“Did you want me, Jocelyn?”
Sighing deeply, she set her jaw, determined not to say anything. She thought better of it and opened her mouth to tell him a thing or two, but he was quick and placed a finger to her lips. “Remember our truce.”
She glared. She didn’t care one iota about their so-called truce. Her main concern was tile, namely marble. If Marcella got wind that she would have to wait six weeks for her foyer to be completed, all hell would break loose. A thought suddenly came into Jocelyn’s head. Bas was supposed to be the expert troubleshooter, the fixer-upper, the problem solver. So let him deal with it and see if he made more progress than she did.
“We got the wrong tile,” she snapped.
He gave her a carefree look. “Then return it.”
As if she hadn’t been trying to do that for the past half hour. “It’ll be another six weeks before the distributor can replace it.”
“Tough. We’ll go to the manufacturer.”
Did he think she hadn’t tried that already, too? “I did that,” she all but spat out. “And I got nowhere.”
“What’s the name of the distributor?”
Jocelyn blew out a sharp breath. “Arnett Distributors.”
“Arnett Distributors?” He almost laughed. “Then there shouldn’t be a problem.”
He sounded so convinced she couldn’t help but ask, “And why shouldn’t there be a problem?”
He smiled again as he met her gaze while pulling out his cell phone and punching in numbers he evidently knew by heart. “Because the Steele Corporation is one of their biggest clients.”
Jocelyn nervously chewed the insides of her cheeks. Could it be possible that Bas had enough clout with Arnett to rectify a major screw-up? She couldn’t help remembering the last house they’d done for Marcella Jones and how she claimed the kitchen fixtures hadn’t been the ones she’d ordered. She’d pitched such a fit that Jim had taken the six-hour drive to Birmingham and back to pick up the ones Marcella claimed she was supposed to have. Jocelyn didn’t relish the thought of having to tell her about the tile.
“Mark Arnett, please.”
Bas’s words intruded into her thoughts and she wondered how he’d gotten past the auto prompts. She wondered too if he’d gotten any more sleep last night than she had. He didn’t seem tired and grouchy this morning. Evidently he hadn’t had a restless night remembering how they had indulged in such a mind-blowing kiss. Maybe it had been mind-blowing just to her. Maybe for him it was just so-so.
“Mark? How are you? This is Sebastian Steele. Yes, I’m fine.” Then cutting to the chase he said, “Look, I need your help and I want you to put it to the top of your list.” He nodded. “Good. There’s been a mix-up with a supplier of one of our subsidiary companies and I need it straightened out. I need a particular style of marble tile sent to me right away.” There was a pause. “How soon? Overnight if you can.” Another pause. “Here’s the style number,” he said and began reading the information off the invoice.
“Think you can handle that?” he asked without missing a beat. “Great. Here’s the address I want it sent to.”
Five minutes later Bas was hanging up the phone, smiling. “Any other fires you want me to put out?”
Not unless he wanted to drop a gallon of water on her head, Jocelyn thought as intense heat ran through every part of her body. While he’d been on the phone with Mark Arnett, trying to save her company from Marcella Jones’s wrath, she’d been studying him like a teenager in lust. Every time he moved his body, she got the full effect of seeing him in his tight-fitting jeans and saw how they contoured to his muscular thighs. And if that wasn’t bad enough, that Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt was clearly emphasizing muscular arms, a firm flat chest and nice wide shoulders. Display Bas on a poster and she would buy whatever he was advertising.
“Jocelyn?”
Snatched out of her reverie, she lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders. “No, there aren’t any more fires you need to put out. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He glanced around. “Where’s Reese?”
“Doing a pickup.”
He blew out a breath and frowned. “When do you expect him back?”
She lifted a brow. “Not sure. Is anything wrong?”
“No, just have him call the office when he returns.”
For some reason Jocelyn felt he wasn’t telling her everything. Why did he want to talk to Reese? He was just the foreman. She was the one in charge of things. Maybe she needed to remind him of that.
“Look,” she said, leaning closer and looking intently at him.
“Yes?” he said, and she felt the force of his own gaze back.
“You do remember who’s in charge, don’t you?”
He smiled. “Yeah, I think so, but do you want to remind me again?”
She frowned, and suddenly wanted to find the hammer and clobber him. “I’m trying to be nice.”
“You shouldn’t have to try so hard. It should come naturally,” he said and reached out and tweaked her nose. “I’ll see you later.”
She was ready to throw out an angry retort when she saw that Harry had reappeared and the two of them were talking with obvious familiarity. Evidently they remembered each other from that summer Bas had worked with her father. Jocelyn decided what she had to say to Bas could wait. There was no need to put him in his place in front of Harry. She would have enough time to read him later.
She was pulled away from those thoughts when her cell phone rang. “Yes?”
“Is Reese there?”
She recognized Leah’s voice immediately. “No. Why?”
“Because I saw him this morning.”
She could tell from the tone of her sister’s voice that there was more. “And?”
“And we had words.”
Jocelyn felt her throat tighten. “Not so nice ones, I gather.”
“You gathered right.”
Jocelyn nodded. No wonder Reese was in a bad mood. Now she understood why the men thought he was angry about something. “Are you okay?” she asked, concerned.
“Yes, but barely. And you were right. He hates me.”
“I never said he hated you. I said he was still hurting.”
“Same difference, since I’m the one who hurt him.”
There was a pause because Jocelyn didn’t know what to say. No, that wasn’t true. She did know what to say, but she also knew Leah wouldn’t want to hear it. She trailed a finger along the fine craftsmanship of the wooden banister Reese had completed last week. “I still think you should tell him the truth.”
“I can’t.”
She decided not to press when she heard the trembling in Leah’s voice. She didn’t have to see her sister’s face to know she’d been crying and probably still was. “Hey, how about the two of us doing something tonight?”
“Like what?”
“Going to a movie.”
“A movie?”
“Yes, a movie. When was the last time we went to a movie together?” She could just imagine Leah bunching up her forehead trying to remember.
“Um, I think it was when Aunt Susan took us to see Titanic.”
“Hey, you’re right,” Jocelyn said smiling as she remembered. “She really liked that picture, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did. We sat through it twice. After that I didn’t care if I ever saw the ocean again.”
“I felt the same way.” Jocelyn laughed.
“You know,” Leah then said in a quiet voice, “I wish she had been around five years ago. I would have gone to Florida instead of California. For all her proper ways, Aunt Susan was pretty special, wasn’t she?”
Jocelyn nodded. “Yes, she was.” After a brief pause she said, “So how about it? Do you want to do a movie?”
She heard Leah chuckle and liked the sound. “Will going to a movie help you sleep better tonight?” Leah asked with a hint of teasing in her voice.
Jocelyn glanced across the room to Bas. He was still
talking to Harry. And as if he felt her eyes on him, he tilted his head and looked at her. The deep intensity of his dark gaze was pinning her to the spot, heating her even more.
It was hard for Jocelyn to keep her voice steady when she replied, “No guarantees there, but it’s worth a try.”
Bas threw the file aside and glanced at his watch. It was almost four in the afternoon. He had a ton of files he still needed to review so there was no reason for Jocelyn Mason to be on his mind.
But she was.
Muttering a curse he leaned back in the chair and picked up a file he had placed to the side. He had done the accounting three times and still the figures weren’t right, but before he jumped to any conclusions, he would do as Jim had instructed him in another letter that Kilgore had dropped off a few days ago. All the note had said was: Talk to Reese first about any discrepancies you may find in the bookkeeping records.
Then, just that quickly, he dismissed the note from his mind as his thoughts wandered to Jocelyn again. He had known she was troubled by something the moment he’d seen her. It was there in her face. She’d had that worried look. And ridiculous as it seemed, something deep within him had wanted to get rid of whatever was causing her stress.
Luckily all it had taken was a phone call and the use of his connections to make things right and to remove her troubled frown. But as usual, they had almost gotten into another argument, something he hadn’t been up to. After talking with Harry he had quickly left, eager to be gone from Jocelyn’s presence before she found another bone to pick. After a sleepless night and dealing with Sadie that morning, he hadn’t been in the best of moods, either. The last thing they needed was to be at each other’s throats…or lips.
Damn, but he couldn’t get their kiss out of his mind! He shook his head remembering. Whoever said ‘out of sight, out of mind’ didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, he thought, reaching for an apple from the basket of fresh fruit Sadie Robinson had dropped off a few moments ago. The woman had stayed only long enough to lecture him on how much better fruit was than some of the other snacks she’d noticed him gobbling up. He hadn’t found her spiel amusing but Noreen, Mason Construction’s secretary, had.
Noreen Telfair.
The woman’s name suddenly made him recall the accounting issue and why he needed to talk to Reese. The one thing he’d noticed about the attractive woman was that she appeared to be a good worker who didn’t have much to say. He knew that she was in her late forties, a divorcée with a teenage daughter, and that she had moved to town three or four years ago from Atlanta. He’d discovered that bit of info from reading her employee records, which was something he had taken the time to do on everyone who worked at Mason’s.
“The guys said you were looking for me.”
Bas glanced up when Reese walked into what used to be Jim’s office. Bas took one look at Reese, saw his tense expression and immediately knew something was bothering him. “Hey, man, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, closing the door behind him and crossing the room to sit in a leather chair. “Today’s been a rough one.”
Bas chuckled. “Tell me about it.” He was pretty good at reading people, and although Reese had said things were fine, Bas knew that something wasn’t. But he was a person who made it a point not to get involved in anyone else’s business unless he was asked.
He leaned forward, remembering why he needed to see Reese. “I was going through the accounting records and found several discrepancies. Kilgore delivered a letter to me a couple of days ago that Jim left. In it were instructions that I talk to you first if I found problems with the books.”
Reese sat up straighter in his chair as a confused expression covered his face. “Jim said that?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder why. As far as I know I’m not privy to any information regarding Mason Construction’s accounting records. What’s the discrepancy?”
“Several deposits of large amounts were placed in an account for Noreen. The last one was a couple of months before Jim died. I verified the signature and he signed off on all of them, but he doesn’t note in the records what they were for.”
“Oh,” Reese said and then sat back and smoothed his hands along the arms of the chair. “I don’t know exactly what they were for, but I have an idea.”
“All right,” Bas said, sensing Reese’s hesitancy in discussing the matter. “Was it a loan? Blackmail? Help me to understand, Reese. We’re talking about a total of over a hundred thousand dollars here.”
Reese shifted nervously in his chair and met the intensity in Bas’s gaze. “No one was supposed to know and I only found out by accident.”
Bas lifted a brow. “You found out what by accident?”
Reese shifted in his chair again and lowered his eyes when he spoke. “That Jim and Noreen were lovers.”
Bas didn’t so much as blink since that had been one of his suspicions. “Why did they keep it a secret? Jim was a widower and Noreen is divorced.”
Reese shrugged and met Bas’s eyes. “Yes, but there’s the issue of the difference in their ages. We’re talking about fifteen years. And besides that, this is a small town that sometimes feeds on gossip, and Noreen has a teenage daughter they wanted to protect. They were very discreet and most of the time they planned out-of-town trips. They had been together a couple of years before I found out. I happened to be visiting a cousin in Atlanta when I ran into the two of them in a hotel there. Needless to say, it was a very uncomfortable moment because it was the last thing I’d suspected.”
Bas nodded. “Did Jocelyn know?”
“I doubt it. At least Jim and Noreen assumed she didn’t know. I really don’t think she would have had a problem with it had she known. But like I said, Jim was uncomfortable about the difference in their ages. Noreen didn’t have a problem with it.”
“And they were lovers until he died?”
“Yes, and I really thought things would come out then, but Jim made Noreen promise not to say or do anything to give them away. That part was pretty hard on her.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“And he didn’t want to leave her a big chunk in his will like he did for me, to give everyone a reason to speculate why. That’s why he set up a special account for her in this bank in Memphis. She didn’t know he was doing it until right before he died.”
“I see.”
“That’s probably why he wanted you to come in and check out things before Jocelyn got a mind to call in an independent accountant to audit the records.”
Bas leaned back in his chair. “Thanks for sharing that with me. That clears up a lot.”
“Well, Noreen and Jim cared a lot for each other and although their affair wasn’t made public, they made each other happy, and to me that’s all that mattered. For some people happiness is a rare commodity these days.”
Bas said nothing for a moment after hearing the rancor in Reese’s voice. He remembered having to deal with his brother’s Morgan’s bitterness a few months ago when a woman he was interested in refused even to discuss the possibility of them pursuing a relationship.
Bas quickly made a decision about something. He might as well call it a day since he wasn’t thinking about work much anyway. “So, what are your plans for the rest of the day, Reese?”
Reese stood. “I’m going over to the gym to work out awhile. I feel like hitting something and I prefer it to be a punching bag than a human being.”
Bas nodded. He knew the feeling. He remembered passing the gym when he arrived in town. It seemed like a pretty new facility. He couldn’t remember the last time he gave his body a good workout. “Mind if I join you?”
Reese smiled. “No, not at all.”
“Good. I’ll run by Sadie’s and get my gear and then meet you there in about thirty minutes.” Bas locked the files in the drawer for the night.
Beating up on a punching bag wasn’t such a bad idea.
Chapter 9
This wa
s the part of construction she loved the best. The finish. Or in this case, the part that was pretty close to being finished, because with Marcella Jones you never knew for sure. But since Bas had explained their pay-if-you-make-any-changes policy, she had kept the changes to a minimum. In fact she had made barely any at all.
Jocelyn glanced around with her hand on her hips. This was indeed a beautiful home and she could imagine how grand it would look furnished. Marcella wasn’t known to skimp when it came to getting what she wanted so there was no doubt in Jocelyn’s mind that this house would be the talk of the town for a while…at least until Marcella saw another design for a home that suited her fancy in one of those magazines of hers. Then there would be house number four.
“It looks nice, doesn’t it?”
Jocelyn turned and smiled at Reese. “Yes, it does, and from the look of things, we’ll finish on time. That marble tile came this morning and Harry and his crew have already put it down. They’ll be back tomorrow to grout it.”
She then studied Reese with concern in her eyes. She hadn’t seen him yesterday and wondered if he was okay. “And how are you, Reese? Leah told me you saw each other yesterday.”
Jocelyn watched as bitterness lined his lips. “Yes, we did. I should have been prepared but I wasn’t,” he said quietly.
“And I don’t think she was prepared, either.”
Reese’s dark eyes flashed. “Then that’s tough for her, isn’t it?” He inhaled deeply and said, “Look, Jocelyn, I’d rather not discuss Leah, but there is something I need to know. If you can’t tell me, then I’ll understand.”
“What?”
Reese hung his head and studied the gleaming wood floor for a second then met Jocelyn’s gaze again. “Is Leah pregnant? Is that the reason she’s not in a hurry to leave here?”
Of all the questions she had expected him to ask that sure wasn’t one. “What gave you an idea like that? She definitely doesn’t look pregnant.”
Forged of Steele Bundle Page 33
