Messing with Mac

“Like…what?”

“Well, I would think demolishing just the downstairs would be enough for the next week. In any case, it’s going to be awfully hot.”

“We’re doing both up and down this week,” he said firmly.

“Hmm.”

The sound that escaped her throat suggested he was not only a hard-ass but a brutal boss to his crew. “Demolition is back-breaking, hot, filthy work,” he explained, trying not to resent having to do so.

“I realize that.”

“Then you also realize we’re far better off digging in and getting it over with quick as possible.”

“Okay…well, maybe you guys can start and complete the entire renovation downstairs before moving to the next floor.”

“No. Not cost-effective.”

“Hmm,” she said again doubtfully, and he narrowed his eyes. Why didn’t she want them upstairs this week? He would have pushed for answers but each of his crew’s heads were whipping back and forth between the two of them as if they were watching a tennis match.

He was not going to make a scene. The woman wanted to breathe down his neck all day long? Fine. Today was going to be particularly brutal. By the end of it, her hair would be in her face, her creamy skin smeared with dirt and no way was that million dollar linen going to make it through unscathed.

She’d be, at the very least, hot, sweaty and rumpled, and he could only hope he would get that insane urge to see it right out of his system.

“Let’s move it,” he said to his crew, and they scattered.

3

FOR SEVERAL DAYS, Taylor kept close tabs on the demolition, from a safe distance of course. She wasn’t stupid enough to rile the beast any further, though she had to admit, she had been able to rile him with little to no effort so far.

She supposed that meant he felt the same irritating physical attraction she did. And it was purely physical. A man as alpha as Mac was only good for the physical. There was nothing sensitive, tender or gentle about a man like that, nothing.

He wasn’t someone to fool around with. He’d swallow her whole and spit her right back out, and in her world, she was the one who did the spitting, thank you very much.

What she needed, if she needed at all, was a far more beta man to have fun with, to walk all over, if that’s what she was looking for.

And maybe she would. Later. Right now she had bigger problems, such as figuring out how to keep her contractor from learning she wasn’t just going to be casually around, she was still living here.

Not because she didn’t trust him, as he figured, but because she didn’t have the money to move out and get another place. Every cent she had was sunk into this building and the renovations. Until she could get more tenants—something else she was dependent on her contractor for—she was pretty much stuck.

Suzanne and Nicole had each offered her a place to stay. But Nicole lived in Ty’s house now, and Suzanne with Ryan. Both were deliciously, deliriously drunk on true love. She knew the feeling, oh yes, she knew, but she couldn’t watch it or witness it too closely. She just couldn’t.

She figured she’d just stay here, quietly, out of the way.

Undetected.

But that would be tricky, because now she knew the truth, that very little, and quite possibly nothing, got past one Thomas Mackenzie.

“You want to move, Princess, or you’ll feel the effects of this dust in two seconds flat.”

Having come out of nowhere, the tall, moody, opinionated man in question stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at her. She leaned against the railing on the second-floor landing just outside her apartment, the one he didn’t realize she still slept in.

He wore a hard hat, protective goggles and a face mask, which he’d shoved off his mouth, and was now hanging around his neck. He also wore a fine layer of dust that clung to his damp body. So did his dark T-shirt, which she was quite certain shouldn’t make her pulse quicken. He seemed so huge, so powerful and virile standing there with his sledge hammer in hand as he stared up at her from those whiskey eyes. And ridiculous as it was, she quivered like a mare in heat. It was shockingly, amazingly juvenile, and if she’d known how it was going to be, she’d have found another man for the job.

No, scratch that, difficult as he was, she wouldn’t want to work with anyone else. He was abrupt, in sensitive and far too hardheaded, but he was a damn good contractor and he was honest to a fault.

Honest or otherwise, he slowly climbed the stairs, holding her gaze in his, until he stood right before her, all but surrounding her with his size and strength in what she considered was a deliberate at tempt to establish his dominance.

Well, she was dominant, too, and she lifted her chin and stared him down.

“You’re not moving out of the dust,” he said.

She wouldn’t back up, not even one little step, though he was close enough now that she could feel the heat of his body, could see the look in his light brown eyes, and it was a very confident, cocksure look.

Even her heartbeat responded to his nearness, quickening, causing a glowing, growing heat within her body. Combined with the almost frantic awareness humming through her every nerve ending, she felt like a bomb waiting to go off.

No. She couldn’t be attracted to him, he wasn’t what she wanted in a man. He wasn’t quiet, easygoing. He wasn’t laid-back. And he certainly wouldn’t let her walk all over him.

Damn, but it had been a long time since a man had gotten to her like this, really gotten to her. And to be fair, Jeff Hathaway had been more boy than man.

They’d met in second grade. Jeff had slugged Tony Villa for calling her a Jolly Green Giant when she’d worn a green dress and green tights with matching green patent leather shoes, and even back then Taylor’s heart had sighed.

In sixth grade Jeff held her hand at lunch break, not caring who saw, and her heart had sighed again and again.

By high school, they’d been soul mates. She’d known he was the one, no matter that he came from what her mother had called an undesirable family. Jeff was her family.

They’d wanted to get married right out of high school but she hadn’t turned eighteen and her mother wouldn’t give her permission. So they plotted away the summer, talking about college, where they’d room together, and then sneak off to Vegas when she turned eighteen in October.

By that time, Jeff had been her best friend, her lover, her future husband and her entire life.

And on the last day of September, he’d been killed in a car accident.

Those days immediately following, and even several years after, didn’t bear thinking about. But al ways having been strong of heart, Taylor did eventually heal. She even moved on, and dated a little in her early twenties, when fast, fun and reckless were infinitely preferable to deep and emotional.

Even now at twenty-seven, she felt perfectly nor mal, but a part of her was missing. The best part. Jeff.

God, she’d loved him. Oh, she could still function, could even care about a man. She could laugh and learn and do all the things she’d done before.

But one thing had irrevocably changed. Now when she let a man in, it was simply to soothe a need, whether it be wanting to be held against his hard body, or merely needing a sexual release that didn’t come from something battery operated.

Nothing more, nothing less, as even now, nearly ten years later, she couldn’t imagine going through that soul-destroying love ever again.

“Princess?”

How could she have forgotten the very unforgettable man looking at her? The one man since Jeff she’d actually found herself yearning for.

There. The admission was out in the open, not that she was going to do anything about it. He was not, repeat not, her type. “I’m not allergic to a bit of dust.”

“You haven’t been breathing it in. Continue to stand there while we demo the hallway and your lungs will be burning within half an hour. Not to mention the pounding sinus headache that accompanies it.”