Chapter 9

Scott

Another day, another dollar closer to my dreams, and I was getting some serious work done today. I didn’t know what it was about Cassie, but seeing her across the site lit a fire under my ass. I couldn’t get close enough to talk to her that morning, so I just pushed through the day, meeting all my daily quotas by lunchtime. When the lunch bell rang out from the speaker, I put down my gear and headed over to get a cup of coffee. As I turned the corner, I almost ran head-on into Cassie.

“Whoa!” She laughed. “Slow down, Rambo.”

“Hey, coffee is calling my name,” I said.

She smiled and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and adjusted her helmet. The sunlight shined down, creating sparkles on her rosy cheeks. I was so damn attracted to her, and I’d thought about sex more since I met her than in the whole thirty years I had been alive. I knew I needed to stay away from her though. She was dangerous, and I was definitely playing with fire. It was so hard though, and I found myself turning and walking over to the dumpster area with her so she could make her hourly safety checks for Bill. She stopped and wrote something down before looking back at me and smiling sweetly. I shouldn’t have been there, but I couldn’t help myself.

“I heard you killed your quotas today,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I don’t know what got into me, but I busted them out as fast as I could.”

“Good for you,” she said. “And good for us. That caught us up, like, half a day.”

“Nice,” I said, nodding my head and realizing we were kind of in a secluded area. “I like to help out wherever I can, and these other guys aren’t going to rush for anything.”

“Well hopefully they pick it up a little bit,” she said, walking out into the open.

I looked up, and I felt like everything was instantly in slow motion. I reached out for Cassie, yelling for her to stop as a crane started to swerve toward us, not seeing us stepping out from behind the dumpsters. I leaped through the air and pushed Cassie to the ground, landing on top of her and covering her head as the crane swung over us and unloaded into the dumpster. I lay there for a minute covering my head, breathing deeply. Slowly, I looked up and watched the crane turn and head back to the site. They hadn’t even noticed us diving out of the way, and one or both of us could have been killed. That was a safety concern that would need to be fixed. If I hadn’t been there, Cassie would have been out of luck.

“What happened?” she said, looking up at me.

“That crane. It almost made you a pancake,” I said, looking down into her eyes.

“God,” she said, her cheeks turning red. “You saved me.”

Immediately, I felt butterflies in my stomach, and sparks began to fly between the two of us. Just feeling her body underneath mine turned me on, and at the moment, all I wanted to do was kiss her. I looked deeply into her eyes for several moments while lying there in the dust and dirt. My heart was beating a million miles a minute, and for a second I was sure we were going to lock lips. However, as a load of wood was dropped, echoing over the site, I shook my head and realized that it was probably a horrible idea.

I looked down and noticed that I was still lying on top of her, so I pulled myself to my feet and reached down, taking her hand. She stood up and dusted herself off before walking over and picking up her helmet and clipboard. She turned back to me and looked from side to side, making sure no one had seen what had just happened between the two of us. The last thing we needed was for someone to have walked over and caught us lying on the ground staring into each other’s eyes. There would be little either of us could say to make any sense out of it.

“That was close,” I said. “I’m glad I was out here with you.”

“Me too,” she said, wiping dirt from her pants. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” I smiled. “Just another day on the site, building houses and saving damsels in distress.”

“Right.” She laughed. “I hope that isn’t a normal occurrence here.”

“Not many damsels,” I said. “So, I was wondering, what do you think your dad would do if he found out we had slept together? Would it be as bad as I’m thinking?”

“Probably worse,” she said. “He would probably skin you alive. I am his only child and a girl, so he is on, like, protective overload when it comes to me. I had to go stag to prom because he wouldn’t let me go on a date.”

“Seriously? Skin me alive?”

She chuckled. “Yep.”

“Who knew I was that forbidden,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m touched by it though. I can tell he really sees me as someone important.”

“For some reason, I don’t think it’s love for you.” She laughed.

“Oh, that’s right. I’m the roughneck, and you are the princess,” I said. “For a second, I felt really important.”

She laughed and shrugged her shoulders, looking over at Bill coming out of the trailer. She turned back to me and held up the clipboard, letting me know she had to get back to work. I wasn’t ready to let the conversation go though. I felt kind of insulted by the fact that her father would do anything he could to keep her away from a guy like me. As if I was the worst she could end up with. In my book, being with some stuffed-shirt douchebag who was all about money and cheated on women would be much more of an insult to her virtue, but I guessed when you were rich, you wanted rich to stay in the family. I felt up for the challenge, though, and I wanted to go out of my way to prove everyone wrong, just like with my business goals. No one thought I would ever own a hardware store, which was half the reason I worked so hard at it. This felt like the same kind of thing, only the prize at the end was a beautiful woman.

I may have grown up poor, without the newest clothes, the newest gadgets, or the best car, but I knew how to treat a woman. If my mother taught me anything, it was that. She never let me think that settling was okay, and she ground into me that I was capable of anything I set my heart on. My heart, this time, was set on Cassie, and there was no one in this world that was going to sit there and tell me I wasn’t good enough for her because my bank account didn’t read in the millions of dollars. If Cassie wanted to be with me, and I wanted to be with her, there was nothing I was going to let stand in our way of that, especially not when it came to some corporate rich-guy mentality and whether I was high enough in society for their liking.

“Hey,” I said before Cassie could walk away. “I’ll see you at the bar on Friday night.”

“You will?”

“Yeah, I will,” I said in an commanding tone. “You’ll be there at seven to meet me.”

“Right,” she said with a smile.

She turned and walked toward the office trailer, looking back at me and shaking her head. She liked it when I took control, and I liked the way she made me feel when she bit her lip and looked at me that way. I went back to work, busting through the rest of the day and heading home to get cleaned up. Afterward, I met Landon at the bar for drinks.

“Hey, man,” he said, shaking my hand. “Good to see you in one piece and all cleaned up.”

“Yeah, for me too,” I said, thinking about the crane from earlier.

“So, what’s up? You look bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” he said and laughed.

“Mostly the same old thing except I met a girl. Her name is Cassie,” I said, leaving out the fact that she was my boss’s daughter. “We, uh, met at the bar Friday night, had some mind-blowing sex, amazing conversation, and, yeah, a change of pace for me I guess.”

“Dude, that is awesome,” he said. “It’s about damn time you got laid. You seriously were in the most epic drought of all time, and to make it worse, you were doing it to yourself.”

“Yeah, well, I hadn’t met anyone who really peaked my interest enough to take home. These girls are all looking for a husband, and I have other things going on.”

“Well, either way, maybe now you can loosen up a little bit and stop being so serious all the damn time.” He chuckled. “I was starting to think you had lost your touch.”

“Nah. I’ve still got it,” I said.

“I can see that, dude.” He smiled and nodded his head. “So, tell me about this chick. Is she hot?”

“Holy shit, dude,” I said, shaking my head. “She has these curves that could kill, and her eyes are this magnificent green color. Her body moved like nothing I have ever seen before. Seriously, she was fucking captivating. It’s no joke. And she is funny as hell and appreciates my sense of humor, which is a first for girls in this town. She’s a rich girl, though, so I guess she really isn’t from the town. She’s here at home on her summer break, and it was completely unexpected. I didn’t see it coming at all. One minute we were talking, and the next minute we were at my house having fucking hot, mind-blowing sex everywhere.”

“Wow,” he said, looking at me strangely. “She sounds like the kind of girl I want to meet.”

“Yeah, except your bullshit lines would never work on her,” I said, laughing. “She’s too smart for that.”

“Hey, my lines are sweet,” he said. “They have rarely failed me—at least in the short term.”

“The long term is when you get the black eye.”

“Not this time. This time I ducked, and let me tell you, that redhead, she has a mean streak in her like nothing I’ve ever seen. Afterward is the best, though, because make-up sex with a crazy fire-hair is out of this fucking world,” he said. “But, man, I am happy you met this girl. It sounds like you are really into her. I mean, I haven’t heard you talk about anyone like that the entire time I have known you.”

“Huh?” I said, looking over at him. “No, man, it’s not like that. I’m just having some fun with a chick who’s looking for the same thing; that’s all. You have to remember, I have my eyes on the prize. I have goals I’m trying to reach, and I am not going to let any girl distract me from them. I can’t be the guy who raises a generation of construction workers. It’s just not for me. I’m going to make this shit happen, and no one is going to turn me from that.”

“I don’t know,” he said, sipping his beer. “From the way you’re talking, it sounds like she already has.”