by Low, Gennita
She was quite sure Mr. Langley was going to show up for the first day. While he’d been studying her, she’d also been keeping him within sight all day, and it hadn’t escaped her notice when he’d picked up a shingle wrapper from the ground and took it with him when he left. She had grinned then too, hiding it under the shadows of her wide-brimmed cap. Mr. Langley was going to read the instructions off the wrapper on how to lay shingles. Somehow, that pleased her. At least, the man was trying.
After wiping her hands dry, Jaymee proceeded to get the vacuum cleaner out of the closet and dragged it into the living room, leaving her father at the kitchen table.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” he called after her.
She plugged the cord in and turned the machine on, the high screechy sound keeping out his voice. If Mr. Langley was willing to learn, she concluded as she pushed the vacuum back and forth, then she supposed she should give him a chance. Even if he meant trouble.
*
Nick showed up for work the next day, looking just as good as he did the day before. Jaymee wrinkled her nose. Well, at least he had the sense to keep his pants on, she noted with morose resignation, as she looked at her new helper. He had gotten out of his Jeep with the lazy grace of a prowling animal on the hunt. The hair on the back of her neck had stood up the instant his eyes met hers and he gave her a knowing, careless smile.
Uh-oh. That was what her warning system had been trying to tell her all yesterday. She should have known, she privately groaned. With those blue-gray eyes, why hadn’t she paid attention? Wolf. She had seen his kind before.
The temperature was already in the mid-eighties, even at that early hour, and the wet sheen of perspiration gleaming off his exposed skin made her suddenly aware of how much skin and muscle there was on Nicholas Langley. He was wearing one of those muscle tank tops, revealing wide shoulders that rounded off into beautifully sculpted arms. A light sprinkling of black hair temptingly beckoned above the low neckline. Her eyes moved lower, helplessly drawn to the length of him, taking in the long, long legs to his feet. Like she’d called it. Hot. And getting hotter.
It didn’t help he stood there like some cadet under inspection. He was, she realized, mocking her. It was there in those wolf eyes, with their strange, intense light gleaming at her.
“Are the shoes right?” he inquired politely.
She hadn’t missed the new shoes. “Show me the bottom,” she said.
“The bottom of my shoes?” he asked, as if to make sure.
Jaymee glanced up at him sharply and saw the gleam in his eyes was now full-fledged laughter. Her chin jutted up. “Yes,” she told him in her firmest tone, and hastily stepped back when he moved unexpectedly in her direction, bumping into the tailgate of her truck. To her dismay, he put a hand right next to her, braced his weight on it, and obediently lifted up a foot for her inspection.
If she moved six inches forward, she would be up against his chest. Her senses were on overload, amped-up and uncomfortable. She didn’t like her reaction at all, not one bit. She didn’t like how he had managed to make her feel small and helpless. Didn’t like that she noticed the way the muscles rippled in his forearm that was bearing his weight. Didn’t like the delicious scent of male and cologne that crowded her mind like an instant logic-erasing spell. Hated, hated, those blue-gray eyes giving her their own lazy perusal.
“Does it look good to you?” he asked, still polite.
She was sure they weren’t talking about the same thing, but Jaymee hadn’t stayed unattached at the advanced age of thirty without good reason. She knew men and all their rotten little games, and had been given an excellent lesson in the particular area of wolves in sheep clothing. She considered that the one main important point under the topic of Past Experience in her resume toward singular living.
Breathing out easily, she replied, “Looking good won’t help you, Langley, when you’re slip-sliding off a roof.” She gave a brisk nod. He smelled too damn good for a roofer. Time to make him sweat. “You can put your foot back down. Your shoes look fine. You can start by taking the toolboxes and air hoses up onto the roof.”
It wasn’t easy to sound businesslike when she was talking to an expanse of male chest, but she didn’t think leaning back and looking up would give her any advantage. Moving sideways, she eased out of the warmth of his male body and made her escape with a pretended air of looking busy.
Nick followed the sway of those enticing hips for one moment longer before turning to look into the back of the truck. If he weren’t careful, he was going to get himself fired before he’d even started on his new job. He didn’t know why he took such perverse delight in trying to rile up Jay Barrows, but the deliberate cool and distant attitude of hers was like an itch just out of reach.
Hoisting three coiled air hoses onto one shoulder, he picked up a box of nails under his free arm, his mind still on his new boss. She might not know it, but Jay Barrows affected him too. He’d watched her a long time yesterday. She was cool as the ocean breeze in the summer heat, working with silent determination while others wiped away their sweat, and seemed to be all business, rarely smiling. However, Nick had been trained to look for the weak links in his opponent’s armor; it was his job to break in, examine, and leave his mark.
Erase, replace, destroy. That was his core job in his unit. There were nine of them, and each was programmed in one specialty, although essentially, they had been trained for one thing.
Nick put that subject out of his mind for now. He would worry about getting his hands on a computer later. Right now, he had to concentrate on his newly-chosen line of work. After reading the instructions on the shingle wrapper he’d picked up the day before, he now had a basic understanding of how to install shingles on a roof, but suspected on-the-job training was very different from mere words written by some technical writer. He, the Programmer, should know that.
And he was proven right.
A few hours later, perspiration pouring down his face, stinging his eyes, his tank top drenched into a useless rag, he marveled at the inhuman coolness of his boss. The other roofers, Dicker and Lucky, were taking a cigarette break, sitting on top of several bundles of shingles, but Jay Barrows was methodically laying her shingles one after another, moving in a crab-like manner across the roof.
His current duty was to tear open a bundle of shingles and put several within her reach all the way up the roof, so that she didn’t have to stop to get the shingles herself. She had given him a utility knife with a hooked blade, showing him how to cut “starters” out of the fiberglass shingles for each row.
She was a good teacher. Instead of explaining and instructing in the sweltering heat, she went straight to work, leaving it up to him to watch her, pointing out ways to do things quicker in short sentences. Too much explanation usually distracted from physical work and roofing, he quickly found out, was all about working efficiently and constantly.
The starter shingles went on first, over the drip edge, then the first course, six inches or so off the left side. Each time, her nail gun flew over the shingles with a precision and speed that belied the difficulty of being in such a cramped and awkward position while wielding the tool attached to the air hose. All in humidity-drenched hundred-degree heat.
“We break for lunch in half an hour,” Jaymee said, as she continued laying shingles without looking up. “You can stay on the site or go to a diner. Up to you.”
“What do you do?”
She gave him a brief glance, then resumed nailing. “I go to a diner. It’s good to get out of the heat.”
The heat had turned her ponytail into a mass of unruly curls, and Nick felt the urge to run his fingers through them, to feel what those little corkscrews were like.
“Can I come along? I’m still quite lost around town.” It was a small lie, but he wanted to see that delectable mouth chewing on food.
Jaymee hesitated. It would be ungracious to refuse. “Sure,” she told him, and changed the subject. “Get me
a lead boot for the plumbing pipe from the box, will you?”
He was a good worker, she thought. He hadn’t complained about the heat yet, and followed every order without question, an essential requirement while roofing and dying of thirst. The latter was somehow surprising to her, as he didn’t strike her as someone who took orders easily. It was there behind that lazy grace—a man who did things his way—and she had the feeling he was merely biding his time.
For what, she hadn’t the faintest idea, but one thing was certain. Nicholas Langley definitely had never been a construction worker. Why was he working as a laborer? There were only a few reasons people picked her kind of work. They were uneducated, or addicted to drugs and thus couldn’t find a steady job, or they started really young and had made this their livelihood, or they were running from the law. The first three reasons didn’t fit. Nick Langley appeared educated and his body certainly didn’t look abused. He didn’t look like some roofing apprentice, since he was probably a few years older than she was, which left one last alternative theory.
Somehow, he didn’t fit the description of a hardened criminal either, but Jaymee had seen them come and go enough these past years to know not to be surprised. Perhaps Langley was a criminal. That would make perfect sense, since she, Jaymee Barrows, was attracted to the criminally inclined, and would do well to remember her debts from that one mistake.
Nick lifted a brow when she finally waved him to stop, stood up and stretched. “Lunch?” he asked hopefully. He was getting hungry.
“Lunch,” she agreed, then disengaged the nail gun from the hose. She pulled out the foam plugs protecting her hearing.
“I need to get some of those,” Nick remarked.
Jaymee smiled. More proof that he wasn’t in construction. Roofers rarely bothered about hearing protection in Florida. Most of them were partially deaf by the time they turned forty.
“I have some extra ones. I’ll give them to you after lunch.” She walked to the ladder leaning against the roof and turned to the other two roofers. “Coming to lunch, Dicker?”
“Nah, I’m going to stay here. Brought my own today.”
“We’ll be here when you get back,” the other man said.
“OK. I have to go pick up some more roofing cement, so I’ll probably take longer today,” Jaymee told them. “Make sure you cut the valleys before the sun heats them too long. The last time we left them till the end, the whole side of the white roof had tar stains, and the builder complained."
“OK, boss.”
Nick watched with interest when Jay pulled off her tee-shirt after she got down from the roof, displaying a colorful bikini. She went to the tap on the side of the house and sluiced her body with water to cool off, wiping herself with the shirt. Now that was a great idea. He proceeded to take off his tank top and did the same, putting his head under the gush of water as well. That felt wonderful, cleaning off the dust and the sticky sweat.
Jaymee swallowed hard. She shouldn’t be looking, but God, the man was nothing but sleek muscles. His body was lean and hard, the same dusting of fine dark hair arrowing down to an “outie” belly button, just above the top of his jeans.
“Maybe it would be better if I wore shorts tomorrow,” Nick interrupted her wayward imagination.
Jaymee blinked. Shorts. Meaning naked thighs and calves. Shaking her head, she said, “You’ll regret it. The fiberglass shingles’ll cut up your knees in no time, and it’ll also burn you every time you kneel down. Remember, the shingles are baking in the sun.”
Nick nodded. He should know that by now. Every time he held on to one too long, the heat had burned his fingertips. No wonder she wore gloves. She, he noted, was golden all over, at least where he could see. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her, and that scrap of cloth she had on right now barely covered unexpectedly full breasts. She wasn’t shy about walking on the job site either, obliviously passing the other men who were looking at her like they would like her for lunch.
As far as he could tell, she was unmarried and unattached. Perhaps she was looking for a man. His eyes narrowed a fraction. No. She hadn’t sent any such signals to any of the men she’d talked to all morning. She had been serious and totally businesslike. Jay Barrows was obviously unaware of any male attention, except for his. He hadn’t missed the heat that showed up in her lively eyes now and then when she looked at him, which was often, heat that would disappear as quickly as it flared up. She was fighting it, and for some reason, it made him want to add fuel to the fire.
Donning a fresh tee-shirt, Jaymee beckoned to him to climb into her truck. “Don’t you have another shirt to wear?”
“It’ll dry in the sun,” Nick said, shrugging. Jaymee sighed, then pulled another shirt out from behind her seat. She threw it onto his lap. “I doubt your shirt would fit,” he wryly commented, indicating her smaller size.
“All my tees are in large and extra large sizes,” she countered, starting up the truck. “Unless you’re a three hundred-pound football player, you’ll fit.”
“Why the large size?” It fit fine, although the printed message—‘I’m woman. I’m strong. I’m tired.’—didn’t.
“Comfort. I like my clothes loose about me.” She looked at the message emblazoned across his chest and laughed in surprised amusement. “I’m sorry. That’s the only clean shirt I have left.”
Nick liked the sound of her laughter. It was a low bubbly chuckle, like a child’s. “I hope you aren’t inviting other workers to lunch,” he said. “I hate to declare that ‘I am woman’ at first introduction.” The dimples appearing in her cheeks were captivating. He wanted to make her smile like that again. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to Hungry Boys,” Jaymee announced, still grinning, “a great diner. Full of macho men at lunch. You’ll like it. Of course,” she added considerately, giving him a sidelong glance, “you might be too tired—”
He looked down at his shirt again. “It all depends,” he said lightly.
Dangerous ground, she told herself. She endeavored to change the subject. “So, Langley, where were you before you arrived here?”
“Nick.”
“Hmm?”
“Call me Nick. Or Nicholas, if you like.”
“OK, Nicholas.”
Interesting. She didn’t choose Nick, like most people would. “Is Jay your real name?”
“No.” She frowned. Maybe he didn’t want her to know anything about him. “And you’re changing the subject.”
“What is it?”
Two could play at being obtuse. “What, you mean the subject?”
“You know perfectly well I was asking about your real name.” The thread of mockery in his voice was unmistakable. “Is it a roofing secret?”
“A roofing secret?” She was beginning to enjoy bantering with him.
“Yeah, like why not cutting the valleys would leave stains on the roof,” Nick replied.
Jay pulled into the parking lot of Hungry Boys. She got out and rolled up the window. “If you leave the valley uncut in the summer,” she explained, “the sun melts the tar strip on the underside of the shingle lying on the roof.”
“Ah, I get it. The sun bakes it and the tar sticks on the roof, staining it.” He locked up his side of the truck and fell in stride with her.
“Strong, as well as smart,” Jaymee quipped. “The men are going to love you in there.”
“Then I’m going to have to place myself in your care,” he calmly retorted. “I can’t fight them off all by myself.”
Somehow, she had the impression he wouldn’t have any problems fighting off anyone, male or female. At the entrance, she held out a protective hand, a grave expression on her face.
“Walk behind me then, Nicholas. The best way to ward off unwanted attention is to let them know you belong to me.”
She strode in through the doors without a backward glance.
Chapter Two
Stupid, stupid, stupid. What the hell made her say that?
Hungry Boys was its usual crowded noon business. Jaymee liked it there—the food was a disgustingly generous portion for a decent price and just the way she liked it, with no thought for one’s health. And the desserts would defeat the most voracious appetite.
They both sat at the counter. Two tall glasses of iced tea immediately appeared in front of them and the waitress patiently waited as they drained them of the sweet liquid.
“Thanks, Mindy.” Jaymee smiled. “You’re an angel.”
Mindy, a tall platinum blond with bold eyes, refilled the glasses. “I’m the angel among the animals,” she acknowledged, grinning back, then slid a long look at Nick. “And what type of animal is he?”
Jaymee chose to ignore the question. “What’s the special today?”
Her friend wasn’t the type to back away when something caught her interest. Mindy turned to Nick, jutting out her generous bosom. “Do you want to have the special today? It’s definitely for a hungry boy.”
Jaymee sighed. She recognized that particular look. Mindy was going to have her claws in her new worker and no one was going to stand in the way. Somehow, the idea didn’t please her, but before she could say anything, Nick drawled, “I’ll take what the boss is having.”
Mindy’s eyes narrowed. “The boss, huh?” she scoffed at Jaymee. “Baked chicken and vegetables. Chicken rice soup.”
“I’ll take it,” Jaymee told her.
“And you, sweetheart?” Mindy’s bright red lips pouted prettily. Jaymee rolled her eyes.
“Sounds good,” answered Nick, returning an easy smile, amusement lacing his low, gravelly voice.
Mindy scribbled the order down and handed a straw to Jaymee, poking it right under her nose. “Looks good too, girlfriend,” she said loudly, then disappeared.
She allowed the embarrassed silence to hang as long as she could, then finally mumbled, “Sorry, Mindy is just a joker.” The last thing she wanted was for him to think she was after him.