Men at Work: Through the Roof / Taking His Measure / Watching It Go Up

“It’s all gone or destroyed,” Ben said to Mathew. “Flattened. Splintered.”

The builder whistled. “I’m real sorry to hear that. We had some damage, but nothing like that. I don’t know what to say… Is it a total loss? What about the insurance? And—” He paused.

Ben heard clearly the words Mathew didn’t say. And isn’t Marina loaded? Couldn’t she build a palace in Monaco if she wanted to?

“Yes. It’s a total loss. My insurance company is claiming that most of the damage was done by water, and I didn’t have a separate flood policy. My lawyer isn’t getting anywhere with them. They won’t budge. I’m screwed.”

“I’m real sorry to hear that,” Tremaine said again. “Anything I can do?”

Ben swallowed. Oh, hell. This was ten times worse than he’d thought it would be. He tried to swallow his pride, but it burned an unholy path down his throat and scorched his intestines. He could feel it flaming in his stomach, smoldering, blackening a hole right through him. Just say it, Delgado. Say it.

“Yes, Mathew. As a matter of fact, there is something you can do. Do you have any openings with your construction crew?”

“Why, sure. You’ve got a good heart, looking out for your employees like this. Send them on over—I can always use a few more men.”

Ben squirmed. “You’ve got a good heart for taking them on. Thanks. But…it’s not just for the workers. It’s for me.”

A shocked silence ensued. “Christ, Delgado. You? You’ve got education, you’ve got managerial experience, you’ve had your own business. Why the hell do you want to work for me? There’s loads of opportunities for you to repair storm damage to vegetation and landscaping. You could make a killing right now—”

“I can’t do it, Mathew,” Ben said flatly. “I get too angry. My equipment is trashed, I can’t pay my suppliers or my guys, my insurance company is useless—it all puts me in a rage. I’ve got to calm down and do something else for a while. Get my bearings back.”

Again, he could hear exactly what Tremaine wasn’t saying. Couldn’t your rich fiancée pay your guys for five years over? Buy heavy equipment outright? Send her high-powered attorneys to sue the pants off your insurance company?

In quiet but concrete-firm tones, Ben said it. “I will not go to Marina for help. I can’t. It’s demeaning. Please, Mathew. Give me a job. You know my work ethic. I won’t let you down.”

“Of course you won’t let me down, you crazy bastard. I’ve seen the projects you’ve done around Marina’s… I just think you need your head examined. But I know better than to argue with you.” Tremaine sighed. “Well, c’mon, then. Get yourself over here and fill out an application. If you want, you can start work today.”

“Thank you. This means everything—I hope you know that. And one day, even if it’s years from now, you and I will build that house. It’s a promise.”

Mathew hesitated for a split second. “Glad to hear it.” Once again, Ben had no trouble reading his thoughts. You and I? What about Marina? What’s going on?

The truth was, Ben couldn’t have told him, since he wasn’t sure himself. All he knew was that he couldn’t go forward with the relationship or the wedding. He felt…worthless.

And though he loved Marina, she was hands-down the most expensive woman he’d ever dated. Her idea of saving money was to go stay at the Paris Ritz for only three weeks, instead of a full month.

She economized by getting a ten percent discount on an entire case of Cristal, instead of buying eleven bottles at full cost. Or buying couture off the rack and having it tailored to her body, instead of commissioning a gown from scratch.

She didn’t deliberately rub her money into his face—never. It was simply that she’d never lived any other way, so she didn’t have a clue how other people managed.

Marina had a huge heart, and she gave away twenty times what she spent, but still…

He thought about Miami’s Reston Humane Society, the RestonChildren’s Hospital in Palm Beach, the Reston Alzheimer’sResearch Facility in Boca Raton. The countrywide Frameworksfor the Future, an organization that built homes for the needy,which was Reston Foundation-funded.

Speaking of Frameworks for the Future, when was that calendar shoot Marina had talked him in to doing? He’d have to call the foundation and talk to Liz Olmos, the administrator. Because he sure as hell wasn’t calling Marina—even though he’d felt guilty at her distraught messages. She needed to forget him.

Ben knew that a man was more than the money he made, but he felt like a failure in the face of Marina’s wealth. And he couldn’t be her husband—or anyone else’s—when he was a failure.

MARINA HAD no problem combining business with pleasure. Why not run numbers while naked and slathered with rosemary-peppermint oil?

She shrewdly eyed the column of figures a foot beneath her face and, once again, examined the total. It was off. She knew it in her bones. And she knew who was responsible.

“Ms. Reston,” Manuel said as he kneaded her lower back and the tops of her glutes, “you shouldn’t be going over accounts right now. The point of a massage is to relax.”

“I know, sweetie, but I need to figure out what’s wrong here. I don’t mind giving money away to worthy causes, but I get very bent out of shape when someone’s skimming funds for their own personal use.”

“Someone’s stealing from you?”

“I’m getting that feeling. Unfortunately, it happens every couple of years. Somebody I employ makes the mistake of thinking that I won’t notice, that I’m stupid or careless simply because I like to shop and have my hair done. Can you imagine?”

Manuel coughed. “No, ma’am.”

She eyed him a bit suspiciously and then drummed her polished fingernails on the Excel printout, which lay on top of a rolling stool under her nose. It was a little difficult to see with her face mashed into the padded, doughnutlike head support of the massage table, but the hole in the middle did enable her to do some work even under Manuel’s expert ministrations.

He worked magic on her muscles, but she couldn’t relax. The person skimming funds was a single mom. A hard worker. Someone struggling to make ends meet.

She’d had no problem having the cokehead intern arrested when he’d raided the petty cash to fund his habit. But this?

Marina continued to study the figures and traced a pattern. Her employee skimmed funds only once per month, as if before some bill were due. Hmm…

Though she could examine numbers this way, the tricky part was when her cell phone rang. Logistically, it was impossible to talk to anyone with her face mashed into a padded doughnut. “Manuel, darling, would you look at the LCD display on my phone and see who’s calling? Thank you. You’re a gem.”

“G K Investigations,” reported Manuel.

Marina scrambled up so fast that the sheet covering her body dropped to the floor. Manuel blushed like a tomato—she was naked as a jaybird and on all fours, butt in the air. Mama would be so proud.

Manuel averted his eyes and bent to retrieve the sheet while she sat down hastily and crossed everything she could cross to hide her nudity.

Eyes glazed over, he practically threw the sheet at her, and she said, “Excuse me, but I have to take this.” She smiled apologetically. Who knew? Manuel wasn’t gay.

Still scarlet-faced, he nodded and left the room. Marina pressed the On button of her phone. “Hello?”

“Ms. Reston? This is Gina Keys. I’ve located Mr. Delgado.”

A sob rose in Marina’s throat. Then joy shot through her veins. “He’s okay?”

“He’s just fine.”

Fury chased the joy. “Where is he? I’m going to go wring his neck. I’m going to gouge out his eyes with his engagement ring…” There she went with those cheery fantasies again.

“Ms. Reston, I’m afraid I can’t tell you his location.”

“What? What do you mean? I paid you up front to find him!”

Gina cleared her throat. “Perhaps I should have explained this before. For liability reasons, I can’t directly give you information on his whereabouts. What I can do is personally contact him and inform him that you would like to speak to him.”

“He knows damn well I want to speak to him. I’ve left nine messages on his cell phone! And what is this liability stuff?”

“I can be brought up on criminal charges, Ms. Reston, if I tell you where he is and you, say, show up with a shotgun and blow him away.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t own a shotgun.”

“A letter-opener, arsenic, a crossbow, a high-heeled shoe. I can’t take the chance—you did mention in my presence that you wanted to kill him. Twice, I believe.”

“I was kidding!”

“That’s beside the point.”

“What is he doing? Can you tell me that?”

“I suppose so,” Gina said cautiously. “He’s working construction.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know, Ms. Reston. You’ll have to ask him that.”

“Where is he?” Marina moaned. “Please, please tell me. I have to find him.”

“I really can’t give you Ben’s exact location. It’s not ethical for me to do that. But would you like to give me a message for him?”

“Aaarrrgh!” said Marina.

“Sorry, but that’s a bit hard to translate. How about a letter?”

“I’ve had enough of letters, thank you very much.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Just tell him I’ve been worried sick and to please call me. It’s important. Do not pass along the part about killing him.”

“No, of course not.”

Marina sighed. “Okay, Gina. Thank you. Now, exactly what do I owe you for not telling me where he is? Oh, fudge. I don’t care. Just send me a bill.”

IN HER OFFICE at the Reston Foundation, Marina leaned back in her leather chair and rubbed her bare feet on the mink-covered foot-rest under her modern maple desk.

She did not believe in killing animals for their fur, but when your grandmother had already bought the mink in question in the form of a coat, what were you to do? She refused to wear it—not that it was possible here in Miami—and so she’d used it for other things.

One of her great pleasures in life was to sit naked on her mink-upholstered vanity stool while she did her makeup and hair—or obsessed about where to find her fiancé.

Working construction.

Now, there were any number of places that Ben could be doing that…but again, a gut instinct had her dialing Mathew Tremaine’s number. Ben would have wanted to look out for his employees, find them other placement. He’d call Tremaine. And if he was working construction himself, then it was quite possible that he’d ask Mathew to hire him, too.

Just as Tremaine’s assistant answered the phone at his office, she hung up. Better to do this in person and be able to see his face.

An hour later, Marina swept into his office, her assets showcased in a tight, peridot-green silk top and black hot pants that were just shy of indecent. Tendrils of her chestnut hair cascaded from a loose knot on her head, secured by two decorative chopsticks. Gold and peridot chandelier earrings dangled midway to her shoulders and a large peridot tear-drop nestled just at the top of her abundant cleavage.

“Mathew! Darling! How have you been?”

Tremaine had the body of a scarecrow and the face of a bullfrog, topped by sparse graying hair. His odd appearance hid a creative mind and great generosity, but the guy was always a little challenged in the babe department. Marina felt a bit guilty taking advantage of this, but the end justified the means.

His pale gaze darted to her cleavage and stuck there as if superglued. He couldn’t help it, poor man—she’d engineered her outfit with that result in mind. So she didn’t hold it against him. Marina repeated her question, since he seemed not to have registered it the first time.

“Mathew. How are you?”

He gulped as she leaned forward to brush one of Gnarly’s hairs off her knee. Then she sent him a dazzling smile.

“Just fine,” he almost squeaked.

“Wonderful. Listen, I wanted to ask you something about the plans for our house.”

Discomfort crossed his face. “Er—the house?”

She nodded.

“I thought—that is—um. I thought you and Ben weren’t, ah, going to build it after all.”

She dropped her Vuitton bag in his visitor’s chair and put her hands on her hips. “Wherever did you get that idea, silly?”

“Ben told me yesterday.”

Aha! They’d been in touch. “Really. Well, that’s news to me. You know,” she said, fiddling with her earring and batting her eyelashes, “he did say he’d be out of pocket for a while, but…”

Mathew’s eyes almost popped out of his head as she shamelessly forced her shoulders back so that the twins thrust forward, launching like pleasure missiles.

She cocked her head and turned a melting gaze upon him. “Oh, gosh. This is a tiny bit embarrassing, but…darling Mathew…do you know where he is?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Tremaine said, rapidly blinking. Then he fixed her with a too-bland stare.

“Mmm.” She sashayed forward and sat on the edge of his desk, never taking her eyes off his.

He swallowed convulsively and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. His gaze fell into her cleavage again.

Marina leaned forward some more and shook her finger at him. “Naughty, naughty, Mathew. Didn’t your mama ever tell you not to lie?”

He blushed to the roots of his hair. “Lie?”

Her voice low and husky, she said, “I should spank you, bad boy.”

His eyes glazed over and he almost drooled onto his desk. “Sp-spank?”

“Mmm-hmm. Take down your pants and—”

He shot backward in his rolling chair and crossed one leg over the other, clasping his hands over his crotch. He wiped sweat from his temple with the back of one hand. “Ms. Reston, please.”

“Please what, honey?” She moistened her lips.

He jerked at his tie as if strangled.

“Where is Ben, sweetie? C’mon, you can tell me. I know he’s working construction. Is he on the job at that new auto dealership you’re doing?”

Tremaine shook his head.

“Then—” She tapped her fingernails on his desk “—on site at the lieutenant-governor’s beach house?”

“N-no.”

She sauntered around the desk and grabbed his chin between her thumb and forefinger. “Where is he, honey? Don’t be a bad boy, now. Tell Miss Marina where Benny is. I know he’s working for you.”

She didn’t, but bluffing got her the information.

“Davie,” he gasped, cross-eyed, his nose disappearing into her cleavage. “Our big condo units there.”

“Oh, Mathew.” Marina smiled. “I could kiss you.” She stepped back and then did kiss him, right on the mouth. No tongue action, though—she had to draw the line somewhere.

Tremaine sat stunned and paralyzed as she picked up her purse, hitched it over her shoulder and walked to the door. His eyes were riveted helplessly to her ass, as if it were a priceless piece of art and he were a collector.

Just to punish him a little for trying to keep Ben’s whereabouts from her, she rolled her hips with the last few steps and shot him a provocative look over her shoulder.

Evil? Not at all. Women had to use what power they had in this man’s world.

“Thanks, babe,” she said. “You enjoy the rest of your day, now. And don’t worry—I never reveal a source.”

3

MARINA GUNNED the Porsche down a dirt road in Davie, Florida. She wore a very short, painted-on white jean-skirt, hand-embellished with embroidery that climbed her hips and blossomed on the small seat. The button on the fly had been imported from Morocco and the artist had signed the low-dipping waistband.

Giuseppe Zanotti had crafted her sandals, Catherine Malandrino had sculpted her clingy, belly-baring top and Bobbi Brown took responsibility for her lush lips and full, expertly lined lashes. God had given her a set of long, slim legs; her trainer had perfected them. God had not provided her highlights or her voluptuous bustline, but Marina would go to her grave swearing that He had.

She had dressed to kill and, if she did say so herself, she looked like hot sex on a stick. Ben would drop to his knees and crawl after her.

She pleasantly envisioned herself planting her bejeweled toes in the center of his forehead, so he had to suck on her spike heel. Then he’d beg her forgiveness….

The 911 sped around a last curve leading to a vast construction site that teemed with hot, sweaty, shirtless men framing out a very large building. According to Mathew Tremaine, one of those hot, sweaty, shirtless men was Ben.

She squealed the car to a halt, unbuckled her seat belt and vaulted out, her chestnut hair streaming in the wind. Several guys on the crew stopped work to stare as she strode toward them wearing her oversized Dior sunglasses. One of them whistled, one clapped a hand over his heart and another almost stepped on his tongue.

“Hello, boys.” Marina accepted a big beefy hand up onto the concrete slab and rewarded its owner with a dazzling smile. Then her gaze narrowed on a set of familiar shoulder blades about a hundred feet away.

Ben’s back was brown from the sun and rippled with muscle as he bent toward his task. Sweat ran in rivulets down his spine; dotted his neck and soaked his hair. She stood stock-still in helpless female appreciation at the way his torso segued into a narrow waist and slim hips; at the firm, well-developed backside under his leather tool belt, the long legs encased in filthy jeans.

Delgado personified power. Raw, dirty, animal force—dear God, her Ben had it in spades. No matter how angry or hurt or devastated she was, he was the kind of man a woman would lift her dress for. Hungrily. Shamelessly. Almost involuntarily—not having any real choice about it.

As if he could sense her gaze on his bare back, Ben turned, his eyes widening as he saw her. For a split second, she felt that naked, helpless feeling and she craved the scent of his skin as it moved over hers. Then he broke the spell himself.

“Go away,” he said.

Rage and frustrated love exploded inside her. “You son of a bitch!” she shrieked.

He closed his eyes, while every man on the site turned and stared, now. She didn’t care.

Relief burst within her next. He was alive, not broken and bleeding in a ditch somewhere, or unconscious from pills or booze. It was one thing for Gina Keys to tell her—and quite another for Marina to see it herself.

“How could you? How could you do this to me, Ben? I’ve been a wreck, worrying about you!”

“Marina, mi amor, get back into your car and go home. This isn’t the time or the place—”

She ran at him, her fists clenched. “A letter, you coward? How could you break up with me in a letter? You didn’t have the nerve to say it to my face?”

Marina reached him and threw a wild punch at his chest.

Ben allowed her to hit him once, then twice.

“A letter?” called one of the onlookers. “Christ, Delgado. That’s cold.”

Another guy spit on the ground. “Whoa. You let this little hottie go?”

Ben’s eyes snapped in annoyance.

She hit him again, and he grasped her wrist and held it. She threw her Chanel purse at him with the other hand, began to cry and then aimed a fist at his solar plexus. He commandeered it, too, before she made contact, staring down at her with those dark, unfathomable eyes of his.

“That’s right, Benny, you show her who’s boss,” some lowlife hollered.

“How did you find me?” Ben growled.

“What do you care?” She struggled in his grasp, all too aware that her cool, carefully calculated image had gone up in smoke. She could feel the heat radiating off his skin, smell his perspiration and the leather of his tool belt and the cool mint of his breath as he held her captive. “Let me go!”

In spite of her anger, a sexual current shot through her, a primal response to the ripped expanse of muscle, the rock-hard chest inches away from her. A mere glance from Ben could cause her nipples to ache and, at the moment, his eyes roamed over her from head to toe.

Her mouth went dry and her knees almost buckled at the look on his face: Hungry, punishing, loving—all at the same time. He looked as if he wanted to screw every inch of her—and it made her feel faint.

Another male voice called, “This little filly is on the market, Delgado?”

Ben’s mouth tightened.

“We’ll take her off your hands, buddy,” yelled another one. More whistles and catcalls ensued. A guy with three belly rolls grabbed his crotch suggestively.

Ben silenced them with a look and loomed over her protectively. “Damn it, Marina, why did you come here?” He released her wrists and shook her gently by the shoulders. Then his mouth crushed hers and his arms wrapped around her as if he’d never let her go.

All thoughts of killing him flew out of her head as she helplessly kissed him back. He lifted her, she wrapped her legs around him. Before she knew it, they were off the concrete slab in a hail of lewd, encouraging cheers and Ben was striding toward the construction trailer with her.

She forgot about power, about dignity, about hurt. She couldn’t care less about his dirt or his sweat or his ripe male odor. All that mattered was him plastered against her, his lips to her lips, his chest to her chest, his sex to her sex.

The bulge in his jeans pressed into the scrap of lingerie at the heart of her, and she almost came before they got to the trailer door.

Frigid, artificial air washed over her as he wrenched it open, stumbled up the steps and inside and locked the door behind them. Then he set her on top of a battered vertical filing cabinet, rucked up her skirt and tore off her panties.

His face pressed between her thighs, his tongue pushed in side her and she screamed helplessly. He didn’t stop when she convulsed and beat her heels on his back, just pulled her forward, settling his big hands under her buttocks and feasting on her until she came again and again and finally begged him to stop.

He pulled her skimpy top and bra down around her waist and devoured her breasts, suckling the tips until she thought she’d die of needing him inside her.

He tore open his fly, freed the hard, heavy length of him and scooped her up again. Then he drove into her with a primal groan.

She spasmed around him again immediately, colors bursting behind her eyelids, while he drove harder, faster, deeper, sliding against her flesh until the tensing of his muscles, the guttural groan, the last mighty thrust told her he’d come, too.

“Dios mío, Marina. Dios mío. Te amo.” One hand still supported her bottom, one clasped her to him.

Just hearing his words almost made her come again, all by herself. He loved her. He loved her… Everything was going to be okay. This was all just a big mistake, an emotional reaction on his part.

They collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily, Marina calm and blissful. “Whose trailer is this?” she asked.

“The foreman’s. He’s at a meeting, lucky for us.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said.

“Neither did I.”

“I was going to cut you off for the next five years.”

He sat up; was silent. Pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

“Ben tell me—what are you doing here?”

“What does it look like? I’m working construction.”

“Why did you leave me that letter and disappear? When are you coming home?”

Ben sucked in a breath and got to his feet, six foot two of naked, sweaty sex-god. His abs were like steel; his biceps as big around as her thighs. He pulled up his boxers and jeans without a word.

Marina sat up, pulled down her skirt and narrowed her eyes on him. Surely, his body language wasn’t telling her what she thought it was? “Ben? You are coming home?”