Love After Hours

by Radclyffe

  Nodding, Carrie said, “That must be what I’m sensing.”

  “That’s also why it means so much to him—and me—that you’re all here,” Abby said quietly.

  Presley snorted and gave Abby a look. “Where else would we be?”

  Abby crossed her arms and feigned looking perplexed. “Oh, I don’t know—at your desk, where you can usually be found anytime, day or night.”

  “That’s not true!” Presley pointed a finger. “I’ve even been resisting checking my email, although I suppose I should look at it.”

  “No need,” Carrie said quickly. “I’ve been through everything, and there’s nothing urgent. You’ll have some phone calls to return this afternoon, but they can wait.”

  “You didn’t have to come in early,” Presley said. “I know your love for early morning.”

  “Actually,” Carrie said archly, “I was here in the middle of the night.”

  Presley laughed. “Let me guess. Six?”

  “Five thirty, I’ll have you know.”

  Abby added, “I am truly impressed, and I’ll mention your dedication to your boss.”

  “So noted,” Presley said playfully. “One merit badge coming up.”

  Carrie laughed. Presley was her boss, and she was also her best friend. Somehow they made it work, probably because Carrie loved her job, and on the rare occasions when Presley was fraught or just having a bad day and directed her mood at Carrie, she never took it personally. She was pretty good at compartmentalizing and wasn’t prone to hurt feelings too often. The only thing that ever really bothered her was if she screwed up. Then she was harder on herself than Presley could possibly be.

  “Today, I think I might’ve earned it,” Carrie murmured, picturing Gina Antonelli glowering at her before she’d even finished her second cup of coffee. No wonder she hadn’t dispatched the verging-on-surly Antonelli with her usual scalpel-like precision. She hadn’t yet had a good warm-up, and Antonelli was a little off-putting. In a distracting, too-attractive, and mysterious way. “Yeah, right.”

  “Something you’re not telling me?” Presley asked, studying Carrie intently.

  “It can wait.”

  Presley quirked a brow. “Take my mind off things. What’s going on?”

  “Have you ever met Gina Antonelli?” Carrie experienced a conflicting surge of annoyance and interest just mentioning the short-tempered, mildly abrasive contractor. The woman was definitely maddening, but intriguing too. Usually Carrie liked hard-charging women—just look at all her best friends—but none of them came with a healthy dose of entitlement and arrogance. All the same, Antonelli had definitely made an impression. “The contractor in charge of the ER project?”

  “No, we dealt with Thomas Antonelli when bids went out, and after that, the hospital attorneys handled the rest.”

  “I guess that explains why she didn’t seem to know who you were. Considering her attitude that everyone jump to do her bidding, I would have expected her to be more on top of the facts.” Carrie shook her head.

  “Something’s gotten you fired up,” Presley said. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone in the business office or legal dropped a ball or two. Gina Antonelli, the daughter and project manager for the expansion, showed up at your office in a storm this morning about six. They can’t get started until some of the permits are straightened out.”

  “You’re kidding,” Abby said.

  Presley snapped, “Are we on it?”

  Carrie returned the arched eyebrow. “Really? You have to ask?”

  Presley chuckled. “Sorry, I forgot who I was dealing with. Is there anything you need me to do?”

  “No, I’ll take care of it.” Carrie checked her watch. “In fact, it’s almost time for me to start making phone calls. I’m going to do that because I suspect if I don’t, Antonelli will be in here chewing up the furniture before long.”

  “That personable, huh?” Abby said.

  “Let’s just say her table manners aren’t the best.”

  Her friends laughed as Carrie left to make calls. She had a feeling no one would be laughing if she had to tell Gina Antonelli there’d be no work today. Oddly enough, she wasn’t bothered by the possibility of Antonelli’s temper. What she didn’t want to do was disappoint her. Why, she didn’t know.

  *****

  “Hey, Coach,” Arnie Cohen called, hiking a hip up onto the low stone wall next to Gina, “how long do you think it’s gonna take the paper pushers to get this straightened out?”

  Gina snorted. Nine a.m. So far, they’d lost three hours of work time. The clock was running and so was the bill. She didn’t have much faith that anything was going to get done until the boss showed up from her morning golf game or wherever else she was off to. After all, how much could the receptionist really do? Make a few phone calls—maybe. Expecting the help to handle a major FUBAR would be like her expecting one of the summer grunts to do her job. Chance of success, zero to none. “Not likely.”

  “Figured,” Arnie said.

  “I’d lay odds we don’t work today.” Gina gripped the edge of the wall and glared into the morning sun, aimlessly watching ambulances pull up to the emergency room, most of them going pretty slow, but now and then one careened in with lights flashing. She’d counted six in the last hour, which she guessed was a good thing in a backhanded kind of way. A lot of people depended on the hospital for a living and to stay alive, and right now, so did she. At least the make-a-living part. This was one of the biggest projects their company had landed all year. With the housing market around here in the dump, new construction was limited and plenty of builders were skating the edge of going under. Her father hadn’t said anything, but she could do the numbers easy enough. They needed this job to come in on time and on budget. She owed it to her crew and her family to make that happen. So far, the hospital bureaucracy wasn’t helping.

  Arnie pulled a hunk of beef jerky from his shirt pocket, folded it up, and shoved it in his mouth. “How long do you think the old—sorry—the big boss is going to keep us out here?”

  “We’ll give it a while longer,” Gina said evasively. She hadn’t called her father yet. He already seemed strained to the max. She could tell her mother was worried about him, even though he’d never complain. “It’s not like we got much else to do, not with all our heavy equipment already here. We could move it, but that’ll be costly, especially if we’re going to start tomorrow.”

  “You know, it’s damn…darn…boring when we’re not working.”

  “You’re usually complaining you’re working too hard.”

  He grinned and scratched at the stubble on his chin. He was her foreman, twice her age, having come up through the ranks from unskilled grunt to master carpenter. He never turned a hair when her father put her in charge of her first project two years before, just watched her for the first few weeks until she’d proven she knew what she was doing. “Yeah, well, I’d rather be complaining about work than complaining about nothing to do.”

  “You and me both.” If it was up to her, she’d work seven days a week, and she knew some of the other guys on the crew would too. They needed the money, she needed to fill her time. When she wasn’t working, options were few. The few things she liked on TV hardly used up a few hours a week, and she’d given up drinking except on Friday night with the crew or after a game, when it was pretty much tradition, and even then she only had one. She couldn’t hang around with the family any more than she already did. She loved them all, and she never missed a Sunday dinner if she could help it, but too much family often led to too many questions. Once everybody got talking about their boyfriends or girlfriends or children, glances inevitably shot in her direction, the questions unspoken but crystal clear. What about you, Gina? When are you going to settle down and start a family?

  No one would like or believe her answer. Not in the game plan. Even after all this time, the bruise on her heart still hurt, and she wouldn’t sell anyone short by getting involved when
her heart wasn’t in it. So work it was. There wasn’t much that pounding a nail or shifting a mountain of rubble couldn’t cure—restlessness, the vague feeling of hollowness that followed her everywhere, the loneliness that caught up to her when she wasn’t paying attention, and the simmering sexual need she recognized but couldn’t figure out a good way to satisfy. She had options there, none of them good ones. She recognized the looks from some of the guys who didn’t know her well enough to realize they hadn’t a chance in hell, and from the women who picked up on something she didn’t even know she was telegraphing. She’d tried accepting those invitations a couple of times when she’d been too weary to resist, and she still flushed with embarrassment thinking about it. She hadn’t made the experience very good for them. She couldn’t have been less connected if she’d been sleepwalking. That’s what bothered her most.

  Nope, she knew what she needed. Watching a building go up, something she’d made, seeing her crew working together, bitching all the time as crews usually did but stopping at the end of the day with the feeling of shared accomplishment, was a reward she could hold on to.

  “This day is going to pretty much be a loss,” Gina said.

  “Maybe so,” Arnie muttered, “but my morning just got a whole lot better.”

  Gina followed his gaze and sat up straighter. The receptionist, whose name she hadn’t gotten, was marching across the parking lot, a slim leather folder tucked under her arm. In the sunlight, her red hair gleamed like fire and her lithe body, in tailored black pants and a pale, shimmery shirt, looked tight and strong and curvy in all the right places. Gina’s mouth suddenly went dry. She swallowed a couple of times before she spoke.

  “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we’ll be getting to work sooner than I thought.” She pushed off the wall and strode to meet the receptionist. “I hope you’ve got good news for me.”

  Carrie shielded her eyes with one hand and glanced up a few inches to meet Gina Antonelli’s hot, dark gaze. She was scowling. No surprise there. Was the woman always in a temper? A light sheen of sweat dotted her brow, but she didn’t seem to notice it or care. Her dark hair lifted a little in the breeze, what there was of it cresting the hill and floating over the expanse of grass and the asphalt parking lot. Some generous few might’ve considered Antonelli’s jaw strong, but right now it was leaning more toward rock. A muscle bunched at the angle. Her T-shirt, navy blue with an emblem of a truck over the chest pocket with the words Antonelli Construction underneath, hugged her shoulders and chest. Her body looked as hard as her jawline.

  Antonelli jammed her hands on her slim hips. “Well?”

  Oh, this wasn’t going to be pleasant. Carrie smiled, doubting it would do a bit of good. But after all, she was the professional here. “That would be a yes and a no.”

  Antonelli squinted at her. “I don’t think I like the way that sounds.”

  “We’re finally in agreement on something,” Carrie said. “I’ve just talked to the town supervisor and I’m waiting to hear from our legal department, but it appears that this particular township, of all the towns in the county, requires state verification of your insurance coverage and workers’ compensation plan and payments.” She paused. Might as well deliver all the good news. “For this fiscal year.”

  “Son of a…gun.” Gina gritted her teeth. “We’re just finding this out? What incompetent is in charge of this fiasco?”

  Carrie sucked in a breath at the insult. Be the big person. Be the big person. That was going to become her mantra dealing with this unreasonable walking ego. “Believe me, I’m no happier about this than you are. We’ve been waiting more than a month to get started until your crew was available, remember?”

  Gina snorted. “Really? A whole month? And I suppose you think we’ve all just been sitting around doing our nails because we don’t have anything to do? We had to shift other project commitments to get this started because your boss twisted some…arms. And being civic minded, we appreciate how important this is to the community.”

  “You’re right,” Carrie said, holding her temper in. After all, as far as she could tell, Antonelli’s company hadn’t been in the wrong here. As with most snags like this, no one was really at fault. Just a long line of miscommunications. Which didn’t help a damn bit right now. “Maybe we can agree we’re on the same side.”

  “There isn’t any side,” Antonelli said flatly. “There’s a job to do, and I’m here ready to do it and so is my crew. How long is it going to take your boss to get this straightened out?”

  “I’m working on it now—”

  “Uh-uh. I think this is a little above your pay grade. When can I talk to the boss?”

  Heat climbed up Carrie’s spine. “Above my pay grade?”

  Antonelli ran a hand through her hair. “Look, I’m sure you’re a super receptionist. You tracked down the paper trail really quickly. Good for you. Now we need someone who is capable of twisting arms and anything else that needs twisting. So you need to hand this off to your boss.”

  “I do?” Carrie wished for all the world she was on the pitcher’s mound and Gina Antonelli was at bat. The unbelievably insulting contractor would be getting a brushback pitch that trimmed the sexy lock of hair falling in her eyes. “Because I’m just a pretty face?”

  “Come on.” Antonelli sighed dramatically. “That’s a no-win for me. If I say yes, I’m probably being a chauvinist pig. And if I say no—well, you never say no to something like that.”

  “Oh, you don’t. And you’re an expert on what women like to hear, I guess.”

  Antonelli’s expression darkened—not with temper, but something else that moved through her eyes like a slow-burning shadow. “No, I’m definitely not.”

  “I’m in charge of this project,” Carrie said quietly. “I’ve already talked to legal—”

  “Hold it.” Antonelli’s voice dropped. “Run that by me again? You’re in charge of this? Your boss doesn’t think it’s important enough for her to waste time on? Worth, right?”

  “Yes, Presley Worth.”

  “Well, presumably your boss is not just a pretty face, either. So maybe you could drag her off the golf course or out of bed or wherever she is—”

  “Okay, I can see we are not going to be on the same side here.” Carrie opened the folder. “And I’m wasting time trying to have a conversation with someone whose head is harder than concrete. So”—she held out a stack of forms—“your company will need to file these with the township after the state confirms various payments, license numbers, and other details.”

  Gina glanced down at the stack of papers and shoved her hands in her pockets. She wanted to take them about as much as she wanted to grab a live snake. Or even a dead one. She detested snakes. It was about the only thing, other than some dreams that took her unawares, that gave her nightmares. “What the hell am I supposed to do with them?”

  Carrie let out an exasperated breath and shook them in the air as a ring of men moved behind Gina, all of them close enough to hear what was going on. Wonderful. In a town this size, you couldn’t change the color of your mailbox without someone commenting on it and everyone in town knowing about it. By the end of the day this conversation might as well have been recorded. At least then there’d be an accurate rendition as it made the rounds in the bars and hardware store and gas station. Lovely. She lowered her voice. “I need you to take them back to your corporate headquarters—”

  “My corporate headquarters.” Gina made an elaborate eye roll. Some male voice guffawed behind them.

  “Office?” Carrie said bitingly. “Do you think you could look up the term cooperation at some point?”

  “And then what?”

  “Have your boss get them completed and filed with the town supervisor. Copy our attorneys. Once that’s done, hopefully we’ll be able to get you all to work.”

  Gina’s gut twisted into a knot. “That could take a month!”

  “We’ll do everything we can to expedite from this end,” Carrie s
aid. “We have every bit as much invested in this project as you do, probably more. We need these facilities as a requirement for our training programs and for our level one trauma certification. And we want to move on with our plans for the helipad.”

  Gina glanced up at the top of the hospital. “You’re going to put a heliport up there. I heard that rumor. That’s going to be a pretty project.”

  “It is, and”—Carrie smiled sweetly—“we’re opening up for bids very soon.”

  “I heard that too,” Gina said. And they needed to land that project, which meant she probably ought to try sweet-talking the receptionist and her boss.

  “Then you can see why we are very anxious to get this project going.”

  Gina took the damn papers, folded them in half, and shoved them into her back pocket. “We’ll get on it. About your boss—”

  “Ms. Antonelli—”

  More laughter from the gallery.

  “Gina,” Gina said. “It’s Gina or Antonelli, not Ms.”

  “Sorry. I should’ve known that.”

  Gina grinned in spite of herself.

  “Just to set the record straight, I’m not the receptionist. I’m the executive administrative assistant to Presley Worth. And I’m in charge of this project. If you have problems, you bring them to me.”

  “Hey,” Gina called as the ticked-off redhead walked away. “I didn’t get your name.”

  “You may call me Ms. Longmire,” Carrie called without looking back.

  Gina’s grin widened as the guys behind her whistled.

  Chapter Four

  The guys were waiting behind her—she could feel their presence like a heavy weight in the air. Looking to her for answers. They were probably all looking in the same direction as her too. Watching the hospital’s executive administrative assistant clip across the parking lot, her low heels tapping out an impatient tattoo on the macadam. Gina waited a few more seconds after the redhead disappeared through the ER entrance, then rewound the conversation and winced a few times. She’d whiffed a few plays from the beginning. Ms. Longmire was not the receptionist, but the CEO’s majordomo. Dumb of her to make the assumption she was something else.