Working For Her Curves (Hard Hat Hotties #8)

Chapter 1

MARTY

We’re barely in the booth at Kincaid’s Early Bird before Leanna’s there, coffee pot in hand, hip cocked against the table edge.

“Mornin’, boys. You want the usual?” She always looks at me when she says it, a slow half-smile as she angles toward my side of the booth like Noah’s not even sitting there.

“Yes, ma’am.” Her hip nearly brushes my shoulder. Not an accident. I’ve done my damnedest to be polite and not lead her on, but Leanna is not subtle and she’s endlessly persistent.

She fills both mugs, and I keep my eyes on the table. She’s barely walked away before Noah is shaking his head.

“She’s begging you to ask her out.” He leans across the table like this is something I don’t already know. “You gonna tap that?”

I pick up my coffee. “I’m here for the summer. I don’t need complications. You know that.”

“Leanna’s not a complication. Leanna’s a sure thing.

” He tears open a sugar packet with his teeth, dumps it into his coffee, stirs it with a butter knife.

We’ve had this conversation at least three times a week since I arrived in Forge Creek, but he keeps at me like more pressure will change the answer.

“A sure thing is still a thing.” The coffee’s strong enough to strip paint, which is one of two reasons I keep coming back to this diner. The food’s the other. “I came here to stack cash. Not to get tangled up with someone I’ll leave behind when I leave in August.”

He lets it drop, though we’ll be right back here tomorrow. Despite this, Noah is the only person on this crew I actually like.

I pull the site schedule up on my phone. “Joe’s crew poured footings Friday. We’re setting anchor bolts if the concrete cured right.”

“It cured right. I drove past yesterday.” He drinks his coffee like he didn’t just admit to driving by the job site on his day off.

“You drove past the site on a Sunday.” My eyes come up from the phone. “It’s at the end of a dead-end road next to a creek.”

“I like to check on things,” he grins. The man drove twenty minutes out of his way on his day off to stare at concrete, and he’s sitting here like that’s what everybody does with their Sunday.

Leanna brings our plates and gives me the same slow look, same angle toward me, same complete disregard for Noah’s existence. Her knuckles graze my wrist as she sets down my plate. “Anything else, hon?”

“We’re good. Thanks.” I give her a quick smile and turn my attention to the plate.

She walks away, and Noah watches her go before turning back to me with his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “She’s giving it away, and you won’t even pick it up.”

I clench my jaw. I like Noah, but there’s definitely a limit to how much of this I can take on a Monday morning. “I’m warning you—”

“Did you hear Adam got hammered at the Foundry Saturday night?” he says through a mouthful, mercifully letting it go. “Kayla took his keys, and he had to walk home.”

At least Kayla, the bartender at the Foundry, has some common sense. I look up at Noah. “From the Foundry? That’s three miles.”

“In flip-flops.” He grins and shovels eggs in his mouth.

Adam stumbling down the shoulder of freeway in the dark, flip-flops slapping asphalt, probably talking to himself the whole way. “Did anyone pick him up?”

“Brian saw him on the bridge and honked, but he said Adam waved him off.” Noah mimics Adam waving drunkenly and laughs. “Said he wanted the fresh air.”

Noah’s phone buzzes. He glances at it, then silences it. “Did you hear? Dale’s granddaughter is starting on-site today.”

Great. Last thing we need is someone in a blazer standing in the mud next to the concrete mixer. “Do you know what she’ll be doing?”

“No idea. Spreadsheets? I doubt our jobs are in jeopardy,” Noah smirks, then polishes off his breakfast.

Dale pulls me off the east framing with a two-word text—my office—and I’m standing in front of his desk before I’ve gotten the drywall dust off my forearms. The trailer is cramped and overstuffed, permits and site maps papering the wall by his desk.

“Got a situation.” He crosses his arms across his chest. “I’ve found an inventory discrepancy. The numbers aren’t adding up for this year.”

“How far off?” I lean against the filing cabinet.

“Far enough that I called my granddaughter, Poppy.” He leans back in his chair, and it groans under him.

“She’s good with this. I want her going through invoices, delivery receipts, purchase orders.

Do a proper audit and figure out what the hell is happening.

She’s here in Forge Creek for the summer. Maybe longer.”

My weight shifts off the cabinet. I’m not sure I like the sound of where this is headed. “And I’m here because—”

“I want you to walk her through the site. Show her the records trailer, answer her questions. You’re not the bookkeeper, but you know more than framing. You know how the invoicing and deliveries work, and I trust you to answer her questions and make sure she gets what she needs.”

My shoulders tighten. I don’t want to babysit someone who may not know the difference between a nail and a drill bit. “Dale, I should be on east framing—”

“Joe can handle it,” Dale says, waving away my objection. “You’ve got this.”

There’s no use arguing with Dale Briggs when his jaw sets like that. Even after being here for a couple months, I’ve learned that when Dale decides something, that’s the end of the story, and it’ll take an act of God to change his mind.

I cross my arms. “Fine.”

“Good.” Dale nods toward the door. “She should be—”

The trailer door opens behind me. I turn around and nearly fall over.

The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is walking into the trailer. I stare at the line of her throat as it curves into her collarbone, the way her shirt skims her waist and then finds the flare of her lush hips, the curve where fabric pulls against her chest as she moves.

Fuck.

My blood drops to my groin, and I have to make sure my mouth isn’t hanging open.

She’s standing in the doorway with a laptop bag over her shoulder, scanning the trailer the way you’d scan a site before you step onto it—the maps on the wall, Dale’s desk, me—and when her eyes get to me, she pauses.

It takes me a second to realize I’m standing up straighter and pushing out my chest, like I’m trying to win her attention.

I should look away. I’m standing in Dale Briggs’s office getting hard over his granddaughter, and I need to stop. Instead, I’m fixating on the few strands of dark hair that have come loose from where she’s pulled it back, and the way the light hits the angle of her jaw.

This woman is the kind of danger that makes me both ache to touch her and also wish Dale chose someone else for this job.

“Poppy, sweetheart.” Dale stands, and his voice goes warm in a way I’ve never heard from him on site. “Come in. This is Marty Conway. He’s your guy while you untangle what’s happening with the invoices.”

She steps into the trailer and gives Dale a quick hug, then stands next to him and turns those eyes back on me. She takes another long look at me, and her expression sharpens.

She extends her hand. “Poppy Briggs.”

Her grip is firm and her hand is warm. I have to force myself to release it.

She tilts her chin up as she looks at me, making me uneasy in a way I haven’t been in a long time.

Desire electrifies me, but I recognize the kind of woman she is, and I know all the reasons why I should stay away from her.

Not least because she’s Dale’s granddaughter.

“Poppy’s just finished her business degree,” Dale smiles. “I’m trying to convince her to come work for me.”

“We’ll see, Grandpa. Let’s get through this summer and this inventory problem first.” She opens her laptop on the edge of Dale’s desk, angles the screen so both of us can see it, and pulls up a color-coded spreadsheet.

“The Q2 procurement numbers are sixteen percent off baseline. I don’t think it’s a rounding error, and that’s where I want to start my research. ”

She says it to Dale, and the authority in her voice is so fucking hot that it feels like my brain is in meltdown. Gorgeous? Competent? Smart? A trifecta for my dream woman.

Dale claps his hands once. “Good.” The grin that cracks through his beard says he’s enjoying this more than he should. “I’ll leave you two to get started. Holler if you need anything.”

We all leave the trailer.

Poppy and I stop and squint into the sun.

“Show me where the records are,” she says. “Let’s get started.”