Sweeping The Bride Away

Lillian stopped and peered over her glasses. “Is he here?”

“Not yet. Any minute.”

Lillian didn’t look too concerned. “Well then, you have plenty of time.”

“No, I don’t.” Cassidy tried anyway, but as always, protests with Lillian were useless.

“I talked it over with Dan this morning and he agreed with me.”

Of course he had, Cassidy thought. He’d just smiled and nodded, just like his father did when Lillian got her teeth into something.

“Orchids. We’ll be doing orchids. I think that’s the perfect flower, and we’ll get them at Estelle’s. All I need to tell her is the color, although honestly I think we’ll be sticking with pure white. You do agree white is best, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Cassidy said in resignation, giving Lillian a smile and a nod. Anything to get Lillian out of the house.

The last thing Cassidy needed was Lillian scaring off the contractor. She’d done enough damage with the city inspector.

“Excellent. I’ve also booked the church for 3:00 p.m., June 10. An afternoon wedding is best, and your rehearsal dinner is the night before. I’m still choosing the location. I can’t decide between The Ryan Room or Gillamaine’s.” Lillian stopped to draw a rare breath. “We also have a private appointment tomorrow evening at Monica’s Boutique to find you an appropriate wedding dress.”

“I thought I’d wear my mother’s dress,” Cassidy said. “It’s in a box in the attic, and…”

Lillian’s mouth dropped open in surprise and she looked as if Cassidy had grown another head. “That won’t do, dear, especially with your parents getting divorced. Heavens, no.” Lillian shook her head vehemently. “Tomorrow evening at six. We’ll be the only ones in the shop. I’ll pick you up at five. You know how traffic can be.”

Cassidy gave Lillian another smile and nod before panic struck. Was that a truck pulling into the driveway? It was. Not good. Somehow Cassidy managed to usher Lillian to the door and got her through it. “See you tomorrow, Lillian.”

Cassidy leaned back against the door and took a moment to sigh with relief. Home safe.

“Oh, you must be the contractor,” she heard Lillian say.

Nope, out at third. Cassidy threw open the front door and walked out. The Ford 350 truck now sitting in her driveway looked as if it had known better days. Red with faded black lettering on the passenger side door, it proudly proclaimed to be from J & B Construction.

“You are the contractor, right?” Lillian asked.

“That would be me, ma’am.”

Great. Lillian was already engaging the contractor in conversation. Did the infernal woman ever stop talking? Cassidy bit her lip and sped up. Wearing heels didn’t help.

Worse, once again she’d had a mean thought about Lillian. That was so unlike herself. She usually had such good manners and polite thoughts.

And just when had the front walk gotten so long? Finally Cassidy reached the back of the truck. The contractor had his back to her, with Lillian facing him. He stood about six-six and had a nice posterior. Great, Cassidy thought. One night with Sara and now she was looking at everyone.

Cassidy paused just a moment, turning around to take a second look at something she’d at first only caught in the periphery of her eye.

Just what did that homemade back license plate say? Power Strokers do it better? Dear Lord. Don’t let Lillian see that.

“What’s that license plate mean?”

Too late.

“It’s the engine. Ford has a diesel power stroke.”

Cassidy saw Lillian nod as if she understood. “I see,” Lillian said. “But shouldn’t you have a real license plate?”

“Trucks over a certain gross vehicle weight don’t need back plates. We pull trailers.”

“Oh. So that plate really isn’t a sexual thing at all.”

“Uh, well,” the contractor began.

Cassidy rolled her eyes and stepped closer. Time to interrupt before someone got himself in deep trouble with the matriarch of the Houston morality police. “Hi, I’m Cassidy Clayton. I believe you’re looking for me.”

As he turned around, she gasped. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Jake had said…

Mistake number five didn’t look surprised to see her. Instead he gave her a wide smile.

“Hello again,” he said. “I’m here to do your work.”

LILLIAN GLANCED over her glasses, her gaze speculative. “You two have met?”

“Yes,” he said, his gaze never leaving Cassidy’s.

“No,” she said, wrenching hers away.

Lillian’s head turned from one to another as if she were watching a championship Ping-Pong match. “So which is it?”

“No, we haven’t met,” Cassidy inserted quickly. She gave the man a wide smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She had never thought she would see him again! After all, wasn’t he a president? He really was a one-man, well, a two-man operation. After talking to a receptionist, and then Jake, she’d hoped otherwise.

“We just talked on the phone today. This is my contractor, uh…” After rolling his name on her tongue all day, now she couldn’t get his name out.

“Blade,” he finished smoothly, returning her fake smile with an infuriatingly real, and extremely sexy, one of his own.

“Blade,” Cassidy repeated. She shot him a warning glance and hoped the man had enough brain cells upstairs to figure out what she meant—keep quiet.

Seemingly satisfied with the explanation, Lillian broke into a small smile. “So, you’re doing all the repairs on Cassidy’s house?”

“That’s what I intend on doing,” he replied. His tone insinuated to Cassidy that there might be more to his plan. Cassidy shifted on her feet.

“Oh, good,” Lillian said, seeming not to notice the sexual undercurrents as she warmed to a topic she knew way too well. “Cassidy needs to get rid of this house quickly. Thank goodness it closes in two weeks. I mean, you heard why she has to sell it didn’t you? Her philandering father left her mother for a younger woman and…”

Great. One more complication to her already hectic life. Now the infernal contractor, Blade—she got his name right this time—knew her personal business. First things first. Time to get Lillian moving toward her own home.

“I doubt he really cares about my parents’ problems, Lillian,” Cassidy said. Relying on her training as an image consultant, she froze her smile in place and hoped that Lillian would get the subtle message. Instead Lillian looked confused.

Cassidy wanted to scream. Did no one around her understand body language? This was her career, and she was good at it. Somehow she managed to keep her voice calm. “I’m sure he’s on the clock, and I’m sure he wants to go home soon. I’ll see you at five tomorrow.”

“Five,” Lillian repeated. She let her gaze rove over Blade one last time. Cassidy bristled. Did every woman stare at him like that? Then Lillian straightened as if the moment hadn’t occurred and gave Cassidy a stern look of warning. “We need to be on time tomorrow. Monica’s is open only to us, so don’t forget. Five.”

“As if you’d let me forget,” Cassidy said under her breath after Lillian slipped through the gate in the hedge between the two side yards.

His voice was right by her ear. “So I take it that’s the infamous mother-in-law-to-be.”

“That’s her.” Cassidy whirled around and found herself facing Blade’s chest. Whoa. She took a step back “Would you care to explain what you are doing here?”

“I’m the contractor.”

Why did he upset her equilibrium so? “Yes, well, your card said you’re the president.”

He grinned, and Cassidy wished she’d never called him. “Oh, that’s a little joke Jake and I have. We own the company together. He’s also a president. But I can assure you, I’m a contractor.”

She struggled to regain control of the mess she was now in. “Well I can see that. You have a truck, and you’re dressed in—”

“They’re called carpenter whites. Whites for short.”

Cassidy swallowed. Never had a pair of dirty white pants and a dirty white T-shirt looked so good. They hinted too well at what lay beneath. And just when had he gotten so tall? And his chest so broad? She gathered her wits, and rallied.

“Well, why didn’t you say something on the phone when I called?”

His greenish-blue eyes twinkled, drowning her. “And ruin the surprise?”

She found a life preserver. “I don’t like surprises.”

His cheek dimpled as his smile curved upward. “I do, especially when it was a phone call from you. Imagine you calling me, especially after insisting you didn’t need my help last night. I thought you’d just throw my card away.”

She had, but she wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of knowing that.

His voice washed over her. “Ironic isn’t it, how fate works?”

“Look, this is a business arrangement.” She stressed the word business.

He shot her another infuriating grin, as if he knew exactly what she was really thinking. “Never said it wasn’t.” He sobered his expression for a second. “Look, do you want me to do this work or not? Or would you rather hire someone else?”

Cassidy drew herself up. As if she could find another contractor on this short notice, and he knew it. After all, she only had ten business days until closing. “Fine, then. Come inside and I’ll show you what that infernal city inspector is referring to.”

With a huff she turned and walked toward the house.

IT WAS ALL BLADE COULD do to stop from humming to himself. He’d made one change to Jake’s misguided plan.

He’d borrowed one of his foremen’s trucks for the occasion, and from the expression on Cassidy’s face, it had been worth it. While Jake wanted him to reveal who he was, Blade didn’t. Why spoil her preconceived notions? No, his plan of appearing like the everyday Joe that Cassidy had pegged him for had gone off perfectly.

Blade grinned at his success. Earlier that day he’d considered Jake’s suggestion of driving his own truck, but the more he thought of it, the more he had decided not to.

She already thought he was just a blue-collar workingman. While Blade had a diesel Ford 350 himself, he knew it didn’t look like what Cassidy thought a contractor’s truck would look like, not with leather seats and being loaded with every known option.

Besides, she’d never believe his truck cost almost as much as a Corvette.

So, instead he had borrowed Frank’s truck, and of course, the forty-year-old Frank had been only too happy to exchange his work truck for Blade’s new BMW convertible, which, too, had cost a few hundred less than Blade’s truck.

“I’ll even take the wife on a date,” Frank had said with a grin. “I’ll tell her I sold the truck. It’ll pay her back for my license plate.”

Blade had laughed. Everyone knew Frank’s wife was a practical joker, and she’d gotten him the plate as a gag gift for his fortieth birthday.

Blade snapped to attention as Cassidy began talking. “This is the first predication,” she said as she came to the front steps. “He said something about needing some new boards, plus he wanted the entire front porch painted.”

“I saw that on the fax you sent,” Blade said. He reached into the pocket of his pants. “I brought it with me.”

Cassidy’s lips thinned into a slight smile. “You’re so efficient.”

“That would be me,” he replied, ignoring her slight sarcasm. Heck, he’d be a mite upset if someone had just pulled this surprise on him. However, he rationalized, he was going to fix her house, so in the end that made it all okay. And despite how pretty she was, he wasn’t going to hit on her the way she obviously thought he was.

His gaze scanned the porch. She did need a few new boards, but nothing really major. “Why don’t you show me the rest?”

“Front door needs painting,” Cassidy said as they walked through it. “All the windows need to have working sashes. Something about the springs being broken. When the city inspector lifted the one in the bay window, the whole window fell out.”

Blade nodded. “That’s not difficult. I know where to get the parts.”

“Good.” And with that, Cassidy was on a roll. Twenty minutes later Blade was certain of two things. One was that the city inspector had been overzealous in citing things that he really didn’t need to have cited. The other was that Cassidy Clayton had grown up with every possible advantage in life.

His bedroom, which he’d shared with his two older brothers, would have fit in the master bedroom closet. The master bathroom of the house, which needed all new plumbing fixtures, was bigger than the living room and kitchen where he’d grown up.

Sure he had a house about the same size now, but he’d worked and sweated for every brick. Cassidy had simply been born into it.

“That’s all of them,” she said. “Think you can have all this work done in a week?”

Blade stared at her. She’d pushed her hair behind her ears and was peering earnestly up at him. Darn, but she was pretty.

“I’m going to have to work nights to get these all finished,” he said. Where those words had come from, he would later decide that he didn’t know. They’d just slipped out. He was the boss. He could do what he wanted, and he could work days.

“You want time and a half?” She seemed shocked.

“I didn’t say that,” he replied, trying to backtrack. “Jake gave you our bid already for all hours worked. No matter what time of day, fixed hourly rate. You only have about twenty hours of work.”

“So what’s the catch?”

Was there a catch? He thought about it a second and dismissed what Jake wanted him to do out of his head. “No catch. It’ll take me about four days of about five hours each. I’ll get here at four and leave by nine.”

She frowned. “Look,” he said, “That’s the best I can do. I’ve got other jobs in the queue, as well, and somehow I’m going to have to balance everything. So I won’t get here until four. But I will get your predications done and have them done before your deadline.”

The thought of him in her house at night seemed so… “I sometimes have to work at night,” Cassidy said, pushing thoughts of Blade in her house at night out of her mind. That was not a path she should tread. He raised an eyebrow, encouraging her to explain, and she felt the need to. “I’m an image consultant, and depending on the day I attend dinner functions and…”

Suddenly he didn’t want to hear about her social life. He cut her off. “If you aren’t here to let me in, then I’ll need a key and your alarm code.”

He almost wanted to laugh at her horrified reaction. “We are licensed and bonded, ma’am.”

“Cassidy,” she corrected automatically. She hated being called ma’am. It made her feel old.

“Cassidy.” He rolled her name on his tongue and decided that he liked it. “Well, Cassidy, since I’m here, shall I get started?”

Her mouth puckered. “You’re starting the job tonight?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Is there a problem with that? I’m already here, and I need to make a list of stuff I need. Plus, you don’t have time to spare.”

He was right.

Cassidy gulped and tore her gaze off Blade’s chest. Last night Sara had said something about stroking it and discovering if his chest was smooth or covered with dark whirls of hair.

If he took off his shirt when he worked in the Texas heat she’d know.

Whoa! Wait right there. Those were not thoughts she should have. Think of Dan, think of Dan.

Oh, God. Dan. He’d be over in less than an hour to take her out to dinner. He had some clients to impress. That meant she needed a shower, and she needed to redo her makeup and…Then again, she also needed to have her predications fixed. What was it Blade had asked?

Normally she wasn’t so scatterbrained. Maybe it was the stress of everything. Her parents had dumped the selling of the family home and moving the few belongings they wanted to keep into her lap.

“No problem,” she said after finally remembering his question about whether he should get started tonight. “Just stay on the first floor.”

The last thing she needed was for him to be in her bedroom. Thankfully that had been one room that hadn’t needed any repairs.

“I’ll try,” Blade replied, his gaze sweeping over her.

“See that you do,” she said, suddenly feeling the need for a long, cold shower. She now knew the truth. She couldn’t blame her physical reaction to him on beer.

Turning, she disappeared up the stairs. She had the distinct impression that he stared at her legs the whole time.

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