Page 13 of Love & Rockets

“Haters. You know they’re gonna hate,” Mat chimed in as he strode into the room. He’d ditched the two-by-fours and picked up a couple of sullen-looking teenagers wearing bright turquoise Home Again T-shirts. Gesturing to the two volunteers, he grinned. “I brought you flunkies.”

Jake rubbed his hands together in his best mad scientist impersonation. “Just what I’ve always wanted.” His audience was not impressed. He eyed the two high school students appraisingly. “Either of you ever touch a hammer?”

The boy raised a tentative hand halfway, then let it fall to his side. The girl simply stared at him. He didn’t need his vast knowledge of aerospace dynamics to see the duo were padding their extracurriculars for college applications. Only a few weeks into stewarding similar candidates through the process, Jake had figured out exactly how to get the best results from this brand of volunteer.

Extending a hand, he fixed them both with his most professorial stare. “Hello. I’m Dr. Jake Dalton. I’m an aerospace engineer for NSA Industries. I hold advanced degrees in quantum mechanics and theoretical physics from the U of A and MIT. Not only am I going to teach you the ropes around here, but I’ll also be the one writing your letters of recommendation.” A few regulars snickered, but the two flunkies he’d been given snapped to attention. He sent a smirk sailing in Mat’s direction, then refocused his energies on his students for the day. “All right, then.” He clapped his hands together and gave them a narrow-eyed stare. “Who’s ready to learn the joys of laminate flooring?”

A heavy hand landed on Jake’s shoulder. He looked up to find Mat staring at a point beyond him.

“Hold up a sec. The big man’s here, and I think he’s looking for you.”

Jake whirled, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. The urge to roll his eyes was overwhelming when he spotted Harley Cade striding through the chaos like he was the King of Everything out for a stroll in the park. Mat worked for Cade Construction, but Jake certainly didn’t. Harley and his mother provided the seed money for the Home Again project, but plenty of other coastal businesses and families contributed too.

Harley may or may not be considered the big man on the project, but he certainly was one in every other sense. Nearly six and a half feet tall, the man was a solid wall of bulk. When he felt like doing so, he tempered his intimidating size with a good-old-boy smile and a lazy demeanor that couldn’t be further from the truth. Other times, he didn’t bother hiding his steel and gunmetal core. He was the kind of guy women wanted, and men tried to goad into a fistfight.

Cade moved through the worksite like a politician, doling out smiles and waves, greeting a few people by name, but all the while keeping his sight set on his goal. And Mat hadn’t been wrong. Harley seemed to have his crosshairs set on him.

Perplexed, Jake resettled the tool belt on his hips as he turned back to the teenagers. “Why don’t you two go unstrap the flooring,” he instructed. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

The kids shuffled to the far corner of the room and Jake steadied himself for whatever might be coming. For the most part, he hadn’t really given Harley a whole lot of thought. Their paths usually only crossed on job sites, and then they rarely did more than the usual nod and grunt. He’d certainly never done anything to get sideways with the guy. Or, if he had, he didn’t know how.

He liked Harley, but he suffered neither the desire to be him nor the delusion he could somehow beat him in a fight. The running and part-time construction work kept him in shape, but didn’t make him Floyd Mayweather. If someone the size of Harley Cade had a beef with him, Jake was more of a mind to try to negotiate an outcome that wouldn’t result in loose teeth or broken ribs.

“Hey, Harley.” Jake kept his gaze on the teenagers, making sure they were on track with their task before bothering to look up. “What’s up?”

Harley smirked and turned to nod a greeting at the teenagers. Much to Jake’s chagrin, the little shits took one look at Cade and decided to hop to.

“You’re doing laminate today, huh?”

“I drew the short straw,” Jake confirmed.

“For a guy who can score any chick he wants by telling them his first name, ol’ Christian sure likes to dole out the punishment.”

Jake smirked and nodded. “Goes with the name, I guess.”

“And the red room,” Matias chimed in as he led a couple more volunteers toward the back of the house. Turning to the older woman, he beamed a toothpaste-ad smile. “Don’t worry. We make him leave the whips at home.”

“But I keep a flogger in my back pocket,” Christian said as he appeared out of nowhere, his tablet affixed to his hand as always. He held the pad out so Harley could see the screen. “Ordered the windows the twenty-fifth. The vinyl was backordered but came in last week. Still no delivery. Now the guy’s not returning my calls.”

“Probably afraid of the tongue lashing,” another member of the crew cracked as he reloaded his nail gun.

Christian ignored the comment, but Jake saw the muscle in his jaw jump. Their new project manager had been taking more than fifty shades of razzing his first day on the job, and it didn’t appear the ribbing was going to let up any time soon. Not when battered paperbacks of the bestselling books were circulated and recirculated at nearly every Home Again worksite. Jake couldn’t help but chuckle each time he spotted one. Most of these guys refused to read anything more than the ticker scrolling the latest sports scores, but he’d bet every one of them had mined the racier parts of those books for ammunition they could use to harass their newly-anointed leader. And Christian could hardly fight back when the man who’d hired him for the job had highlighted a passel of phrases and terminology for his own arsenal.

Harley scanned the data on the screen, then nodded. “Text me the details. I’ll make a call.”

“Thanks.”

Christian turned and managed about a half step before Harley whiz-banged him. “Shouldn’t that be, ‘Thank you, sir’?” To his credit, the younger man kept walking. Chuckling at his own joke, Harley turned back to Jake. “Never gets old.”

“At least not for us.”

“Aw, you know he’s not about to complain. I’m pretty sure he gets a good amount of action based on the name alone, no matter what he says about his charm.”

Ready to move past all speculation concerning Christian Lacour’s love life and get on with the day, Jake gestured to the stack of planks his minions had laid out. “So yeah, laminate today.”

“And dinner at Darla’s tonight,” Harley said without missing a beat.

Jake stiffened. The impulse to tell the man his dinner plans were none of his damn business leaped to the tip of his tongue. He tamped down the quick flare of temper the statement sparked in his chest and fixed Harley with a cool stare. Tipping his chin up to look the guy in the eye galled him, but it wasn’t nearly as annoying as Harley thinking he had a right to question his plans. Harley and Darla were not a couple. Neither were he and Darla. She hadn’t invited him to dinner because she was interested in him. She’d invited him over because she was a mother who wanted the best for her kid. A noble purpose. His reasons for accepting the invitation were honorable.

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