by Eva Moore
But the little voice inside of her, so long ignored, kept whispering, “Give him a chance,” in her quiet moments.
She needed to talk to him about the changes in the plans anyhow. Before she could talk herself into an email, she picked up the phone and called him.
“Hello?” His deep voice on the line sent a shiver of pleasure from her ears down the back of her neck. How did he do that?
“Hey, it’s Sofia. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, we are between takes. What’s up?”
“I have some updated changes to the plan. I’d love to get your thoughts on them before I commit. Can I drop by the site?”
“I’m in the middle of demolition day on the Shah project. Everything is a hot mess, and the cameras are rolling…”
The idea of him sweaty and dirty, his T-shirt clinging to his chest, flipped every last switch. She crossed her legs and pushed caution aside. “And if I said I missed seeing your face?”
“I’d ask you why you aren’t over here already.” She heard the grin in his voice.
“I’ll see you at the lunch break.”
“Sofia?”
“Yeah?”
“I miss your face, too.”
She was as good as her word. Sofia walked into the chaos of demo day seven minutes before they were scheduled to break for lunch. Not that he’d been looking at his watch every five minutes since she’d hung up or anything. She looked fresh and bright in her flowy top and tight jeans, and he wanted to drop everything and have her for lunch instead of the leftovers in his cooler. Adrian shook his head at his own ridiculous behavior. He was completely gone on her, and they hadn’t even had a real date yet.
“Cut! Hey, Sofia. What are you doing here?” Lorena, the assistant producer, hustled over.
“I just came to talk to Adrian about a few tweaks to the plan.”
“That’s great. When we get back from lunch we can do a quick makeup blitz and film a walk-and-talk. Get it on camera. I know Jake is still playing with the plotlines, so the more feature shots we can get before he goes into editing, the better.” She spun away from them without waiting for a response. Adrian supposed she didn’t need an affirmation because they’d both signed contracts saying they’d play nice. “OKAY, EVERYBODY! BREAK FOR LUNCH!”
Adrian winced. How that huge voice came out of that tiny body, he would never understand. Lorena might be little, but she was a force to be reckoned with. The image of her as a miniature Napoleon in full costume leading an army into battle flashed fully formed into his mind, and he grinned. He turned that smile back to Sofia and gestured to the door. “Shall we?”
He followed her out to her car, so it wasn’t until they’d gotten in that he noticed her smile had dimmed.
“Hey, what’s wrong? Is it the plan?”
“No. Nothing. It’s nothing.” She put her hands on the steering wheel but didn’t start the car.
“I have a mother and three sisters. ‘Nothing’ is never nothing. Spill.”
She shook her head and reached for the ignition. “I’m being stupid. Leave it alone.”
He covered her hand gently and waited until she looked up. “I can’t. Not if it’s something I can fix. What can I do?”
She loosed a deep sigh and hid her face in her hands. Speaking between her fingers, she muttered a curse.
“I didn’t catch that.”
“I said, ‘God save me from persistent men.’”
“No, you didn’t.” He grinned.
“God knew what I meant.”
“So are you gonna tell me?”
She hauled in a deep breath and sighed. “I saw the way you smiled at Lorena. It didn’t feel very good.”
“That is a problem.”
Her eyes went wide, his answer clearly not the one she was expecting. “It is?”
“Yes. You see, I don’t want to ever hurt you, but I may smile at other people. I’m a happy guy, and I smile a lot. But I can’t look at another woman the way I look at you.” As he spoke, he leaned across the console. When her focus shifted to his lips, his heart leapt in satisfaction. “It’s not possible. There is no other woman I want the way I want you. So this look? The one that is begging for your smile in return? The one that keeps dropping to your lips because I miss how good they taste? That look is all yours.” He raised one hand toward her cheek, needing to touch her, connect with her. He stopped just shy of her soft skin, not wanting to sully her with his dirty hands. He dropped his hand and hesitated, a breath from touching her lips with his own. “I’ve missed you. May I?”
Waiting for her to decide, to close the distance, to choose him back, nearly killed him, but it was worth every tortured second when she nodded. She leaned into the kiss, as eager as he was.
From the moment their lips touched, all notion of the outside world disappeared. His existence narrowed to the one spot where his body was touching hers. The power, the heat, the intensity of her kiss blew all of his good intentions away, their truce incinerated.
He lost himself in her. Tongues tangled, and he was thoroughly caught in her web. Moreover, he was content to let her wrap him up nice and tight and feast away.
When she jerked back from the kiss, his first instinct was to pursue and resume. Her hand against his lips was the only thing that stopped him. That he didn’t exactly remember where they were or what they were supposed to be doing didn’t alarm him as much as it probably should have. His brain was still struggling to engage through the warm haze of arousal.
“We’re in my car, parked at a client’s house. We can’t do this here.”
“Hmm, so we can do this somewhere else?”
“Now is not the time for semantics.” She tried to start the car multiple times, her nerves making her jittery enough to stall out. She pulled back behind her defenses and away from the house. “We need to get lunch and get back. I can’t afford to get distracted.” Her eyes trained on the road and her hands gripping the wheel, she drove them to her favorite take-out burger joint in silence.
Damn. Hadn’t she enjoyed that as much as he had? And how the hell was she able to find words like “semantics” after a kiss like that? What did that even mean? He sat back in the passenger seat, trying to navigate the right path but lacking the map of her mind.
Chapter 8
How could a cheeseburger be awkward?
She’d eaten a million of them in her lifetime. She loved the special magic of the thick, juicy meat topped with fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, melty cheese and special sauce that her favorite chain was famous for. But now that she was eating one in front of the man who’d kissed her like he meant it, it felt completely weird. Was the juice dribbling down her chin? Was he judging how many fries she ate? Holy hell, if she kept this up, kissing Adrian would be the best diet she’d ever tried. She set down her food and pushed the tray away. Apparently, embarrassment killed her ability to eat and converse like the grown-ass woman she was.
She sat and stared at her half-eaten food, unable to swallow past the lump in her throat. He’d kissed her, and she’d freaked out when she’d started to lose control. Why did I break the truce? Where is my self-control? And what if someone on-site saw the kiss? Then she’d have to explain everything to everybody even though she didn’t have a clue what anything was, because that was just how her family worked! Sometimes working with the people she loved was a real pain in the ass. She couldn’t believe she’d caved to temptation, but even now, with Adrian covered from head to toe in dirt and grime, his hands and face hastily scrubbed clean, she wanted to climb in his lap and let him kiss her until her brain quit this incessant worrying.
“Is your food okay?”
Startled from her rapidly spiraling thoughts, she answered on the defensive.
“Of course. Why?”
“You’re not eating it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you turn down a cheeseburger.”
Heat flashed to her cheeks, and not the good kind. Of course, he’d never seen the fat chick turn down fo
od. That lump in her throat grew as shame joined the party and threatened to choke her.
“Whatever you’re thinking to put that look on your face, stop. All I meant is I know you like In-N-Out, so if you’re not enjoying it then it must be because of what happened in the car.”
“What did happen in the car?”
“You were sad because I joked with another woman. I speak to women every day, but I didn’t want you to be sad. I missed you and your smile. So I kissed you to bring it back. I thought you were enjoying it, too, until you weren’t. What did you think happened in the car?”
Though she felt ten times a fool, Sofia gave him an honest answer. “I think you took pity on me because I got all twisted up and kissed me to make me feel better. But you did it in front of an entire work site of our employees.”
“So it would be better if I kiss you while we’re alone?”
“Yes. No. Don’t twist my words.”
Sofia shook her head with an exasperated sigh. He took her chin between his fingers and waited for her to look him in the eye.
“I’m not. I’m trying to understand. You think I took pity on you, but you’re the one ashamed to be seen kissing me. How does that work?” She could hear the annoyance creeping into his voice.
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“Neither of us seems to know what’s going on here. I’d rather not face the Valenti Family Inquisition until we do.”
“So does this mean the truce is over?”
“My brain is so scrambled right now, I don’t know what to think.”
His irresistible grin spread over his face, and his dimple made an appearance. Sofia struggled to stay mad. Why was she mad again?
“So my kisses scramble your brain?”
“They make me stupid. It wasn’t a compliment.”
“You don’t get to decide what I take as a compliment. Turning that impressive brain off with my lips is something I’m very proud of.”
“I do get to decide when I want to kiss you.”
“Yes, you do, just as you decided to kiss me in the car.”
“Clearly, the truce isn’t working, but I’m going to ask that we keep our kisses away from the workplace while we figure things out.”
Now that she’d spilled her worries, she felt her anxiety spiraling. She nibbled a fry.
“I just don’t want everyone jumping all over this,” she said around another fry, “before we see if it’s really going to be a thing.” She grabbed three fries and tucked them into her mouth. “I mean it could be bad for your proposal, for my credibility, and oh God! The show! What if someone caught us on camera?” She reached for another handful of fries, and his hand covered hers. Taking it in his, he raised it to his lips and kissed it, silencing her thoughts with frightening ease.
“Don’t worry, beautiful. We will go as slow as you need to, but be clear. There is an us. And this is definitely a thing.” His phone chirped a text alert. He glanced at it and frowned. “We should head back. We need to film your walk-and-talk, and I need my guys to finish this demo day on time.”
Head still spinning that he hadn’t walked away from her meltdown, she climbed back into her car in silence. There had been something she’d wanted to talk to him about…
Adrian ran a hand through his hair as a camera-ready Sofia walked into the rubble of what used to be the kitchen and stole his breath. Was it her beauty contrasting with the wreckage he’d caused that made his heart stutter in his chest? Or was it something more? He had to get a grip, or he’d look like a fool on film.
“Okay, you two, just walk side by side and talk to each other. Try to keep a steady pace, because I’ll be walking backward.” Trina prepped them. “I’m pretty nimble, but things are all torn up today. Good job on that, Adrian.” Trina was friendly but focused as she talked them through what she needed for the shot.
“What can I say? You’ve got to break things before you can fix them.”
“Let’s start here in the kitchen. The demo is mostly done, and it makes a great backdrop. I’m going to keep filming so if you blow a line or need to repeat yourself, just say it again, and we’ll edit it in post. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” muttered Adrian.
“And…go!”
“Hey Adrian, the demo looks great!” He barely recognized the girl he’d had lunch with. When she put on her camera mask, she was a different person.
“Yeah, we had a fun morning. You’ll see your wall is mostly gone. We’ve got the cased opening framed in, which let us avoid the header beam.”
“That’s fantastic. I’ve got a few changes I need to talk to you about in here. Instead of the custom built-ins, I found some gorgeous ready-mades for less, but it means I have to change the layout a little…” She turned to gesture to the empty space beneath the window. “How hard would it be to move the main sink a foot and a half to the right?”
“The plumbing? Maybe an extra hour. But then it isn’t centered under the window.” Where was this coming from? Why was she making changes to the blueprints now?
“That was my next question.”
“We can’t move the window.” He crossed his arms as if that would help him hold back his frustration. It didn’t help. He couldn’t tear apart the back of the house just so she could keep her fancy plans. It went against everything Valenti Brothers stood for.
“But the cabinets won’t work right if we don’t.”
“If we move the window, we’d have to completely tackle the back exterior of the house, replace siding, fix any surprises we find when we pull off the back wall, plus extra permitting and the cost of a new window because the old one isn’t energy-efficient…”
“So that’s out. Shoot.” He hated the way her shoulders fell along with her smile, but he had to be clear. Sometimes trying to save on cheaper materials cost more in the end, and changing blueprints midstream always fucked things up.
“Why are you changing the plans now? I thought we had everything approved.”
“I’m just trying to keep the clients happy.”
“Leave the sink. Seth and I will make the new cabinets work. What else?”
“The island is going to be smaller.”
“Wait. Isn’t the island why we knocked down this stupid wall? Who makes an island smaller?”
“Someone who found a deal on a smaller slab of marble and needs to stay under budget.” She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head toward the camera.
Screw the camera. Her plan to save money was to shrink everything down? Would they be building a dollhouse by the end? Her father had built his reputation on affordable quality, but he was always up front with clients about what they could afford. If he wanted to stay in Dom’s good graces, he had to toe that line. This was not going to end well. “There has to be a way to keep the size or the proportions will be all off.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” She pressed her fingers to her forehead and winced.
He regretted pushing back, but she needed to be realistic. He might as well get all the bad news out on the table at once. “While we’re in here, there’s something else I need to show you.”
“Oh, God. What now?” She snapped her head up, eyes wide with panic.
He wanted so badly to touch her, to soothe her, but he knew how she’d feel about that getting caught on camera so he kept his hands to himself while he added another straw to the camel’s back. “The old fridge had a water line that was slowly leaking for who knows how long.” Adrian knelt by a dark spot on the subfloor and pushed his thumb through what should have been solid plywood. “It’s a miracle the thing didn’t drop into the crawl space when we pulled it out.”
Sofia’s jaw dropped. “How did the inspector miss this?”
“He didn’t have to pull out the appliances, just note if they were working. And there’s a note that he couldn’t get into the crawl space because he was too broad in the shoulders so he did a visual inspection from the trap do
or.”
“So we don’t know about the supports underneath?”
He could hear the panic in her voice. He wished he didn’t have to be the bad guy here.
“I don’t know the damage yet. I told the guys to wait to rip a hole in the floor until we were done carting everything out.” He held out a long-handled sledgehammer, hoping to give her a bit of control back. “Do you want to do the honors?”
Sofia gripped the sledge and dropped her sunglasses down from their perch on top of her head. He watched her gather her courage and grinned. She looked beautiful and fierce wielding that sledge in full makeup, but he hoped to God they weren’t opening another can of worms. She lifted the sledge waist high before dropping it down onto the ruined panel. It sank through the weakened wood without a hint of resistance and dropped the foot and a half to the bottom of the crawl space.
“That can’t be good.” She tugged the hammer back up through the hole, and a bigger chunk of subflooring fell down. “Can you see the joists yet?”
Adrian took the hammer from her and widened the hole with a few punches. He took the flashlight and dropped his head and shoulders into the dark space below. He surveyed the beams for damage before pulling back out, gratified that Sofia had to move her eyes from his ass to his face when it reappeared.
“Good news? Bad news?” Her shoulders were brushing her ears as she braced for another hit.
“Hang on a sec!” Trina moved to reframe the shot, climbing halfway up a ladder to get a better angle. “Now, angle your shoulders toward me a little…perfect. Okay, go ahead!”
Adrian tried not to feel self-conscious, but it was hard standing so close to Sofia and trying to keep his impulses under control. “Both. Bad news, two of these joists show signs of water damage.”
“Da—darn it! How much?”
“That’s the good news. The damage seems localized and minimal. So I think we can dry them out and reinforce this section with two-by-six sister beams. We won’t have to replace the whole thing.”