by Taryn Quinn
“Fine? Is this how you run a work site?” She twirled around, the helmet practically a weapon as she took in the piles of wood I had to go through. Some could be salvaged—and should be, based on the age of the barn. Once she had half a second to think, she’d realize I was taking good care of her space.
She’d want to use some of the old wood to make benches or a table for the rec room. Or at least that was the plan I had for it. But I was only one man and wrangling a bunch of teen males. We were still in the destructive phase. Personally, my favorite time.
But to someone not in the know, it looked like hell.
“Now Ruby—”
“Don’t ‘Ruby’ me. God, I made a huge mistake.” She dropped the helmet and clutched her head as if she was in physical distress.
I’d never realized just how much of a flair for the dramatic my future wife possessed.
“Hey, this is just the start.”
She kept right on talking. Her big brown eyes blazed, and anger bled in to flush her cheeks. “I figured with Gideon involved—”
“All right, stop right there.” I turned her around and shuffled her around the front of the house. “I get that you’re a little wound up, but this is demo day, Tish.”
She did not deserve the Ruby nickname right now. That was reserved for when she was attractively pissy, not for when she was having a Miss Piggy-style meltdown.
She yanked her arm away from me and frowned, and then whatever was going on in her brain clicked back into shriek mode.
At the moment, I didn’t care. I just kept moving her along. The nosy teens were already craning their necks to hear our conversation. Number one, I didn’t need them to question my authority, and number two, I needed to cool her down—even if she was frighteningly sexy in her anger.
Perhaps I’d fallen off too many ladders in my day. Surely there was an explanation for my dick’s bad choices.
I walked forward and she backed up with each step. Finally, we got to her front lawn. She put her hands on her hips and threw back her shoulders. A black shirt was like her second skin under her usual motorcycle jacket. “Demo? What, with the Incredible Hulk?”
“Well, I do call Stone Hulk, but that’s beside the point. I’m sure your garage looks a little crazy before you—”
“No. No, it does not. My garage is neat and organized. It doesn’t look like that.” She flung her arm out again, pointing toward the back where my truck was still blasting music. This time, a funky, beachy version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” pumped toward the sky.
“Yeah, well, I guess we just work differently.”
Her chest heaved.
I rushed on before she ripped into me again. “I have it handled. There was a lot of crap in that barn that needs to be gone through. I figured since you love this place so much, you’d want to salvage some of the lumber. Not to mention the cost of tossing out perfectly good wood and replacing it with lesser quality materials.”
She shut her mouth and crossed her arms. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Sensible. And I appreciate the money angle since it looks as if I’m going to be carving out a crater in my savings.”
“Not necessarily. I’d do more myself if we had time, but with the deadline, I’ll need to purchase furniture and all that.”
She sucked in a slow breath. “Makes sense.”
“I had a thought about that too.”
Her brow arched. “I’m listening.”
I jammed my hands into my pockets. “Good. And if you hadn’t come in half-cocked, I would have been happy to discuss things with you.”
“I’m just…” She fisted her hands under her arms, emphasizing her stupendous chest.
Don’t look, asshole. Eyes up.
She dropped her arms to her sides in frustration. “I’ve been fielding texts from Luna all day about this bonfire thing today. And I come here and see…this.”
I took a step closer and gently gripped her upper arms. “I got you, Ruby. Everything will be ready for tonight.”
Her nose wrinkled. “I wouldn’t hate it if you weren’t ready, so we could cancel.”
“So, you’re really mad about the thing tonight and not the site.”
“No. That’s some chaos squared over there, Thor.” She wiggled out of my hold. “I’m just not good with people.”
“Cancel then.”
“I can’t. She did all these things. Ordered food, for God’s sake. I thought it was just going to be sitting around the fire with some tunes.” She nodded toward my truck. “Like what you’re playing. That’s cool.”
My lips twitched. I didn’t think a smile and a laugh would go over well with the tension emanating from her in waves. “We already started cleaning up for tonight. Don’t worry.”
She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets. “I don’t like not knowing what’s going on here.”
I cracked my knuckles, considering. If I didn’t give her something, she was likely to keep stopping by and distracting me. And while the idea of her distracting me in several creative ways didn’t bother me one bit, the reality was I could not be trusted with that kind of situation. She was already living in my head far more than she should.
Far more than any woman had since…ever.
“Tell you what. I’ll send you two daily vids of what’s going on. You know, on your phone.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Right. Only the pretty parts, I bet.”
“No.” I folded my arms. “Okay, probably one will be internet share-worthy. But then I’ll give you a panoramic view of the big and the ugly.”
“Acceptable.”
I rocked back on my heels. “Just like that?”
“What? We hashed it out.” She punched my arm. “We’re good. Now I gotta get back. You can show me the barn so far though.” She went around me and headed for the water.
Dealing with this woman gave me fucking whiplash.
I blew out a breath and followed her. I was always watching her ass walk away from me. I wondered what it looked like under those jeans. All firm with that little jiggle that made me want to take a bite.
Damn. Focus, Lucky.
I scraped my hair back and retied my bun. I would be sacrificing some time to show her around, but at least it would calm her down.
By the time I caught up with her, she was surrounded by a trio of posturing boys.
“Miss Burns, you can see how much stuff we hauled out over here.” Stone was puffing out his over-pumped chest. He kept licking his lips and his gaze bounced from her wildly snapping hair to the ground.
The kid didn’t have a chance with Ruby.
“You can call me Tish. Looks like you guys have been busy.”
“Oh, yeah. We’ve been busting ass—er, butt.” Win spoke up, then blushed hard.
She gave him a half grin and seemed less stressed now that we’d had our little argument. She stepped up on the pile of pallets in front of the dumpster and took a look inside, then jumped down and wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Do you need me to call them to haul out a load?”
“Handled.” I slid my thumbs under the straps of my tank top, pulling them to the center where I laced my fingers loosely. “Take a look inside the barn.” I nodded to the guys to scram.
“Man,” Tyler muttered. “Finally got to see the hot chick and now we gotta work again.”
“You don’t want the hundred bucks she’s paying you to work?”
Tyler clenched his jaw. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“Then go help them clean up the beach. She’s got friends coming tonight.”
Tyler gave a deep sigh then strolled down the patchy grass to the beach.
I wasn’t sure when I’d turned into the old man who gave out instructions. I wasn’t certain I liked it either.
Quickly, I followed her into the barn.
She glanced back at me. “Everything good?”
“Yeah, just being idiots.” I shrugged. “I’ve been working them all aft
ernoon.”
“Shouldn’t they be in school?”
“Seniors. They have like half days of class at best.”
“I know how that is. I was in shop class more than economics and all that crap.”
“Better than me.”
“School skipper?”
I laughed. “Dropout.” I shrugged. “I wasn’t cut out for school. I eventually got my GED so I could get better paying jobs.”
Being on my own before I was even a teen had made school less than desirable. Homeless most of the time, I’d worried more about making cash than grades. It helped that I’d never really looked my age. Made it easy to slide in on work crews. I had a strong back, learned fast, and I had a knack for numbers.
“The stuff we know isn’t exactly in the curriculum.”
I didn’t realize I’d tensed up until I caught her half smile and my shoulders relaxed. “Damn straight. So, what do you think?”
“It’s massive.”
Without all the crap that had been stored in there, it was a perfect blank canvas. She did that little twirl thing while she took everything in. I stuffed my hands into my pockets to loosen the sudden tightness of my work pants.
Hell of a thing was my chest was almost as tight. Ruby affected me in a way no one else ever had.
Good thing she didn’t know the power she had over me. I’d probably have to go into witness protection.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah, we have some structural work to do, but it’s really showing her bones now.” I went to the large support beam in the center of the room. “I was going to try to do a different setup in here and get rid of this, but changing the structure like that would require too much time and money to change.”
“No, that’s okay. I like it. Maybe build around it and make it a feature? Dart board?”
I pulled out my phone and made a few notes. “I’ll see if I can make it work. Or maybe build the bar around it with some large TVs making up a 3D setup. Put the game on or whatever on one side while someone’s playing pool.” I walked to the middle where I’d put a quick chalk outline for where I thought the pool table would go. “Could move the pool table a little.”
“Hmm.” She came up beside me. “Interesting. More interactive.”
“And the other side of the bar could be another TV so you could watch movies on a big sectional.”
“Yeah, that could work.”
“Speaking of sectional.” I pulled out a card from the pocket at the back of my phone case. “Since time is a factor and it keeps me working on the structure and making sure the building supplies are in order, I thought you might want to talk to a designer.”
Her face went blank.
“Macy worked with her. She helped with the café and The Haunt and her apartment before Macy did the whole Gideon and house deal.”
She took the card. “Dahlia McKenna.”
“Yeah. It’s up to you, of course, but you seem as busy as I am. Thought you might want help. I called her to see if she had any room for a new project, and she said a big job just fell through. She had put aside a lot of time for it.” I stuffed my hands back in my pockets. “So, if you wanted to talk to her…”
“Wow.” She tapped her nail against the top of the card.
“I don’t want to overstep, but you have some stuff to cover in the house too.”
“I sure do.” She slipped the card in her back pocket. “Thanks. That’s really thoughtful.” She frowned just before pulling a pair of sunglasses out of her inner jacket pocket and slipping them on.
I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or bask in the idea that I might have impressed her. Tough call.
“I’ll get out of your hair.” She took one last twirl before she strode out into the sunshine. Before I could trail after her, I heard the bleat of her Triumph engine.
My thigh vibrated again. I pulled out my phone.
Luna will haunt you if that bonfire doesn’t happen.
It’s gonna happen. Trust me.
We’ll see.
I laughed and stuffed my phone back in my pocket. I followed the sound of clacking and found the guys using the handles of the rakes as weapons again.
“Come on, guys, enough with the Star Wars fantasies, yeah?”
Win set the rake down into the stones. “Witcher is far cooler.”
I laughed. “Well, that’s true. Let’s get this done. I’ll treat you to a pie at Robbie’s if we can finish before four.”
Stone twirled his rake, then headed down to the end of the beach. “I’ll meet you in the middle.”
I headed for the haphazard pile of pallet shrapnel and got to work on setting up the perfect spot for a bonfire on the beach.
My Ruby could try being impressed with me twice in one day on for size.
Eight
The sun was just shy of setting as I turned into my drive. A Zoom meeting with a client in California had run long. I had about eleven text messages on my phone right now. Literally a record since I chitchatted with…no one.
Ever.
Now I had Luna, Lucky, and some chick named Ryan—whom I didn’t even know—blowing up my phone like I lived for small talk. Even my one-word replies didn’t seem to put them off. Actually, even more texts flooded my phone in response so that it was constantly pinging with annoying tones. The button on the side had gotten jammed from my repeated pressing to make it stop, so now I couldn’t even turn it to silent.
My jacket pocket buzzed again. Maybe I should just toss the stupid thing into the lake.
I turned off my engine and coasted silently down the drive. I didn’t want them to know I was there yet. Not that they could hear me over the ginormous speakers of Lucky’s truck.
More of that funky, retro music floated out on the lake. This time, it was a different singer, but one with the same rocker-almost country sound. The song was almost like a throwback to a classic like “Sweet Home Alabama”, but with more of a gritty guitar undertone.
I sat on my Triumph for a few more minutes and let the music sit in my bones. The scent of a bonfire teased the air. Not with smoke but with the crackling echoes of fall. It also smelled like maybe they put something a little extra in the fire.
Too bad it wasn’t the kind of thing that would chill me out. Not that I touched that stuff anymore. It was all well and good when I was young and dumb, but I was too busy for that shit now.
Regardless, it was spicy and soothing. The wind kicked up and laughter hitched a ride on the scent. Suddenly something extra hit my nose.
Food.
My stomach roared. I hadn’t had time for anything other than a questionable power bar I’d found in my desk. I could wash anything down with coffee and often did. Gage was forever trying to get me eat something healthy. I was pretty sure the bar of sawdust was his doing.
I rolled up to the top of my driveway and tucked my bike under the awning in case we got some rain. I could smell it on the air, but sometimes the clouds liked to hold onto it for a few days before giving it up.
The closer I walked, the more hints of citrus added onto the definite barbecue dinner that was brewing. When I rounded the back of the barn, I stopped dead in my tracks.
The beach I loved to distraction had been cleaned up, leaving the sand and smooth rocks glowing against the dying sun along the water. The bonfire sizzled with life, denting the cool air with a cozy heat. Adirondack chairs in muted blues and yellows were situated around the fire, but far enough away not to get roasted. Gage was chatting with some guy I didn’t recognize at the top of the rocky coastline. Probably the suit who’d hooked up with Ryan.
A grill and cooler were set up at the edge of the lawn with a sturdy folding table laden with food just beside it. A large metal tub filled with ice and cans anchored the table down against the wind that came up off the water.
The flames of the bonfire flickered high, fed by a few old pallets I’d seen earlier.
Two women with dark hair wearing almost identical clothing—dark hoodies and com
fy jeans—were standing in front of the fire with their hands held out for maximum warmth. They were laughing about something.
Luna, with her halo of bouncing curls, spotted me first.
“There you are.” She jogged over to me, a sparkly gray sweater fluttering behind her like starlight. “I didn’t think you were going to show up to your own party.”
“It’s not a party.”
She hooked her arm through mine and dragged me toward the beach. “Close enough. Lucky has been manning the grill. I had no idea he was so handy. Caleb didn’t tell me he could cook.”
“News to me.”
Lucky filled the space in front of the grill. A black pipe with something silver on the front peeked from one side of him. His long legs were encased in dark jeans and hugged his ass. I quickly dragged my gaze upward, and the rest of him wasn’t much better for my speeding heart rate. A faded charcoal thermal shirt hugged his shoulders and arms. It had seen so many washings that it clung to his body like—okay, enough of that thinking.
Since when did I get all freaking flowery?
He turned with a massive spatula in his hand. “Hey, you finally made it.” His hair was back in a tail, the curls still damp as if he’d just showered. “How do you like your hamburgers?”
“Medium.”
“That’s my girl.” He turned back to the grill. “What do you think?” he asked over his shoulder. “Looks pretty great, right?”
I swallowed hard. It really did. Exactly like I’d dreamed about when I first stepped onto the property. I knew I’d get it done eventually but having someone do the work made my chest tight. Heavy with…regret. No, not just regret. Some relief was stirred in there like sour mix in a whiskey sour.
Guilt floated on top of the mixture like an unwanted cherry. Man, evidently, I really wanted an adult beverage. It really had been a day and a half and it was only five o’clock.
Still, I hadn’t been there to help. I wasn’t used to anyone doing things for me unless I was there to oversee every step.
Luna patted my arm and warmth flowed through me. Surprised, I glanced at her.