Chapter 4
MAVERICK
I couldn’t get the woman out of my head.
Bridge. The quietly beautiful, ridiculously smart, nerdy little thing from the coffee shop.
Who’d spilled cold fucking coffee all over me and tried to dry me off with a handful of napkins.
She was skittish and wary, sassy and shy.
And fucking young. She also eyed me behind those thick glasses like I was a piece of candy and she wanted to get a lick.
Then she’d run out. Bolted like a horse out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby.
She wasn’t like any woman I knew, and I’d been all over the world. Why did a tiny thing like her, who kept a pencil tucked behind her ear, distract me?
Like now, talking to Silas.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
I blinked, getting visions of freckles and green eyes out of my head and on my brother’s scruffy face. “No, what?”
“I asked you what the hell are you wearing.”
I had him on video chat as I leaned against my car.
I was at the site, getting my first glimpse of the resort since ground breaking two months earlier.
His face, so similar to mine, filled my cell’s screen.
There were four of us James brothers–with me being the oldest–but only Silas ran the family business with me.
Theo and Dex never had any interest. Theo decided to save the world by being a doctor and Dex got all the athletic genes and played pro hockey.
I frowned, glanced down, then grinned.
“Coffee shop t-shirt,” I told him, remembering how I got it. How Bridge’s little hands patting me down was the closest contact I’ve had to a woman in far too long.
“It’s pink.”
“Sure is.”
“Going local already? You’ve been there… three hours.”
“Someone ran into me with a cup of coffee.”
A wince crossed his face. “You look way too happy for having your nipples burned off.”
I rolled my eyes. “Iced coffee, thankfully.”
“So what gives then?”
“A pretty woman did it.” My mind drifted to those full lips and wide hips.
He laughed. “What about Farrah?”
My smile dropped. “What about her?”
“Word on the street is you’re together.”
“You know we’re not. At all.”
Farrah and I had grown up together and our parents had playfully suggested we should marry. That never went away. These days, we ran interference for each other, being each other’s date as needed to social events.
I only had sisterly affection for her, and she didn’t want me in return.
The fact that Silas brought her up was another reminder as to the gossip mill of the rich and famous. Being in Montana would hopefully avoid that.
“Mom wants grandchildren and as oldest–”
“She’s not getting them from me and Farrah,” I countered. I had the baby convo with my mother on a consistent basis. She had four single sons with no grandchildren on the horizon.
“Fine, fine. You were almost drowned by a cup of iced coffee and a pretty woman. Have a fling. When was the last time you were laid?”
I frowned, not sure if I should feel good he thought I could pick up a woman at a coffee shop and then fuck her, or depressed that he pointed out I hadn’t gotten any in a long ass time.
“I’m not that much of a player.” I wasn’t.
I didn’t want to think how long it’d been since I had a woman in my bed.
Not that I wasn’t up for a little fun, but a quickie just didn’t do it for me any longer.
Nameless hookups had been fine in my twenties.
I wasn’t that shallow, but some women were, especially when they learned my last name and the number of zeros in my bank account.
They wanted to fuck their way into a billion-dollar marriage so I always kept it casual.
“And it hasn’t been that long,” I added on a grumble.
He only laughed because he knew I lied.
“Besides, she’s young.” I followed that with a frown, thinking of how incompatible Bridge and I were.
“So? Is she legal?”
I didn’t know for sure, but based on the conversation I overheard, she had a job that involved math, not a trig test in high school.
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
I didn’t answer right away, and he caught on.
“You think because your dick gets hard for a younger woman that you’re like Dad?”
“He didn’t fuck anyone over the age of twenty-five.”
After my mom finally divorced him for having an affair with yet another secretary or caddy girl, he kept right on going with the young ones. Even having died of a heart attack while fucking one of them.
“Well, you have. And you’re nothing like him,” he told me. “You’re thirty-seven years old. Go fuck who you want. Move away from home. Seriously. Stay there. Have babies with a twenty-something hottie. Make Mom happy.”
“Babies? She spilled coffee on me and I’m attracted. I’m not planning on inseminating her.” Jesus.
“Fine. Leave the semen out of it. Wear a condom. But go for it.”
Go for it. The idea of peeling Bridge’s clothes off and seeing all her secrets beneath was what I wanted to do now.
I imagined–and with pretty dirty fucking thoughts–she would be lush and soft and perfect.
I wondered how far her blush spread beneath her shirt.
I also wondered what she’d look like with my cum splashed all over her.
“I think I scared her off,” I admitted.
I wasn’t sure how I did that–since I hadn’t said any of my dirty thoughts aloud–doing everything I could to reassure her I wasn’t mad about the spill. I even held her hand and called her baby. I’d never done that before, called anyone baby, but it just seemed… right.
“You are a big, scary motherfucker.”
Was that it? Was it because at first glance, I really was a big, scary motherfucker? I’d tried to be gentle, to protect her. Even from me.
“You’re an inch taller,” I countered. The James men all ate their vegetables as kids.
“It’s a small town. Maybe you’ll run into her. Your wardrobe hopes not literally. Pink definitely isn’t your color.”
I’d sacrifice another shirt to see her again.
“What’s the status with the project?” he asked, steering away from my encounter earlier and onto why I was in Montana in the first place.
“Definitely behind.” Turning my cell away from me, I offer him a slow scan of the site before facing him again.
A crew was busy building out the second story, a few men pushing up a section of wall and anchoring it in place.
The hum of an air compressor followed by the thwap, thwap of a nail gun filled the air.
The resort would have fifteen rooms. A five-star restaurant. Spa. Outdoor adventure center. Now? It didn’t even have a roof.
“It’ll get done.”
“Before you retire?” he poked.
We were close, too fucking close sometimes, especially since we worked side by side. I may be CEO, but he ran James Corp just as much as me. We were close with Theo and Dex, too, up in each other’s business non-stop and I was surprised one or both weren’t also on this call.
“Fuck you. I’m not that old.” Thirty-seven wasn’t ancient, except when I seemed to have the hots for someone at least a decade younger.
Maybe Bridge thought I was old. My dick didn’t care.
I’d had a semi since she patted me down and thinking of her naked with just a pencil behind her ear had me shifting my dick in my jeans.
“The project’s that behind,” he clarified.
I sighed because he was right. “I have a meeting in a few with the contractor.” I flicked my gaze to the resort, currently it was nothing more than framed out.
“I’ll come up.”
I shook my head. “To do what? Kick someone’s ass for me?”
“You are scrawny.”
No response was needed for that because I hadn’t been scrawny since the second grade.
“Let me see what the hell’s going on. Unless you can build trusses or operate a crane, you aren’t going to be of much help.”
That was the next step. Once the second-floor framing was done, trusses would be lowered to build out the roofline. Then it could be enclosed and the roof put on. Hopefully before the snow started. Here in Montana, that came sooner than later.
“You can’t do that shit either.”
I smirked. “No, but I can hopefully scare the project manager into getting his shit together. I’ll be back in the office by lunchtime tomorrow.”
“You’re not that scary in pink. But go bust some balls, brother.”
I’d do it, because I wasn’t having this project fail. I could throw more money at it, and I would, but that wasn’t my way. The project team was failing at their job, and I needed to find out why.