Hot August Nights. Christine Flynn
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Her quick, almost instinctive concern pleated his forehead. “He’s fine. I’m just taking over because you’re here.” And because of my big mouth, he thought, pulling ahead to get their little show on the road. “I couldn’t ask one of my foremen to deal with you.”
Her calm was as impressive as the regal arch of her eyebrow. “Deal with me?”
“And your entourage.” He checked his side-view mirror before he turned onto the road leading from the little municipal airport. Sure enough, the news van had pulled out right behind the one with the documentary crew. Right behind that was a tan sedan that belonged to one of the reporters.
It seemed she didn’t have to look to know they were leading a parade.
“You knew the press would be here,” she quietly reminded him. “You knew about the documentary people, anyway. I have little control over the rest.”
For a moment, he said nothing. Of course, he’d known about them. That was why he’d taken over himself rather than dumping the responsibility for this particular project on one of his men. It could sometimes be difficult enough working with untrained workers, as good-hearted and well-intentioned as they were, without having the distractions of a celebrity in their midst.
He had told himself before she’d stepped off the plane that he would do exactly as he had already asked everyone else at the site to do and treat her as they would anyone else. He would overlook the fact that she had undoubtedly never done a hard day’s work in her life, just as he intended to ignore the events that had brought them both to being where neither wanted to be. If he’d learned anything in thirty-one years, it was that there wasn’t a thing he could do about the past, but he could sure as hell see that it didn’t repeat itself.
When it came to everything but business, he lived purely in the present.
Presently, sticking to business was all he cared to do.
“Then, we’ll concentrate on what you can control,” he finally said. “I didn’t send anyone else to get you because I wanted to make sure you understand that I can’t cut you much slack.”
“I’m not asking for any.”
“I didn’t say you were,” he defended, patiently. “But unless you’ve been moonlighting in maintenance at your country club, my bet is that you don’t have any skills that are going to be immediately useful on a construction site.” He frowned toward her hands. “Have you ever used a hammer? For something other than a doorstop, I mean.”
From the faint pinch of her mouth, he doubted she’d ever even held one. It was entirely possible, he supposed, that she’d never even seen one up close.
“How about a tape measure? A level?
“My point,” he continued, making himself behave when what he really wanted to do was remind her that he knew exactly how protected and indulged she’d been, “is that every volunteer has to be capable of accomplishing her job. If you’re going to be here, you have to work just like the other volunteers. Getting the house up is our first priority. We’re on a schedule and we have to keep to it.
“I’ll show you how to do something that doesn’t require a lot of instruction. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, ask for help.”
“Is this the orientation speech the brochure promised?”
He wondered how long all that cool composure would last once she was on the job. “I suppose it is,” he conceded. “Everyone else got theirs when they started a few weeks ago.”
“I thought I was supposed to do this start to finish.”
“Like I said, there’s a schedule. We couldn’t wait until you were ready before we started. If the weather holds, we should be finished in another three weeks.”
She opened her mouth, judiciously closed it again and glanced out the passenger window. He had a feeling she wasn’t checking out the view. As intent as she seemed on maintaining that annoying unruffled poise, she was probably biting her tongue.
He’d actually liked her better when she didn’t hold back, when she said what was on her mind. But, then, she apparently had to be in a rebellious mood and half-inebriated to do that with him.
He forced his tone to stay even. “Do you have any questions?”
She looked as if she had a ton of them. She also looked as if she didn’t know if she should pose them to him, or save them for a friendlier face. He wasn’t fooled by her quiet manners, or the composure she so diligently maintained. From the rigid way she sat, he figured she was as comfortable with him as she would have been with a water snake.
“We have to work together,” he pointed out flatly. “You might as well ask.”
The edge in his tone drew her faint frown. “Only if you’ll answer.”
“Of course, I will.”
“Then, how did you get involved with this?”
That wasn’t at all the sort of question he had in mind. Talking to her about his turbulent youth definitely was not on his agenda of things to discuss with her. Especially when that youth was what had set him so clearly apart from her and her breed.
“A friend told me about it,” he replied, knowing he was being deliberately vague, not caring as he pulled his glance from her mouth. The nerves low in his gut tightened. So did his voice. “You shouldn’t wear perfume here.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her blink at him. “Excuse me?”
“You shouldn’t wear perfume,” he repeated, her scent still taunting him. “Scents can attract bugs.”
“I’m not wearing perfume.”
Puzzled, she watched his jaw lock. Preferring only to get this ride over with, she also changed the subject.
“How far is it to the job site?”
“About half an hour. We’ll drop off your bag at the motel first.”
They were heading east, away from the commercial development she had seen from the air along the coastline. The few small, single-story manufacturing facilities they’d passed had already given way to little more than a flat landscape, lush with low vegetation and occasionally punctuated by majestic umbrella-like palm trees.
Matt reached over and turned on the radio. “I want to catch the weather,” he muttered over the blast of the air conditioner.
What they got was the news. Specifically a traffic report for Sarasota, ninety miles northwest and an ad to be sure to visit the Cypress Slough preserve out of Fort Myers where visitors could take a mile-long boardwalk and see wetland inhabitants such as wading birds, turtles and alligators.
The thought of seeing an alligator gave her definite pause. She hadn’t even considered the local wildlife when she’d thought of her trip here. But the noise from the radio prevented silence from becoming awkward, and she was pretty sure that was all Matt was really interested in, anyway.
The Cypress Motor Inn sat right off the two-lane highway on the outskirts of Gray Lake. It was flanked by a doughnut shop on one side, a field of vegetation on the other and had the nearby amenities of a two-pump gas station and a convenience store a couple of city blocks down. A pool, crystal blue and sparkling, occupied the middle of the grounds. Patches of green lawn hugged it on three sides, punctuated here and there by the same sort of tall palm that surrounded the entire building. Crushed white seashells filled in the other side and served as a parking lot.
The motel itself definitely needed a coat of paint. The tan cinder block building wrapped itself around the pool in a deep U. All doors faced center. And all doors were paired with a large window with a slightly rusted air-conditioning unit protruding from beneath it.
The Shelter office had given her the name of the motel as the one being closest to the site. Since every volunteer made