Page 10 of Nailing Studs

“How long do you think it would take to get the place looking its best again?” I asked, hoping to ease the new tension between us.

He stared at me for a moment, then visibly relaxed. “If you’re talking about tip-top shape, a full historic house restoration, five to six months, maybe more, maybe less. I’ll write up a general report once we get back to the office and send you an estimate tonight. Then you should probably meet with a real estate agent to figure out a strategy to bargain with sellers.” He dug around in his back pocket and pulled out a wallet. “Here’s the card of a realtor. Haven’t talked to her in a while but Laura sells well in Fosterman and surrounding areas.”

When he came close, I got a momentary whiff of his skin, of his warm body. He smelled good enough to eat, like he’d stepped out of the shower moments before. He passed me a business card, and our fingers touched. Lingered. I noticed his sexy eyes flickering up and down my body once more and suddenly imagined Taylor slipping off my towel and taking me, hard, right up against this wall.

The space between us felt charged and I held my breath.

Call me crazy, but I could see the question in his eyes, one I instinctively wanted to respond to, but I held myself back, dropping my gaze to the business card. “Thanks for the lead,” I breathed, right as I heard footsteps coming down the hall. I moved backward and bumped against the wall.

Dominic stood in the doorway. “I’m done downstairs,” he told Taylor, but his riveting eyes were on me.

“Great, then we’ll do the outside and be finished,” Taylor said.

“Nah, don’t mind me. You can finish doing whatever you were doing here.”

Seriously? Did Dom think we’d been fooling around or something? And why the frowny face?

Yes, Taylor and I had just had a moment, but whatever happened was not any of Dominic’s business. I glared at him. He may have been through a hard breakup, but that wasn’t any excuse to be wearing that contemptuous expression. “Nothing was going on. Besides, if we were doing anything, it wouldn’t involve you,” I said haughtily.

“No, it wouldn’t,” he shot back. “You couldn’t handle me.”

Seriously? “I don’t want to handle you.”

He cocked a brow. “Really? Because that’s not the impression I got earlier.”

My face flamed with heat, and I looked between him and Taylor before fleeing and heading down the hall toward the guest room.

Even over the sound of my bare feet slapping on the floorboards, I could hear Taylor snap, “Goddamn it, Dom—” and Dom responding with, “You were right, she’s gorgeous. But you need to stay away from her. We both do.”

Having heard this, I froze in my bedroom doorway.

We both do? What did that mean? Was he saying they were both attracted to me, so neither one of them could have me? Was this some sort of Bro Code thing? Or was this because I was a client and Dom was reminding Taylor to be professional?

I was already ticked off that Dom had called me out on my attraction to him. Now part of me was pissed that he was laying down rules without my input. The other part of me, however, was still reeling from the fact that Taylor and Dom thought I was gorgeous, and for some reason that was causing tension between them. Was it jealousy? Male competitiveness? I’d never had two such great looking guys attracted to me before, let alone fighting over me. It would be a great ego boost, for sure.

But it was also irrelevant. I probably wouldn’t be staying in Fosterman, and even if I did, I wasn’t into casual hook ups, which is all anything could be with one of these guys.

I stepped into the guest room and resolutely shut the door, reminding myself that I’d come here to get my life back together—and avoid men. I’d already run into a roadblock because of the condition of the house, and the last thing I needed was to complicate things by getting in between those two gorgeous hunks—no matter how delicious getting between them might sound.

5

Dominic

Great.

Now Kayla Pratchett thought I was a dick.

Granted, part of me still thought she was a bitch, given the fact that she hadn’t attended her own aunt’s funeral and was already planning on selling said-aunt’s house. Even so, now that I’d met her face-to-face, now that I’d talked to her, now that I’d seen for myself that she didn’t really seem like a bitch, well, I found the idea of her thinking I was a dick unacceptable.

Too damn bad, though, because given how I’d just acted, she was well within her rights to think that about me.

Yeah, I’d been on edge lately, because my fiancée Ada had thrown what we had away, but that wasn’t Kayla’s fault. It actually wasn’t even Ada’s. She’d done what she believed she had to do—which was leave me for a man she’d met and fallen in love with more than she loved me—and though it had hurt me, I was the one letting it control me to the point I was being rude to a complete stranger.

After giving me a brief but intense ass chewing for my unprofessional behavior—one I definitely deserved—Taylor headedoutside to check out the front of the house, telling me that after I was done acting like an asshole, to go take a look at the back. He left me to gaze at Kayla’s closed bedroom door, torn between the urge to knock and apologize to her and the urge to get the hell out of this house and as far from her as possible.

Bitch or not, I was undeniably attracted to our new client. She was the type of gorgeous that gorgeous women didn’t know they were—face like an angel, and round in all the right places,but not too round. You know, borderline curvy that pushed the boundaries. Cushion for the push-in, as they say. And her eyes—those big hazel eyes—made her look more like a milkmaid off a Georgia farm than a NYC chick.

She had no idea she was hot. Or maybe she didn’t care. And that made her even hotter.

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