“Yeah, what?” she demanded, but she kept staring at the smile.
“Yeah, I want to probe and push.” He paused and moved closer, his body heat surrounding her, trapping her like invisible bands of steel. His head dipped and, pausing a few inches from her upturned face, he added, “I want to see what turns Jay Barrows into Jaymee Barrows.”
He had found her out. All thought disappeared when his head descended. She sat still as his lips touched hers, her heart roaring like a speeding train. She was prepared to fight and resist, but his lips were gentle against hers, soft and persuasive.
Nick didn’t deepen the kiss, only slanted his head for more access into her sweet mouth. It was an impulse he chose not to resist. He didn’t know why he felt the need to comfort her as well as hold her, but she drew a strange reaction from him. Her response was making promises to him he knew she wasn’t consciously giving. There was an enticing innocence about the way she sat there and kissed him back, and he knew, there and then, with absolute certainty he was going to take Jaymee Barrows to bed sooner or later.
Later. After he’d straightened out some things.
He reluctantly lifted his head, his breathing uneven. He smiled into eyes so slumberous that he wanted to start kissing her again. “Better?” he asked.
Jaymee could only stare back at him. She hadn’t been kissed in—God—years. Her last date was exactly a year and three months ago, a blind arrangement forced on her by Mindy, an awkward, uncomfortable experience she vowed she’d never repeat. She’d decided then she could live without dating until she got her life straightened out, and here she was, kissing a stranger. And probably a criminal on the lam.
“I ought to fire you,” she told him. It was difficult to sound boss-like when one’s voice sounded breathy and aroused.
Nick cocked his head, those long eyelashes unbelievably sexy as he watched her through half-closed eyes. “You shouldn’t. You’re shorthanded,” he reminded her.
That was like a wake-up call. She had a house to finish. “It won’t matter if we both die of heat stroke in this truck,” she retorted with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Come on, I’ve got to get busy.”
She didn’t let him get through her armor again that day, and Nick was wise enough not to try. She kept the atmosphere thoroughly businesslike, giving him chores that had him climbing up and down the ladder. As the day ended, she let him do a couple of the last rows of shingles, showing him how to cut the rake of the roof. The other two roofers left at four, as most construction workers did, but Jaymee Barrows, he discovered, was either a workaholic or a woman on a mission. She kept on working till almost six. He stayed on, even after she told him he could leave any time. She didn’t object.
Jaymee had to get the house done, no matter how late it would be when she finished. She was one roof behind, and couldn’t put off the builder from insulating it tomorrow. Used to working past normal working hours alone, she was pleasantly surprised to find her new help willing to stay on. Of course, this was just day one. He could be gone after a few days of this.
With focused effort, she tried to keep the memory of his lips on hers at bay. That kiss unnerved her more than the confrontation with her father. She had thought herself quite able to control her emotions after eight years of practice, but in less than ten hours, this stranger had managed to get under her shield where she sometimes yearned to be touched.
Instantaneously, she ruthlessly pounced on that admission. Yearn. Oh no, not yearn. Jaymee Barrows did not yearn for anything from a man. Ever. Especially from someone who looked like this man. He would be a mistake, her second mistake. The cost of her first one had been high—her father’s health, her mother’s death, and more than one hundred thousand dollars in the hole, courtesy of her father’s business acumen. Nick Langley could cost her everything else.
Behind the dumpster, and out of sight, Jaymee touched her lips. He could cost her what she thought she had mended with super glue—her heart and her pride. She wasn’t going to allow the past to repeat itself.
***
By the end of the week, on payday, Nick was feeling the soreness of previously unused muscles. He was a superb athlete, trained to swim for miles to escape enemy land, able to climb up cliffs to avoid being detected by dogs, and had undergone covert programs to shift physical and mental pain when tortured. However, a man’s body, he admitted, wasn’t created by the Almighty to squat and kneel for untold hours on end, dragging a tool attached to hundreds of feet of heavy air hoses. Especially, he added, a long, lanky body that had to bend more than normal to nail a shingle.
In the short week, he’d discovered his kneecaps could protest with noisy complaints after a daily regimen of eight hours of being squashed into kneepads and being subjected to crawling like a toddler up a slope. The arches of his large feet, clad in soft-sole rubber, ached from the constant pressure of his weight pushed on the front. He imagined those ancient Chinese women who bound their feet probably felt like this, as he ignored the pain and kept on laying shingles. The fingertips of his left hand were raw from constantly scraping against the fiberglass shingles as he pulled them apart to be nailed. And, his nose was sunburned. That was the most difficult part, ignoring the heat and continuing to work with speed as the day got hotter and hotter.
His boss, the cool Jay Barrows, was totally unaffected by the weather. She watched over him like a hawk, spotting every mistake he made. She was a tyrant, a pint-size general, approaching each roof like a battle in a great war. After only four days, Nick had a healthy respect for her. She might look tiny next to him and could barely carry a five-gallon can of roof cement across the length of the roof, but the lady could outwork every man around her, with a horse thrown in for good measure.
She had been so very polite all week, except that one time he messed up and walked all over the shingles with tar under his shoes. He had trekked black prints up a whole side of the roof’s hip before she noticed, and the colorful language she’d used while tearing off the whole row of shingles would have put his fellow operatives to shame. He still grinned at the memory. Wouldn’t Command just love to see a tape of one of their top commandos standing meekly while being dressed down with heavy sarcasm by a barely five foot-two termagant?
The thought of Command sobered him. Getting paid tonight would give him some cash. It wouldn’t be enough to buy cheap electronics and the hardware he needed, but it would be a start. He wished he could just use his credit card and buy a damn laptop. He shrugged. If necessary, he would build a crude system, if he had to. He rejected the easy use of a phone, since phones could be traced, and he hadn’t any control of the fiber optics without his usual toys. And emails would be monitored as well. His agency had a super-computer that would trace his exact location within minutes and right now, he didn’t want to be found.
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.
<
br /> “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. Fr
om 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.
Big Bad Wolf: 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.
Holding Out For A Hero: SEALs, Soldiers, Spies, Cops, FBI Agents and Rangers Page 20