Chapter Four
What fresh hell was this?
Jade’s one-night stand was her contractor?
No, no, no!
Did that mean he lived in Shell Grove? Because, what the hell?
There had to be some sort of mistake. She hadn’t kicked a puppy. And she often gave money to the homeless. She didn’t deserve karma this messed up.
“Red?” Hunter—not Bob—repeated. “You’re Jade Hollingsworth?”
So this was what going into shock felt like. She had always wondered.
She thought she nodded, but there was no way to be sure. “You’re Coastline Construction?”
He looked just as flabbergasted about the situation as she did, which made her feel a teensy bit better.
“Uh, yeah. I own the company.”
Well, he hadn’t lied. Technically, he was in construction.
Un-freaking-believable.
“Why were you in Harperville yesterday?” she asked, still trying to make sense of everything.
“A meeting. It got out late,” he said. “I didn’t feel like driving home last night.”
But her life would have been a whole lot less complicated if he had.
Then again, without him she never would have visited The Land of Multiple Orgasms. It was a lovely place she wouldn’t mind vacationing in for a while.
Whoa. What the hell was she saying?
This, right here, was exactly why she didn’t do one-night stands.
She rubbed her temples, and for a brief second, she thought she might faint. That would have been ridiculous, though. So debutante. She fought to steady her feet. Get ahold of yourself.
So she’d slept with her contractor. Ex-contractor. So she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him all morning. Big deal. The world was not ending.
“You’re from here?” she demanded.
He grinned, looking more and more pleased at her frazzled state. She wanted to throttle him. She was reeling at this wildly unexpected turn of events, and he looked almost tickled about it.
“I am,” he said. “Lived here my whole life, aside from the few years I lived in Charleston after high school.”
She nodded several times—probably looking like a deranged bobble head. “Well, I would say it’s nice to officially meet you, but we kind of have a problem here.”
His top lip curled and he raised an eyebrow. “Do we, Red? How do you figure?”
The way he crossed his thick arms across his body caused images of the night before to flicker through her mind. How powerful his body had been. How easily he had dominated her in bed.
Stop it.
She was not going to think about last night. From here on out, she was putting it behind her and moving on with her life.
Then again, maybe she could use the situation to her advantage. After their night together, he surely wasn’t still going to turn down the job. Was he?
“It’s Jade,” she said through gritted teeth. “And yes, we do have a problem, because I hired you to do a job and you quit on me.”
His smug expression was wiped from his face and his jaw clenched. “I explained in my email my reason for having to back out. I’m sorry, I just don’t have time to work on your store renovations. But I can help you find someone else.”
She felt her blood pressure rise. And it wasn’t just from anger.
He wears those jeans really well.
“I need to be open for summer business, and we had already created a floor plan,” she snapped. “I don’t have time to start from scratch with someone else. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“I’ll pass everything along to whoever you choose for the job,” he said easily, like none of this fazed him.
Of course it didn’t.
It wasn’t his life going haywire.
“Well, that’s comforting,” she said curtly. “You know, bailing on someone the day before they get into town—through an email, no less—is a pretty crappy thing to do, and certainly not very professional.”
He looked away and did the chin-rubbing thing that had driven her crazy last night. Don’t think about it.
“Again, I’m really sorry,” he said in a low voice. “Believe me, any other time I’d be happy to help you out. I just— I can’t.”
“Save your breath, Hunter.” She pivoted and headed for the door at a brisk pace. She was so mad she was afraid steam was going to start coming out of her ears. “I’ll figure it out without your help.”
Crap, crap, crap.
If only she knew how.