Page 11 of The Contractor & the Entrepreneur

“Rhett,” he had to remind her again.

“Rhett.” She smiled almost shyly at him.

“I’m from Coleville, about an hour north.”

“The town is named after you?”

“Yes, ma’am, or after my great-grandpa. Take your pick.”

She laughed. Rhett was completely blindsided by her. This woman was a phenom. He’d never forget how the earth shifted when he first saw her. He’d never experienced this level of banter and easy conversation with any woman he’d dated. Sadly, this woman was off-limits. He could only imagine what the other contractors would say if they knew he wanted to datetheSloan Jensen. Especially his mentor Josh Francis who Rhett had been commiserating with regarding Sloan just yesterday morning.

How had none of them figured out she was a female? She had been extremely elusive. He remembered Paul Nash telling him he'd spoken to Sloan Jensen on the phone and the guy ‘seemed a little feminine’. That was laughable now. Sloan was very feminine, and her deeper voice appealed to him like no woman’s voice ever had.

“Why are you only getting here now?” he asked, trying to focus on business and not how magnetized he was to her. “When as soon as you got the county’s approval, you started encouraging the homeowners to push us to dig when there wasstill snow on the ground?” He risked a glance at her, focused on her lovely face and not her lovely legs.

She stiffened and lifted one hand. “You already pointed out that I don’t understand Montana winters. I’ve been waiting for this for over eighteen months and the homeowners have been waiting since December. The average temperatures were high enough at the end of February and first of March that I thought digging was a safe bet.”

“Not around here. Especially with the rain we’ve had this spring.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry. I was too busy to fly up here. I work—well,worked—for DWA Construction out of Vegas after I graduated with my master’s degree in construction management and technology from ASU.”

His brows rose. He was impressed just as she’d obviously wanted him to be, throwing around the master’s degree and DWA Construction. It was one of the largest in Vegas. His parents encouraged education, but only Houston was an eternal student. Rhett had certificates from the local tech school for plumbing, electrical, framing, finish work, and construction management. Each certificate should’ve taken nine months. He’d doubled up and gotten all of them done in under two years. Definitely no master’s degree, though. More the school of hard work, apprenticeship, and Josh taking him under his wing. Josh had the new build started next door and had been cussing Sloan’s name for weeks. He was not going to be happy if he saw Rhett with his guard down like this.

“That’s impressive. Your focus was commercial construction projects?” That made more sense why she wouldn’t have understood not only the weather but the lack of infrastructure for a far out of the way subdivision. Power lines needed to be strung from miles away, and there was no paved road within miles either. The deep snow, constant rain, muddy nightmare,and county officials stuck in the Middle Ages wouldn’t have been much of a focus in Vegas with commercial deals.

“Yes. I grew up on commercial construction sites in Phoenix and L.A.”

He darted a sharp look at her. “And you still dressed like this coming to a construction site?”

“I didn’t know it would be so muddy,” she protested.

“I’m not talking about the mud,” he muttered, pulling off the ‘main road’, which was a loose term as it was a formerly dirt road, now a mud pit, that this lady needed to make into a paved two-lane, and into the drive that led to her grandfather’s house. Even though sunset was a couple hours off, it felt dark and foreboding with the dark skies, incessant rain, and thick trees lining the thin, rutted-out road.

“What are you intoning?”

He risked a glance at her. She had her trim arms folded across her chest and looked impertinent and offended. She might know commercial deals, but not residential and not Montana. Maybe the workers in Vegas were all well-behaved and clean-mouthed. He doubted it. He loved his guys, and they respected him and worked hard, but he still wouldn’t let any of them date his sister, if he had one, and he didn’t want the gorgeous Sloan Jensen parading around in front of them. She’d distract them and they’d all act like fools trying to get her attention.

A branch scraped across his door, and he bit down on a curse. There went his paint job. He clamped his jaw and maneuvered the slick, potholed road.

Silence filled the truck. Terse, uncomfortable silence.

Lights filtered through the trees, and a few moments later he pulled up to the old cabin. Warm yellow light spilled from the windows. At least the generator was working, but who wasin there and what were two battered Chevys doing parked out front?

“Are you expecting someone?” he asked.

“What?” She’d been staring a hole in the side of his head. She whipped around and squinted at the trucks. “No.” Unfolding her arms, she clenched her hands together as if in prayer mode. “Who would be here?”

Rhett shrugged, staring at the windows but not seeing anyone within view. He had some guesses, but he wasn’t about to reveal them to her. He’d been trained by his former Green Beret Captain father to be a human weapon as his family ranch was used for protection details. He also had his favorite Glock 19 and holster in a locked compartment underneath his middle console. He wasn’t afraid to walk in there by himself, but no way was he taking this too-innocent woman in there.

Yet if she was from Vegas and had grown up around construction, maybe she wasn’t as innocent as she seemed.

“Back to the way I dress,” she said, bringing his head around. “You take exception to a woman being classy and professional?”

Rhett grunted out a laugh. He would probably say the wrong thing no matter how he responded. Was she putting off dealing with whoever was squatting in her grandfather’s house or did she really want to know what he thought? “Miss Jensen?—”

“Sloan,” she said, her dark eyes daring him to not use her name.

“Sloan,” he repeated. He actually loved her name, and now that he’d met her, he had no idea how he could think it was a man’s name. With that throaty voice of hers and her beautiful dark looks, Sloan was an exotic and feminine name. “You say you grew up around construction sites, but commercial construction must be quite different from residential.”

---