by Low, Gennita
No, he would bide his time. Knowing Command, they would give him a reasonable amount of time before deciding he was dead. Or before sending a tracker on his trail, he added, rubbing his jaw. Damn, he didn’t like trackers, mean S.O.Bs who shot first and asked later.
The little house at the end of the dirt trail came into view as he followed Jay’s earlier instructions. The property was a few acres, surrounded by a wooden fence. He could see some sort of a lake behind the house. Parking the Jeep next to the familiar blue truck, he slowly got out, looking around. Behind him, two other trucks pulled in. Dicker and Lucky were in one of the vehicles. Two other men got out of the other mud-splattered truck. Nick nodded at Dicker and Lucky.
“Hey, Langley,” greeted Dicker. “Getting your first paycheck, huh?”
“Yeah.” The two roofers didn’t talk to him much, and he never encouraged them.
“How do you like roofing?” asked Lucky, lighting a cigarette. “The sun tough on you?”
“It’s all right,” Nick answered, taking in the two approaching strangers. They were, undoubtedly, roofers; they had tar all over their clothes. They nodded at him, but didn’t seem very friendly.
“This is the new man we’ve been telling you about, Chuck,” Dicker said, gesturing at Nick. “Nick, this is Chuck and that’s Rich. They used to work for Jay just prior to you showing up.”
Lucky’s gap-toothed smile was positively wicked. “Yeah, you boys can forget about convincing Jay to give you another chance. Nick here replaced both of you.”
The one named Chuck spat to one side. “Sure, that’s for one week. How long do you think he’s going to last?” He looked suspiciously at Nick. “You ain’t no roofer, man. How long are you going to stick around?”
Nick shrugged.
“Not much of a talker, are you?”
“Oh, he talk,” Lucky said, still grinning. “He talk fine with Jay. I think he’s learning lots from Jay.”
“Well, I just want my check for what she owes me,” the other man, Rich, said. “Miss High and Mighty thinks she can do everything herself her way. She’s welcomed to it.”
They all walked up the trail toward the house. Nick followed along as they went the back way, instead of up the front porch. Dicker turned to him.
“Boss doesn’t like us walking in the front with our dirty shoes all tarred up. Her office is at the back, next to the kitchen. That’s where we get paid.” He looked at Nick up and down. “Of course, you’re all cleaned up regular, aren’t you? Look at that, boys, no tar on him at all.”
The four of them studied Nick like he was some alien. He returned their stares, unperturbed.
“He ain’t no roofer,” Chuck repeated. “She’s going to call us back as soon as he’s gone.”
“Not if you keep leaving things half done, like you’d been doing,” Lucky declared.
“She’s just plain bitchy,” said Chuck, and spat again. “We weren’t doing nothing particularly wrong. We’ve been working for her daddy before she even knew how to hold a hammer, let alone swing it. Now she gone and fired us.”
“Yeah, and just because she got to run the company doesn’t mean she could just treat us like dirt,” Rich agreed.
“Well, boys, she’s the boss right now,” Dicker told them.
“Well, Dickhead, I beg to differentiate from your opinion,” retorted Chuck.
“Ha! Differentiate from your opinion,” snorted Lucky. “You sound mighty educated with them big phrases, Chuckie. Now, if you can only remember to nail six nails in the shingles instead of two—”
“Shut up! Shut up, man!” Rich yelled, losing his temper. He was the one to keep an eye on, Nick decided.
Dicker climbed up the back porch steps. “You better keep it down now.”
“What, is she afraid her daddy might hear? We already done told him she got rid of us and he wasn’t too happy about that,” Chuck sneered. “He told us he would help us get our jobs back.” He gave Nick a hard look. “What do you think of that, boy?”
Chuck wasn’t that much older than Nick, probably by four or five years, with a balding pate and a beer belly protruding over his pants. “Surf rats. College smarty pants,” he went on. “You all think you know everything, don’t you?”
Nick leaned lazily against the banister. “Sounds to me like you two tried to cheat with some shoddy work,” he drawled. It was easy to put two and two together from the other men’s conversation and it was even easier to push these men’s buttons. “I’d say firing you was a justifiable action on her part, nothing dirty or bitchy about.”
“Justifiable action.” Lucky sat down on the porch steps, his gap-toothed laugh coming out in hiccups. “I want to see you try to differentiate your opinion with Langley, Chuckie. Maybe you can give him some justifiable actions.” He hugged his knees, laughing so hysterically even Dicker smiled.
Rich put a threatening hand on Lucky’s head. “The only action you...”
“What’s going on out there?” Jaymee’s voice broke them apart. She was behind the screen door. “Rich, Chuck, if you want to collect your last check, I suggest you don’t cause my porch any damage. Come on in and give me your bills. Be careful where you step, please. I just had the carpet cleaned in the office.”
She pushed open the screened door, a scowl on her face. She was wearing shorts for once, and Nick got to appreciate her bare legs. They were shapely, toned from all the time she squatted down, and he noticed they weren’t as tanned as her arms, which made sense, since she was constantly in those long tight pants at work. Her bare feet revealed pretty pink toenails, which for some inexplicable reason, made his mouth water. You’re losing it, boy-o, getting hot about painted toenails.
It wasn’t that, he amended, as he entered the kitchen, a surprisingly large room. It was the woman herself who turned him on with the little unexpected displays of her feminine side. One moment she was tough as nails, throwing bundles of shingles around like they weighed nothing, then he would catch a whiff of the flowery perfume she wore. Another moment, she would ignore a cut as she kept on laying shingles, blood trickling unheeded down her arm, and then he would see her adjusting her bikini and rubbing suntan lotion over her arms and shoulders. Today, she had been covered in dust and dirt from climbing under the overhang of a dormer to pound down a nail, hair disheveled, face smeared, curses streaming from her lips, and now, she was soft and clean, delightfully dainty, wearing a very feminine flowery blouse. And God, such pretty, sweet, enticing painted toenails. She was driving him crazy.
Her study was a small room stacked with boxes and file cabinets. It smelled vaguely of her, as if she spent a lot of time there. A sofa was against one wall, and two of the roofers went to sit on it. The others pulled two of the kitchen chairs into the room. Jaymee walked to the desk by a big picture window and sat down—Nick froze in mid-step—in front of two computers.
“Sit down, Nick,” she said, frowning when he just stood there.
Nick tore his gaze from the computers and looked around. He was too big to sit on the sofa with the two men, and there weren’t any more chairs in the room.
Jaymee sighed and relinquished her big office chair. “Here, take this. I’ll be moving around signing checks anyway.” When he hesitated, she impatiently pounded the arm of the chair and ordered, “Sit! I’ll sit on the desk if I have to.”
Nick sank down into the large leather chair, softened from constant use. He immediately thought of her tight little ass sliding on and off it as she did her paperwork every night.
Jaymee picked up her checkbook and turned on one of the computers. “I’ll pay you two first, Chuck and Rich, and will print out a record for you to keep. I’ll send you all the appropriate forms at the end of the year.”
“Didn’t your daddy talk to you?” asked Chuck, a sullen expression on his face.
“He did,” Jaymee answered, “and I said no.”
“Where’s he? I want to talk to him!” Rich loudly demanded.
“He isn’t
here,” Jaymee informed him curtly, “and you were talking to the wrong person. I don’t need your kind of work giving my business a bad name. Let’s just get this done, Rich. Give me your bills and I’ll sign you a check and a bonus.”
The two men were angry, but they could see that they were wasting time. So they did what they were told, muttering between themselves. Jaymee started a program on the computer, then punched in some numbers. While the printer started, she signed the checks and handed them over.
“After all these years I’ve worked for your daddy...”
“It ain’t right, the way you treat us...”
Jaymee took the sheets from the printer and gave them to the two men. “Don’t lose these,” she said over their voices. “I’ve added a bonus in your checks. ’Bye.”
She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, leaning a hip against Nick’s chair. She wasn’t aware she was touching his forearm.
Chuck looked back and forth from Jaymee to Nick. “I see what’s going on,” he said, as he and Rich walked out. “Let’s go, Rich. You and I ain’t pretty enough for Miss Barrows.”
Nick felt the temperature in the room drop as the two men left. From the study, they could hear part of the disgruntled conversation of the two departing roofers as they slammed the screen door shut.
“You know about her and pretty boys...”
“Ain’t her old man gonna get another stroke if she bought another high lift...”
Laughter. Silence. Dicker shifted in his seat. “Never mind them, boss,” he told Jaymee. “You don’t need to dwell on nothing they’ve been saying, insinuate-like.”
“It’s OK. What do I owe you this week, Dicker?” Jaymee asked, picking up her pen.
Dicker gave her a bill, then Lucky did the same. “Come on, Luck, I need to get me some bait to go on my fishing trip this weekend,” he said. “’Night, Jay.”
“’Night, Dicker. Catch a good one.”
“Will do. ’Night, Langley.”
“’Night.”
Jaymee realized suddenly Nick and she were alone, something she had avoided the last few days.
Chapter Three
Nick rotated the chair and watched Jaymee as she entered some numbers into the program. On rollers, it slid silently into position behind her, until she stood between his open thighs. “Need a seat?” he asked.
Jaymee slowly turned around, managing not to fall onto his lap as she gripped the table behind her. She tried to sound cool as she looked down at him, but her heart rate was, as always, when he got too near, speeding up with maddening awareness. “You need to give me a bill for my records.”
He made her nervous this evening. There was a different air about him as he watched her with those deceptively lazy eyes.
Nick shook his head. “I’d like to be paid in cash.” He placed his hands on her hips, holding her.
Her knees were going to buckle. “Are you a criminal?” she asked lightly.
As if he would admit it, even if he was one. He shook his head.
“A tax dodger?”
“Negative.”
“An escaped convict?”
“Nope.”
“An illegal alien, then?”
His smile was wicked, sexy. “Which accent do you want me to put on for you?”
Jaymee folded her arms protectively over her chest. That smile was dangerous to a woman’s peace of mind. “I’m entitled to an explanation.”
She had paid cash to some past employees before, those whom she knew were transient workers who had no address for her to contact at year’s end. The construction industry was seasonal and laborers came and went.
However, Nick Langley called to her like no one had for a long time. His mystery fed her curiosity. She wanted to solve it, and hopefully, eliminate this senseless attraction she felt. All week, she had kept him at arm’s length, not wanting him to make more of that kiss in the truck. It frightened her, the way he made her feel. He’d caused her to forget herself and every one of her self-imposed rules. She wanted to use her head this time because the last time she followed her heart, she’d been conned into believing the man to whom she’d give it to was sincere. She knew better now. Men like Nick Langley didn’t stay sincere for long, and certainly wouldn’t stay around for long after they got what they wanted.
When he remained silent, she pressed on, “Well?”
“I’m trying to straighten some stuff out,” Nick said, a smile teasing his lips. “It’s nothing criminal, so you don’t have to worry about helping a convict, but I just need some time.”
“Some time for what? What exactly do you do, Nicholas?”
That crooked smile was awfully distracting and she refused to succumb to the temptation of bending over and kissing those lips.
“Construction?” he asked, his blue-gray eyes twinkling.
Jaymee gave a snort. “Yeah, you’re just the typical construction man.”
“And what does a typical construction man look like? What does he have that I don’t?” He flexed an impressive bicep at her, questioningly wriggling his brows.
Jaymee wanted to run her hand over the arm, to feel its hard strength. Then she wanted to—she cut off her thoughts abruptly.
“Nails too clean, shoes too clean.” She counted each item off on a hand. “Owns a pretty new Jeep, paid off, you told me—that, Mr. Construction Man, is a big telltale clue. Paid off? Do you know how much a new Jeep costs? And lastly,” she gestured grandly, then, not able to help herself, she ran a light finger on his bare arm and whispered, “No tattoos.”
She was good, a worthy opponent indeed. “Do you always stereotype people?” asked Nick quizzically. “Are you a stereotypical roofer?”
Jaymee frowned. “You know, mister, I can see right through you,” she told him.
“Oh?” Nick leaned back comfortably, lacing his hands behind his head. He was beginning to enjoy this bait and wait exercise with his new boss.
“You always pretend to answer my questions, but all the time you try to divert me by putting me on the defensive. Not so?”
Oh, she was good. “Why would I do that?”
“You men are all the same, talking all the time like I’m not here. I’ve grown up among men all my life, Nicholas. I know how they think, what they do, why they talk the way they do. They talk differently when women are around them, except I’m around them so much, they forget I’m a woman sometimes. I know every which way they talk down to women, every half-truth they utter to them, to each other.”
“Ah,” Nick said sagely, “an expert in evasive tactics.”
Jaymee looked startled for a second, a slight frown on her face. “Evasive tactics?” she repeated, then nodded, pleased. “Yes, I like that. I’m an evasive tactic expert.”
Nick grinned at her. If she only knew.
“So, back to the original subject, what exactly do you do?”
He noticed she didn’t say she wasn’t going to pay him in cash, which told him plenty about her decision already. He relaxed. “I’m good with electronics. You know,” he placed his hands on the table on each side of her body, and tapped a long finger against the keyboard, “computers. Radios. Stuff like that.” Missiles. Bombs. Satellites. He continued in silence.
Jaymee studied him for a few moments. Those long elegant fingers and artistic hands. Yes, she could see him playing with electronic things, assembling, wiring, rearranging. Clever, knowledgeable fingers. She shook off the sudden torrid images of those hands on her body. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Her imagination, so long buried under piles of debts, had suddenly decided to stir from its coma.
She wasn’t, by nature, a prying person, and since he had answered her question, she was satisfied enough to let it go for now. Maybe he would tell her more later, when he finished straightening out whatever needed straightening out, but right now, at this moment, she needed to understand why she was reacting in this way.
“OK, I’ll help you out,” she told him, and smiled at his s
urprise at her sudden capitulation. “Let me get my figures into my program, and turn the computer off.” She waited a beat. “You have to move and give me room, Nicholas.”
“What’s wrong with my lap?”
Jaymee looked down her nose. “Get your own laptop.”
He laughed, his teeth very white against his new tan. “Done,” he said, and without warning lifted her onto his lap, turning her to face the computer on the desk. The big arms closed securely around her waist as he scooted the chair closer toward the table.
Jaymee swallowed hard. Reaction? How about internal combustion? The numbers on the screen didn’t make sense. She’d probably messed up the whole program, as she tried to concentrate on the task instead of his roaming hands. They seemed to be everywhere, around her waist, on her thighs, up her back. Then they were pulling her blouse tucked into her shorts. Her brain refused to work any longer.
“Stop it,” Jaymee huskily commanded, and almost slammed her palms down on the keyboard when his hands touched flesh. They glided across her quivering stomach, his fingers teasing the top of her shorts, one finger lazily exploring her belly button, before moving higher. She clutched those clever hands just before they reached their target.
“Stop it,” she said again, trying to push them back down.
“Don’t you like it?” he whispered into her ear, that gravelly voice low and seductive.
Too much. She hadn’t been touched or caressed for.... In a last ditch effort, she moved to scramble off his lap, but her body went on strike when his teeth caught her earlobe. The sudden shot of electricity from that sensitive spot caused her to arch her hips in helpless response, seeking to make a live connection. She began to tremble.