Construction Beauty Queen (16 page)

He’d stew over that later. Right now, he needed to focus what was left of his energy on his niece. The house smelled like it used to when he’d come down for a weekend visit with Steve and Leah. Food was cooking in the kitchen. He hadn’t planned ahead to have something ready for when he got home.

He strode through the entry to the living room and paused. Jenny was cuddled against Veronica on the couch, just like she used to curl on Leah’s lap. She was wearing her Easter dress and reading aloud. Her legs were tucked under her, but he could see her Sunday shoes peeking out under the dress. Her normally stick-straight hair was a mass of curls, which Veronica’s fingers absently threaded their way through.

His chest hitched at the adorable, maternal sight. This was the life Steve and Leah had wanted for their daughter, the life he’d never quite been able to duplicate alone. If only he’d been dating Veronica when he returned from the city to take his brother’s place. Unlike Kimberly, she would have toughed it out and given Jenny the comfort and attention she needed.

Jenny looked up and noticed him. She tossed the book aside and bounded across the room. She jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his neck and dangling her fancy shoes off the ground. “Uncle Matt, you’re home.”

“And you are all dressed up and looking gorgeous.” He squeezed her tightly, aching with the knowledge of how much Steve would give for the chance to hold his daughter one more time. “What’s the occasion?”

“We made you supper.”

“Did you?” Matt let her babble about the ingredients for beef Stroganoff and how they’d sent a big bowl home with Stephanie and her mother. Then he shifted his gaze to Veronica. She was sitting perfectly still on the couch, smiling at him and Jenny.

Veronica wasn’t Leah, and Matt wasn’t Steve. He couldn’t make her play house with him just so Jenny could grow up with the family fate had cruelly snatched from her.

“Sorry I kept you here so late,” he said. “I can take over now.”

Her smile didn’t waver, but her eyes dimmed, making her expression almost bittersweet as she rose off the couch. “Of course. Good night, Jenny.”

Jenny pulled away from his embrace and ran to Veronica. “But you were going to stay for dinner.”

She reached for Jenny’s hand and squeezed it. “Sorry, sweetie. That was up to your uncle, remember? You have a lot to tell him. You can do that without me around.”

He
did
want her around. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he ever wanted her to leave. But he didn’t want her to be a stand-in for his sister-in-law any more than he wanted to go through the motions for his brother. Steve was gone, and everything Matt wanted in his future was in this room. The thought didn’t just scare him. It terrified him.

“Of course you can stay for dinner,” Matt backpedaled. “You went to the trouble of cooking, plus made enough to give to another family. You not only helped me out of a tight spot but ensured I get to relax for the rest of the evening.”

“Yes!” Jenny danced around the living room.

Veronica’s face lit up again in a brilliant smile that told him dinner wasn’t the only thing she was hoping to stick around for. “In that case, let me wash my hands, and I’ll start serving. I believe everything is ready.”

Oh yes, his attraction was blazing hot and intensified every time he saw her. It didn’t matter that he’d already learned the hard way he had nothing to offer a beautiful woman who already had it all. Somehow he had to get through the rest of the evening while remembering that he had pride and integrity—and a niece watching his every move.

“What needs to be done to finish dinner?” Matt asked, after he’d cleaned up and then sent Jenny to wash her hands. He suddenly felt awkward and out of place in his own kitchen.

Veronica turned off the Crock-Pot and ladled the heavenly smelling food into a serving bowl. “You can set the table. We’re having two courses.”

Two courses, and she’d pulled out Leah’s fancy Christmas serving dish when eating the meal straight from the Crock-Pot would have sufficed. Nope, she was not an imitation of his sister-in-law. He needed to catalog everything she did that didn’t fit with his lifestyle to remind himself of why she would never be satisfied with his way of life.

Jenny skipped into the kitchen. “I’ll set the table.”

“You’re wearing makeup.” As if that wasn’t enough to make Leah roll over in her grave, Jenny’s hair sparkled with glitter.

“We had fun being girlie,” Veronica replied, winking at Jenny. Her hair shimmered more than usual, too.

Matt couldn’t fathom why anyone thought glitter in hair was a sensible thing to do. Steve and Leah certainly wouldn’t have understood, either. He’d tried so hard to follow their example, but faced with glitter and makeup, he felt like he’d failed. “The only thing I asked of you was to refrain from being girlie.”

“You said don’t dress like a pop star,” Veronica corrected. “So we skipped the meat dresses and the neon hair dye. We didn’t go overboard.”

This wasn’t overboard? Well, he’d wanted a reality check, and Veronica had delivered. “Jenny’s only eight years old. She’s too young for that stuff.”

Veronica glanced at him as she stirred the contents of the Crock-Pot. “She knows she can’t wear it every day. There’s an art to applying blush and eyeliner. It’s never too early to start practicing to get it right.”

“She let Stephanie and me put on our own makeup, and then we got to put it on Veronica’s face, too,” Jenny said, her excitement undimmed by Matt’s grumpiness.

He narrowed his eyes at Veronica. Maybe the glitter was Jenny’s handiwork, but there was no way a child had applied the makeup on her smooth, glowing face.

“And then we washed it off so you wouldn’t have a heart attack thinking I was going to take her to stand on a street corner, and I applied it like it is now.” Veronica took the serving dish to the table. “I didn’t corrupt her. I didn’t make her grow up and not need you while you were gone. She’s still your little girl.”

Matt took a deep breath. She’d voiced his fears, and they sounded ridiculous coming from her lips. Jenny was his little girl, and she would always be Steve and Leah’s girl, a child they had loved wholeheartedly and would have loved regardless of how much makeup or glitter she paraded around in. Girliness wasn’t a superficial flaw that needed to be wiped out. Jenny just needed someone to connect with who understood her love of pretty, feminine things. And in that respect, she was now also Veronica’s girl.

While Veronica cleaned the kitchen after dinner, Matt coaxed Jenny into taking a bath. She protested, trying to save her curls. Veronica offered to braid her wet hair so it would be wavy in the morning, and Matt gave in. But if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that it was simply an excuse to keep her in his house longer.

After the braids were secure, Jenny tried to stay awake with the grownups but fell asleep on his lap as he read her a chapter of
Charlotte’s Web
. Once he returned from carrying her back to her bedroom and tucking her in bed, his anticipation built. He had an entire evening ahead of him with a beautiful woman who cared about his niece and the life he’d built in this town.

Veronica was no longer sitting on the couch. Instead, she was covering the dining room table with stacks of papers.

“What are you doing?” Disappointment and confusion settled over him. They weren’t going to get comfy on the couch and make out?

She turned and smiled. “I want you to be the first to know I’m not going to take over Ron’s distribution company, and I’m not marrying Trevor. I’m starting my own financial consulting company, and I want to work for you in that capacity.”

He opened his mouth but no words came out. He’d been gearing up to kiss her, and she was setting up a business relationship. Was that really all she thought of him? What about the flirting and the kisses they’d shared? Had he been nothing more than a crush, and she’d already lost interest?

“Have a seat.” She tapped the empty chair next to her. “Let’s start with cash flow. This is your current bank balance.”

Or now that she knew to the dollar how much he was worth, was she no longer interested? Just when she’d managed to convince him she wasn’t superficial, she threw this evidence at him. “The bank had no right to tell you what my balance is.”

“They didn’t,” she said cheerfully. “You had six months of unopened bank statements on your desk, which I reconciled.”

She didn’t seem fixated on the lack of zeros and commas in the number, so maybe he was overreacting.

“You’re running a business,” Veronica continued. “Someone in the company should know how much cash you have to buy supplies. If you’re not going to take the responsibility, then it falls to your office manager, who at the moment is me, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.”

The idea of her as his office manager held more than a little appeal. Only a few days ago, he hadn’t wanted her touching any of his stuff, but now he liked the thought of having her fingers all over everything—especially him. He shifted in his seat and tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

“Here is the essence of your cash-flow problem. You’re trying to collect from jobs you finished six months ago, while your suppliers are demanding you pay them in fifteen days.” She’d researched a lot more than his bank balance to figure that out. Both his respect and his unease increased a notch.

“The economy’s been in the tank. I’ve had to cut people some slack.” He hadn’t meant to let accounts receivable go unpaid that long. His intention was always to send out personal reminders and follow-up letters as Leah had done, but now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure he’d ever gotten that far down his priority list.

“I think that’s the problem.” Veronica covered his hand with her own and squeezed gently. “You’ve cut them so much slack they don’t consider an invoice from Kortville Construction as something that
has
to be paid.”

Okay, so he had quite a bit of outstanding work he hadn’t collected on. But Steve never liked to make other people look bad. Matt especially didn’t like how she was making
him
look bad. He wanted to flip his hand over and press his palm to hers, entwining their fingers together. Instead, he shifted his hand off the desk, breaking the contact. He might want her in his bed, but not out of sympathy.

“Look, you’ve never been broke before.” Matt pushed back his chair so he could inhale a full breath without catching her exotic scent. “You don’t get what it’s like to live without an unlimited cash supply at your disposal. Everyone’s going to make good. I won’t refuse to fix their broken water mains and faulty electrical outlets until they’ve scraped together the cash.”

She turned fully in her chair to face him. “Don’t turn defensive on me, Matt; we’re a team. I called your suppliers and was able to negotiate new terms where you now have thirty to forty-five days to pay and the payments will be electronically deducted.”

“I can deal with my own business contacts.” He jumped to his feet and started pacing the carpet. She made him sound incompetent at what Steve had entrusted to him. He had no chance of convincing her he had anything to offer when she was listing his faults down to the tiniest detail.

“I didn’t set up a mega-business deal. I just negotiated some minor administrative details with the account managers, who usually are part-time employees with a community college education,” Veronica explained. “The result gives you financial breathing room, and the electronic payments guarantee they get their money.”

She’d done something so basic he’d never even thought to inquire about. Matt felt like he had nothing to offer Veronica that she didn’t do better or couldn’t get better somewhere else.

Veronica hated watching Matt grow more agitated by the minute. She needed to take him through the balance sheet, and she had some serious concerns that he was not getting his fair share out of the partnership with Ron.

“Talk to me before you make any more decisions or changes,” Matt said, drumming his fingers on his thigh. As if having a longer grace period to pay the bills was a bad thing.

Veronica wanted to rub his neck until she’d smoothed out his rigid tendons. Instead, she picked up another file folder. “You need someone to do what I’ve done this week—keep up with accounts receivable, send reminder bills, make gentle phone calls, as well as keep your bank statements balanced so you don’t get into overdraft trouble.”

His eyes practically glazed as she talked. She tried to inject a little personal humor into her next item. “I’d also like to see a monthly plan to set aside some money to replace depreciating assets. Like, say, a wheelbarrow that’s taken a lot of abuse lately.”

He didn’t crack a smile.

Apparently, they weren’t at the point of sharing inside jokes. “Come here and look at these four scenarios I’ve worked up—hiring a part-time administrative assistant for twenty hours a week, hiring the same person for ten hours a week, hiring no one and doing everything yourself, and hiring an independent consultant to work with you.”

Matt walked back to the table and glanced at the papers lying across it. His arm brushed her shoulder as he pointed to the column with the cheapest initial expense—doing nothing. If she turned her head, she could press her lips against the smooth bulge of his biceps.

“Looks like a no-brainer,” he said.

Her brain was gone. She wanted to kiss him until neither of them could see straight. But she was staking her future on bringing Matt around—she couldn’t afford to lose her focus. “Don’t forget to factor in what your time is worth, the extra work you’ll have to put in when you could be home with Jenny, the jobs you’ll have to turn down.”

He cut her off with a strong hand to her shoulder. “I’m not turning anything down. People will call in companies from other towns to do them, and then I’ll be completely out of a job.”

She covered his hand with her own and squeezed. “Then you need skilled labor to replace you on the job site or you need someone else in the office. I’d like to be that person.”

“What?” He pulled his hand free and looked at her as if she’d taken a hard hit to the head. “You’re already working for me.”