They had planned a wonderful space for Miss Trudi. A workable kitchen, a dining room that opened into a living room, an entrance hall lined with bookcases that she called “the library,” a bedroom suite with vaulted-ceiling sitting area, bathroom and utility area all on the ground floor, plus a guest suite upstairs.
It would be so much more livable than the rambling, decrepit Bliss House. Yet Miss Trudi did not seem enthusiastic.
The older woman had come into Suz’s room and said with such urgency that they should do a walk-through of the site with Max right away. So their work could proceed, she’d said. But if she didn’t like the plan, why was she so eager for the work to proceed?
“The kitchen’s too small,” Miss Trudi said now.
From the expression on Max’s face, Suz could tell this was an old discussion.
“Annette showed you how the windows can work as pass-throughs to the dining room, and—” His gesture to indicate the two rooms brushed Suz’s shoulder. “Sorry.”
“No problem.”
Miss Trudi wasn’t sidetracked. “I want visitors to be with me in the kitchen as at Bliss House. I don’t want a wall there at all.”
Max moved away, resting one shoulder against the weathered brick wall. “It’s a load-bearing wall. Can’t take it out.”
“Can’t another wall bear the load?” Miss Trudi asked. “Then the kitchen could be a more generous size.”
“The working area’s almost as big as you’ve got now. With the separate dining room—”
“A dining room is not conducive to casual interaction. I haven’t served my friends in the dining room in decades.”
“The Bliss House dining room hasn’t been safe for decades.”
Miss Trudi’s face rearranged into the austere lines of a teacher who’s a stickler for discipline. “Maximilian Augusto Trevetti—”
Suz would have to try that on him sometime to see if he looked as abashed when she said it as when Miss Trudi did. At the moment, though, she had another matter to pursue.
“What if you made that wall the divider between the library and the living room, instead of between the kitchen and dining room? As visitors came in and passed your collection of books, Miss Trudi, they would catch glimpses of the living room, and it would be like they were being invited in.”
“An excellent suggestion, Suz! In speaking of the pass-through arrangement, Annette mentioned using shutters on the old windows to allow the option of leaving them open or closed between the two areas.”
“Shutters would work great. You could have them finished on the living-room side to match the walls so when they were closed, you would hardly notice them. That’s—”
She bit her words off when she realized Max had pushed himself away from the wall about five sentences ago. He was looking straight ahead, but with the glazed expression of someone who’s seeing something else entirely.
Like probably his entire construction project crumbling into dust. Taking with it the project’s schedule and budget.
“It wouldn’t work,” she said quickly, trying to backtrack. “I shouldn’t have jumped in where I don’t know—”
“Nonsense.” Miss Trudi trained that stickler look on her now. “Eliciting your ideas is precisely the reason we wanted you to stay.”
Suz gave a fleeting thought to how loosely Miss Trudi used “we” in that phrase.
Then Max was asking, “Where would you move the other rooms?”
“Forget I said anyth—”
“Where,” Max repeated, facing her, his full attention so concentrated it felt like a fifty-pound weight on her chest, “would you move the other rooms?”
He wasn’t going to let her bow out gracefully. He was going to make her expose how little she knew.
“Rotate,” she said.
“Rotate? How?”
She gave her hand a halfhearted twist, like turning on a faucet. “Leave the bedroom suite where it is and move everything else one room clockwise.”
“Show me.” He took her copy of the plan and smoothed it out on top of a stack of lumber. When she hesitated, he handed her a pen from his pocket and insisted, “Show me.”
She sketched a new wall for the other side of the library– entry hall and added shaky lines to indicate configurations for the rest of the downstairs.
“Sort of like that. But you don’t have to tell me it’s not practical, that it won’t work, so—”
“Yeah, it will.” He reached for the sheet. She reflexively held it down with her palm, but he slid the paper out. With his other hand he took back his pen and started tracing over her lines, making them stand out boldly, “In fact, it puts the water and sewage lines for the bathrooms and kitchen in a better configuration.”
“How fortuitous,” Miss Trudi said. “Now aren’t you glad Suz stayed in Tobias?”
“Yes’m,” he said with mock meekness, a grin creeping up. But when he turned to Suz, his gaze was sincere. “This is a great idea, Suz—a creative solution to several issues. You’ve more than earned your keep.”
Suz’s stomach felt like a dish towel someone had twisted to wring dry.
“You have to check this out, Max. Make sure it will work. I’m not sure what I said about the shutters can be pulled off, much less moving the design. It was a…a whim, and you can’t turn the project around on a whim.”
“Not a whim. A good idea. Can’t you take a compliment?”
She waved that away. “Off-the-cuff remarks aren’t something you should rely on.”
Although focused on Max, Suz had been aware of Miss Trudi’s gaze, going from her to him and back as she followed the exchange. Now Max looked toward the older woman, and Suz saw Miss Trudi, the brightness and sharpness in her eyes turned up an extra notch, give him a raised-eyebrow look with a little nod, as if encouraging a student on the verge of making some vital connection.
He frowned.
Suz matched that expression. What was going on?
“Why would you think it wouldn’t?” he demanded abruptly.
“What?”
“Why were you so sure your idea wouldn’t work?”
Trapped for a second, she quickly recovered. “I’m not an architect, am I. How could I possibly expect my idea to work?”
He studied her, the frown still tucked between his dark brows.
“Well, it’s going to work. Yeah—don’t bother to say it again—I’ll check it out. But this is one off-the-cuff remark that I’m betting can be relied on.”
Before Suz could do more than open her mouth to protest, Miss Trudi slipped her hand through Max’s arm and started off with him.
“Once Max makes up his mind, there’s no changing it, at least not without—” she gave Suz a look that Suz had no hope of interpreting “—a great deal of evidence to the contrary.”
Their inspection wrapped up quickly, since Suz hardly said another word. He promised to let them know ASAP about the design change, so Suz and Miss Trudi could adjust their thinking about the interiors.
They started for the house, with Miss Trudi talking away. The material of Suz’s shorts swayed and flirted with the back of her firm thighs.
A change in Miss Trudi’s voice caught his attention. She was looking over her shoulder at him, talking still. She gave him that one-eyebrow-up expression and a sort of nod, as if acknowledging that he understood something just between the two of them.
He didn’t understand at all.
Nobody thinks Suz is just decorative.
That was what he’d intended to say to Juney earlier today. But could Suz possibly think she was just decorative?
But that didn’t fit with the Suz he knew. Sassy and bright and taking no guff from anyone.
A good offense made one helluva defense. The sports axiom wriggled into his head and wouldn’t go away. Sassy and bright and taking no guff could be a way to keep people from seeing that you thought you were just decorative.
Was that the bread crumb Juney had hoped he’d pick up? But how could Suz think that after what she and Annette had done with their business? That took talent, dedication, creativity and hard work—a lot of hard work. Sure luck had a role, but without the others, luck wouldn’t have mattered.
And look at the way Miss Trudi had perked right up at Suz’s idea.
Boy, she hadn’t thought it was a great idea. Not after he and Miss Trudi latched onto it. When he’d complimented her, she’d gotten worse, as if his saying he believed in her idea made her more skittish.
Just then Suz stepped back to let Miss Trudi enter the back door first. He thought she might turn and catch him watching her, so he looked away—and caught Eric watching her.
The younger man must have felt Max’s stare, because he looked toward him, not taking the time to fully mask his pleasure at what he’d been ogling.
“Lenny!” Max called out, a decision suddenly made. “I’m leaving you to wrap up today. I’ve got things to buy.”
The knock at her door Tuesday morning took a moment to register in Suz’s consciousness.
Partly because she first took it to be an element of the syncopated hammering that had started at seven-thirty. And hammering was only one instrument in this building cacophony. Add in the thrum of the generator, the shrill two-toned pound of the hammer guns, the whine of a power saw, men’s raised voices.
And partly because that seven-thirty start had come awfully early, because in a sudden craving for baked solace, she’d been up until three making chocolate-chip cookies in Miss Trudi’s archaic kitchen—the stove had to be a throw-back to Victorian times. The urge for cookies had followed several sleepless hours after a call to her family in Dayton with the news that she was staying in Tobias. There had been tears, flutterings about how the sale of Every Detail meant she could have a genteel life now if she would just put her mind to it and warnings about dangerous and dirty construction sites. Even the temporary nature of the situation hadn’t reconciled her parents to this plan.
On the other hand, her parents hadn’t been reconciled to her leaving Dayton for college, so that wasn’t likely to change anytime soon.
The final part of the delay in that knock registering with Suz was that she wasn’t expecting a knock, since the doors were wide open in a vain attempt to catch a breeze.
But sure enough, when she looked up from the stack of home-building and renovating magazines she’d purchased last night at the grocery store, Max stood beside the open doorway, knocking at the frame, a lineup of workers behind him.
“May we come in?” he asked when he saw he had her attention.
“Sure, that’s why it’s open.”
For some reason that made him frown. An expression that deepened as she unfolded from sitting cross-legged in the center of bed.
She would almost think he was uncomfortable being in the same room with her with a bed in it—but that was crazy. Half the times she’d visited Tobias with Annette she’d slept on the couch in his living room. He never once showed the least discomfort about that. Heck, he’d push her feet aside so he could sit on the couch if she was too slow getting up for his taste.
Besides, for him to be uncomfortable because this was her bedroom, he’d have to be thinking of her as a woman. And he’d made quite clear that making that mistake Saturday night had been an aberration.
“Put that down over there,” he told two workers carrying a large box, pointing to the floor beside the desk. To another pair of men carrying five boxes between them, he added, “Leave those by the door.”
She retreated to the far side of the bed to avoid being trampled by the workers intent on following Max’s instructions. One of them was his foreman, Lenny, whom she’d met at the wedding. He put two boxes, each about half the size of a shoe box, on her desk and set a toolbox at the foot of the bed. As he straightened, he met her eyes and winked.
“All set, boss,” he said to Max. “If you need any more help…”
“I’ll give a shout when I’m ready to put the unit in place.”
It was a dismissal, and the workers filed out quickly. The only one who looked at her was Lenny. He tugged at his ball cap’s brim and smiled. No wink this time. His eyes cut to Max and he seemed to work hard at suppressing the smile.
“Thanks, Lenny.” Max pulled both doors three-quarters closed.
“It gets too hot in here with the doors closed,” she protested.
“We’re going to take care of that.” He squatted down and started opening the big box. The position and movement drew the material of his white T-shirt tight. It conformed to the muscles of his broad shoulders and made his shoulder blades shift sharply under skin and fabric. Then it snuggled up to his backbone as the white cotton dropped into the gap left by the waistband of his jeans, sinking lower and lower, out of sight, until—
“Suz?”
She jumped—and was grateful the involuntary reaction took her backward, because if she’d jumped forward, she would have landed on him. She hadn’t even been aware of moving closer, and here she was practically with her shins against his—admiring phrases from women friends spoken about some men’s great butts floated through her head—his rear end. “What?”
“You’re blocking the light.”
“Sorry.” She turned away at the same time she backed off. “Wanted to see what it is.”
“Air conditioner. A stand-alone unit. It should keep this single room cool enough for you.”
“But…why?”
“Because it gets hot. And fewer mosquitoes get in with the windows closed.”
She stifled the urge to rap him on the head with a rolled-up magazine. Not because of any anti-violence concerns, but because that would have required looking at him while he remained in that position with his jeans pulled across his…rear end, and that darned T-shirt doing its hugging number.
What was wrong with her? She’d seen him in jeans and T-shirt hundreds of times. It was his uniform, his work outfit, his comfort outfit. No big deal.
“I mean,” she said with forced calm, “why bother, since this addition’s going to be torn down when you renovate the main house?”
“You could swelter to death by then and the mosquitoes would pick the bones clean.”
Her heart did a jazzy little tap dance. Probably at the thought of sweltering to death and the lovely image of bone-cleaning mosquitoes. Certainly not because his comment implied she’d be here for some time. Before she could consider that, another angle hit her.
“Annette stayed in this room until last week.”
“It wasn’t as hot then.”
She’d been in Dayton, so she didn’t know, and it sounded reasonable. The kitchen had certainly gotten steamy during last night’s baking.
“What about the budget? How can the project afford an air conditioner that will be used so short term? With Miss Trudi’s house and Bliss House getting central AC, there won’t be a use for it later.”
“It’s not coming out of the project budget. And before you say you can’t accept it from me, you’ve got to. Annette would kill me if I let you suffer.”
“Leaving the doors open has worked fine.”
He pivoted on his toes, still couched down. “You left the doors open? At night?”
“Why not? This is Tobias.”
“Tobias, not Utopia, for God’s sake. From now on you close and lock the doors at night. Understood?”
She nodded. Only because she hadn’t slept that well with them open. Something about the way the gauzy curtains billowed kept making her think someone—no one in particular—was walking into her bedroom.
“So what’s in the other boxes?”
Apparently satisfied with his inspection of the AC unit, he stood—finally—and went to the toolbox. He started rooting around in it, then seemed to change his mind, put it on the desk before reopening it and rooting anew.
“Blinds,” he said at last. Maybe “rooting” wasn’t accurate. He seemed to know exactly where everything was. In quick succession he pulled out three tools and set them on the desk. She recognized the screwdriver and had a feeling one of the others was a wrench.
“Blinds? For where?” She looked around, as if she might somehow have missed a window without curtains on it.
“The doors and windows.”
“There are already curtains on the doors and windows.”
“You can’t see through blinds.”
How could she argue with that? “You didn’t think this was necessary when Annette was here, but you do now?”
“Steve was looking out for Annette by then.” He paused an instant, then started talking quickly—probably so she wouldn’t think he’d meant to imply that their relationship bore any similarity to Annette and Steve’s. He needn’t have worried. “There weren’t three-dozen men working outside the door then.”
A lightbulb moment.
“Ah. So this is to make sure I don’t mingle with the workers?”
“Something like that.”
“I wouldn’t take them away from their work.”
“Right.”
She propped her fists on her hips at that evidence of his disbelief. “I know how tight the schedule is, Max. I wouldn’t— What’s that?” He’d opened one of the boxes Lenny had put on the desk and revealed a metallic gizmo.
“A dead-bolt lock.”
That was what she’d thought. “You’re planning on locking me in?”
Her amused challenge didn’t rattle him a bit.
“Not a half-bad idea.” He strode across the room and studied the doorway. “Nah, I’ll put the key on the inside.”
“Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.”
“This is ridiculous.” She scooped the magazines off the bed and propped the stack on one hip, feeling more off balance than truly angry. “I’ll be in the kitchen until you’ve finished this security frenzy.”
“Good. I could use some peace and quiet while I figure how the AC goes in.”
“Here.” As he passed her on his return to the toolbox, she handed him the pamphlet that had fallen and was in danger of being kicked under the bed.
“What’s that for?”
“The instruction booklet for the air conditioner.”
“Never touch the things. You need an advanced degree to figure ’em out and I never got the basic degree, much less advanced.”
The tone was meant to be joking. But after Saturday night she knew—he couldn’t un-ring that bell—not finishing college bothered him.
“So go back and get the degree.”
“You’d have a hell of a long wait before I got this air conditioner in.” His lips twisted into a half grin as he rubbed his right wrist before selecting a long, narrow, shiny tool. “Nah, I think I’ll muddle along on my own.”
And if that wasn’t Max Trevetti’s motto, she didn’t know what was. She teetered on the edge of pushing it. Of pointing out that after Saturday night it didn’t make any sense for him to pretend he didn’t care.
When she backed away and matched his joking tone, she wasn’t sure if it was for his sake or her own. “Reading the instructions—what was I thinking? Actually reading instructions might dry up every bit of your testosterone.”
“Not likely.”
In the sudden silence, Suz heard a buzz in the room. It sounded vaguely electrical, but Max hadn’t started fiddling with any cords or outlets. So what…?
Then their glances caught for an instant. That was all. An instant, before they bounced off like water on a hot plate.
On second thought, maybe the buzzing was something electrical.
She cleared her throat. “Max, I appreciate your concern. It’s misguided, but I do appreciate it. But I can’t take all this from you. There’s no reason—”
“Annette never complained.”
Ah, that put her in her place—right next to his little sister. She’d been wrong about that buzz. Must be an insect in the room—not that she’d tell him, or he’d have an exterminator on the doorstep in minutes.
“If you think you’re the first interfering, overbearing, overprotective male I’ve had to deal with, you’re wrong. I have four older brothers, remember? You’d have a long way to go to match them.”
“Just trying to uphold the honor of big brothers everywhere.”
“God forbid you let down your big-brother image.” She didn’t sound bitter, not enough that he’d take it seriously. But in case he misread her tone, she shifted quickly to business. “Miss Trudi and I are touring new houses and condos at Lake Geneva this afternoon to get ideas of her likes and dislikes. Would you be available to go over things tomorrow?”
“Eleven-thirty.”
“Fine. Eleven-thirty here.”
She’d taken one step into the hallway when his voice stopped her.
“Not here. At my house—office. Better to meet at the office.”
“Good grief.” Juney halted at the door to the office in exaggerated surprise. “Did you two beat me back or haven’t you gone to lunch yet?”
As if on cue, Max’s stomach grumbled.
“And the answer is, haven’t gone yet,” Juney said.
Suz chuckled, but continued making notes on her legal pad. She’d arrived with pages of questions about what could or couldn’t be done in Miss Trudi’s new space.
Juney had left after twelve-thirty to have lunch with her mother, Gert, who was taking care of Nell while Steve and Annette were on their honeymoon, with help from Miss Trudi and Fran Dalton, Steve’s neighbor and his friend Rob’s younger sister.
He and Suz had kept working.
They’d covered her original questions, then somehow started talking about plans for the main Bliss House renovation. Pretty soon she was making lists of things to check out for him—display cabinets, special lighting, wiring requirements for computerized cash registers and dozens of other details in his mental “deal with it later” file.
All the time they’d talked about the project, he’d second-guessed his insistence that they meet here. The round trip took a big chunk out of his day. But it got them away from that cramped little room that was three-quarters bed. And from glimpses of clothes hanging on the shower-curtain rod to dry. Some practical underwear, a blouse and a skirt. No big deal. He’d faced down women’s underwear and paraphernalia in his bathroom before, so why had he worked at a snail’s pace getting the AC unit hooked up until he’d closed the door to her bathroom?
Besides, meeting Suz at his office cut the time she was around the construction site for Eric and others who hadn’t toed the line—yet—to stare at.
She was a beautiful woman, always had been, but she was Suz, for Pete’s sake, someone he’d sworn to protect and look after—not lust after.
He stood abruptly. “I’m starving. C’mon, let’s get something to eat.”
“You go ahead. I’m going to finish these notes and then get the rundown on sources for material from Juney.”
“Do that after lunch. You gotta eat, Suz. C’mon, we’ll go to the Toby.”
She looked up. “Is that the place whose menu consists of five dozen ways of serving fat?”
“That’s the one,” Juney said before he could answer. “The place where you can get more nutrition by drinking a beer than by eating some of their meals—and that’s where Mr. Health Nut here eats most often.”
“Uh, thanks but no thanks, Max,” Suz said with a chuckle. “I’ll get something later. And you should eat better than that, too. Why don’t you try the vegetarian place down by the library?”
Juney coughed, which did little to hide her laughter.
He glared at her and said to Suz, “I’ll go if you’ll go.”
“Call the funeral home!” Juney shouted. “The man who said he’d get dragged to the Better Veggie only over his own dead body is on his way.”
Suz put down her pen and laughed. “Oh, no, I couldn’t make you suffer that way, Max. Besides, I don’t want to go anywhere because I’d have to come back to get that information from Juney. How about a compromise—we get something here.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. I’ll cook as a thank-you for the air conditioner. It made a difference last night. The blinds and the dead bolts are a little much—” she shrugged “—but thanks for them, too. So I’ll cook lunch. You have a kitchen….”
“Barely,” Juney said.
Chuckling again, Suz protested as she started for the door, determination in every step, “Oh, come on, you always had plenty of food on hand when Annette and I visited.”
“Special circumstances,” Juney said. “You’re about to glimpse the uncensored eating habits of Max Trevetti. You’re a brave woman, Suz.”
Sure he stocked up for visitors, who didn’t? Max thought as he followed Suz to the kitchen.
She swung the refrigerator door open with a flourish, then made a noise between a gasp and a laugh.
“Juney wasn’t kidding. You really don’t keep much food around here.” She took out a container of yogurt. “This expired two weeks ago.”
He shrugged as he took it from her and dropped it in the garbage. “Must be Annette’s. I don’t buy that stuff.”
“Annette’s? She moved out months ago!”
“She had lunch here sometimes,” he said defensively.
“Not recently.” She poked more deeply into the refrigerator, pulling out a bag of salad mix that had started to liquefy and celery that drooped over her hand. He held the garbage pail and she deposited them with a face of disgust.
“What do you buy?” she asked as she washed her hands.
“Cereal, milk, bananas. Stuff for breakfast—most important meal of the day, you know.”
“Breakfast?” She opened the fridge again, checking in the door, and found the eggs and butter he kept there. “An omelet okay?”
“Sure. But you know we could still make it to the Toby before they stop serving lunch.”
“Forget it, Trevetti. You’re going to have a lunch without brats and fries, and you’re going to wash dishes. It’s good for your soul.”
With minimal fuss, she whipped the eggs with a fork, splashing in a little water, then trolling his cabinets and shaking in small amounts from spice containers Annette or Juney must have left. She muttered a couple of times about fresh not killing him. He leaned back against the counter as she started a pan heating, washed her hands again, then turned to him.
“So you have breakfast at home—one meal down, two to go.”
“Lunch is whatever’s near the site, and dinner’s usually at the Toby.”
Drying her hands, she prowled toward a basket in the corner. “Your bananas are all green.”
“That’s the way I like them.”
“I’ve never had one that looked like a cucumber. May I try one?”
No. “Sure, go ahead.”
He walked over to the table, spun a chair around and straddled it as she peeled back the first section of banana skin.
He did not want to watch her eat a banana, not because it meant anything. Just that…he’d have to go to the store a day early. He hated that.
“Tired?” she asked.
“I guess.”
“You were working out at the site early this morning, weren’t you?”
“We had a guy call in sick. I wanted to put in a few hours so we wouldn’t get too far behind.”
“You could have rescheduled our meeting. You know, if you need daylight hours to do other things, we can meet at night. That might work better for me, too. I can use business hours to see suppliers and meet with you when I couldn’t see them.”
She was leaning back against the counter. It was a small kitchen. There wasn’t anywhere else to look. That was why his gaze locked on the sight of her mouth closing over the tip of rod-shaped fruit.
“Fine.”
Her lips drew back as her teeth sank in, and his knees tried to clamp together in reflex. All that did was squeeze the back of the chair between his thighs. He slid back a couple of inches to ease his position.
“Good heavens.” Her eyes had gone wide. “This banana is crisp. I’ve never had a crisp banana before.”
“That’s the way I like them.”
He didn’t mean anything other than what he’d said as it applied to bananas. Absolutely nothing.
He’d known she’d had a little interest in him when they’d met, and he’d been bowled over by her. But where would it have taken them? A fling? And when it was over, what would have happened to her friendship with Annette? Annette had needed her then. He never had gotten the hang of flings, anyway.
Getting serious wasn’t an option—she was a college kid with a universe of possibilities. His possibilities had already narrowed to Tobias and Trevetti Building. What sort of slime would he be to have taken advantage of her?
Then, in Suz and Annette’s senior year had come the accident….
He’d made it there in record time. After taking care of details, he’d brought the girls to Tobias for a few days. By the end of those days, it was settled without anyone saying a word—he’d be another big brother to Suz.
“Well, this one is making my teeth hurt. Sorry I wasted your banana.” She started to pull the peel up. “I’ll replace it.”
“Give it here. I’ll eat it.”
After handing it over, she sat across from him.
He finished it in four quick bites. “Was this a sneaky way to get me to eat fruit in the middle of the day?”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s not a bad idea.” She stood, seeming to hear something. “Pan’s ready.” After she poured the eggs in with a smooth motion of her wrist, she turned toward him. He blinked away so she wouldn’t think he was watching her. “I didn’t see any, but in the hope that I simply overlooked it, since there’s probably a law that as a native of Wisconsin you have to have some somewhere, do you have any cheese?”
“Do cheese curls count?”
Lunch was great. It was after lunch the trouble started.
It started with him saying lunch was great.
Suz had mumbled something about anybody could cook eggs and hurried off to the office.
As he’d loaded the few dishes and one pan into the dishwasher, he thought about her reaction. So it wasn’t only in her work that she backed away from compliments as if they gave her a rash.
Suzanna Grant didn’t think she deserved compliments.
Of all the cockeyed attitudes… The woman should have been taking bows on the hour and half hour all day long.
Instead, she shied away from being told she’d cooked a great omelet. Monday, when she’d come up with that solution for Miss Trudi’s house and he’d said it was a great idea, she’d acted like she’d been tossed into a sizzling pan and cooked thoroughly herself.
He dried his hands.
The more he worked with her change in the floor plan, the more he appreciated it. She’d applied both practicality and creativity. He’d seen more of those skills in her questions today. She seemed always on the lookout to save money and time while producing a top-quality product.
Not that he’d tell her that after the way she reacted to “Great omelet.”
He went to the office to get paperwork for tomorrow’s deliveries. By ordering for both jobs at once, they got a volume discount, but more of a headache in storing and safeguarding.
Suz was stowing her papers in a leather case.
“You got everything you need for now, Suz?” he said.
“I think so. If not, I can always check with you when you’re at Bliss House. Or I’m sure Lenny or Eric would—”
“Stay off the construction site unless I’m there.”
“Or what?” Her eyes glinted with challenge. “I’m not your sister, so you can’t disown me, and you aren’t paying me anything, so you can’t fire me.”
“She’s got—”
“Shut up, Juney.” He didn’t take his eyes off Suz. “It’s for your own good.”
“If I can’t look out for my own good, don’t you think I deserve whatever happens to me?”
Peripherally, he was aware Juney had started typing with great fervor.
“I mean it, Suz.”
She stood, back straight, chin up. “So do I. Thanks, Juney. Goodbye.” She gave Max a cool nod as she walked out.
He stared at the floor a full minute after her car pulled away, leaving Juney’s determined typing as the only sound.
“Sorry I told you to shut up.”
“Apology accepted.” She kept typing, but at a natural pace. “Especially since I’ve said the same thing to you. More than once.”
He looked up. “You have?”
“You might not have heard me,” she said with great dignity. “I might have waited until you’d left the building.”
He laughed, and he realized that was what she’d been aiming for.
Juney had a good heart, in addition to a level head and a smart mouth. She was also a good judge of character.
“What do you think of Eric?” he asked abruptly.
With her hands poised as if over the keyboard, she turned ninety degrees to face him. “What brought that on?”
“Stuff at the site.”
“Stuff with Suz at the site?”
“Suz doesn’t see…”
“Maybe she does see and knows she can handle it.”
He shook his head. “She’s used to a different kind of guy.”
“Well, I know Eric isn’t exactly uptown, but he’s not a sleazeball, either. He wouldn’t hurt Suz or anybody else.”
Hurt Suz. His stomach muscles clenched at the phrase as if he’d taken a punch. And a memory clicked in. A long hospital corridor, with Suz at the end of it looking impossibly fragile. He’d pledged then that he would take care of her the way he took care of Annette.
“He’s a bit of a hothead,” Juney was saying, “but his biggest problem is he wants the perks without the responsibilities.”
Juney had hit it. The kid was good with the tools, good with the other men on the job and customers. The trouble was what he didn’t do. He tried to slide by without attending to the grunt details, leaving them for someone else. As owner and boss, Max had to do something about it.
“What are you going to do about the rest of it?”
Juney’s question came as if she knew exactly when he’d reached his conclusion. Now that was scary.
“Rest of what?”
“You putting your foot in it with Suz.”
“I didn’t—”
“Oh, yeah, you did.”
He expelled an emphatic breath but didn’t argue. “Juney, you said the other day about Suz thinking she’s just decorative…”
“Did I say that? I don’t think so.” She shook her head.
“Well, something like it.”
“See, that’s where guys get in trouble. Thinking that saying something within the same galaxy is good enough. Big difference, Max. Way big difference.”
“All right, what did you say?”
“What I said was that Annette said that anybody who took Suz as being just decorative was misguided. I didn’t recall the word misguided right off, but that was the word Annette used. And that’s what I said.”
Misguided. Could that be what Suz was? He didn’t think she regarded herself as purely decorative, but she surely didn’t believe in her abilities the way they deserved. And she didn’t give herself credit for what she did.
He was more than willing to give her credit. Except he’d seen that compliments did not convince her she’d done a good job. If anything they seemed to make her feel less secure.
If I can’t look out for my own good, don’t you think I deserve whatever happens to me?
Max knew what Suz Grant deserved—the best and happiest of lives with someone to look out for her. For now that was him. So beyond making sure she wore a hard hat and stayed away from guys who wouldn’t treat her the way she deserved, he’d have to convince her how good she was.