Fierce- Drake (Fierce Family Series Book 3)

by Natalie Ann

  Her smile wanted to drop, but she found the whole thing too funny to let it. “Truth nerve? I’ve never heard of that. I tend to be as truthful as possible at all times.”

  “Same here,” Drake said, picking up his completed folder. “See you tomorrow. Oh, and don’t worry. I won’t be taking anyone out for lunch or drinks today so no need to slap my hand on expenses.”

  She didn’t comment on that. Not that she would know what to say. She’d never slap his hand over his expenses. Just because she didn’t approve of how he spent the company money, it wasn’t her business.

  Her job was to report those costs and if the owners were fine with it, who was she to say otherwise?

  “Woohoo, my hormones need a fan.”

  Kara turned to see Michele coming into the copy room. Drake’s assistant. “Excuse me?”

  “Drake just passed me in the hall. He smells so good.”

  “You sniffed him?” she asked.

  “Of course not. When he walked by his scent just hit me. So fresh and clean with an undertone of musk. I wonder what he uses.”

  “Don’t you have a teenage daughter?” she asked Michele. Michele was older than her by several years. She didn’t know her exact age, but she’d put her older than Drake too.

  “Yeah, so? I’m not that much older than Drake that I can’t appreciate a fine male specimen when I see one.”

  “I thought you were dating someone.”

  She wasn’t sure why she was making so many comments to Michele about Drake. She normally kept to herself in her office and pushed any office gossip away as fast as she did advances from her father’s buddies when she was a teen by screaming her revulsion at them.

  “Nah. That fizzled out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kara said, laying out her own copies where Drake had been. Michele jumped in front of her on the machine so she’d wait a minute.

  “No reason to be sorry. I never have any good luck with men. I can appreciate one just fine though,” she said. “And my boss is pretty damn hot. Not that he ever looks at me like that and probably never would.”

  She didn’t think Michele was Drake’s type. He was high end and classy. Michele was...not. It wasn’t just her attire that bordered on inappropriate in Kara’s eyes with the short jean skirt and a fitted T-shirt with sandals, but also her behavior. Not to Michele though. She probably felt her behavior and attire were just fine. She’d bet that outfit came out of her daughter’s closet the closer Kara looked at it.

  “It’s always wise to keep your work and private life separate,” she said.

  Michele snorted behind her and then laughed. “You’re too young to think that way. But hey, if it works for you, that’s fine. Life’s short. Live a little.”

  “I’ve lived plenty enough in my life,” she said and walked over to the copier while Michele turned to leave. And there in the doorway stood Jade Fierce. Drake’s younger sister by two years.

  “She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” Jade said.

  Looked like the copy room was the hot spot of the office for the day. “I suppose we all are in our own right.”

  Jade laughed at her. “True. She’s got her eye on Drake. She’ll be ready to retire before he notices her and even then it’s only going to be to ask her what kind of cake she wants for her party before he wishes her well.”

  Kara let out another genuine laugh. She liked Jade a lot. She always said what others were thinking but were afraid to voice.

  Not Jade. She said what was on her mind and no one batted an eye.

  “You’re probably right. I can’t understand why anyone would want to get involved with someone they work with anyway,” she said.

  “I always felt the same way, but my cousins in Charlotte all did it and it works. Of course they had no idea it was being plotted on them.”

  “What?” Kara asked, that comment getting her attention.

  “My Aunt Jolene and Uncle Gavin set their five kids up with mates. Said they were getting sick and tired of no one settling down and focusing on work all the time. My cousin Ella was the only one that was able to figure it out. Too bad she didn’t realize it happened to her too, long before her brothers.”

  “That’s amazing. So all five of them are with people they work with?”

  She knew about the Fierce Five, as they were referred to, that owned and operated Fierce, the bar, restaurant, and brewery.

  “They work with them in some form or another. We’ve already told our parents not to get any brainy ideas about setting any of us up.”

  “I couldn’t imagine,” she said. Not that she’d have anything to do with someone either her mother or father would put in front of her.

  She hadn’t seen her father since she left home after graduation twelve years ago and had no intention of seeing him again. He’d tried to call her a few times, but she wasn’t answering his calls. He hadn’t bothered in a few years and she was fine with that. Of course she’d changed her number a few years ago too.

  Her mother and she talked now and again, but Kara had a hard time moving past being left with her father, even if her mother was still in the area.

  Did she understand her mother had been working three jobs and was never home anyway, that she hadn’t wanted to leave Kara by herself? No, she didn’t. It still would have been better than being left in the house with her drunken father.

  “We are all on the lookout for it,” Jade said. “But Sam is engaged to someone no one expected him to be with and we all love Dani. My cousin Bryce is dating someone that totally isn’t his type and he seems happy too from what I heard.”

  “Why does that matter?” she asked.

  “What? That they were with people not their type? Because the Five all ended up with people that were like them. Shared the hobbies or work or something in their life for the most part. If our parents were going to take my Aunt Jolene’s lead, they would do the same.”

  “Makes sense,” Kara said, even though it really didn’t. She didn’t have time for this conversation either, but she couldn’t very well say that to the daughter of one of her bosses. “I’m done with the copier if you need it.”

  “Thanks,” Jade said, moving forward.

  Kara walked back to her office and sat down to get to work, pushing all the thoughts of Drake’s family out of her mind.

  She was here to do a job and that was all she was focusing on. She really didn’t care enough about other people’s personal lives and wondered how she always got sucked into conversations like backyard trash during a twister when all she wanted to do was seek shelter in the basement.

  Several hours later she was letting herself into her apartment a little after five. Though she normally worked later, tonight she didn’t have it in her. Maybe it was all the interaction she had with people when she was used to staying in her office and doing her thing.

  “Hey, Tyson,” she said to the black cat with white paws. “Are you hungry?”

  The light meow was answer enough that had Kara opening the cabinet to get a can of food out. She left some dry food out all day, but Tyson liked the canned stuff that stunk like tuna when she opened it.

  Once the cat was fed, she went into her room and changed out of her black pants and light pink sweater into yoga pants and a tank top. She was rolling her yoga mat on the floor in her bedroom when her phone rang.

  Walking back out into the kitchen, she grabbed it off the counter and saw it was her mother calling. Speak of the devil after thinking she hadn’t talked to her in a few weeks.

  She silenced the ringing. It would be a few hours before she called back...if she did. Kara had more important things to do than talk to her mother.

  Peace Offering

  Thursday morning, Kara was ready for her meeting with Drake and for some reason she was nervous when she hadn’t been nervous at her job once since she was hired.

  She remembered the day she interviewed. She wasn’t from this area and didn’t even go to college around here. Little by little
she’d been moving further and further away from her family in Detroit. When she saw the ad for this job in Durham, she applied and crossed her fingers, hoping she’d find the place she could finally settle down.

  She’d taken a day off of work, drove the two and half hours from Roanoke, interviewed, then turned around and drove back home praying to a God she’d never believed in before.

  Every few years she’d up and move, but she was getting sick of it and hoped to call this place her own. When Garrett Fierce had called her back the next day and offered her the job, she put her three weeks notice in, asked for recommendations on apartment complexes in the area, and started to pack.

  Moving cost money that she hated spending, but she hated staying in places that didn’t feel right to her. Comfortable, even. She’d spent too much of her life in places she hated.

  So far, she was loving it here.

  So why was she nervous today? Because that stupid conversation with Jade yesterday was playing back in her head about workplace romances.

  She’d never thought to have one. Her job was her haven, knowing she needed it to survive. She’d do nothing to risk that.

  Yet last night she dreamed that she and Drake were fighting when they met today. That he made a sarcastic comment to her and she bit his head off. Stood up, slapped her hands on the desk, leaned into his handsome face and told him to grow his childish, selfish butt up and stop living off of mommy and daddy.

  She’d never really thought that of him and wondered why her subconscious put that in her mind.

  Drake wasn’t living off of his parents. She knew everyone’s address, or she could see it since she had access to payroll. Drake lived in a house not that far from her. Just a few miles. A much nicer place than she had, but she liked her cozy one-bedroom apartment.

  She was more interested in putting money aside than throwing it away on places that were too big for her. She was basic and didn’t plan on changing that.

  After taking a deep breath, she walked downstairs to the third floor and went into one of the smaller conference rooms that she’d signed out for two hours. They wouldn’t need that much time to meet, but she didn’t want to run the risk that they’d be cut short either.

  She was sorting her piles of paper a few minutes before nine when Drake walked in in dark jeans and a button-down shirt. A few buttons undone at the neck, the sleeves rolled up, a smile on his face, a tray of coffee in his hand and a folded-over brown bag.

  “I brought us coffee and muffins,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said, reaching her hand forward for the cup he pulled out of the brown tray. “You didn’t need to do that.”

  “I don’t need to do a lot of things, but I do them just the same.”

  “I appreciate it.” So much for the fight dream she had. This one was starting out with almost a peace offering. At least she was thinking of it that way.

  “Blueberry or chocolate chip muffin?” he asked when he pulled them out of the bag and set them on napkins.

  “I’m good with either,” she said. “You bought them, you pick.”

  He grabbed the blueberry and pushed the chocolate chip toward her. “Women seem to like chocolate more than me in my experience.”

  “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of experience,” she said.

  He snorted and she could have bitten her lip for letting that slip. Where the heck was her control? And the last thing she wanted to do was anger or annoy him when it seemed she did that a lot.

  “I guess it depends on who you compare me to in my family. I’ve got a lot less than my brother Wyatt and cousins Sam and Ryder. More than Bryce for sure; we all do. He has a type and it never lasts. Noah and I are probably tied.”

  There was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, so he at least thought she was kidding. “Do you guys keep score or something to know that?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Just talk and reading between the lines. Sam is engaged so his days are over. Wyatt, he likes to have fun too much and doesn’t like to be alone. Ryder, well, you work here so I’m sure you’ve heard about him and women.”

  She had. Ryder was always dating someone and half the time they were airheads or just plain drama queens. “He doesn’t seem to have good taste when he picks someone, does he?”

  “He’s like a life crusher magnet,” Drake said, breaking his muffin in half and taking a bite.

  “Life crusher?”

  “Drains the life right out of you until you are flat on the ground as if you’d been crushed. Man, the stories he has. I just don’t get it. I don’t have time for that kind of drama nor do I want it in my life.”

  “Same here,” she said.

  “What about you?” he said. “Single?”

  Her head snapped up from the papers she was ready to push toward him. “Why?”

  “Just conversation,” he said. “We don’t always have to be so businesslike, do we?”

  “I guess not. I’m just used to keeping to myself.”

  “You are. Nothing wrong with that,” he said, reaching for the pile of papers she’d slid in front of him.

  She felt bad that he was offering an olive branch with breakfast and being nice and here she was being her normal controlled private self when she’d told herself she’d been here almost a year now and there was no reason for it. Not really.

  “Yes, I’m single. I’m still learning my way around the area and don’t get out much. I tend to work a lot.”

  “You do. You work more than most. I know you and I can butt heads at times, but you do good work.”

  She shouldn’t have been shocked he’d complimented her. “Even if I hound you for receipts and make comments on your spending habits?”

  “As it’s been pointed out to me this week, I’ve been this way my whole life.”

  “You spent a lot?” she asked. Back to the dream she had last night about living off of mommy and daddy. Maybe there was some truth to it.

  “Only on things that are important. I guess that is why my father and uncle wanted us to meet. I feel I should justify my costs to you when I really don’t need to. My family understands it and are fine with it.”

  “You don’t report to me,” she said. “I’m just gathering the data and putting budgets together. You’ve got the highest of all the engineers.”

  He laughed. “For a good reason.”

  “So what is that reason? I get the feeling you want me to know.”

  “Maybe you’ll understand more if you did. When I first started working here, I went on a client meet. Went to pitch our services, find out what they were looking for and put together plans, talk with fiscal and have bids drawn up. You’re doing more with the bids now, aren’t you?”

  “I am. I’ve been using my expense reports and others and putting them together to come up with final costs though I don’t write the actual bids.” And she was happy about that. She didn’t want to get into the contract details.

  “Well, I met with a town board not too far from here. Older people in the community, elected officials and whatnot. Probably closer to my father’s age or older. I showed up similar to how I’m dressed now. Figured what was the big deal? Well, when it was all said and done they said they were impressed with what I said and could do, but felt I was too young. That made no sense to me. I came back and talked to my father and uncle, devastated that I was going to lose the first one I went on alone.”

  “What did your father say?”

  “He said it was the way I looked. I dressed like a college kid. I pulled up in a two-door sports car with the windows down and music playing, I had sneakers on with my jeans and no one took me seriously. I was so ticked off my father never said a word to me and let me go out that way.”

  “He wanted you to learn the hard way, didn’t he?” she asked, expecting no different from Garrett and Grant.

  “Yep. I did. From that point on, I changed my appearance. Don’t get me wrong. I always liked nice clothes, I always liked to look the part. It’s just I had
to adjust my part for different times. So yeah, it also comes down to looking successful. That means treating the clients like we are that way too. And we are successful,” he added with a boyish grin.

  “Okay. I understand more now too. So I’m guessing you are in the office all day today?” she asked.

  “I’ve got a meeting with Ryder off site at a new development this afternoon. We’ve got the contract, now I can wear what I want. No reason to get the nice digs dirty.”

  She grinned. “That’s true. I guess you’re practical too then.”

  “I’ve been told that before. I’m not frivolous with money, even if it looks that way. I’m sure you don’t see it or agree with that statement.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been frugal with my money my whole life. I’ve had to be.”

  ***

  Later that afternoon, Drake and Ryder drove to the development. When they got there a little early, they walked around. Drake had done the plans for the developers for the water lines to be installed and the roads to be dug out and paved, and Ryder was dealing with the new houses. It’d been a huge contract for the firm to be doing the grounds and the houses.

  The ground breaking was in a few days and everyone wanted to make sure they were on the same page.

  After his meeting with Kara, he’d gone back to his office surprised it wasn’t nearly as painful as he thought it was going to be.

  He did try to butter her up with breakfast and wanted to say it worked, but he had a feeling she wasn’t someone to get buttered up often. Or at least fall for it.

  It probably had more to do with the fact that he explained why he spent what he did. She seemed to understand and he felt he had a bit more understanding of her.

  Not that she ever offered anything of herself of a personal nature. He’d found himself wanting to know more about her lately. Maybe it was because she seemed to rub him the wrong way half the time. At least he had a feeling she wasn’t doing it on purpose.

  She’d made comments before about being alone in the city. He knew she’d moved here for the job and now he was guessing she had no family around. Her comment on being frugal with money could have been because of the nature of her job, but he had a feeling it was more.