumber.
Justin grabbed his tools, but before he even got into the first bedroom, he heard her yell.
He clattered down the stairs, through the kitchen, and slammed out the back door. “Cat? Are you okay?” Then he skidded to a stop.
She was standing in the back lot, hands on hips, opening and closing her mouth. Then she started spewing weird curses about weasels and four generations of children.
“What?” he asked. She was obviously fine, angry but not hurt.
“Look,” she finally sputtered, pointing to the shed. The door hung open, its hinges splintered.
Justin cursed. He had enough problems to deal with, and if some low life had messed him up even further… Four long strides took him to the shed, and he forced himself to look inside.
It was empty. Nothing but scattered nails and a raging fist in his gut. Every spool of his electrical wire had vanished. Hundreds of dollars and precious days lost while they reordered. The bank…his schedule….
Justin kicked the door, nearly knocking it completely to the ground. “Jerks. Thugs. I can’t abide people with no respect for property, especially someone else’s,” he growled. “And that wire had a lot of copper in it, worth a pretty penny if they knew where to sell it.” He stomped out and swiped his phone open.
“Who’re you calling?” she asked. “Mr. Blake?”
“Not yet,” he snapped. “But I’m sure getting the cops out here. I’d like to throw the book at these thieves.” They deserved a lot more than they’d get from the police if they knew the bind they’d put him in. He took a slow breath to calm his knotted muscles.
Justin looked up as Cat gasped. She was staring open-mouthed at a pile of lumber half the size it should have been.
She blinked and shook her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t see this first. I wonder why they didn’t take it all.”
Justin shook his head. “Because they’re a bunch of bottom-feeding lowlifes.” He grimaced and tapped the number he wanted, hands still shaking. “There’s not much crime around here, but we should’ve locked it up better anyway. Blast it all—I needed to start working on it!” He cursed again and kicked the bottom boards.
“You need it? I finally got the specs worked out, and I’ve got a framing crew starting tomorrow!”
“Hey, Javi,” Justin spoke into the phone. “It’s Cooper. We’ve got a problem at the McCormick mansion - some crackhead stole a bunch of building materials.” He ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket, taking more slow breaths. There was nothing else he could do at the moment.
“Who’s Javi?”
“Javier Gonzales. One of the cops.”
“And you just call him up? You don’t call 911?”
Justin shrugged. “It’s not an emergency, and I’ve got his cell number—we go way back.”
Cat snorted. “As in, ‘this is Mayberry where nothing ever goes wrong?’”
Justin gave a slight smile. “No, and Opie isn’t going to come running in after school, either. We must have watched the same reruns after school.” Then the fury hit him again. “Our police force may be small, but they’re good and we need them now.”
“Preaching to the choir here, bud,” Cat said. She sat on what remained of her lumber pile and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You said ‘crackhead.’ Do you think drugs are involved?”