Challenge Accepted - A Contemporary Romance

by Rose, Carol

  *

  Colt whistled as he poked at a damp spot on the ceiling, his stick catching at a pocket of water in the sagging ceiling paper. Boards had been torn out of the walls in the west bedroom to allow for the rewiring. Glancing over the work quickly, Colt congratulated himself on hiring only the best crew. As usual, their work couldn't be faulted.

  He strode into the front room. Even though he knew his men were thorough, Colt still checked out each phase of the restoration. More than likely, he'd inherited the habit from his father, who'd had a reputation for quality work.

  A sudden thud on the roof drew his attention. The sound was followed by a shriek of terror and scrabbling sounds against the slate.

  Horror gripped Colt as he saw a pair of bare legs swinging wildly in the air in front of the window. He swore, and hit the tower stairs at a dead run, thundering up them two at a time.

  Vaulting over the low wall onto the roof, Colt edged swiftly in front of the eyebrow dormer, his fear giving him agility.

  Hayley clutched the heavy molding at the roof's edge, her fingers white, her head ducked to look below her.

  Bracing himself to hold her weight, Colt grabbed both her wrists in his hands. She cried out, her voice ragged.

  "It's okay, Hayley," he said urgently. "I've got you."

  Hayley whimpered, her fingers still gripping the edge of the roof.

  "You can let go, sweetheart," he urged her. ''I'll pull you up."

  She lifted her head, meeting his gaze with terror-shocked eyes.

  "I have you," Colt promised. "I won't let you fall."

  Slowly and with obvious willpower, she loosened her trembling fingers, her eyes still locked with his. He lifted her carefully then, trying to avoid scraping the length of her body over the edge of the roof.

  Once she was up, Colt pulled her to his side and swiftly, cautiously, backed up to set her over the tower wall.

  "Lord, Hayley." Stepping into the tower, he drew her into his arms. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

  Her slender body trembled so violently in his arms that Colt leaned against the door

  frame and slid to the tower floor, taking her with him. He sat there holding her, his face buried in her neck, breathing in the nectar of her fragrance, uttering a silent prayer of thanks.

  "Don't ever do that again," Colt commanded unsteadily, a thread of anger running through his words. He felt her shaking diminish as she drew in several deep breaths.

  "Gosh, Colt," she said through shivering lips. "It was real fun for me, but I won't do it anymore if you can't take the shock."

  A combination of rage and relief shuddered through him as he stared at her upturned face, pale and shaken. Then, before his eyes, she seemed to crumple, tears tracking down her cheeks as she sobbed into his shoulder. Colt held her in his arms, shushing her trembling, knowing her distress was a natural reaction to her near-death experience, but still disturbed by it.

  Hayley's sobs subsided slowly and she drew herself out of his arms, fluffing her fingers through her curly hair. "Sorry about the waterworks. I'm really fine," she assured him with a plucky smile that didn't quite hide her self-consciousness. ''I'm usually fine when I have something solid underneath me."

  Colt stared at her flushed face, a tenderness blossoming in his chest as his imagination ran amok, fueled by adrenalin and fear and something else he couldn't identify. At that moment, he ached to put something very solid underneath Hayley. But he didn't think she'd appreciate the suggestion.

  Maybe she was telepathic, because at that moment she scooted a little farther away from him.

  "I, uh, I want to thank you," she stumbled over the words. "You really saved me. The veranda roof might have broken my fall, but it's too shallow to have stopped me. I probably would have landed on the front walk with a broken neck."

  "It's such a nice neck, we wouldn't want that," Colt said, his voice grave. "Even though that would have solved the little problem about who gets the contract."

  Hayley's head whipped up, her eyes shocked. He met her gaze, keeping his face straight for several long seconds. For a moment, she must have believed him. Then, her lips began to quiver, mirth brimming in her eyes.

  Laughter echoed off the tower ceiling as they both convulsed, the tension dissipating in their gales.

  Hayley wiped her eyes and held a hand to her side. "Sometimes you make me nuts," she gasped, her voice faint.

  Colt stood up, reaching a hand down to pull her to her feet. "You ain't seen nothing yet," he promised.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hayley held the banister carefully as she descended the stairs. Her knees felt like jelly and an occasional aftershock sent trembles through her muscles. On the stairs, Colt clumped behind her. The sound of his solid footsteps echoed like a reassuring heartbeat.

  He had saved her life. She could still feel the strength of his arms around her, the vibrating energy that held his body tight when he pulled her onto the roof.

  The warm, solid circle of his arms had evoked some unexpected reactions. She'd wanted to stay there, huddled and safe. She'd wanted to raise her mouth to his and taste his kiss again.

  It was that last urge that had propelled her out of his embrace. Colt made her think of connection and desire and comfort, all in the same instant. But she knew the price of loving, realized the cost of connection.

  From the first, she'd barricaded herself against his attraction. She couldn't be swayed from her purpose. But fate seemed to be conspiring against her. All she wanted to do at

  this moment was throw herself into his arms again and stay there for a very long time.

  The knowledge of her own weakness stiffened Hayley's backbone. She and Colt were locked in combat, and she couldn't allow herself to forget that. She needed the Victorian Oaks contract to pay her rent as much as to prove her independence.

  "Are you sure you're all right?" He touched her shoulder in a concerned gesture as they stopped in the foyer.

  Hayley drew in a deep breath and beamed her best smile at him. "Yes. I'm fine." She just needed to get home to her tiny apartment, climb into bed, and cry into her pillow for hours.

  "Well, good." Colt seemed to be at a loss as he hesitated at the foot of the stairs.

  Still plotting her escape, Hayley groped to remember where she'd parked her car. The simple detail seemed to have gotten lost in the fall, her memory apparently tumbling loose in that horrifying moment.

  "Oh, no," she groaned, suddenly realizing the whereabouts of the Volvo.

  "What's the matter?" he asked quickly.

  "Is Wolf still here?" Hayley peered into the library, hoping to conjure up her friend. With the Volvo at the mechanic's, she'd counted on Wolf giving her a ride home.

  Colt seemed to stiffen. "He left earlier this afternoon."

  Of course, he had. And she'd been pacing through the house, obsessing about the roof, forgetting all about needing a ride. Hayley gnawed on her lip.

  "Did you need him for anything in particular?" Colt asked, his voice cool.

  Hayley let out a disgusted breath. How did she get herself into these situations? "I was hoping he'd give me a ride home," she admitted. "My car's in the shop."

  "Oh." Colt's thundercloud expression lifted. "No problem. I'll take you home and pick you up for work in the morning."

  She really didn't have a choice.

  "Thanks," Hayley accepted, trying not to sound grudging. She was already too beholden to this man; the last thing she needed was a tally of obligations with Colt.

  They locked up the silent house and trekked across the overgrown lawn to Colt's Suburban. Hayley slid into the comfortable seat and strapped herself in, battling the sensation of surrender. It was too easy to be taken care of, too familiar. Just being in comfortable surroundings brought out a prickly defensiveness in her.

  Growing up the daughter of Henry Haslett had been like being raised in a jewelry box. Her life had been very well padded, but there hadn't been much air.

  Colt
started the engine, powerfully aware of the silent tension filling the vehicle.

  "Where to?"

  "I live in a little apartment on Edwards Avenue," she told him.

  She lived alone. He tried to keep the satisfaction out of his face.

  What he really wanted, he knew, was to drive straight to his apartment and spend the night making love to her. That option, however, seemed out of the question at this point.

  "I never did thank you for allowing me to rescue you," Colt teased, trying to get a rise out of her. "I've always wanted to save a damsel in distress."

  Hayley inhaled deeply and blew out an irritated breath.

  "In these liberated times, men don't often get the chance to be Sir Galahad. We can't even open doors anymore," he ventured.

  "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?"

  Frustration and anger simmered in her voice.

  "Yeah," admitted Colt. "I am. A natural reaction, I think, after you made such a big deal about being an expert."

  "I know what I'm doing," Hayley protested, her voice shaded in desperation almost as if she'd had this argument before and didn't expect to win it. "Anyone could've fallen off that roof."

  Colt chuckled. "But it happened to be you."

  "So?" she asked scathingly. "It's childish to enjoy someone else's downfall."

  He leaned over, brushing the back of his hand along her cheek. "Honey, you didn't have a downfall. I caught you. Remember?"

  Hayley's heart thundered, her lungs suddenly feeling as hot and dry as Death Valley. She clenched her hands in her lap, battling the welter of emotion that threatened to break loose. He had saved her and held her close while she trembled with shock.

  If she hadn't been so powerfully affected by him, so set afire by his warm, musky smell, his subsequent teasing wouldn't matter.

  Stuff happened when you worked construction. She'd been in a hundred difficult situations, at least half of them brought on by her own ignorance. Generally, she laughed at herself harder than anyone else. But things felt different with Colt.

  "What is it with men, anyway?" Her head turned in his direction, anger flaring through her veins. "Is there something in the Y chromosome that creates this always-have-to-be-right attitude?"

  "Probably the testosterone," Colt said, grinning at her from across the vehicle.

  Hayley shook her head in disgust.

  Colt was silent for a moment before he spoke.

  "I used to think I knew it all," he mused.

  "I thought I was all grown up when I was eighteen years old-when my father died." Colt shot her a glance filled with emotion. "I jumped right in. Took over the business and went to college at night."

  Hayley found herself picturing an eighteen year-old Colt, grieving for his father and struggling to take his place. She'd lost her own mother at the age of six and she remembered all too well how the death of a parent stole your childhood.

  ''I'm sure I overdid the take-charge thing," he said. "But money was tight, and my mom needed my help. Her life kind of revolved around dad."

  "That must have been hard on you," Hayley offered hesitantly.

  He shrugged. "It was, but I knew she didn't have much choice. Dad's death was hardest on her. They had a really good marriage, and then he died so suddenly. An accident at a job site."

  Hayley's voice was soft. "So you took on a man's responsibilities very young."

  Colt looked at her, his eyes holding a mute recognition of her understanding. "Yeah, well, I certainly tried. The business was smaller then and I'd been helping Dad out every summer since I turned twelve. So I managed to pull it off."

  "But it was still difficult, I would guess, making all those decisions without your father's guidance--and with everyone depending on you." She could imagine him, a teenager, struggling to keep up with all the complexities of running a business.

  This was not good. The cutthroat world of business was alien enough to her soft-hearted nature without getting intimately involved with the enemy. She didn't want to care.

  It would be so much simpler if she could keep Colt at a distance and see him only as an adversary. Not a man with too much responsibility and a sense of obligation that ran bone-deep.

  They pulled up in front of her apartment, the Suburban idling quietly in the dark. Shadows thickened between them, the air suddenly gone still. Hayley struggled to still her thundering heart.

  Colt thrust the gearshift into park and reached for her. Hayley felt him tilt her head back for his kiss.

  "Just one," he murmured. "Don't damsels reward the knights who save them?"

  She fell into his kiss, drawn by the soft, heady taste of his mouth. She felt herself quiver and lean into him, precariously stretched between their two seats.

  It made no sense. He was the competition, and might be a real threat to her independence. But he was also a man, solid and evocative, strong and vibrating with energy. A man who didn't seem to know his own needs. She felt a deep call to her own longings.

  Colt's hand cradled her head as he kissed her with a devastating thoroughness. The callused texture of his thumb along her neck sent sparks radiating along her nerve endings.

  Conscious thought disintegrated into instinct. She felt the drift of his touch along her arm, and then he cupped her breast, his hand gentle despite his strength.

  His mouth absorbed her murmur of pleasure as his hand soothed over her sensitive flesh. Clothing separated them, but she felt the sensation of his touch as if she were bare.

  He hovered above her in the dark, his face taut with desire.

  Slowly, she drew back, disengaging herself from his embrace. "I thought you weren't going to argue about this."

  "Argue?" His smile was a seduction in itself.

  "About what?"

  "Us. This." Hayley flapped an impatient hand between them, her instinct for self-preservation returning. "We agreed to keep things strictly business."

  "No, you said that's how you wanted it," he corrected. "I never agreed to that. I still don't see the problem. I'm attracted to you and, judging by your response to my kisses, you're attracted to me."

  She glared at him in the darkness. "You inherited your company from your father, but I'm out here on my own, trying to make it on my own and be independent. Building up a business takes a tremendous amount of work."

  "And kissing me keeps you from doing that?"

  "It's not just kissing," Hayley declared with asperity.

  "It is so far." Colt sighed soulfully.

  She wouldn't laugh, Hayley told herself, biting her lip. How did he do it? In two minutes, he took her from sensual meltdown to irritation and then to laughter.

  "I have to concentrate on my business," she repeated doggedly.

  "Are you sure this isn't about something else?" Even in the darkness, she could see the skeptical expression on his face.

  "Why can't you believe that my business is as important to me as yours is to you?"

  Colt shook his head. ''I'm not arguing with that. I just don't see why you getting your business going means there can't ever be a relationship between us."

  "I haven't forgotten that you're trying to steal the Victorian Oaks contract out from under me! My livelihood is on the line here. You know-food, rent, and gas money. I need this job to survive."

  He sat back in his seat, his face perplexed in the shadowy light. "I hadn't quite thought of it in those terms."

  "Well, think of it now," she shot back. ''I'm fighting for my financial life. I can't allow myself to get so distracted by someone's kisses."

  "Thank you," he murmured.

  "I didn't mean that as a compliment," Hayley said witheringly. She hesitated, her hand on the door handle. "Thanks for pulling me off the roof and...everything."

  *

  Colt slapped at his jeans, puffs of dust rising from his efforts. He'd only stepped inside for a minute, but a hundred years of fine-grained dirt had accumulated within the walls of Palmer House. They'd apparently stirred eve
ry bit of it up.

  Across the now-trampled lawn, Hayley stood conferring with a small, earnest man.

  Colt sauntered down the walk toward them. Colt knew luring Hayley into the excursion he had planned would require tact and a guileless expression. The woman had been avoiding him like he was a threat to her health.

  "I thought we'd go with three shades of the blue," Hayley said. "And then use the four complementary tones." She held paint swatches in one hand, fanned out like a poker hand.

  "Terrific choices." Skip nodded, as he gave her color scheme his full attention. "I really like the touch of rose."

  Hayley smiled. "Thanks. I worked on it quite a while." She glanced up at Colt. "Skip, I’d like you to meet the other foreman on this job. Colt Granger, this is Skip Newman. He's our paint expert."

  Skip ducked his head and blushed. "Gee, Hayley."

  "Now don't deny it," she scolded him, her voice maternal. "No one could have done better work on the MacIntire house. Right?"

  Still rosy, the other man reluctantly nodded.

  "You worked on the MacIntire place?" Colt sounded impressed. He held out his hand. "Nice to meet you, Skip. That's a classic Victorian 'Painted Lady.' Great job on the color scheme. We'll need someone with an imaginative sense of color for the Palmer House."

  Skip took his hand in a damp, brief shake, his expression like a pup who was relieved not to be kicked.

  "We'll have the six from our paint crew," Hayley went on with her instructions. "And four from the Granger crew." She glanced at Colt meaningfully. "I did mention that we'll be training them, didn't I?"

  "Yes," Skip grinned.

  "Why don't you get the paint ordered?"

  Hayley asked, handing Skip the swatches. "We'll do the power wash on Tuesday,"

  "Yes, ma'am. I'll take care of it" Skip moved off to confer with another worker,

  Colt could almost feel it, the change in temperature as she turned to him. Hayley seemed to be girding herself up to do battle now that they stood alone together in the yard. Her shoulders went back and her breasts thrust against the T-shirt she wore with her overalls.