Messing with Mac

Oh yeah, she was. For the sledgehammer, anyway.

What could it hurt? She had aggression coming out her ears; for her grandfather, who was probably sitting on a cloud laughing down at her right this very minute, for her mother, who would rather do anything than be a mother, for her dwindling bank account, for the chandelier she’d lost out on…for being alone in all this.

For just about every damn thing in her entire life, she needed that sledgehammer.

Mac held it out.

Her fingers itched.

His eyes sizzled with the dare, and a potent, heady male heat.

“Fine.” She set her hat back on her head, snatched the tool from him, then swore in a very unladylike way as the thing jerked both her arms down with its weight, slamming the heavy sledgehammer to the floor.

Mac tsked. “Sorry, I thought you were stronger than that.”

2

TAYLOR’S ACCUSING EYES speared Mac, and he had to bite back his grin as he lifted an innocent shoulder.

She let out a rude sound, and with determination and aggression blaring out her eyes, she hoisted the sledgehammer up…and nearly fell to her very finely dressed ass. Stumbling back a step, she spread her legs out a little for balance, then sent him a triumphant smile.

It stopped his heart.

Funny, that, since he’d have sworn the organ in question had dried up from abuse and misuse.

Taylor turned her back on him and with all her might, swung the sledgehammer into the wall. When drywall fell and dust rose, she let out a cocky laugh, whirling back to make sure he was looking.

Oh, he was looking. He’d been looking since she’d first sauntered into the room, just as he had a feeling men always looked at Taylor Wellington.

He’d bet his last dollar that she knew it as well. She was a pricey number, all fancy labels and perfect grooming. Stunning, too, with her blond hair, see-through green eyes and a body meant to bring a grown man right to his knees. She had long, willowy curves, outlined in mouthwatering detail beneath the silky sundress that made his hands itch to mess her up. It was crazy, but he had the most inane urge to toss off her hat, sink his fingers into her hair and shake a little, to eat off her carefully applied lipstick that smelled like peaches and cream, to run his hands over that cobalt silk and see if she looked as good undone as she looked done.

But he recognized a spoiled socialite when he saw one. Oh yeah, he did. He’d been there, bought the T-shirt, and because of it, he wasn’t tempted.

Well, maybe a little tempted, but he wasn’t an idiot. She was upset because of some silly little bid she’d lost for a damn light fixture, when Mac had his entire future riding on a bid as well. A bid with South Village’s town council to get in on the area’s renovation and preservation acts. South Village wasn’t some prefab pedestrian neighborhood like Universal’s City Walk, but a genuine historical district in the middle of extensive restoration. He had bid on several of the upcoming jobs that would hopefully set up his business and reputation. Now that was something to get a little excited over, and he was trying not to think about how badly he wanted to be awarded those bids.

Taylor lifted the sledgehammer again, and with all her might, gave it everything she had. Not a strand of hair fell out of place beneath her hat, and nary a wrinkle appeared on those fine clothes. More interesting, he sensed she wasn’t just humoring him here, but was genuinely striving to work off steam. Her mouth was grim, her eyes quite focused on the task, as if she was imagining someone’s face right where the sledgehammer fell.

It shocked him, the barely restrained violence pouring out of her, but what really shocked him was how arousing it was to watch her go at it. With every swing, her perfect, palm-sized breasts jiggled, her hips wriggled, her ass shimmied and shook.

And damn, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. “Remind me to never piss you off,” he said, and she let out a rough sound of agreement as she swung again.

She was going to get blisters if she kept it up, which she appeared to intend to do. He hadn’t expected her to be able to lift the sledgehammer, much less swing it. “Uh…Princess? Don’t you think that’s probably enough?”

Ignoring him, she swung again, but it took a huge effort.

Figuring she had to be nearing exhaustion, he shifted closer, thinking he should grab the sledge-hammer before she hurt herself. That’s all he needed, was to maim the boss before she paid him.

Blocking him with an elbow, she growled, “Back off.”

Torn between annoyance and amusement, he did. “Okay, maybe I was wrong, maybe anger management classes would have been more effective for you.”

“No.” Heave. Smash. Heave. Smash. “You were right, this is good. And…” Heave. Smash. “Cheap, too.”

She paused, gasping for breath.

“You could always just ask Daddy for more money,” he suggested.

She went utterly still. Then carefully and purposely set down the sledgehammer before turning to him, eyes suddenly cold as ice. “You know, I think I’m finished after all. Thank you,” she added politely, and then cool as he pleased, walked past him and quietly shut the door behind her.

Shaking his head, he let out a low whistle. Classy down to the last millimeter, when what she’d obviously wanted was to tear into his hide. Still in that state of amused annoyance, he let himself out of the unit as well, figuring he’d give in on this, her need to have the rest of the day to herself.

Only because it suited him.

Mac got into his truck and drove east. He didn’t live in the high-class, high-rent district of South Village. Nor with the middle class in their gated condo developments and upscale houses that all mirrored each other. He didn’t live with the wannabes on the outskirts either.

He lived exactly where he wanted to, and damn expectations. He lived in the area known as The Tracks, which before the Town Council and Historical Society had gotten a hold of it meant that he lived on the wrong side of the tracks.

He appreciated the irony of it.

In ten minutes he was walking into his own little house, little being the key word here. The first thing he did was toss his mail—unread—on the table, where it knocked over the existing pile of unpaid bills.

Didn’t matter. No matter how big that stack got, he was still free. Free of his family’s obligations, well-meaning but smothering nonetheless. Free of his ex-wife—whom he had to thank for all those un paid bills.

He’d refused to let her live off his very generous family and their money, refused to make her the socialite she wanted to be. As a result, she’d taken everything he owned and then some before purposely and completely destroying him in the only way she could.

By aborting his child.

But he wasn’t going there, not tonight. He stripped, hunted up a pair of beat-up old shorts and headed back out for his own anger management class.

A long, punishing run.

AT THE CRACK OF DAWN the next morning, Mac drove back to Taylor’s building. He had a soft spot for this hour, before the sun had fully risen on the horizon, as no one had yet screwed up his day.

Today he’d have a crew working on the demolition, tearing out drywall down to the wood studs, then stripping old electrical and plumbing lines. Yesterday had been just for him, a way to burn off some accumulated steam. And he’d had plenty of it. There’d been that call from his mother, who in spite of her own life and full-time, very demanding job, was warm and loving and more than a little certain he was wasting away without her home cooking, and when was he going to come home for a Sunday meal?

Then had come the call from his old captain, wanting him back on the police force, which he’d left at the same time as his divorce four years ago. Much as Mac had loved being a cop, he loved rebuilding and renovating more, and always had. He’d been building things, working with his hands, ever since he could remember, and his love of doing so hadn’t changed.

But his purpose had. Life was too damn short, as he’d learned the hard way, and he intended to spend the rest of it doing what he loved. And what he loved was taking old, decrepit, run-down historical buildings and restoring them to their former glory. He’d been doing just that since getting off the force and had never looked back. He’d started out working for a friend of the family, learning the trade. For two years now, he’d been on his own doing mostly single rooms within existing buildings until this last year when he’d taken on whole buildings for the first time.

He’d found his calling. Taylor was his biggest client to date, his biggest job and his stepping stone to the next level.

He hoped. Thanks to Ariel, who’d dragged him through the coals financially, morally and every other way possible, he couldn’t afford to renovate his own place, not yet. Fine. He’d do it for someone else and work his way up. He had no problem with that.

And with that single-mindedness, he parked right in front of Taylor’s building—a miracle given the deplorable parking in South Village—and fervently hoped she’d made herself scarce. He had a crew to think about, and he wanted their minds on work, not on a beautiful woman, no matter how good she’d looked swinging a sledgehammer in all her finery.

His crew was waiting for him, just standing on the front steps, which made no sense. They knew better than to stand around wasting time.

But they weren’t just standing, they were smiling and nodding like little puppets to…surprise, surprise…Taylor.

“It came from Russia,” she was saying, holding up some sort of vase as he strode up the walk, annoyance already starting to simmer.

Taylor stroked perfectly manicured fingers over the smooth, porcelain surface of the vase as she talked, caressing the thing like she would a lover, and Mac’s blood began to beat thick, and not with just annoyance now. An ache, purely sexual, began to spread through his belly.

Which proved it, he was insane.

“It’s worth a small fortune,” Taylor said, seeming lost in the delicate etching on the vase, sighing over the beauty of it as she touched.

The sound of her soft sigh didn’t help Mac’s inner ache, and he spent a moment brooding over the fact he hadn’t been with a woman in a good long while. He hadn’t wanted to, not since Ariel and her cruel betrayal.

But not having a sexual urge wasn’t the same as ignoring one. He looked at the vase in Taylor’s hands and concentrated on her words.

Worth a fortune, she’d said.

Enough to cover the wasted labor for however long she stood there occupying his men’s every thought?

But what did she care how much money he lost in wages unearned? Mac wasn’t exactly sure what had happened yesterday, why she’d momentarily drawn him, given who and what she was—that being a woman too close to Ariel’s type to make him comfortable. But whatever it was, whatever little spark or electrical current of attraction he’d felt in spite of himself, he wouldn’t feel again.

She wore a pair of pale blue capris with a matching short, little cropped jacket, looking like she should be getting ready to walk down the runway instead of standing on the step of her ugly building.

Her hair was pulled back in a careful twist and she wore more of that peach lip-gloss from yesterday.

She was a long, cool drink of water, and even knowing it, even having prepared himself to see her again, he was suddenly dying of thirst, and couldn’t seem to tear his eyes off her.

When she saw him, she stopped talking, rubbing her lips together in a little gesture that signified either nerves or arousal. Either way, awareness shot straight to his groin.

So much for ignoring her. “Why are you here?” he asked.

She lifted a brow, assuring him and everyone around that she considered him a Neanderthal for asking such a question. And okay, yes, maybe his tone had been a bit brusque. After all, she did own the place. But there was some inexplicable…thing going on between the two of them, some amazing thing that reminded him of…a shark bite. Painful, and probably lethal.

But they’d signed a contact, he and she. Every possible little detail had been decided on, down to the last shade of paint on the walls. Her presence here wasn’t required, and in fact, he knew the ratio of work done today would be directly related to how far away she was.

The further the better. “You agreed to move out for the duration of the restoration,” he reminded her.

“I agreed to make sure there were no tenants during the duration. Suzanne and Nicole are gone.”

“But you’re not.”

“I’m not a tenant.”

Shaking his head, he took the last step that put him on even ground with her. Mostly he towered over everyone around him, and knowing it, he usually made a conscious effort not to use his size as an intimidation. But right now he wasn’t thinking intimidation so much as self-preservation. He wanted this job. He needed this job. It was the first thing he’d cared about in far too long. And in a way he was just beginning to understand, he needed to lose himself in the pure joy of the work itself, something he couldn’t do with her parading around all damn day.

“You can’t mean to be here while we work.”

She lifted that chin, eyes flashing. “I’ll do as I please.”

Damn. She did, she meant to be here while they worked. Because she didn’t trust him, or because she wanted to drive him crazy every step of the way?

“Why?”

“I won’t be in your way,” she said in lieu of a real answer.

In his experience, clients couldn’t help but be in the way, always wanting to change the logical order of things, waiting until paint was on the walls or tile on the floor before deciding the color was off, or the brand not quite right. And he had the Town Council and historical society to impress on this one. “Look, Princess—”

“My name,” she said, still smiling that cool smile as she carefully shifted the vase from one hand to the other in a way that suggested she was considering smashing it over his head, “is not ‘Princess.”’

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not trying to be a hard-ass here, it’s just that we’d all be better off if you’d just let us do our jobs.”

“You are a hard-ass, it’s one of the reasons I hired you,” she said, surprising him. “And I think you could try trusting me a little. I’m not going to bog you down.”

Mac didn’t do trust, and even if he did, he’d be crazy to give in to a woman quite used to crooking her little finger and having the entire male population fall over its own feet to please her.

“I’m not,” she repeated, a little softer now, watching him with those clear, clear eyes that weren’t going to give an inch.

He ran his hands over his face, put them on his hips and stared at her, but she was still just waiting with what he figured was the patience of a cobra. “Okay, whatever.”

She was wise enough to keep her smile to herself but he saw the triumph in her eyes, the eyes that only yesterday had turned him on.

Still turned him on.

“You’ll finish the demo downstairs this week?” she asked.

“And upstairs.”

“Oh.” Now something else flickered in her gaze. “Is it really necessary to push your men like that?”

“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.”

Was that concern? If so, it didn’t bear thinking about, as it might soften her toward him. And given her body’s response to his without letting her brain get into the mix, that would be just plain stupid. And dangerous.

“Thanks for the concern,” she said sweetly, and turned away. She entered her apartment, stripped now of all furnishings and personal belongings except for the bedroom. Everything had been taken to her storage unit, where she also kept her precious antiques.

But here, in her private sanctuary, her bedroom, she still had her huge four-poster bed and the luxurious beddings left over from the good old days be fore the end of her bottomless—and now nearly extinct—bank account.