by Lee Kilraine
The look in his eyes. The passion in his voice when he talked about his brothers. I felt a yearning for a taste of that fierceness and passion. I shivered at the idea of a man having that level of fierceness and passion for me.
It was everything I’d convinced myself I’d had with Paul—only to find out just when I desperately needed it—poof—it had never been there. It had been an illusion.
And suddenly I craved the real thing. And the damn voice in my head was urging me on. Not helpful when I needed time to digest all this new information and think rationally. Or was this where risk takers simply leapt off the safe and sure path into the void of possibilities?
“Enough.” Shoot. Did I say that out loud? I’d been trying to get my brain to stop whispering at me. “Enough…information for now, thank you, Gray. I thought maybe you’d like to walk through the house and I could tell you what I’m thinking for the remodel.”
“Absolutely.” He snapped his computer closed, slid it in his bag, and stood.
I pried my gaze from watching his every move and stood, bending over to put Sully down, since he was wiggling to get free. “Are you okay with dogs?”
“Sure.” He turned and looked like he braced his feet, ready for some hundred-pound lab to pounce.
Sully trotted over, his body visibly quivering in excitement, but sat at Gray’s feet on his best behavior, waiting for some sign it was okay to show his undying love. Which usually included lashes with his tongue, excited barks, or if he really, really liked someone, an accidental tinkle. I hoped he didn’t do that.
“He’s wearing a bowtie,” Gray said with a suspiciously emotionless face.
“We’re visiting his friends later, so he likes to dress up for it.” The patients we visited at the rehab facility thought he was adorable when he dressed up. Mostly the kids. Since Sully was willing and it helped make them smile, we had a whole wardrobe for him.
“Friends? Little bit of laser tag or out for ice cream?” Gray shoved his hands in his pockets and grinned.
“How did you know?” I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes at Gray, which made him do a double-take. Hey, he was the one giving me attitude. And maybe I was overly protective of my dog.
Sully and I had dealt with this attitude before. People who saw me carrying Sully around in my purse and assumed I was a Paris Hilton wannabe. Whatever. Sully and I knew what we did was important no matter how many times people rolled their eyes at us.
“Have we met before? I feel like we have…” Gray’s gaze had changed and he was all of a sudden looking at me more closely. From my hair, over my face, a quick once-over down my body to my shoes and back up.
“No, I don’t think so. You’re not ringing any bells.” Huge lie. There were bells and whistles going off. I felt sure under the right condition fireworks would be involved also.
Then his eyes jerked back down to my shoes. “Yes we have. I recognize those shoes. The flats.”
“My flats? Oh, that was you?” I notched up my chin and crossed my arms over my chest, quickly employing the offense-is-the-best-defense tactic. “The guy who manhandled a perfectly innocent woman in a public place?”
Sully picked up on my tension and he took a step toward Gray with a warning growl.
Gray’s eyes jerked down to the dog, dismissed it, and refocused on me. Later, when he was revisiting what went wrong, which I was almost sure he would, I felt sure he’d zero in on the moment he dismissed the ten-pound dog in a bowtie.
Because all it took was one more scowl in my direction and Sully had a mouthful of impressively pressed Chino pants caught between his little sharp teeth.
“What the hell, lady?” He looked down at Sully and laughed. He laughed. “Poor guy is as dangerous as a gnat.”
“Sully, release.”
Sully released and plopped his butt back down in front of Gray and went right back to staring at him like he was a rock star. Or a bone. Or a rock star with a bone.
“Fine. So maybe it was me in the bar. I wasn’t the one who spiked your drink.”
“It’s all just a big coincidence, isn’t it? Meeting at Big Eddie’s, the spiked beer, and now this appointment?” His face turned suspicious (yes, still gorgeous) and one eyebrow cocked way up. “Did you set up this appointment just to meet me?”
“Oh my gosh, you caught me. You’re on to me. That’s exactly what I did.” You bet I rolled my eyes. “I went out and found the most rundown, in-need-of-a-renovation house, and dropped a couple hundred thousand dollars just so I could meet the famous Gray Thorne. Or should I say infamous. That sounds totally sane, doesn’t it, Fifty?” Oh, yeah. I went there.
His gaze narrowed on me in a what-did-you-just-call-me way.
“Oh, please. Like I have Viagra lying around.” I began opening kitchen cabinets to prove the obvious. I was a smart-ass Vanna White, only with cabinets. Until I opened the medicine cabinet.
Guess what was front and center on the bottom shelf. Uh huh. A bottle of Viagra.
“You were saying?” Guess who still looked disgustingly gorgeous with an I-told-you-so-expression on his face?
“Oh my. That must be my grandma’s.”
His eyebrow arched in disbelief. “Your grandmother’s Viagra? Sure it is. Or, a Viagra in a beer is your signature pick-up maneuver.”
The sudden shimmer of lights in my peripheral vision warned me I was about to be body-slammed by a migraine. Stress brought them on. Or a changing barometric pressure. And sometimes they seemed to hit just because. I had two options. Option one: Cut the meeting with Gray short, so I could take my medicine, curl up in a dark room, and hope I caught it in time. Option two: Throw up on Gray’s shoes.
Some choices in life were easy.
“Gray, I appreciate you coming by. I’ve got a few more remodeling companies on my list to call.” I ushered him to the foyer, and swung the front door open wide, and pushed a frowning Gray out onto my front porch. I squinted my eyes, trying to keep out as much light as possible. “Thank you.”
If his face was anything to go by, I’d pissed Gray Thorne off. Again. Probably not a good plan now that I’d decided I did want to kiss him. Especially because I already knew…I wanted more than just one kiss from Gray Thorne.
Chapter 4
Gray
“Gray, how did the meetings with potential clients go this week?”
“Holy shit, Beckett. The King job can’t wrap up soon enough, so you can take your job back. I hate sales.” I shoved my chair back and stomped over to the window before turning back. “Tell me you turn some jobs down when you go to these things.”
“Sure.” Beck raised his eyebrows at my over-the-top reaction. “Occasionally a potential client raises a red flag, and I don’t bid for a job. But there have to be major red flags, like they’ve taken a builder that I know is reliable to small claims court. Or they’ve been through more than one other reno firm on the same job. Or they come off as just plain crazy. I usually try not to turn away people wanting to pay us money though.”
“There you go.” I pointed at him. “One woman was plain crazy.”
Eli grinned. “Cat hoarder? Nudist? Wanted everything white?”
“No. None of that, but I just know she’s a ball buster,” I said. With a vicious attack dog.
“Are you sure this woman just didn’t fall for your renowned charm, and it threw you off your game?” Ash asked from where he was sprawled at the end of the table.
Bullshit. Sure, I liked it when clients agreed with me, but that wasn’t what this was. Yet, I saw the doubt on my brothers’ faces.
“It’s true you like easy women.” Eli nodded. “I’m not talking about women who sleep around, although you seem to like those too. I’m talking about women who are easy to get along with. No conflicts, no friction, nothing that makes you engage your emotions.”
“I’m not looking for eas
y women to ‘like’ these days.” Which Eli well knew since he made the damn bet. Besides, which Thorne brother didn’t keep his emotions locked up tight? Like I was any different from any other Thorne brother? Ha! We were all a piece of work. I sank down into a chair, crossed my arms over my chest, and frowned across at Eli.
“Did you put in a bid?” Wyatt asked.
“Nope. She said she wanted to talk to a few other construction companies first. And by ‘a few’ I’m guessing she means thirty. If she calls back, she’ll be your problem, Beck. I recommend we pass on that one. Contessa Madigan. Mark her down as a hard pass.”
“Me thinks the man doth protest too much.” Ash laughed. “Did you already shag her in the sales pitch?”
“Fuck off, Ash.” No. This had nothing to do with the fact that Contessa Madigan rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing to do with the fact that when I closed my eyes searching for sleep every night, I couldn’t get the woman out of my head. She was different. Quirky. Full of fire the way she challenged me, not backing down even when I’d caught her out in a lie.
“Okay, okay. I’ll make a note of it,” Beck said, looking suspiciously like he was smiling on the inside. Beck’s cell phone rang, and he glanced at the caller ID before his eyes met mine. “Speak of the devil.”
Well, hell.
Beck took the call. “Ms. Madigan, what can I do for you?”
Sitting back as he listened, Beck’s face went from polite to amused to surprised (which was when his eyes whipped back to me and stayed on me) to concerned to amused again and then to curious before ending up on resolute. “You have my apologies. You’ll have Gray’s too. I understand your concerns, and I appreciate you giving us a second chance to make this right. He must have been having an off day. Yes, we’ll be happy to take it on. Of course he can handle it. You can expect him there bright and early tomorrow.”
Beck ended the call, tossing his phone on the conference table with enough force that it slid a few feet. “What the hell happened at that sales pitch?”
I pointed at him. “I tried to tell you she was crazy.”
“Crazy or not, we can’t afford angry clients. Not at this juncture. And I’ll be honest, Gray… If half of what she said is true, then what in the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I was giving a sales presentation to a reasonably sane person. That didn’t turn out to be the case. I don’t care what she said—I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Did you make a comment about her shoes?”
What the fuck? “Yes, but nothing bad. I just—”
“Did you laugh at her dog?”
“Well, yes. But the dog was wearing a bowtie. And he attacked me like a Rottweiler only he’s about the size of a lop-eared rabbit, and I thought it was funny.” Plus he’d ruined a perfectly good pair of my pants.
Ash snickered at the other end of the table. “Dude, you got attacked by a dog-rabbit wearing a bowtie and you didn’t tell us about it?”
“I’m pretty sure it would be a rabbit-dog.” Eli scratched his chin and then looked around the table at us all. “And next time anyone works on a job with a bowtie wearing rabbit-dog, get a picture. That would be great for our website.”
Beck’s voice sliced sharply into the conversation. “Did you make a comment about medication in her kitchen cabinet?”
“Yes, but…but…it’s not the way it sounds. There is more going on here.” This was completely ridiculous. “Okay, so here’s the deal. I got partway through the pitch with Ms. Madigan when I realized we’d met before. On Halloween at Big Eddie’s. I recognized her shoes. You all were there. Remember?”
“Remember what?”
“When the cat sent over the Viagra beer. That was her. Only she claims it wasn’t. And at first I believed her because the woman who sent me the beer was definitely a D cup. And the other cat—Contessa Madigan—not a D cup. But next thing I know I’m going to a sales meeting at her house. Doesn’t that sound like too much of a coincidence? And guess who had Viagra in her cabinet?” I nodded aggressively as I laid out my case. Honestly, I was a bit pissed I even needed to defend myself.
“And there’s more. She called me out on naming our company Six Brothers Construction when there are only five brothers working together. Five or six, what the hell does she care? And she kept staring at my mouth. The whole thing was weird. Seriously weird.”
Right then was when I realized my brothers were all staring at me with one of those looks on their faces. I knew that look because I’d given it to one of my brothers a time or two myself. The look that said, isn’t this interesting? It was like when you go to the doctor because you hurt your knee sliding into second base and you can hardly walk. So the doc starts poking around to find the source of your pain. And when they find it, bingo, they poke it some more to see if that’s really the source of the pain. A trigger point.
“No. I see what you think is going on here. You think you’ve found a trigger point. You haven’t.” I was known for my laid-back personality. Eli was correct; I liked to keep my emotions disengaged. Made things easier all around. So the fact that I was on the edge of losing it here, of course they thought something was up. My eyes honed in on Beck. “Sometimes a crazy woman is just a crazy woman.”
Beck nodded slowly. “All right. If you say none of it was you, then it wasn’t. If you think we should walk away from this job, then we’ll walk. Your call. But if there is any chance that the two of you had some small misunderstanding, then I’d like you to fix it.”
A small misunderstanding? Maybe. Or had my man flu made me more impatient? Maybe that too. If I was honest with myself, I’d have to admit that there was something about Tessa Madigan that had caused friction from the moment we met. Something about the way she looked at me with those big, green eyes. Something about the way her soft perfume stayed with me long after our meeting was over. Even when I didn’t know who she was. Dammit. So maybe I did need to fix this.
Especially since Beck as the oldest brother had quietly sacrificed and handled so much over the years to keep us all together, that it was damn near impossible to not want to step up and do the same. I knew he was stressed about wrapping up the King mansion in time for the big-deal annual Roughnecks Fundraising Gala. I knew our company was on shaky financial ground at the moment. Every one of us had to handle a crap job or two over the five years in business. It looked like it was my turn this time.
“I’ll fix it.” I could shut up and deal with one small job, crazy lady or not.
“Okay,” Beck said. “She would like to see a sample of what we can do for her. To that end, I agreed we—you, Gray—would renovate the interior of her van.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Her van? Who did she think we were? The cast of Pimp my Ride?
“I’ll grant you it’s unusual, but I think we’re dealing with a unique situation. I don’t have many details, but she did share that her dog is a medical necessity for her anxiety.”
“You mean like a companion dog?” Eli asked. “I’ve seen people traveling on airplanes with those.”
Well, now I felt like a jerk. So yeah, I could see why laughing at her dog might have made her upset. Okay. I would fix this. I could redo the interior of a van.
Obviously I didn’t know her story or her background. I didn’t know where she was coming from. My own background and the hang ups that came along with it helped me learn to put aside judgment. I would say every Thorne brother was open-minded. A dysfunctional childhood had a tendency to help adjust a person’s mind that way. Until you’d walked someone’s path, there’s no way you knew their truth.
Hell, I dragged baggage from my childhood into adulthood. Carried it around every day. When I was younger, swear to God, it felt like lugging around a boulder. But then my brother Beck rounded us all up, collected us from various foster homes, and life got better.
Then, day by
day, year after year, my baggage got lighter. Or maybe I just got better at carrying it. It was still there. Probably always would be. No fucking way it was going to disappear until all the Thorne siblings were present and accounted for.
I sure as hell didn’t want people rooting through my baggage. I was happy to give other people the exact same respect. So long as nobody was getting hurt and work was getting done, people were entitled to their idiosyncrasies.
I also wasn’t a heartless bastard. If there was something I could do to help someone, I was happy to. So long as it didn’t take any emotional commitment. I’ve got time; I can give my time. I’ve got money—not a lot—but enough to spare if it’ll help someone out. I had patience—although not an endless supply, as my brothers would tell you—but I did try to exercise patience.
I wasn’t even going to blame this on my man flu. This was all on me. If anybody knew that sometimes people had heavier baggage to carry through life, it was a Thorne brother. So I resolved to be more patient and more observant and do the best job I could for Tessa Madigan.
Chapter 5
Tessa
I was killing two birds with one Thorne. That was Laura’s theory. Because a few nights ago, during girls’ movie night with Laura, Paul called again. And I was so distracted with Patrick Swayze teaching Baby how to dance (his hands on her hips got me every time) that I forgot to check caller ID.
A big mistake because Paul asked me out to dinner (my favorite Asian fusion restaurant, darn it). I politely declined, but Laura was afraid if he kept hanging around, that I might cave. I didn’t think I would, but then she pointed out it had been a long time since I’d slept with a man. She had a point because it had been over three years.
“Now that you mention it, I miss having a healthy sex life.” I shrugged. “Although maybe sex isn’t as good as I remember it. Is it?”
“That depends. How was Paul in bed?” Laura had asked. “I don’t need any details. I just need to know on a scale of 1 to 10, where was he?”