Chapter 3
MARTY
Twenty-three and a quarter,” Joe says. “Not twenty-four.”
“I said twenty-three.”
“You said twenty-four. Twice.” He holds the tape against the header. “You good?”
I grab the tape and re-mark the line, but I press too hard and the pencil tip snaps.
No. I’m not good. I’m standing on a framing platform in ninety-degree heat with sawdust in my teeth and my cock straining against my zipper because my brain has locked onto the fantasy of Poppy Briggs underneath me, my hips grinding hers into the mattress, her thighs wrapped around my waist, those pink lips parted and wet and saying my name like it was the only word she wanted to say.
I’d have that fitted shirt up over her head in a second flat.
Get my mouth on the curve of her tits, taste the soft skin between them, work down the curve of her stomach while she arches up and pulls me where she wants me.
I drive a nail sideways. Yank it. Try again.
I shift my weight and seriously consider ducking into the john to jerk off before I drive a nail through my own hand. It’s not dignified, but I can’t focus when I’m this hard.
A two-by-four slips off the sawhorse and clatters onto the platform like a gunshot.
“Wow.” Noah’s at the base of the framing, hard hat tipped back, arms folded, looking at me in amazement. “You dropped a board.”
“Sawhorse is uneven.”
“Sure, you tell yourself that. What’s her name?”
“Whose name?”
“The woman who’s got you so distracted I’m worried you’re going to put a nail through your hand.
” He picks up the two-by-four and leans it against the stud wall.
“I’ve worked with you for months. You don’t make mistakes.
You make other people cry about their mistakes.
So either you’re having a stroke or you met somebody, and you’re too healthy for a stroke. ”
I drive a nail. Clean this time. The gun kicks hard into my palm. “Drop it.”
“Was it the granddaughter? Please tell me it was the granddaughter. Please tell me Miss PowerPoint Briefcase walked in and you’re banging her.”
“She’s fine.”
Noah laughs and shakes his head. “I think you mean she’s hot and that you haven’t banged her, but you want to.”
“She’s smarter than I expected. And yeah, she’s pretty.” The moment the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve made a mistake.
Noah is silent for a loud moment, then busts into laughter. “Oh, you are so screwed.”
“I’m not screwed.”
“You just said a woman was smart and pretty in the same sentence without anyone holding a gun to your head. I’ve heard you compliment three things total since I met you: your truck, this nail gun, and one sunset, but you were drunk so I don’t think it counts.
” He jabs a finger at me. “You might as well lie down in traffic.”
“I complimented your haircut last month.”
“You said it looked ‘fine.’ That’s basic kindness, not a compliment.”
The truth is pressing against the back of my throat and I need to say it before it chokes me.
“She just graduated with a business degree. She’s sharp, polished, going places.
” I set the gun down. “Women like her don’t end up with a guy who frames houses for a living.
They see me as a man to have fun with for a while.
They like the arms and the calluses and the ‘isn’t it charming how he works with his hands.
’ Then the job offer comes, or they decide to marry an accountant who wears a tie and has a 401k and doesn’t come home smelling like pine tar. ”
He stops laughing.
“I’m the summer thing,” I say. “That’s the role. The blue-collar detour before real life starts. I know the pattern. And I’m done with it.”
What I don’t say is that despite all that, I can’t get her out of my head and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t deeply attracted to her, despite knowing that it’ll just lead to a world of hurt that I don’t want or need in my life.
I’m not above having a fling, but I already sense Poppy Briggs is not the kind of woman you have a fling with.
She’s the kind of woman you build a serious future with.
She’s already in the trailer when I get there.
I’d planned to be early. At lunch, I pulled binders for Q1 and Q2 procurement, delivery receipts for March through June, subcontractor logs, then stacked them on the worktable in the order she’d need them, tabs facing out, Q2 on top. I arranged her workspace with logic.
And she beat me here. She’s sitting in the chair I put the Q2 binder in front of, laptop open, pen between her teeth, reading the file I pulled for her. She looks up when I open the door and my cock gives a hard twitch behind my zipper. Just from her looking at me. Fuck. Me.
“You organized these by quarter.”
“That’s how they’re filed.”
“And you moved the delivery receipts to the window side.” She pulls the pen from her mouth, slow. Fuck. I thought I was fine with the single life, but every move of her body is reminding me it’s been six months since I got laid, and how much I need to rectify that.
The trailer is a claustrophobic box with fluorescent lighting, six feet wide, her knee a hand-span from mine under the table.
Every breath I take is full of the clean scent of her.
I press my thigh hard against the underside of the table to give myself something to focus on besides the fact that the woman I’ve been imagining naked since yesterday is an arm’s length away.
“Okay.” She flips to a tabbed page. “March fourteenth. Green Valley Building Supply. Invoice for two hundred linear feet of pressure-treated four-by-four, dated six days before the delivery receipt.”
“Could be a billing error. Some suppliers invoice on dispatch.”
“That’s what I thought.” She slides a page across the table, her fingertips almost touching mine, and flips through two more tabs. “March twenty-eighth, five days. April eleventh, four. Same supplier, same gap, tightening every time.”
I pull the page toward me. “How many orders total?”
“Every single one since March. I ran it against every other vendor in the system. Henderson, Creek Road? They all invoice within twenty-four hours. It’s only Green Valley that’s invoicing in advance.”
She leans forward and the collar of her blouse shifts.
The edge of her collarbone, a scatter of freckles disappearing under the fabric, the shadow where it falls away from her skin.
My blood burns through my veins as it rushes to my cock, because all I want to do is put my tongue on each of those freckles.
“You’re staring at the same page we’ve already discussed,” she says, and I can hear amusement in her voice.
“I’m a slow reader.”
“You’re not.” The corner of her mouth twitches. “You read the Q1 summary upside down at the site meeting yesterday. I watched you do it.”
“What changed in March?” I ask, because if I don’t talk about invoices I won’t be able to keep resisting her.
“The invoices indicate a new point of contact. It looks like a guy named Rawlins took over the account in February. His name starts appearing on everything.” She pulls a receipt and holds it next to the invoice.
“And the delivery quantities don’t match.
The invoice says two hundred linear feet, but the receipt says one-sixty. ”
“Forty feet of lumber that either walked off the truck or was never on it.” Shit. That’s no good at all. And we should be verifying what we receive before we sign off on receipt. Someone’s been cutting corners.
“At four-fifty a foot.” She does the math faster than I can. “That’s hundred and eighty dollars per order. Over six months, it adds up. Someone’s padding invoices on Green Valley’s end and either pocketing the overage or splitting it with someone on ours.”
She’s watching me, those dark eyes sharp and bright, and watching her mind run at full speed is fucking sexier than watching a strip show.
“Dale needs to know,” I say.
“I want to finish the documentation first. If we bring this to Grandpa with anything less than airtight, whoever’s on the other end has time to cover their tracks.”
“Then we build the case.”
“Together?”
“I know this system better than anyone on site. You need me.”
Her lips part and she exhales sharply, her eyes flicking to me. “Yeah,” she says. “I do.”
We both reach for the Q2 binder at the same time, and our fingers tangle. The sharp gasp that comes from Poppy’s mouth shoots straight down my spine into my cock.
For a long moment, neither of us move. She’s an inch away, the scent of her shampoo mixing with the scent of her, and I nearly lose my mind. Every hair on my arm is standing at attention, aching for her to stroke me.
“Marty.” Barely a whisper.
I set the binder down and pull my hand back, dragging the contact out because I cannot make myself end it fast.
I know why I shouldn’t touch her, but my body wants her more than any woman I’ve ever met.
I am so fucked.