by North,Leslie
“I don’t use,” she snapped angrily.
“Good. Keep it that way.” He took a deep breath. “A piece of advice. If you plan on being a legitimate activist, I would use caution on where you spend your time and who with. If you hope to achieve anything with the companies in this area, reputation is everything.”
Daisy had no idea how to respond. Part of her wanted to be angry at his insinuations but she also knew he was right.
When he’d parked the car, Gabe got out and tried to walk her to her building. Panicked, she put a hand on his chest to stop him. “You really don’t have to do this.”
His body was warm under her touch, and her mouth went dry. “I have driven you home. It’s my responsibility to see you safely inside,” he said neutrally. It was as if he wasn’t even affected by her touch.
Humiliated, she snatched her hand back and let him into the building. He started towards the elevator, but she shook her head. “It’s not working. I’m not sure it’s ever worked. We have to take the stairs.”
“Have you brought up the issue with your landlord?” he asked as he followed her into the stairwell.
“Around here, it’s best to pay your rent and keep your head down. Besides, the exercise is good for me.” Her apartment was situated right outside the stairwell, and she winced when she heard her neighbors screaming. “Okay, this is me. You have seen me safely to my door. You can go now.”
He lifted an eyebrow when he heard the string of obscenities unleashed from the apartment next door, but he didn’t say anything. Fairly certain he wasn’t going to leave until she was actually in her apartment; she slid her key into the doorknob. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a clean exit. Her door sometimes stuck a little, and she had to jiggle it until the deadbolt would slide out. Finally, she practically fell through the doorway and shut the door quickly. With her back to the door, she rested her head against the wood and closed her eyes.
The entire night had backfired on her, but she hadn’t walked away completely empty-handed. It was nice to know that Gabe Maxfield hadn’t always been Mr. Perfect. Now, she knew that it was possible to crack his cool exterior.
She only wished that she affected him the same way he affected her.
6
When Nathan knocked on the door of Gabe’s office, he discovered his brother was in a sour mood. Gabe had lost several hours of sleep over the past few nights, and the culprit was Daisy Levine. Every time he closed his eyes, her face popped up in his mind, and it was setting him on edge.
“What?” Gabe growled as he looked up. His younger brother opened the door and glanced around.
“Bad time?”
“Its fine,” he said with a sigh as he pushed the papers away. Actually, it wasn’t fine. Angie would want the proposals finished before tomorrow, and he already had a walk-through for a construction site with Daisy in a few hours that would take up the rest of his day. But if he were being honest, he wasn’t really focusing on the proposals anyway.
Nathan sat down and regarded Gabe closely. “You look tired. Got a woman keeping you up late at night?” he asked jokingly.
“What do you want, Nathan?”
“Right. Sorry. I forgot that your private life is private. I know you’re taking Daisy out this afternoon, and I wanted to know if you had any questions or needed any pointers.”
“Pointers?” Gabe asked with a raised eyebrow. “Why would I need pointers? I walk people around real estate sites all the time. I’m sure a construction site is no different.”
“She’s manipulative,” Nathan said as he squirmed around in the chair. It was obvious that talking about his ex-girlfriend was well outside his comfort zone. “You need to choose every word around her carefully or she’ll take it and twist it.”
Gabe had to suppress a chuckle. “Nathan, I know that this is difficult for you but this isn’t a relationship. I’m not walking on eggshells because I’m afraid she’ll hold it over my head later. This is business, and if there is one thing I know how to do, it’s present this company in a positive light.”
“I know that. But Daisy is passionate about this kind of thing, and if she doesn’t see things going her way, she may take some radical steps to straighten the path. Be careful.”
“You’re welcome to join us,” Gabe said casually. He knew that Daisy said she didn’t want to see Nathan, but if Angie was right, Daisy was lying. Gabe didn’t really understand the games that women played, but he was willing to play along if it meant that he could get the damned woman out of his hair so he could get on with his life.
“No,” Nathan said immediately. Gabe didn’t like the finality in his tone. “I don’t know why Daisy is here, but I don’t want anything to do with it. I’ve already played that game, and I lost.”
“You don’t think she’s here to get your attention?”
“She’s not that kind of girl,” Nathan said with a shrug. “If she wanted to be with me, she’d call me and tell me that. I don’t think she’d go after Duncan Enterprises unless she had to. Something else must be going on.”
That checked out with Daisy’s story. So maybe this whole thing was because she was trying to impress Jordan and had nothing to do with Nathan. Gabe was tempted to tell Angie that she was wrong and pass this whole project off on somebody else. But he’d already signed the contract, which meant he had to see it through.
“Anyway, be careful. I’ve got a lunch with Stephen, but I’ll check up with you later today.”
“You have a lunch with Stephen?” Gabe asked quietly. He tried never to indulge those middle-child desires to be included, but sometimes they got the best of him.
“Yeah. He wanted a chat about how some of my ideas can be implemented with Maxfield Construction.”
Ah. Business. No need to be jealous of that. Gabe went back to focusing on his proposal as Nathan slipped out the door. Finally, the speaker on his phone came to life.
“Mr. Maxfield, I wanted to remind you that you’ll need to leave in fifteen minutes if you want to make it to the site on time,” his secretary said cheerfully.
He sighed regretfully. “Thank you, Sarah.” He needed to get this over with.
Daisy was waiting for him at the job site. Dressed in jeans and an open flannel button-up over a low-cut tank top, she looked incredible sexy in her yellow hard hat. Gabe tried to push the thought back as he took in the large and angry foreman that had her in a vise grip. “Mr. Maxfield,” the man growled. “This woman says she’s waiting for you.”
Gabe eyed Daisy warily. “Yes, she is waiting for me. What has she done?”
“Caught her snooping around.”
“You were supposed to wait for me,” Gabe lectured sternly.
She jerked her arm and glared at him. “I got the impression that this tour gave me access to everything. What’s the big deal if I get a head start? You’re not hiding something from me, are you?”
The foreman loomed over her. “I don’t care what you look at around here, but you don’t do it without someone here to keep an eye on you. There are parts of this site that are still unsafe, and I don’t want to have to fill out the paperwork if you get killed because of your own stupidity.”
Her eyes widened, and for a moment, Gabe thought she was going to fight back. “I’ve got it from here, thank you,” he said smoothly. “Can I get a hat? We won’t be in your hair too much longer.”
Grumbling under his breath, the foreman went to fetch a hard hat, and Gabe shook his head. “I give you all the access you want, and you’re still causing me problems. Why exactly is that?”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “I’d barely made it into the site when he nabbed me. I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere that looked dangerous.”
“It doesn’t have to look dangerous to actually be dangerous.” Gabe grabbed the hat from the foreman and nodded his head. “You get an hour of my time, so tell me what you want to see.”
“An hour?” she muttered as she folded her arms, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Daisy, I am carving time out of my very busy schedule for you, so yes. You get an hour. If you wanted more time, I can call Nathan to come out here and give you a tour.”
He watched her carefully. There was a flicker of irritation at the mention of Nathan’s name, but no anxiety or hope. For some reason, it pleased him that she didn’t react all that much to her ex’s name. Of course, the sooner he got her to admit that she was here for Nathan, the sooner he could get back to his own life.
“An hour will be fine,” she muttered. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
They walked into the site, and Gabe looked through the clipboard of papers in his hands. “All right. We always do an environmental survey of the area. As you know, that’s a legal requirement, but Nathan wants us to go one-step farther. So, we pay a little extra to do a more thorough study. Once we get the go-ahead, we start with materials. If we can get recycled materials, we do, but we can’t sacrifice safety. Everything is inspected to ensure that it’s up to code.” Gabe reached out and touched one of the wooden posts. The truth was that while he knew the mechanics, building wasn’t his forte. Before Stephen came back, Gabe tried his best to understand what was going on, but Stephen really changed the game for him.
Daisy looked like she didn’t understand much more either, but she looked around carefully. “How often do you find that recycled materials won’t work?”
“That I don’t know but you’ll have access to the building reports. Everything will be detailed there. Nathan has made quite a few changes in the design department. Popular trends today are no wasted space and energy-saving technology. All county codes differ, so he’s working to figure what we can and can’t do. While solar panels are popular, they’re not considered pretty enough for some home associations,” he added wryly.
Daisy frowned. “And that’s what’s wrong with our country. Doesn’t matter if the environment is going to hell so long as everything looks pretty. What about water waste?”
“If you’re talking about the new technology to reuse water from bathrooms and showers for lawn irrigation, you have to understand that the technology is still relatively new. While it’s testing great, it’s still far more expensive. At the cheapest, it can cost us seven grand per house. If the budget allows for it, we’d be more than happy to implement it but, as you know, we’re not always in charge of how much we can put into a project. Housing developments give us a little more leeway, but sometimes we have to use that money elsewhere.”
He watched the disappointment on her face. “How much do you know about the construction development of projects?” he asked.
She avoided his gaze. “I’m still learning,” she mumbled. “That was part of the reason why I came early. I was hoping to take a look around so I could ask a few halfway-smart questions.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know much about it either. Working with you is forcing me to broaden my horizons.”
“And you don’t like that change?” Daisy said with a wry smile. “Nathan said you like to be in control.”
“Did he now?” Gabe grumbled. Tapping the clipboard on the palm of his hand, he studied her. Dressed in jeans, a flannel shirt, and a hard hat in the middle of a dirty construction site, she shouldn’t have stirred his interest, but the way the sun bathed her in light took his breath away. She looked up and stared into his eyes, and he felt a jolt of desire.
Christ. What was wrong with him?
“From what I can tell, he’s not wrong,” she said teasingly. “You’re on time. You don’t like deviating from your schedule. I guess I disrupt everything for you.”
“You have no idea.”
Abruptly, he turned and walked to the back of the construction site. She scrambled behind him to keep up. “I didn’t mean to insult you!” He didn’t respond but got straight back to business.
“If we order too many supplies, we usually return or sell them. We pay local waste companies to handle the trash,” he said as he pointed to the compactor.
“Trash? What about recycling?” she asked abruptly.
Gabe flipped through the paperwork. “No recycling. I think it differs for each county. If it’s too expensive to move the product, we opt to toss it instead.”
“And you don’t see a problem with that?” she demanded. “You’re kidding, right? We’ve been recycling for years now. How the fuck is it that you can’t…”
“Whoa!” Gabe held up his hand and blinked. “I get it, okay. The yelling doesn’t help.”
“Well, sometimes it’s hard to be heard without the yelling. And seriously, I can’t believe that you don’t recycle.”
“I said that I get it,” he said softly. Something must have resonated with her because she stared at him.
“You get it?” she repeated quietly.
“You probably would have heard that the first time if you weren’t yelling at me. Seriously, Daisy. You need to moderate your views. And you need to do your homework. If you don’t understand how a company works, how are you going to be able to change it? I tell you what. I’ll send you two budget reports. One will be our budget report, and the other will be a report if we do everything the way you want us to do it. Maybe then you’ll see the decisions that we have to make.”
“Fine.” Daisy folded her arms “I guess your hour is up. I will go home and do my homework.”
“Why don’t you stop by tonight for the budget reports,” he said casually. He really needed to get things on the fast track with Nathan and Daisy. Not only was she right about how she was disrupting his schedule, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from thinking about how attractive she was. That was not part of the deal.
“Stop by your apartment?” She stared at him for a long moment, then before he could change his mind she said, “Sure, I can do that.”
“I won’t be at the apartment,” he said quickly. “I’ll be at Duncan’s house. Stop by around six.”
She gave him a strange look. “Can’t you email it to me?”
“Not a great idea. If an electronic copy of the wrong budget goes out on the server of Duncan Enterprises, it can be accessed by everyone, and that could spell disaster. I’ll print off a copy for you to use, and then I can delete it.”
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll be there at six.”
She tugged on her braid before handing over the hardhat, giving him an awkward salute and leaving the site. The foreman came to collect their hats. “She’s a spitfire. How did you end up with her?” he said with a smile.
“Pulled the short straw,” Gabe muttered as he turned the hats over, but he wasn’t really focused on the foreman. Tonight he was having dinner at Duncan’s with Daddy Dearest, Stephen, and Angie.
And Nathan.
Gabe didn’t feel bad at all about leading Daisy right into a trap. The way he saw it, it was payback.
7
Daisy felt strange as she pulled into the expansive drive at the Maxfield estate. When she and Nathan were dating, he’d never invited her over to his father’s. She used to think that he was embarrassed by her, but then she quickly discovered it was because Nathan himself didn’t like coming home. His family was the poster for dysfunctional families everywhere.
There were several cars parked in the drive. Frowning, she got out and walked up the well-tended path. Flowers bloomed along the walk, and it was clear that the grounds were groomed every day. “Rich bastards,” she muttered. Although she was all for the environment, she couldn’t even keep a cactus alive in her apartment.
After a few minutes of hesitation, she rang the doorbell. What was her problem? She was here for a stupid piece of paper. It wasn’t like she was coming over for dinner.
“Daisy! So glad you could join us,” a familiar voice said as the door opened.
“Angela?” Daisy asked with a frown. What was Stephen’s wife doing here?
“We’re just getting started. Dinner should be ready in a few minutes. And look, call me, Angie.” Angie grabbed her arms and
pulled her in.
“Dinner? Oh, no, I’m not here for dinner,” Daisy said. “I’m here to grab something from Gabe. If you could let him know that I’m here.”
Angie pushed through the double doors, and Daisy’s eyes widened. Everyone sat at the dinner table. Gabe. Stephen. Duncan.
Nathan.
She’d been set up. With a dirty look at Gabe, she let Angie pull out a chair. “I think everyone remembers Daisy,” she said brightly as Daisy slowly sat down.
“Sorry, I’m not dressed. I didn’t realize that I was interrupting a family reunion,” Daisy said with a pointed glare at Gabe.
Nathan cleared his throat. “Gabe said you wanted to join us,” he said quietly.
“Really? Because Gabe told me that, he had something for me to pick up here tonight. I guess he thought me picking up a paper meant I wanted to have dinner with the Maxfields,” she said dryly. It also wasn’t lost on her that Angie had sat her next to Nathan. He was so close that she could feel the heat radiating from his body, but it wasn’t Nathan that interested her.
Gabe sat right across from her, and she briefly wondered whether she could give him a swift kick under the table to let him know how she felt. But knowing her luck, she’d kick the wrong shin and land in a heap of trouble. She had no idea what he was up to, but if he thought that it would shake her off the job, he was wrong. If she had to schmooze the Maxfields to make this project successful, then that’s what she would do.
“Daisy, I’m sorry we never had you here before,” Duncan said with a smile. “I know our relationship wasn’t quite as good while you were with Nathan. Most of that was my fault.”
Startled, she stared at him. “You should never have to apologize for family,” she said with a smile. “Everybody has problems with relationships.”
“How were you with your father?” Duncan asked. Nathan cleared his throat rather loudly and tried to hide the fact that he was shaking his head to warn his father off that topic, but Daisy squared her shoulders.
