Messing With Mac

by Jill Shalvis

  When she saw him, she stopped talking, rubbing her lips together in a little gesture that signified either nerves or arousal. Either way, awareness shot straight to his groin.

  So much for ignoring her. “Why are you here?” he asked.

  She lifted a brow, assuring him and everyone around that she considered him a Neanderthal for asking such a question. And okay, yes, maybe his tone had been a bit brusque. After all, she did own the place. But there was some inexplicable…thing going on between the two of them, some amazing thing that reminded him of…a shark bite. Painful, and probably lethal.

  But they’d signed a contact, he and she. Every possible little detail had been decided on, down to the last shade of paint on the walls. Her presence here wasn’t required, and in fact, he knew the ratio of work done today would be directly related to how far away she was.

  The further the better. “You agreed to move out for the duration of the restoration,” he reminded her.

  “I agreed to make sure there were no tenants during the duration. Suzanne and Nicole are gone.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “I’m not a tenant.”

  Shaking his head, he took the last step that put him on even ground with her. Mostly he towered over everyone around him, and knowing it, he usually made a conscious effort not to use his size as an intimidation. But right now he wasn’t thinking intimidation so much as self-preservation. He wanted this job. He needed this job. It was the first thing he’d cared about in far too long. And in a way he was just beginning to understand, he needed to lose himself in the pure joy of the work itself, something he couldn’t do with her parading around all damn day.

  “You can’t mean to be here while we work.”

  She lifted that chin, eyes flashing. “I’ll do as I please.”

  Damn. She did, she meant to be here while they worked. Because she didn’t trust him, or because she wanted to drive him crazy every step of the way?

  “Why?”

  “I won’t be in your way,” she said in lieu of a real answer.

  In his experience, clients couldn’t help but be in the way, always wanting to change the logical order of things, waiting until paint was on the walls or tile on the floor before deciding the color was off, or the brand not quite right. And he had the Town Council and historical society to impress on this one. “Look, Princess—”

  “My name,” she said, still smiling that cool smile as she carefully shifted the vase from one hand to the other in a way that suggested she was considering smashing it over his head, “is not ‘Princess.”’

  He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not trying to be a hard-ass here, it’s just that we’d all be better off if you’d just let us do our jobs.”

  “You are a hard-ass, it’s one of the reasons I hired you,” she said, surprising him. “And I think you could try trusting me a little. I’m not going to bog you down.”

  Mac didn’t do trust, and even if he did, he’d be crazy to give in to a woman quite used to crooking her little finger and having the entire male population fall over its own feet to please her.

  “I’m not,” she repeated, a little softer now, watching him with those clear, clear eyes that weren’t going to give an inch.

  He ran his hands over his face, put them on his hips and stared at her, but she was still just waiting with what he figured was the patience of a cobra. “Okay, whatever.”

  She was wise enough to keep her smile to herself but he saw the triumph in her eyes, the eyes that only yesterday had turned him on.

  Still turned him on.

  “You’ll finish the demo downstairs this week?” she asked.

  “And upstairs.”

  “Oh.” Now something else flickered in her gaze. “Is it really necessary to push your men like that?”

  “Like…what?”

  “Well, I would think demolishing just the downstairs would be enough for the next week. In any case, it’s going to be awfully hot.”

  “We’re doing both up and down this week,” he said firmly.

  “Hmm.”

  The sound that escaped her throat suggested he was not only a hard-ass but a brutal boss to his crew. “Demolition is back-breaking, hot, filthy work,” he explained, trying not to resent having to do so.

  “I realize that.”

  “Then you also realize we’re far better off digging in and getting it over with quick as possible.”

  “Okay…well, maybe you guys can start and complete the entire renovation downstairs before moving to the next floor.”

  “No. Not cost-effective.”

  “Hmm,” she said again doubtfully, and he narrowed his eyes. Why didn’t she want them upstairs this week? He would have pushed for answers but each of his crew’s heads were whipping back and forth between the two of them as if they were watching a tennis match.

  He was not going to make a scene. The woman wanted to breathe down his neck all day long? Fine. Today was going to be particularly brutal. By the end of it, her hair would be in her face, her creamy skin smeared with dirt and no way was that million dollar linen going to make it through unscathed.

  She’d be, at the very least, hot, sweaty and rumpled, and he could only hope he would get that insane urge to see it right out of his system.

  “Let’s move it,” he said to his crew, and they scattered.

  3

  FOR SEVERAL DAYS, Taylor kept close tabs on the demolition, from a safe distance of course. She wasn’t stupid enough to rile the beast any further, though she had to admit, she had been able to rile him with little to no effort so far.

  She supposed that meant he felt the same irritating physical attraction she did. And it was purely physical. A man as alpha as Mac was only good for the physical. There was nothing sensitive, tender or gentle about a man like that, nothing.

  He wasn’t someone to fool around with. He’d swallow her whole and spit her right back out, and in her world, she was the one who did the spitting, thank you very much.

  What she needed, if she needed at all, was a far more beta man to have fun with, to walk all over, if that’s what she was looking for.

  And maybe she would. Later. Right now she had bigger problems, such as figuring out how to keep her contractor from learning she wasn’t just going to be casually around, she was still living here.

  Not because she didn’t trust him, as he figured, but because she didn’t have the money to move out and get another place. Every cent she had was sunk into this building and the renovations. Until she could get more tenants—something else she was dependent on her contractor for—she was pretty much stuck.

  Suzanne and Nicole had each offered her a place to stay. But Nicole lived in Ty’s house now, and Suzanne with Ryan. Both were deliciously, deliriously drunk on true love. She knew the feeling, oh yes, she knew, but she couldn’t watch it or witness it too closely. She just couldn’t.

  She figured she’d just stay here, quietly, out of the way.

  Undetected.

  But that would be tricky, because now she knew the truth, that very little, and quite possibly nothing, got past one Thomas Mackenzie.

  “You want to move, Princess, or you’ll feel the effects of this dust in two seconds flat.”

  Having come out of nowhere, the tall, moody, opinionated man in question stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her. She leaned against the railing on the second-floor landing just outside her apartment, the one he didn’t realize she still slept in.

  He wore a hard hat, protective goggles and a face mask, which he’d shoved off his mouth, and was now hanging around his neck. He also wore a fine layer of dust that clung to his damp body. So did his dark T-shirt, which she was quite certain shouldn’t make her pulse quicken. He seemed so huge, so powerful and virile standing there with his sledge hammer in hand as he stared up at her from those whiskey eyes. And ridiculous as it was, she quivered like a mare in heat. It was shockingly, amazingly juvenile, and if she’d known how it was
going to be, she’d have found another man for the job.

  No, scratch that, difficult as he was, she wouldn’t want to work with anyone else. He was abrupt, in sensitive and far too hardheaded, but he was a damn good contractor and he was honest to a fault.

  Honest or otherwise, he slowly climbed the stairs, holding her gaze in his, until he stood right before her, all but surrounding her with his size and strength in what she considered was a deliberate at tempt to establish his dominance.

  Well, she was dominant, too, and she lifted her chin and stared him down.

  “You’re not moving out of the dust,” he said.

  She wouldn’t back up, not even one little step, though he was close enough now that she could feel the heat of his body, could see the look in his light brown eyes, and it was a very confident, cocksure look.

  Even her heartbeat responded to his nearness, quickening, causing a glowing, growing heat within her body. Combined with the almost frantic awareness humming through her every nerve ending, she felt like a bomb waiting to go off.

  No. She couldn’t be attracted to him, he wasn’t what she wanted in a man. He wasn’t quiet, easygoing. He wasn’t laid-back. And he certainly wouldn’t let her walk all over him.

  Damn, but it had been a long time since a man had gotten to her like this, really gotten to her. And to be fair, Jeff Hathaway had been more boy than man.

  They’d met in second grade. Jeff had slugged Tony Villa for calling her a Jolly Green Giant when she’d worn a green dress and green tights with matching green patent leather shoes, and even back then Taylor’s heart had sighed.

  In sixth grade Jeff held her hand at lunch break, not caring who saw, and her heart had sighed again and again.

  By high school, they’d been soul mates. She’d known he was the one, no matter that he came from what her mother had called an undesirable family. Jeff was her family.

  They’d wanted to get married right out of high school but she hadn’t turned eighteen and her mother wouldn’t give her permission. So they plotted away the summer, talking about college, where they’d room together, and then sneak off to Vegas when she turned eighteen in October.

  By that time, Jeff had been her best friend, her lover, her future husband and her entire life.

  And on the last day of September, he’d been killed in a car accident.

  Those days immediately following, and even several years after, didn’t bear thinking about. But al ways having been strong of heart, Taylor did eventually heal. She even moved on, and dated a little in her early twenties, when fast, fun and reckless were infinitely preferable to deep and emotional.

  Even now at twenty-seven, she felt perfectly nor mal, but a part of her was missing. The best part. Jeff.

  God, she’d loved him. Oh, she could still function, could even care about a man. She could laugh and learn and do all the things she’d done before.

  But one thing had irrevocably changed. Now when she let a man in, it was simply to soothe a need, whether it be wanting to be held against his hard body, or merely needing a sexual release that didn’t come from something battery operated.

  Nothing more, nothing less, as even now, nearly ten years later, she couldn’t imagine going through that soul-destroying love ever again.

  “Princess?”

  How could she have forgotten the very unforgettable man looking at her? The one man since Jeff she’d actually found herself yearning for.

  There. The admission was out in the open, not that she was going to do anything about it. He was not, repeat not, her type. “I’m not allergic to a bit of dust.”

  “You haven’t been breathing it in. Continue to stand there while we demo the hallway and your lungs will be burning within half an hour. Not to mention the pounding sinus headache that accompanies it.”

  Was that concern? If so, it didn’t bear thinking about, as it might soften her toward him. And given her body’s response to his without letting her brain get into the mix, that would be just plain stupid. And dangerous.

  “Thanks for the concern,” she said sweetly, and turned away. She entered her apartment, stripped now of all furnishings and personal belongings except for the bedroom. Everything had been taken to her storage unit, where she also kept her precious antiques.

  But here, in her private sanctuary, her bedroom, she still had her huge four-poster bed and the luxurious beddings left over from the good old days be fore the end of her bottomless—and now nearly extinct—bank account.

  She wasn’t upset she had to make her own way in the world. In fact, it was a challenge she appreciated.

  What she resented was how it had happened, so abruptly, even cruelly, without a thought to her feelings.

  Saying that her family wasn’t close was something of an understatement. Her family was selfish, all of them, including herself. They each cared more about their immediate world than each other, all of them including herself. Taylor hated that, and as her heels clicked across the bare floor, she yearned for it to be different. She yearned for more. She needed…something.

  It wasn’t often she allowed herself to need, but she needed to now. Sitting on her bed, she pulled out her cell phone and called Suzanne.

  “How’s my unit coming?” Suzanne asked. “Nearly ready for me?”

  Taylor could hear pots and pans clattering, and smiled, feeling soothed already. For as long as she’d known Suzanne, she’d smelled like vanilla, had some sort of food stain on one part of her person or another and was always in the middle of whipping up something mouthwatering.

  “Your unit is coming along,” Taylor assured her. “You’ll be opening Earthly Delights in no time.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Me, too.” Hopefully she’d be right next door opening her own store as well. If she could afford to get away without a tenant’s monthly cash flow. She sighed. “I can’t wait to have you around again.”

  The clanging slowed. “I thought you were enjoying your solitude.”

  “Yeah, well, not as much as I thought I would, it turns out.”

  Now the clanging stopped all together. “Taylor? What’s the matter?”

  Damn it, she’d given herself away. Caring deeply for her friends and opening up to them were two different things entirely, at least for her. She didn’t open up easily.

  Correction: she opened up never.

  But complicating the matter was the simple fact that she didn’t really even know what was wrong, she only knew she felt this unsettling and vague…need. For what exactly, she had no idea. “I just wanted to say hi.”

  “You sound…sad,” Suzanne accused.

  “I do not.”

  “Never mind. I’m coming over right after I finish up here. I won’t be but another half hour. I’ll bring ice cream, and you can tell me everything.”

  Ice cream happened to be Suzanne’s cure-all for anything and everything. It usually worked, but this seemed bigger than even ice cream. “Chocolate?”

  Taylor asked pathetically. “Double fudge chocolate?”

  “Chocolate,” Suzanne promised. “Give me thirty minutes, hon, tops.”

  Tempting, oh God, it was so tempting. But no matter how much she loved Suzanne, Taylor had never been able to tell her about her own painful past, about her distant family, about losing Jeff, and some how she knew that what she was feeling now was all tied up with that. And she couldn’t go into it, not now, not after so many years of burying it, because she was afraid that if she did, if she let it out, it would destroy her all over again. “I have a Historical Society meeting this evening.” True enough. “But maybe tomorrow, okay?”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Kiss Ryan for me.”

  “I wish you’d come stay with us so you could get away from the renovation, at least at night.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I just don’t like you there in the heart of downtown, all by yourself in that big old empty building.”

  “No one is going to bother me
because the place is so old and empty. Don’t worry about me, I’m safe.”

  “Of course I’ll worry, but that won’t stop you from doing as you please. Talk to you tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Taylor flipped off the cell phone, and had just slipped it back into her pocket when Mac spoke in that low, husky voice of his, nearly causing her to leap right out of her skin. “You didn’t move out.”

  Damn. “Well aren’t you observant.” Slowly, on her own terms, she shifted on the bed to face him.

  Big mistake.

  First, sitting on the bed while he was standing right next to it made her feel a little bit shameless, a little bit…hungry.

  Horrifyingly so.

  And second, there was the way he was looking back at her—eyes heated, glinting with that edgy, unreadable expression that made her thighs tighten.

  Did he wonder how combustive they’d be in this bed, the way she wondered? Not that she intended to follow through on that wondering, but…

  “I don’t know who you were just talking to,” he said. “But they were right. It’s not safe here at night, no matter what you think.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “The building is deserted, and in obvious renovation. You know damn well this street gets heavy foot traffic on a daily basis. You never know who’s going to come pawing through here looking to steal supplies or tools.”

  “I lock up.”

  He let a rough snort.

  “I’m staying, Mac.”

  “There are going to be times where there’s no electricity. No water. No gas. This isn’t going to be the Ritz, Princess. This is going to be little more than camping at best.”

  She hadn’t had luxuries in months, but hell if she’d admit that. Or the fact that she was slowly selling off her beloved antique collection just to keep afloat here. He thought her a spoiled princess, so be it.

  What he thought was no skin off her nose.

  And if he really believed she was going to back off the first challenge in her entire life, the first chance she’d ever had to prove herself, to get by on her own, he was sorely mistaken. She’d continue her spaghetti and canned tomato diet for as long as it took. She was going to do this, and do it right, and not even for him, the first man to make her feel a twinge in the heart region in ten years, would she give it up.