Back to Luke (5 page)

From the corner of her eye, she saw someone climbing down the ladder. Expecting Jess, Jayne was surprised to see Luke. He descended gracefully for such a big man. She’d always loved that about him—his agility, his gentleness for someone his size. When she began to remember what that meant in bed, she adjusted her hard hat over her eyes to cover her expression as he strode toward her. She had to stand up to him, but he’d taken the wind out of her sails earlier—which hadn’t been hard, because her self-confidence now was only a whisper of a breeze. Still, she steeled herself as he reached her.

“I’m sorry I said that. It was mean and uncalled-for.”

She hadn’t expected an apology, knew he hated to make them, and waited to hear what he’d say next.

“I was out of line, but what are you thinking to even consider working with Harmony Housing? I can’t imagine what Naomi will do when she finds out.”

Jayne shook her head. “I can see how sorry you are.”

“I’m not very good at apologizing.” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t do it very often.”

“I remember.”

“I’m overprotective of Jess.”

She looked away. “My coming to Riverdale was a mistake.”

“Isn’t there somebody in California you could go to?”

Keeping her gaze averted, she shook her head.

“Why, Jayne?” His tone had softened, making her go mushy inside. “Why didn’t you ever find anybody out there to share your life with?”

“I won’t talk about that with you.”

“Why not?”

Because, once she’d left Luke and dated other guys, she’d realized if she couldn’t make it with him, she probably couldn’t make it with anyone else. And after two failed relationships, she’d thrown herself into her work and only dated casually.

He lifted a hand, dropped it in a helpless gesture. “Never mind. I don’t want to know about you and other men, anyway. Do what you want about staying. Especially if you have nowhere else to go.”

“Before Jess convinced me to stay, I was planning to go to my condo in Florida and work on new projects. Perhaps that was a good idea after all.”

“And be alone while the architectural board is making a decision?”

“I’m used to being alone.”

“I can’t fathom that.”

“Because you’ve always had your family and friends to depend on. You have no idea how lucky you are.”

“I’m sorry about that, Jayne.” He pulled off his hard hat to reveal spiky, wet hair. “I always hated how your family treated you.”

She lifted her chin. “Yes, well. None of that matters.” To change the subject, she pointed to the foundation. “I see you used concrete instead of cinder blocks. It’s not that popular in California.”

He tracked her gaze. “It sets faster, so we can get on with the house quicker.” He was silent a moment.
“Look, stay in town if you want, but try to stay out of my way on the site, and I’ll do the same with you.”

She eyed him carefully, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It did. “And try not to cause trouble between Naomi and Jess.” He shook his head. “I hope you both know what you’re doing.” He started toward the ladder without giving her a chance to respond.

As she watched him walk away, she wondered how she was going to be able to avoid Luke on the site. Given the current state of her affairs, she wasn’t sure she had the strength to take him on, too.

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, Luke rounded the corner of the trailer and stopped short. Jayne stood near the flatbed truck that delivered the lumber, hefting one end of several two-by-fours bound together, while someone else picked up the wood in the truck. The load weighed way more than she could handle. Her face was flushed; sweat beaded on it. He strode over to her to shore up the beams.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked hotly as he took the brunt of the weight by standing in front of her and grabbing the long two-by-fours.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He waited until the lumber was set on the ground and the man was off the truck, then turned to the foreman of his general contracting crew, who also oversaw the volunteer work. “Ranaletti, why’d you let her haul this stuff? It weighs a ton.”

“She insisted.” Ranaletti was a good guy and seemed amused. “I thought she’d topple over at first lift. But she didn’t.”

In Luke’s peripheral view, he saw Jayne fume. She
bent down, hoisted up the wood and nodded to the guy at the other end. “Let me help you get this over to the foundation, John.” She glared at Luke. “Then I can come back and fight with
you.
”

“I said I’d carry it.” Not only did her overexertion piss him off, he also wasn’t used to people questioning him on the site.

“Like hell. I was doing just fine until you rushed here on your white horse.”

He stared her down; she moved in closer and nudged him out of the way with her shoulder. “I mean it, Luke.”

Damn it. Let her pull a muscle. Maybe an injury would keep her out of the way. He stepped back.

Though her biceps strained, she carried the lumber—backward no less—over to the foundation. Yanking off her hard hat, she stalked back to him. Those violet eyes looked like purple flame and her damp hair gleamed in the sun. Her face was beet-red. Appealingly, Luke thought incongruously, as she was ready to ream him out. “Don’t you
ever
do that again.”

“Excuse me? I’ll run this site however I choose. I
am
the contractor.”

“Damn you, you said you’d stay out of my way. Or did you just mean I should stay out of yours?”

Actually, he had.

“Oh, God, you did.” She stood straight and threw back her shoulders. “Don’t interfere with what I’m doing.” Her expression was haughty and, despite her somewhat bedraggled appearance, she seemed like royalty. “In case you didn’t notice, I carried that just fine.”

He’d noticed. “You’re stronger than you used to be. So what?”

“FYI, I can bench-press my own weight and I run two miles every day. I’m in great shape.”

Because he couldn’t disagree with the proof of her buff body, and because curiosity got the better of him, he asked, “How come?”

“So,” she said, again like queen chiding her subject, “I don’t have to deal with chauvinists like you pushing
the little lady
out of the way.” She turned and walked back to the truck.

“Ooo-ee,” Ranaletti said, “she sure told you, boss.”

“The bitch.” This from Hank Herman, a framer who had no tact and never dealt well with women in construction.

“Man, how long is she going to be here?” Juan Gomez asked. He was a peacemaker and one of Luke’s favorite workers.

Luke faced his crew. They shouldn’t be letting loose with nasty comments, but since he’d just made an ass out of himself as an example, he didn’t correct them.

Damn it, how the hell was he going to keep his head on straight and run the site with this woman from his past in his way? Especially since all he really wanted to do was jump her bones?

O
NCE AGAIN
, Jayne sat in the trailer late that afternoon, taking a break from physical labor. She’d been glad to get away from Luke, who was watching her like a hawk. On the desk, she noticed a picture of Jess, Luke and Timmy, probably from high school, as they were all wearing football jerseys.

“Jess, where’s Timmy?”

Jess’s hand froze on the cell phone he was about to use. “Timmy?”

“Yeah, I haven’t heard you or Luke talk about him much.”

“We don’t.” He perched on the edge of the desk.

“Why?”

“I…” His phone rang. Jess seemed relieved when he said, “Gotta take this. Why don’t you check out the plans more closely? See if there’s anything that doesn’t look up to speed to you.”

Jess answered the call. After a moment, he rose, went to the file cabinet and got out a folder. Before today, she’d had no idea how complicated his job was. He’d dealt with paperwork for the funding all morning, and now he was trying to set up delivery schedules for floor tile.

Jayne rolled out the blueprints and began to study them. It was a while before he ended the call and crossed to her. Hunching his shoulders back and forth to let out the tension, she guessed, he said, “How do they look?”

“I, um, think you could do more for the home owners with a few changes.” She traced a line in the kitchen drawing. “If you moved this wall, you’d still have plenty of space in the dinette, and you could put in a small laundry room over here.”

Jess examined the blueprints, as he used to in college before he quit. “Actually, I thought about that early on. But we were working with a new architect, and he and I didn’t agree on a lot of things.” Again he scrutinized the plans. “It wouldn’t cost much more than the wiring and some additional lumber.” Smiling at Jayne, he reached over to his desk, got a yellow pad and pencil, and handed them to her. “Sketch that out and note anything in the rest of the house you think could be improved without spending too much more money.
There’s still time for floor-plan changes at this stage. I’ll go over it with Luke before we shut down for the day.”

Her heart started to beat fast. God, she so wanted to work on a building design again. “You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Luke won’t like it.”

“He’ll be okay with it. He had his own run-in with the architect. We ended up not hiring him back.”

Still, she doubted Luke would be amenable to her suggestions. Too bad. She was furious at his earlier behavior.

After Jess left, Jayne spent a blissful hour looking over the rest of the plans, making notes for inexpensive improvements. When she finished, there were a lot of scribbles on the legal pad. And she’d loved every second of it. The problem was, as she’d worked, a gaping hole had formed in her heart, reminding her she could lose her license and never be able to do this again.

Standing, she stretched her back, which hurt from sitting down too long. Or maybe from lifting the lumber. She walked to the door of the trailer, which Jess had left open for the warm air to drift in, and scanned the site. They’d made a lot of progress today, getting up some of the outer shell and steel joists. This was one of her favorite times in construction—seeing the frame of the building take shape. Technically, architects didn’t need to be on the site unless there was a problem. But learning from the actual construction—what worked, what didn’t work, how she could improve things—had helped her succeed in her field. She just had to get past the barrier of contractors who wondered why she was there.

Off to the side, she caught sight of Jess and Luke
talking. Unable to see Jess’s face, she unfortunately got a good glimpse of Luke’s. His features were set in a stern frown, and there was heat in his eyes. She remembered another kind of heat there—sometimes when he just looked at her, but always when he touched her, always when he drove into her with a passion he couldn’t harness. Damn it, she couldn’t afford to have these kinds of thoughts about him.

He gestured and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Then he glanced at the trailer and, when he saw her, he scowled.

Uh-oh.

He and Jess came over to the trailer.

When they reached her, Jess gave her a smile, but it was weak. “I was just telling Luke I asked you to look at the house plans, that you had some suggestions.”

“He doesn’t seem too happy about it.”

Luke snapped, “I’m here, you two, in case you haven’t noticed. No need to talk about me in the third person.”

“Oh, I noticed. What have I done now?” She played innocent, but she knew very well what irked him.

“Have you any idea what a pain in the ass it is to change interior plans at the eleventh hour because of an architect’s whim?”

She bristled. “Whim? Give me a break. Changes need to be made in all buildings as they go up.”

“At the risk of setting a precedent and refereeing you two on this site, neither of us was satisfied with Anderson’s drawings, Luke.”

“They were good enough.”

Jayne couldn’t help but comment. “I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Come on in,” Jess said in a conciliatory tone. “Have a Coke and look at what she’s got.”

As they stepped inside, Jayne’s stomach tightened. Suddenly, she wished she hadn’t made so many suggestions. He’d always hated interference.

Jayne crossed to the plans and picked up the yellow pad. She handed it to Luke.

He scanned the front page, then the second. Then he looked up. “You gotta be kidding me.”

H
ARRY’S
B
AR
in the center of town was frequented mostly by laborers: builders, plumbers, electricians, construction workers and city maintenance people. Luke liked its lack of pretentiousness and—okay, he’d admit it—the male atmosphere of the place. Women rarely darkened its doorway and he appreciated the camaraderie and talk of work, as well as the sports blaring from the three overhead sets. The place always smelled of fresh beer and the peanut shells strewn on the floor.

Snagging a stool at the end of the scarred oak bar, he ordered a Coors. Right about now, he could use a double Manhattan. Though he used to favor the drink in his old life, he stayed away from it these days. As he sipped his beer, he thought about the liquor and everything else he’d given up. And maybe because he and Naomi had talked about her the other day, he had a clear vision of Elizabeth Madison, the woman he’d become involved with after Jayne left him, handing him a rocks glass full of booze….

She’d sat on her white leather couch, a martini, dry, two olives, in her hand. Funny, he remembered the pretty ice-blue dress she’d been wearing. “Here you go, darling. You seem like you could use reinforcements.” Her dark looks always pleased him, as did her
refinement. Her sophistication had reminded him of Jayne. At one time, he thought he wanted that in a woman.

“I’m thinking of leaving New York, Elizabeth.”

She’d studied him carefully. “Look, I know you’re upset about Tim. But forsaking everything you’ve built up here is foolish.”