Destined for the Maverick Read online

  She kept her smile in place, though her mouth went dry. She’d helped her dad build an extension on their garage, she knew the difference between a miter and a chop saw, and was an avid devotee to all television do-it-yourself shows. She was also well aware that didn’t make her an expert in anything. So she sidestepped.A little.

  Okay. A lot.

  The same way she’d sidestepped when she had her phone interview. “More, uh, more residential. Mr. Swinton needed a handyman.” She laughed overbrightly. “Handyperson, I guess I should say.”

  Jack’s gaze turned even more assessing. As if he could see right through to the truth of the matter. That, in her enthusiasm to move to Rust Creek Falls, she might have exaggerated her experience a teensy bit. And she hadn’t corrected Mr. Swinton’s assumption that she had plenty of on-the-job experience.

  The man had told her they were in need of general construction laborers, and specifically, he was looking for a woman. She’d guessed, by Mr. Swinton’s eagerness to make her fit his requirements, there hadn’t been too many females who’d applied.

  Anxious to move the topic away from her employment and back onto more interesting matters—namely the good-looking, seemingly eligible and for a few seconds there, seemingly interested, guy standing before her—she jerked her head at the small house behind her. “So, do you live in the neighborhood, Jack?” There were three other houses on the street, looking sleepy and quiet at seven in the morning on a Sunday. He could have come from any of them.

  “I’ve got a house a little ways outside town,” he said, revealing pretty much nothing, but dashing that hope all the same and leaving her wondering, instead, what he was doing there at that hour at all.

  He moved his hand from the dusty car and pushed his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. She determinedly kept her gaze from following the motion too closely. The man knew how to wear jeans.

  “Keith’s gas station down on the corner is where you’ll want to take your car,” he said abruptly. “Keith’s a mechanic. He’s my cousin, but anyone around here will tell you he’s fair.” Then he settled his cowboy hat more squarely on his head, nodded and went over to one of the trucks parked on the street, same as her own car. It was black beneath the dust covering it, and had a rack in the back loaded with ladders. He climbed behind the wheel. “Hope you’ll enjoy Rust Creek Falls,” he said. Polite. Friendly.

  But not as friendly as he had been.

  She smiled weakly, bubbles fizzling. “Thanks. So do I.”

  Then he drove away, leaving her with the sinking sensation that “bigger and better” had just passed her by, yet again.

  Chapter Three

  Jack wanted to kick himself.

  He should have known the pretty, curly-haired blonde was one of Swinton’s doings soon as he saw that Ohio license plate.

  It wasn’t as if Rust Creek Falls drew a lot of newcomers despite the attention that had been drawn to them as a result of that ravaging flood last year. Which was one of the reasons Arthur Swinton started offering employment bonuses to lure workers for the Community Center project.

  Mostly, though, Jack wanted to kick himself for not just admitting to Addie that he was the construction foreman on the job.

  He slowed as he neared the Town Hall and the construction site across from it, turning into what would be a driveway once the construction was finished. Right now the landscape surrounding the chain-link fence protecting the building site was nothing more than a jumbled series of dirt ruts. Inside the fencing, it wasn’t much better. But progress was visible thanks to the framing they’d finished last week. Which left Jack on schedule for the plumbing and electrical crews who were due in tomorrow.

  Addie would be due in tomorrow, too.

  He exhaled and rolled down his window to let the morning air pour over him.

  Why hadn’t he just told her?

  Jack had a few rules that he unfailingly stuck to when it came to a job. He ran a safe site. An honest site. And even though fraternization was common—and frankly impossible to prevent—among the crews, he never got personally involved with someone working for him.

  He’d seen firsthand the disaster that could come with it when romance worked its way onto a site. His brother, Cam, had recently lost the contracting business he’d built from scratch over in Kalispell as a result of getting involved with one of the women working for him.

  Call it archaic, but as far as Jack was concerned, the fewer women around on the work site, the better. And up to now, there had been none at all. Not by design, though.

  Arthur Swinton—making up for a lifetime of misdeeds in the not-too-distant resort town of Thunder Canyon—was determined that his return to honest society was entirely proper. He was intent on being an equal opportunity employer. He’d made no secret of the fact that he wanted women on the project, so Jack supposed it had only been a matter of time. Swinton had been advertising far and wide, and had gotten a few takers—men who’d been on Jack’s framing crew. Since the old guy was the bucks behind the deal, Jack didn’t have a heck of a lot of choice. His job was to run the crews that were hired. Pure and simple.

  As long as the people on-site did their jobs and followed the rules, Jack had no reason to complain.

  He’d just have to be sure to follow his own rules, too.

  Which meant pretending that Addie McBride was just one of the guys.

  Unfortunately, considering his immediate reaction to her when he’d stopped by the duplex to feed his little sister’s cat while she was out of town, he was pretty certain that was going to be easier said than done. Addie was the first woman he’d felt an interest in since he found out the girl he’d intended to marry had been cheating on him. He and Trish had parted ways over a year ago, and since then he’d had no interest whatsoever in the opposite sex.

  And maybe that’s why he’d bolted like some damn teenager faced with the first pretty girl he wanted to kiss, rather than just telling her that—while Arthur Swinton might have hired her—it was really Jack Lawson who was going to be her boss.

  * * *

  It took Addie the rest of the day to unpack her car and get fully settled in her half of the little duplex she’d rented.

  It was a third of the size of her apartment back in Cincinnati, but once she’d hung her photos on the walls, made up the bed properly with the red-and-white afghan her grandmother had knitted for her when she was in college and loaded up the small kitchenette with the boxes of cookware and cookbooks she’d brought with her, the studio was as homey as it was likely to get.

  She’d arranged the rental while she was still in Cincinnati, and had been delighted that it came equipped with a Murphy bed that folded down from the wall. It meant she didn’t have to worry about transporting a bed—something she couldn’t have afforded to do even if she’d wanted to.

  Foolish or not, before she left Ohio, she’d had the mother of all yard sales and sold off everything that she hadn’t been able to fit into her car. Clothes. Furniture. Potted plants and her bed.

  Her mother, who usually held to the “everything happens for a reason” mantra, had given the sign of the cross when she saw that, and scurried away mumbling that she feared Addie had lost her mind.

  Addie had known her mother viewed her moving away as some sort of defection. And she didn’t want to hurt her, but she also hadn’t been able to make her understand just how unhappy she’d become in Cincinnati. How dissatisfied. How she’d felt if she didn’t do something drastic, she’d find herself ten years from now in exactly the same place in life.

  She could have stored her stuff in her parents’ garage—there was room, after all, thanks to that extension—but Addie had decided against it. She was making a fresh start. Not getting rid of all that stuff would have felt as if she was leaving herself with a safety net. An out, in case things didn’t work in
Rust Creek Falls, and Addie didn’t need that sort of fallback. She already had the only safety net that mattered—parents who loved her and would be there if disaster really struck.

  The studio was small, yes. But she had a few nice windows that gave her a view of the mountains in one direction and a view of the little grassy garden area in back.

  All in all, it was perfect for what she wanted.

  But spending the rest of her Sunday getting settled didn’t leave her any time to get her car to the mechanic that Jack had suggested.

  Which meant, the next day, when she was supposed to show up at the construction site, she did it with Edith screaming at the top of her tailpipes.

  It was the kind of entrance that she would have preferred to avoid, especially considering she was nearly a half hour late thanks to the challenge she’d had getting Edith to start at all. Despite her confidence in moving to Rust Creek Falls, despite her optimism, her personal pep talks, her cramming of internet construction and carpentry tips, she was as nervous as a cat.

  Per Mr. Swinton’s instructions, she’d come equipped with her steel-toed boots, her own tool belt and hard hat. She wore her oldest jeans and a denim, long-sleeved shirt over her pink tank top and had corralled her unmanageably curly hair in a braid that reached her shoulder blades.

  She was as prepared as she was going to get.

  So she parked in the dirt, alongside the collection of other vehicles where Edith—the lone car among a sea of pickup trucks—looked particularly waifish, and headed through the opening in the temporary fencing surrounding the construction for the portable trailer that was positioned off to the side. Her heart was thundering in her chest even more loudly than the sound of hammering that filled the air, and she tried to take in as much of the activity around the rectangular structure being built as she could before she reached the three metal steps that led to the trailer door.

  The framing was up and the hammering was coming from several workers nailing wood walls in place. She knew there was a term for it—a term she was probably supposed to know and didn’t. But she did know the smell of lumber. The distinct aroma of sawdust filled the air, and she inhaled deeply, wondering if she’d been a carpenter in a past life or something, because the smell was so satisfying to her.

  “Get that hard hat on your head, girl,” a grizzled-looking man with a long gray ponytail and an even longer gray beard barked as he passed her. He had a stack of long pieces of lumber propped on his shoulder, and he carried them with ease. “Can’t you read a simple sign?”

  Addie swallowed, glancing at the very obvious Hard Hats Required sign on the trailer, and plopped the hard hat on her head. It felt awkward and tended to tilt forward over her nose and she nudged it back until she could see.

  Mr. Swinton had told her they were nearly desperate to get fresh workers on the Community Center project. She might not be experienced, but she was able-bodied, learned quickly and was willing to work.

  She hoped that would be enough.

  Walking up the steps, she straightened her shoulders and went in through the door.

  Battered metal desks were crammed into the space, covered with papers and blueprint rolls, hard hats and two empty donut boxes.

  A middle-aged woman sat at one of the desks, pounding on the keys of an ancient-looking adding machine. She didn’t even look up. The two men leaning over the plans spread out on the desk in the back of the trailer did look up, though.

  And Addie felt a swift rush of pleasure as her gaze met Jack Lawson’s.

  She hadn’t imagined him. Hadn’t imagined how unreasonably hot he was.

  She also hadn’t imagined she’d ever see him here. At the construction site.

  Wearing a hard hat, with safety glasses hanging from his neck.

  The other man—definitely older than Jack, but not so grizzled as the gray-haired lumber guy outside—rolled up the plans. “Thanks boss,” he said, and moved past her, taking the plans with him as he left.

  The rush of pleasure congealed in a swift and ugly little death of realization and she stared at Jack.

  His smile was polite. No more. No less. “Good morning, Addie. Ruth will finish your paperwork and show you how to clock in on the computer.”

  She realized he was talking about the machine that looked even more antiquated than the adding machine.

  “Eight hours.” He might have been speaking to a complete stranger. As if they’d never shared that exciting, promising moment together on the street in front of her duplex only the morning before. “Two fifteen-minute breaks and a half hour for lunch. When you’re done with Ruth, come and find me.” He grabbed a gigantic red toolbox off one side of the desk with amazing ease and brushed past her as he, too, moved to the door. He barely even stopped to give her a look out of unreadable, definitely un-sparkling brown eyes. “And tomorrow, be on time.”

  Chapter Four

  “Swinton outdid himself on that one.”

  Jack didn’t need to look up from the inspection report he was studying to know that Reggie, his oldest and most reliable carpenter, was talking about Addie. Nor did he need to look up to know that she was crossing the ground from the office trailer toward them.

  He could feel the shifting energy that traveled along with her. It was almost as though there was a shimmer of excitement, of anticipation, in the air.

  He ignored it. Tried to, anyway. “What d’ya mean?”

  Reggie snorted. “Don’t play dumb with me, Jackaroo. Known you too long.” Not only had Reg worked with Jack on every build Jack had run, but he’d worked with Jack’s brother before Cam had to sell it off, and before that, he’d worked with Jack’s father, who’d been the one to get his boys started in construction in the first place even though the Lawsons as a whole were ranchers from way back. “Pretty girl like that on a site like this? Might be trouble. Only females these guys are used to are ones like ol’ Ruthie.”

  “Ol’ Ruthie’s your wife,” Jack pointed out dryly. “She’d probably be nicer to you if you didn’t call her that.”

  Reggie tugged at his long beard and let out his cackling laugh. “She goes and gets nice, I might wanna start living in the same house again, and after all this time, we’re both happy the way we are.”

  “Married and living under different roofs.” Jack shook his head. “I’d call you and Ruth both crazy if it hadn’t been that way ever since I was a kid.”

  “Don’t fix what ain’t broke, I always say.”

  He allowed himself only the briefest glances at Addie, but he couldn’t fail to notice the way the two guys on the plumbing crew stopped to stare as she sashayed her way toward them, her trim hips looking particularly feminine beneath the tool belt she was fastening around them.

  He stifled a sigh. That tool belt was straight off a store shelf, spanking new. And she’d fastened it on backward.

  Handyperson, his eye.

  “Just keep an eye on her,” Jack told Reg. “Let me know if anyone starts getting out of line.”

  “That include you?” The old man was eyeing him knowingly. “About time you stop acting like a monk. Year’s long enough to get Trish outta your system.”

  Maybe it was, because God knew, Jack hadn’t been able to get Addie out of his head since the morning before. He’d developed a hefty dose of mistrust after learning his ex-fiancée was cheating on him, but he wasn’t dead.

  And Addie, with her caramel-colored eyes and curling dark blond hair that reached halfway down her back, had made him remember that fact but good. He hadn’t felt such a visceral connection with a woman ever. Not even Trish.

  “Just keep an eye on her,” he said impatiently. The inspector had signed off on the framing, and he stuck the report back on the nail where it was always hung.

  Addie had reached the old board being used as a ramp to get from the
ground up to the foundation where they were standing, and he stepped around her, careful not to brush against her.

  “Reggie will tell you what to do,” he told her, and tried not to feel as if he’d kicked a brown-eyed puppy as he clomped down the ramp. He wasn’t treating her any differently than he would any other new laborer. Reg was his right-hand guy and often shook out the kinks with someone new because Jack generally had other more important things on his plate.

  The fact that he felt like a coward, running away from something, was his own personal cross to bear.

  Addie chomped down on the annoyance that rose inside her at such an obvious and abrupt dismissal and looked from Jack’s retreating hind end to the gray-haired man who’d snapped at her about her hard hat.

  “Jack’s always cranky on Monday mornings until he gets a gallon of coffee in him.” He brushed his palm down the front of his paint-stained overalls before extending it. “Reggie Hart.”

  Addie shook the man’s hand. It was as callused as Jack’s had been and carried none of the bubble-inducing effects. “Addie McBride.” She moistened her lips and looked around at the skeletal frame around them. “I’m ready to get to work. Just, um, just point me where you want me to go.” And please, Lord, don’t let it be something extremely technical.

  Reggie tugged at his beard for a moment. “First off, you might want to turn that tool belt around so it’s facing the right way.”

  She felt her face flush. For once, she managed to find silence rather than nervous babbling and looked down, fumbling with the stiff, awkward buckle. The hard hat slid forward, bumping the bridge of her nose, and she impatiently pushed it back.

  When she looked up, Reggie was studying her through narrowed eyes. Then he muttered an oath, plucked the hard hat off her head, made a quick adjustment on the inside and plopped it back on her head, where it fit much more snugly. “You have any experience, girl?”

  Her gaze flitted toward Jack’s retreating back. He’d nearly reached the trailer. “Depends on what kind you mean,” she hedged. She had barely clocked in and was going to be fired already. Undoubtedly, that would mean returning the signing bonus, which wouldn’t quite devastate her financially, but it would be close if she didn’t find herself some other sort of income...like yesterday. No matter what happened, though, she wasn’t going to let failure drive her from Rust Creek Falls. Not when she’d only just arrived.