“How’s the nailing coming there Mand?” Marc stood smiling down at her.
Mandy rolled her eyes upward, her expression grouchy. “Super.” Basically, she’d had nothing to do. The structure was solid as a fortress. At least Marc was doing a good job overseeing quality. Her dad would be happy about that.
Because she was on her own, she listened to the pairs talk.
“Another dollar in the pot,” A.J. laughed, shaking his head at Larry. The two of them were creating their own spreading platform of flooring that would meet Marc and Boston’s in the center before lunch break, Mandy estimated.
“What?” Marc stopped. “Another woman?”
All work ceased as every gaze shifted to Larry whose lazy grin spread wide when he lifted his shoulders.
“You’re an animal,” Marc’s voice cracked with disbelief.
“She was something else, too.” Larry’s legs hung down from the joists he was straddling. “A real livewire.”
“Man, how do you find ‘em? I’ve never seen a guy with your luck.” Marc shook his head and hammered.
“And the variety…”
“Yeah, well, I prefer a buffet to one dish.”
“Most of us would.” Marc moved positions and helped Boston fit another piece of plywood into place.
“Every time I hook up with a woman I say to myself, is this really what I want when there’s so much out there?”
Mandy snorted out a laugh and Marc glared down at her. “What?”
“You’re miserable when you don’t have somebody and you moan and groan when you do. I think that’s your answer right there.”
“I am not miserable.”
“I live with you.” Mandy stood underneath where the floor above was gradually coming together and looked up into Marc’s scowl. “You’re worse than a premenstrual woman, and you’re not just lame for a few days of the month, either.”
The guys laughed, but Marc tilted his head at her.
Mandy enjoyed putting him on the spot. “You should go with Larry. Maybe you’ll pick up some tips.”
“I can pick up my own women,” Marc bit out.
“I work alone, man.” Finished with the center joists, Larry swung his legs up and stood. Then he jumped over on the landing where A.J. was working.
Mandy tapped her chin. “What about you, A.J.?
Would you be willing to drag along your boss one night for some on-the-spot tutoring? He might be willing to give you a promotion since that would qualify as some pretty good brown-nosing.”
“Zip it up, Mandy,” Marc’s voice was hard, his gaze harder staring down at her.
A.J.’s eyes twinkled. Mandy could tell he was enjoying this discussion as much as she was. “Sure, I could take you along, boss, since we go for different types.”
This interested Mandy more than ribbing her brother, and she turned and looked up at A.J. “So what type do you go for, A.J.? No, let me guess.”
“This should be interesting,” Marc teased, resuming his hammering.
A.J. paused and looked at her in a way that sent something warm but unidentifiable through her.
“She’d be sporty, into dirt biking, mountain climbing, wind surfing, stuff like that. I’m guessing she’d be tall and tan – so you guys would match. Hmm. Blonde or brunette…” Mandy liked the way he blinked slow and lazy as if he was thinking about what she was saying.
“You’d appreciate either, being raised with sisters. But she’d be attractive for sure. Not beautiful or exotic, more cute or pretty. Am I right?”
Amusement kept his smile wide. He reached into his nail sack and took out a nail. “A gentleman never talks about other women around a lady.” Holding the nail in place, he gave it one, fast whack.
“Guess I’m not a gentleman then,” Marc laughed.
Larry joined him. “Me either. Heck, I get my best inside info from women.”
“So that’s how you do it,” Marc said.
“Part of how.” Larry ripped his shirt off and swiped the sweat from his face, then under his arms and across his chest. “The other part’s my willing body.”
“So another dollar goes into the pot?” Mandy shaded her eyes from the sun, now making an arc in the middle of the sky bringing along sweltering temperatures.
“Do you even know this girl’s name?”
Larry bunched his tee shirt between his hands and thought a moment. The guys laughed when he couldn’t come up with her name. “Hey, catch this, will ya?”
Larry tossed down his damp shirt before Mandy had the chance to say, forget it.
“Mine too.” Marc’s came flying at her next, and hit her in the face. She scowled at him, peeling it off of her head.
“Excuse me?” she said, holding both shirts at arms’
length in her fingertips.
When Boston pulled his shirt up over his head, she took an involuntary breath. The muscles under his skin rippled. She tossed Larry and Marc’s shirts into a nearby corner. “Um, I can take that,” she offered with a shrug.
Boston looked at her for a long moment. She held her hands up and he dropped the shirt down. She stuffed the shirt into her crooked arm before bending to snatch up the others.
“It’s totally unfair that you guys get all over tans and I’m stuck with a construction tan.”
“Baby doll.” A.J.’s voice had her turning. He stood shirtless too, and smiling. “Will you put mine with theirs?”
“Sure.”
His shirt came at her like velvet on a breeze, and she grabbed it mid air, then curtseyed for them. “Anything else? I’m just ye old slave girl here.”
“Yeah,” Marc laughed. “Get us some water.”
Mandy shook her head. “One minute I’m a flunkie, the next I’m a laundress,” her tone was dry with sarcasm.
“Get your own water.” She took the shirts to a clean corner of the house and dropped them. She was about to leave them there but heard Boston.
“Uh, would you…could you fold mine, please?”
Mandy stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at him. So what if he looked like some golden god up there, giving out commands. “Fold?” she asked.
“Mandy doesn’t fold,” Marc said. “You should see her room. Does it even have a floor? I haven’t seen one in about five years.”
“If it’s folded it won’t be wrinkled when I put it back on.” Boston looked adorably embarrassed to be asking, so Mandy tilted her head back and forth for a minute as if she was trying to decide.
“Okay.” She squatted down and folded all of the shirts. “At least I know how to fold. That’s more than I can say for you, Marcus.” After she’d finished, she picked up her hammer and crossed back to the corner she’d already checked twice for secure fittings. “Gee, maybe if you’d give me something else to do, I wouldn’t be folding.”
“Fine. Start sweeping up.”
Mandy’s eyes bulged. “We’re not even halfway through the day. That’s clean up work.”
Marc lifted his shoulders. “You wanted something to do.”
Mandy’s eyes slit. He wanted to play mean? She dug out her cell phone with a smile just as mean as she felt. He shook his head. Mandy spoke into her phone, even though she hadn’t really dialed. She made sure her tone teased. “Daddy?”
“All right, fine. Fine.” Marc climbed down one of the ladders looking ready to growl.
“Play fair,” she told him.
He brought his face to hers. “Fair would be you at home, baking cookies and reading books, or going to college somewhere very far away.”
That hurt, and he hadn’t even whispered it. Mandy wanted to slap him. Instead, she lifted her chin and tucked the phone back in her belt.
“Lunch!” Marc boomed, sending Mandy back a step. He bowled over to the truck without saying another word, unbuckling his tool belt.
The guys seemed to drop from the sky, and soon they were all heading toward the truck.
Joining them, Mandy waited, trying not to feel crushed u
nder Marc’s work boot. It was so unfair, not to mention unprofessional, that he bullied her in front of them.
But it wasn’t her way to dwell on something unpleasant. That only made you more miserable. She decided instead to enjoy the sight of Boston’s bare, lean back. He was standing right in front of her and with every move as he unbuckled and then lifted the belt to put it away, a glorious masterpiece of movement shifted underneath his flawless skin. Her stomach growled, bringing all heads around to her.
She lifted her shoulders in a coy shrug, then stepped in between the guys unhooking her belt. “Today, I pick lunch.”
“No way,” Marc snapped.
“Sorry, my pick today Marc.” Mandy set her belt in the box with the others, then stepped back so each of them could reach over and grab a shirt from the pile. “It’s only fair.”
“She’s right.” A.J.’s grin winked to her right. He ripped off his bandana, rubbed his hair until it stood up like a porcupine, then tucked the swatch of fabric in his back pocket.
“I don’t care one way or the other.” Larry shrugged into a Haynes shirt he’d grabbed from the back of the truck and climbed into the truck bed, making himself comfortable.
“What about you, Boston?” Mandy looked at him and he turned, his dark eyes unreadable but magnetic.
Mandy’s heart skipped. “What would Napoleon say?”
His smile was even more beautiful than she’d imagined with white teeth that gleamed off his tanned skin. Mandy was sure she’d finally broken through his austere barrier. “He’d say it isn’t smart for an employee to interfere with his boss’s decision, especially if it’s something as basic as lunch.”
“A lame answer.” She hooked her arm in A.J.’s and lifted her chin. “A.J. sides with me, so the vote swings in my favor.”
Marc slammed on the breaks. “No way.” The big truck idled in front of Barnes and Noble bookstore. “What are we supposed to eat? Paper?”
“They have a café inside.” Mandy was sitting next to him with A.J. on her right. She shoved her left foot over, kicked his aside and pressed on the gas pedal. He let out a screech as the truck lurched forward.
“A café? For what? Crumpets? Tarts? I want food.”
“Pull in and stop being a baby.”
With a muttered curse, Marc yanked the truck into a spot. “An appetizer, that’s what this place is.” He threw open the door and hopped out. Mandy thought it’d be safer to go out A.J.’s door. He was wearing a grin, and didn’t look like he wanted to kill her.
Boston and Larry jumped over the truck bed. Larry squinted up at the sign. “It’s a bookstore.”
Mandy started toward the entrance. “Might as well refine ourselves while we eat.” They were trailing her, albeit warily. She worked to keep the grin off her face.
“Refine ourselves?” Larry mumbled, scratching his crotch.
“When I eat, I eat,” Marc grumbled. They were at the doors. “I can’t eat and do something else at the same time.”
A.J. pulled the door open and gestured for Mandy to enter and she did. “I know you can’t,” she tossed over her shoulder. “But that doesn’t mean the rest of us won’t enjoy a nice meal while browsing over a book or a magazine.”
“Whatever,” Marc sneered, air from inside the store gusting wafts of brewing coffee in his face.
“I don’t know.” Larry looked around now that they were inside. “This doesn’t feel right. Like hooking up and getting your teeth cleaned at the same time. The two just don’t mix, you know?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Marc concurred.
Mandy took a right, through magazines and straight to the café. First she eyed the rich and gooey desserts in the glassed-in display. Mmm. Oreo cheesecake. But the mud brownie looked awfully good, too.
“May I help you?” A guy with black hair molded into a baby mowhawk on the top of his head addressed her.
Only A.J. stood next to her, the other guys were approaching with the hesitancy of being burned at the stake. Even Boston. What was this, “I’ve never been in this place before” look? She knew better than to bring up that she’d seen him here, so she turned and ordered. “I’ll take a hot muffelatta, a bag of Sunchips, a piece of Oreo cheesecake and a Pepsi.”
A.J.’s grin widened with approval. Since the waiter was waiting, he ordered next.
Mandy moved aside to wait for her meal. She didn’t want to miss seeing what the guys would order. A.J.
picked a ham and cheese bagel, a Coke and chips.
Larry stood, arms crossed, face twisted, staring at the menu. He waved Marc ahead.
Marc grunted at Mandy. “What’re you having, Mand?”
“A hot muffelatta.”
“A hot whatta? What the?”
“It’s good, you’ll like it. Promise. They’re New Orleans’ famous.”
“Oh.” Marc’s expression brightened, “That’s cool then. I’ll take one of those muff things.” Marc pulled out his money.
Boston stepped up and ordered a vegetarian sandwich in a pita, no mayo, no chips and water. Mandy tilted her head. Decidedly a health nut, but then, that body of his pretty much defined an organically perfect male.
She wondered what, if any, reading material he would choose to enjoy over lunch, doubting he’d bring Napoleon to the table with the guys around. Since her meal wasn’t ready, she took a peek at the magazines, grabbed the latest Architectural Digest, Southern Home Builders and Homes Today then found two tables and slid them together.
A.J. approached with both of their lunches and a smile when he saw her moving the tables. He set down the plates. “Good choice, baby doll.”
“Thank you.” She dipped in a quick curtsey, pulled out a chair and sat, propping the magazines to the left of her plate. A.J. pulled out the chair across from her, eyeing her choice of reading material. Then he set off for the magazine racks.
Marc and Larry stood grumbling over by the napkin/
straw/utensil stand. Order in hand, Boston was on his way to the table. Mandy tried not to enjoy the delicious heat drizzling through her. He reminded her of a black panther when he walked. She couldn’t stop looking at him.
She patted the empty spot next to her. “Here.
Remember, I don’t count.”
He hesitated only a moment then took the seat. Mandy was glad they were alone. “No reading material?” she queried.
He reached for his water. “I don’t eat and read.” He drank, set the glass down.
“Like Larry?”
“Nothing like Larry.” His long fingers deftly wrapped around the pita and he lifted it to his mouth. “But it was a nice idea, bringing us here.” His brown eyes sparkled for a second. Mandy blinked, sure she imagined it.
“You like your literature straight then.” She plucked a chip, popped it in her mouth. “I take it either way – any way, actually. I can always read, and I can always eat.”
She flashed a smile that she noted he caught, watched.
“So I’ve noticed.”
“You got a problem with a girl that has an appetite?”
He looked ready to laugh, but didn’t. “No.”
“You like your food as straight as your literature,”
she went on, because she had his attention. “Healthy.
Clean.”
He smiled, turning a shade darker with a blush.
“What?” she ribbed him. “It’s true. Salad yesterday, vegetarian pita today.”
“And you eat like a garbage disposal.” His gaze skimmed her meal.
Marc and Larry ambled over but Mandy wasn’t about to let the conversation she had going with Boston get lost in a bunch of male grumbling. “Excuse me?
Garbage disposal?” She crunched another Sunchip.
“Look at this.” Boston waved a hand over her food.
“And it was even worse yesterday.”
“What was worse?” Marc pulled out a chair with his foot and sat.
Boston swallowed a bite. “What she
eats.”
“I told you she eats like a pig.” Marc stared at his mile high muffelatta and let out a sigh. “How do you pick this thing up? Do I start in the middle or on the ends?”