Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (3 page)

“I know you will.” Her arms wrapped around my shoulders and she folded me into a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she said, her breath whispering over my ear. It was gentle and light, and if she didn’t step back in the next three seconds, my hand was going to introduce itself to her ass.

Client, client, client.

“Okay, well, that’s wonderful,” I murmured.

Retreat. Disengage. Fall back.

Thirty was too old for midday erections on the sidewalk. A stiff pat to her shoulder, a giant step backward, and a notebook over my crotch kept my dignity intact.

For the moment.

Hugging clients wasn’t a standard part of my consults. Neither was caring. I was good at numbers, structures, and ratios. It was a pleasant coincidence that I usually liked my clients, and because I was good at getting shit done, and delivering on time and under budget, they liked me. Somehow, I managed to both hug Miss Halsted and care about her happiness inside an hour.

And let’s not forget the waking wet dream.

“I’ll run some numbers. Probably get back to you in a day or two.” I tried ignoring her smile—I could feel it piercing my skin, stabbing me like little pins of sweet, sinful joy—and gestured to the stone steps. “Watch out for stairs.”

Lauren nodded and accepted my card. “Thank you so much. For everything.” Her gaze swiveled between the steps and me, and she laughed. “I sent all of my information to your assistant last week, but if you need anything else…”

There was more, something she wanted to say, but it melted on her tongue and she presented her card instead. I felt only the brush of her fingertips against my palm, but it was enough to send electricity charging through my veins.

I didn’t know what the naughty schoolteacher was doing to me.

“Call me. Day or night. This project is my life. Really. Anytime.”

But I didn’t think I wanted it to stop.

*

I went a
couple more rounds with the inspector on the Back Bay brownstone restorations that were giving me hell, but after six hours of fixing mistakes and chewing some general contractor ass, all I had to show for it was a pounding headache. Making tracks on at least ten miles of pavement was the only answer, but at the rate my day was going, I’d be running at midnight. Exhausted, I climbed the stairs to the Beacon Hill headquarters of Walsh Associates and waved to Shannon and Patrick when I passed her office. Inviting myself into their weekly budget-and-sushi meeting was the last thing any sane person needed.

Settling into my desk, I stared out the eyebrow dormer windows at the night sky. Why did I do this? Insane hours, impossible expectations, bitch-ass inspectors. Why did I put up with this?

There was always Lauren Halsted.

If pulling a bubbly blonde from an unstable building and subsequently preventing her from eating concrete were the highlights of my day, I was calling it a memorable day. The full-body embrace put an interesting spin on things. A scarf camouflaged the finer aspects of her chest, but the second she was up against me, her full breasts were unmistakable.

Something else unmistakable? The semi I got from those tits and the vision of my hands all over them while she rode me. I couldn’t remember the last time my hands explored a body like Lauren’s, if ever. She wasn’t sculpted or race-hardened. She was real, all feminine, and completely foreign to me. And a client and not my type and I needed something else to occupy my mind.

Fast.

I demolished a Reuben sandwich while listening to voicemails, and sighed—and couldn’t repress a smile—when her voice filled the room.

“Hi, Mr. Walsh, this is Lauren Halsted. From the Saint Cosmas property. Touching base to see if you have any updates for me. Looking forward to hearing from you.”

I pulled up the specs of her project on my laptop.

“Mr. Walsh, this is Lauren Halsted again. Please feel free to reach out with updates. I’m free anytime. Looking forward to hearing from you. About the Saint Cosmas project.”

I checked the timestamp on her calls. Thirty-five minutes apart. “She wasn’t joking when she said it was her life,” I murmured.

“Mr. Walsh, this is Lauren Halsted calling. Sorry to trouble you. I’ve emailed some information gathered from a feasibility study completed on the site a few years ago. Again, please call me. Anytime. Looking forward to hearing from you.”

I crumpled the sandwich wrappings and turned my attention to the Saint Cosmas project. The calculations were quick, and confirmed everything I suspected: the site was completely unstable. The costs of rehab far exceeded Lauren’s budget, and that was before we started talking about restoration or turning it green.

Annoyed, I rolled my eyes at the screen. I probably would have been prepared with that information before this afternoon’s meeting if I wasn’t managing a ridiculous project load and incapable of seeing more than four minutes ahead at any given time. Regardless, I wanted another visit with Miss Halsted, and I wanted to touch her again.

And I figured she’d want to go through the data in person, piece by piece. She seemed thorough like that. Flicking a glimpse at my watch, I decided it wasn’t too late to call.

“Hi, this is Lauren.”

Fuck, I wanted to know what she was wearing. In detail. The conservative suit made me think of cotton panties in safe, subtle colors, but those heels said red thong. And I wanted to get to the bottom of that controversy.

Client, client, client.

“Miss Halsted, Matt Walsh. How are you this evening?”

“We’re not in my classroom, Matt. Lauren is fine,” she laughed, but her tone was no nonsense. It went in my ear and straight down to my dick. “So great to hear from you so soon. Any news on the site?”

We were pushing and pulling against a strange layer of formality. Was she still Miss Halsted because I was imagining her underwear, and fighting like hell not to? Or because she was my only full-body contact since the triathlon chick in July? Or was it the naughty schoolteacher thing?

If anyone asked, I was totally down for exploring the naughty schoolteacher thing.

“Still running scenarios. Can you meet me tomorrow?” I toggled to my calendar. “Around five?”

“Of course. At Saint Cosmas?”

“No!” I cried, imagining the floor dissolving into splinters under our feet. “Can you make it to our Beacon Hill offices? Off Cambridge Street?”

“Definitely. Thank you again for everything, Matt.”

A smile spread across my face as I sat back in my chair. “Goodnight, Lauren.”

She paused and I thought I heard her smile. Was that possible? To
hear
a smile? “Goodnight, Matt.”

I definitely heard a smile.

She was contagious. It was viral, her juju, her mojo, her sparkle, her hip-swiveling swagger. Whatever it was, it was on me.

I needed a little swagger for the deluge ahead.

Seventeen messages from sub-contractors, all requiring immediate attention.

Five budget updates from Shannon, plus a rundown on Angus’s new Bunker Hill properties and the associated screaming match, but I knew those issues would keep for another day. He liked to disrupt our work with time intensive, expensive properties, but he usually managed a few drunken rounds of golf in between the surprise attacks.

Eleven designs requiring structural analysis from my brother Sam, the sustainable design specialist. If that runt continued accepting new work without getting the entire team’s approval first, I was drop-kicking his skinny ass into the harbor.

Six frighteningly basic questions on restoration projects from my brother Riley, the youngest architect on the Walsh Associates team and Patrick’s slave.

Twelve one-line messages from my older brother Patrick, the senior architect and de facto chief executive, all bitching about progress on my Back Bay brownstone restorations. Bitching suited him. He liked freaking out over minute details.

I spent two hours deep in calculations for Sam, and updated my partners on the brownstone issues.

And that left one message from my little sister, Erin, with a photo album from her research trip to São Jorge Island, off the coast of Portugal, and its trio of volcanic complexes on the Azorean archipelago. I saved her for last.

Me and Erin, we got each other. We were the youngest, in a way, and being at the bottom of our respective heaps always brought us together. Patrick, Shannon, and I were born one after another, inside three years. Sam came along about two years later, then Riley, and finally Erin.

From: Matthew Walsh

To: Erin Walsh

Date: September 23 at 22:43 EDT

Subject: RE: Back from the Azores

E –

Good to hear you’re back on the mainland. The pictures of that lava flow are sick. How do you even get close enough to take those shots?

Crazy, crazy day here today. I just about dislocated a client’s arm when she tried to take a header down some stone steps. I think I’ve seen you do the same.

Miss you. We need to Skype soon.

Find a way to get your ass back here for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. Pick one and show up.

M –

I reread the message before clicking Send. I didn’t know why I mentioned Lauren; I just knew I wanted to tell someone about her and Erin was my most trusted someone.

LAUREN

I
sat cross-legged
on my antique velvet sofa, staring at the cover of my latest book club selection. Another meeting with Matthew A. Walsh.
Matt.
I was more than happy to give him an hour of my day, especially if it involved good news. I needed good news, and sharing his company was no hardship.

He was one of those guys you met and immediately thought, “Wow. Let me take off your pants. And yeah, the shirt too.”

Or, in my case, “Let me throw myself down some stairs and rub up against your chest.”

Given his kindness in keeping me from becoming a sidewalk stain, I was tempted to thank Matt with coffee after our meeting, but I’d hesitated, and the moment had slipped away.

I was curious about him. He wasn’t the type of architect I had expected—no tweed jacket, no suede elbow patches, no tortoiseshell glasses, no ill-fitting pleated khakis. Instead, he was an architectural superhero, all muscles and dark hair and throbbing annoyance at the building for failing to meet his expectations. His smile was scorching, but his intense gaze hit me hardest. When those blue eyes landed on me, serious and heavy, it was as if he was sifting through my every thought.

My phone vibrated across the table, and my heart leapt just as quickly. I rolled my eyes, laughing at myself and shaking free from my daydream. Time to shut down all thoughts of Matt Walsh’s chiseled chest.

I studied the readout and smiled. “If it isn’t the road warriors!”

“Hi, honey! It’s your Mom and me, we’re on the speakerphone,” my father announced. For a guy who trained Navy SEALs for over twenty years, he sounded quite impressed with the capabilities of his cell phone.

“Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom. Where are you today?”

“We’re in the Anza-Borrego Desert, in the mountains outside Palm Springs. Amazing country up here. You’d love the hiking.”

I snorted, imagining myself tumbling down the trail and landing in a bank of jumping cholla cactus. My brothers liked to say I tripped over dust. It wasn’t that I was clumsy—ten years of gymnastics and competitive cheerleading proved I could control my body—it was that I managed to stumble at inopportune times, and those times were typically when I was nervous.

Or distracted by the dress shirt pulled tight across Matt’s chest, and the thought of peeling it away and tasting him just beneath his collar.

“And the views for miles!” Mom added. “The natural landscape is gorgeous. I can’t stop taking pictures.”

“How long are you staying there?”

“Well…” Dad released a good-natured chuckle. “We’ve scrapped the itinerary for the moment. Your mother has persuaded me to follow the good weather.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I said.

“But we’ll be spending some time in Palm Springs to visit with the Rosses. And then down to Mexico. I’d like to stop in Rosarito, and then Ensenada. Along Highway One. Probably ending in Cabo San Lucas around Thanksgiving. Maybe later. I want some sunny holidays this year.”

“You’re welcome to join us anytime, honey,” Dad said. “Just say the word, and we’ll have a ticket waiting for you. I hope you’re not worrying about money.”

He trusted me with firearms, yet doubted my ability to balance a checkbook. Was it a protective dad thing? An only daughter thing? Or was it that he truly doubted I had my shit together?

Not that my shit was remotely together, but still.

“I know, Dad,” I sighed. “I’m doing fine. You don’t need to worry about me—”

“I know you can handle yourself, but I’ve seen more than enough evil out there. You’re still carrying that pepper spray, correct?”

It was always a matter of time until he went there. Commodore Halsted and his “the world is brimming with danger and therefore my daughter needs a thigh-holstered k-bar to walk around the corner” speech. He liked to spice it up with stories cherry-picked from his missions, although I was fairly certain he tossed in plotlines from spy novels and war movies.