Construction Beauty Queen (4 page)

“Rich girl didn’t show up, huh?” a man asked, the same voice that had called for the dog a few minutes ago.

“Yeah, looks like that baseball field will get finished right on schedule after all.” That was Matt’s deep, rumbling tone. Funny how she could recognize it after only a couple short conversations.

She squinted against the blinding light. The trailer had no curtains or shades, and the sun shone straight across her pillow.

“You’re going to write her off because she’s a few minutes late?” a woman countered.

“If I can get my work done instead of participating in some
Debutante Checking Out How the Other Ninety-Nine Percent Lives
reality TV show, believe me, I’m going to jump on it,” Matt replied.

Veronica rolled off the bed that she’d carefully inspected and determined to be rodent-free, despite Matt’s dire warnings. She grabbed a new pair of jeans from her suitcase and pushed her legs into them. Her real life was at stake, not any reality show.

She had to prove herself as his equal and worthy of his respect. She wouldn’t let him brush her off like her father had, like Matt had yesterday when she’d tried to help with the convenience-store job. After today, she would only have twenty-nine more days before she took over the distribution center from her grandfather—a business she was well qualified to run.

“Give her a call on her cell phone, and leave it up to her to decide if she wants to come,” the woman said. “Then you’ll be off the hook with Ron when he finds out.”

Veronica kept her body below the window ledge as she changed her shirt, and then peeked out as she snapped her jeans. Barney was standing in the entrance to the convenience store, holding a big black dog by the collar. The woman from the bench yesterday—Agatha Hollister, dressed in lavender pants and an olive-green starched blouse that looked like it was cut from someone’s front curtains—was talking with Matt.

Veronica wasn’t sure if Agatha was defending her or making sure Matt didn’t get himself in trouble. The former would have been a nice thought, but the people in the grocery store had trampled on her rose-colored glasses, so she had to assume the latter.

“I know better than to call her type at seven in the morning,” Matt said. “That’s the equivalent of two or three in the morning to you and me.”

It was only seven a.m.? No wonder she was exhausted. Much too tired to take issue with the disdain Matt used when he talked about “her type.” Veronica’s boots zipped along the side, so they were easy to put on. She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and slid on lipstick.

When she came out of the bathroom, Agatha was still lecturing Matt on the courtesy of giving someone a phone call. If she’d thought there was a chance anyone in town might have a soft spot for her, she would have guessed the elderly woman was purposely stalling to give Veronica time to get her act together.

“I don’t give wakeup calls to any of my employees,” Matt said. “They take responsibility for themselves, and they pull their weight around the job site.”

Veronica grabbed her denim blazer and her home-improvement manual, fumbled with the flimsy lock on the screen door, and slammed outside. “Give me a chance to prove myself before you decide whether or not I can pull my weight.”

She couldn’t tell whether Matt looked surprised or annoyed as she power walked across the road toward him. “It’s after seven. You’re late,” he said.

“A start time was never specified.” She didn’t expect him to drop his condescension immediately, but she wasn’t going to stop reminding him until he treated her as an equal. “Good morning, Barney. What a sweet pooch you have.” She let his dog sniff her hand and then scratched it behind the ears. “Do you need help covering the doughnuts this morning so they don’t get dusty?”

Barney turned his dog away from her and tramped inside the convenience store with it, letting the door slam shut behind them.

She tried again. “Good morning, Agatha. Do you have a pen and paper? I have a web address for you and your husband that has some great step-by-step information on starting a food pantry.”

“Wilbur would love that.” Agatha opened her purse and began shuffling through the contents.

Veronica turned her smile on Matt. At last, she was making progress. “I’m here. Are the drywall and nails in the back of your truck?” She was proud of figuring out the name of those gray-white slabs they’d been wrestling with yesterday.

He didn’t look impressed. “I’m not working here this morning. Barney’s still pretty ticked about me dusting up his fresh doughnuts yesterday. His sales were way down, and he had a lot of complaints.”

“Imagine that,” she murmured. Right now she was willing to blow her entire budget on a breakfast that would counteract the effect of too many cleaning chemicals, too little sleep, and an empty stomach. Too bad she’d run out of the trailer so fast she’d forgotten her purse. Barney’s complimentary welcome gifts weren’t exactly fit for consumption.

“I’m going to fix a gate,” Matt said. “Are you coming or going back to bed?”

If he hadn’t been so snotty about it, she’d much prefer to go back to bed. But she didn’t have that luxury. She didn’t want that luxury, she reminded herself. She wanted to work hard to make it on her own. “That’s great. There’s a whole chapter in my book about gates and fences. I am all over this job. Let me get my car, and I’ll follow you.”

Matt folded his arms over his chest, clearly not buying into the excitement she was attempting to generate. “You think reading a do-it-yourself article qualifies you to do construction work?”

“Not alone for my first job,” she backpedaled, trying not to get distracted by his biceps bulging out from under his T-shirt sleeves. Appearances weren’t everything, she reminded herself, and Matt hadn’t exactly done much to show he had a personality worthy of his hot body. “That’s why I’m working with you. My point was that you don’t have to worry about getting me up to speed or my slowing you down or bothering you with simple questions.”

“That’s a relief,” he said sarcastically.

All right. That was enough. “You don’t know enough about me to have any clue what kind of qualifications I have. But I’ll tell you what you
should
have figured out from the beginning. I am a human being with feelings, hopes, and dreams, just like you. Stop lobbing insults at me and treat me with respect.”

“Amen,” Agatha said, her severe gray bun bobbling with gusto. “I found a pen, so you can give me the name of that website.”

Veronica blinked. She’d gotten so wrapped up in Matt she’d completely forgotten they had an audience. She took the pen and paper from Agatha and wrote down the information.

Matt stalked to the driver’s side of his truck. “If you want to come, get in.”

“Go with him,” Agatha advised under her breath. “The more time you spend together, the more you’ll learn.”

Matt gunned the engine, and Veronica shot a grateful smile to Agatha before opening the passenger door. She needed space to pull herself together and become as impassive as he was. But she knew the old woman was right—she had to take every opportunity she could to learn about this business she was working for. Matt wasn’t going to freely offer it to her.

More important than learning the ins and outs of the construction business was the fact that she needed the paycheck. She had more to clean and repair than she had money in her wallet. She’d sold everything of value to pay off the student loans from her business degree—the one that was supposed to make people take her seriously.

Veronica shivered. Nobody did, and she’d given up everything she could fall back on. Now she had to prove she was strong enough to do manual labor and work at the poverty line. Before she could prove it to Matt, her grandfather, and her parents, she had to prove it to herself.

…

“So you mend fences and remodel convenience stores. What else do you do?”

“A little bit of everything.” Matt gulped his morning coffee and focused on the road. He didn’t want to start a conversation. He’d already discovered yesterday afternoon that Veronica was charming and witty. It would be too easy to enjoy her company and want to impress her. The entire scenario would end with him falling far short of her expectations.

“You’re a handyman.” Veronica’s tone implied the designation fell below construction worker on the social scale. She flipped open her book to a section titled
Fences, Posts, and Gates.

“Yeah, pretty much.” It wasn’t the complete truth. He did plenty of handyman jobs, but he also ran a full-service construction firm. He enjoyed taking on big jobs, as long as he could preserve the reputation his brother had built for small-town personal service and keep himself on the front lines of the labor force. No amount of money was worth chaining himself to a desk, buried in paperwork. But there was no use explaining that to someone with her pedigree.

“How long will this job take?”

“About an hour.” Probably longer with her distracting his focus and standing in his way. “Then I’ll go back to the convenience store.” He swerved around the massive pothole on the right side of the street, then turned into a driveway.

Veronica braced her hand on the dash and looked out the side window at the bumpy road. “Is that hole another project on the day’s agenda?”

“Construction companies from bigger towns come in to do road projects.” He bounced up the driveway and stopped at his favorite house in the whole county. It was an old-style farmhouse with peeling paint, old-fashioned shutters, and a drooping wraparound porch. Some day he was going to turn it into a beauty.

“Oh my gosh. This place is gorgeous. If you painted the house white and the shutters bright blue, it would look amazing. Oh, and you could put some big antique rocking chairs on the porch once you fix that up. Wow,” she said, looking on in awe, “there is amazing potential here. What are we starting with?”

“The gate,” he reminded her. He got out of the truck and walked around to open the tailgate, unsettled that she was so in tune with the way he coveted replacing those rotting floorboards, restoring the whole house and making it beautiful.

Veronica met him at the back of the truck. He grudgingly gave her points for not sitting in the vehicle waiting for him to open the passenger door. “Right. The gate.” She shot another wistful look across the yard. “Is fixing up the rest of the house too big a project for your company, too?”

The insinuation smarted, although moments ago he’d wanted her to think his business was nothing short of pathetic. “Too much for the owner. Mrs. Parker’s doing as much as she can afford right now.”

Speaking of Mrs. Parker, he’d forgotten to return that darn library book again. He wasn’t even sure where it was in his house. “When she’s ready, she’ll give me the green light to fix up the porch and paint the place.” He liked the idea of blue shutters even better than his original plan for brown.

“And you’re making a living off this business?” Veronica looked incredulous.

“Enough for me.” Not enough to pay back Ron and regain complete ownership of his company. Not nearly enough to satisfy a high-class woman.

But Veronica was still focused on the building. “Wow. She must really love this house to live here in the condition it’s in now.”

“She hates it,” Matt muttered. Knowing that made him want to fix it up even more and give it the love it deserved. He pulled out his tool belt, hammer, and some two-by-fours to use as temporary braces. “Grab two L brackets.”

Veronica reluctantly looked away from the building, but she didn’t glance at the materials in the truck. Instead, she opened her book to the index in the back. “There’s nothing in here by that name. What are L brackets?”

“Steel angle. They look like the letter
L
.”

“Wait, maybe they are in here.” She flipped the pages and squinted at a picture. “Are they the same as butt joints or angle irons?” She looked up at him and grinned. “
Butt joints
, really? I’m pretty sure I have two butt joints, but I’m not going to build a gate with them.”

He laughed, despite her having no intuition about construction at all. “You don’t need to know every vocabulary word to know how to do it.”

“Listen to this.” She had her head buried in the book again. “’Resquare a sagging gate with a turnbuckle and wire.’ Is that what you were going to do? Is a turnbuckle the same as the L-thingy?”

Still grinning with amusement, Matt ignored the question and grabbed the supplies he wanted. He didn’t need to explain the process—she was never going to fix a gate in her life. She’d hit her limit within a few minutes or hours, and he could go back to getting his work done in peace. Unfortunately, working without her humor, sunny disposition, and wide, hopeful gaze didn’t hold nearly as much appeal as it had yesterday.

Although the day was early, the weather was unusually warm. Matt shoved a baseball hat on his head to give himself a bit of shade. Veronica sauntered around the truck in her skinny jeans, fussing with her pink bandana.

He walked ahead of her so he wouldn’t act on the sudden and bizarre urge to slide his fingers through her hair. By the time she joined him, he’d removed the lopsided wooden gate from its hinges.

“Prop this up somewhere.” He held the bulky structure out to her, but she had her book under her arm and was still messing with the silly bandana. Instead of dropping everything to take it, she brushed her toe over the deep gouge in the earth that the gate’s lopsidedness had created. “What caused it to sag this much?”

He set the gate out of the way himself. “You can look it up in your book later; the cause doesn’t matter. You need to pay attention to how to fix it right so it doesn’t start sagging again tomorrow. Lean against this post to push it back in position, and then I’ll secure it.”

“The solution would make more sense if I understood the cause,” Veronica murmured, but she leaned against the post like he’d instructed.

Matt pounded the braces in place, his hammer doing an excellent job of silencing the conversation. It was not nearly as effective at blocking out her warmth and soft curves beckoning him, as he worked inches away from her lithe body. She, meanwhile, was so absorbed in the pages of her book that she seemed oblivious to both him and the noise.