by Rin Daniels
“Bullshit.” Her eyes flew open. His jaw hardened, even if his mouth hadn’t lost its curve. “I’m not forgetting anything. You recognized me the other night. I may not have realized it was you, but it was you that let me touch you, sweetheart. You still want me.”
“Ass,” she shot back, mortified as she darted glances at the other tables. No one seemed to be taking undue attention, but his voice wouldn’t take much to carry.
“You want me,” he repeated. He touched two fingers to her wrist, to the pulse fluttering there in manic fury. “You say you don’t want my money. Fine. But you want me. God only knows why, but I still want you. Let’s try a date.”
Kat pushed her water to the side, which tugged her wrist out from under the touch that seared her skin. “I don’t understand why you aren’t threatening me with a restraining order.”
“Because.” Adam leaned back in the booth. “I can’t touch you if I order one.”
“Lame excuse.”
“But true.” His eyebrows lifted. Flat out challenge. “Go out with me, Kat.”
It was the dumbest idea in the world.
And she was turning out to be pretty dumb herself.
“Fine,” she groaned. “One date. But,” she added when his grin widened in obvious triumph, “I’m taking you out. As an apology,” she added when his eyebrow hiked high. “And I get to choose the place.”
“Sold,” he said, surprising her. “You can choose the place.”
“And I pay my own way,” she added, but Adam was already sliding out of the booth instead of listening. “Adam—”
“How does Thursday sound?”
“Fine,” Kat replied, frowning, “but I really will—”
He held a small card out to her. “I’ll call you.”
She looked down at it. A private card. His own phone number. Was that a thing? Did people really have separate business and private cards?
She closed her fingers over it. “You don’t know my number.”
Adam held on just long enough to make a point. “I will,” he said simply.
He left her staring after him, the card creased in her hand.
I will.
Well, score one for the rich and powerful. Kat had zero doubt he’d find everything there was to know about her.
She didn’t know whether that worried her or turned her on. Maybe she’d go with both.
CHAPTER FOUR
AN ELECTRIC SAW whined as Kat ducked under the tarp protecting the front door and the wide shop front window from the construction dust filling the air. She coughed, waving at the thick motes dancing in front of her face. “Dale?”
“Yeah, one sec!” The smooth, slow baritone of her contractor boomed out of the enclosure Kat had designated for private guests. Right now, it wasn’t much more than a rectangular hole.
Sunlight streamed through skylights in the roof, and electric lamps had been strung up to provide the workers enough light to see by. She noted one guy in the rafters working with wiring. To the left, a wrench flew out of a hole in the floor to clang against the cement. The tile wasn’t scheduled to get laid for another month.
Dale Simmons stepped over the discarded tool, flicking an irritated glance down the hole. “Watch it, Tabby.”
“Get out of the way,” the team’s only woman shouted back.
Dale’s full mouth twitched at both corners as he adjusted the hard hat he wore over his buzzed head. His dark skin was coated with plaster, but he beat one hand against his pants before offering it to Kat. “Ms. Harris. How’re you?”
“Good,” she lied. Her problems weren’t her contractor’s. She shook his hand like she always did—he was a man who believed in the power of a handshake. His hand was large and callused from the job, and his grip firm. “How’re things here?”
“On schedule,” he replied.
“Son of a bitch!” Tabby’s shout distorted.
Dale sighed. “Mostly.”
That didn’t sound good. Kat winced. “How bad?’
“We found a crack in the floor,” Dale said, beckoning her away from Tabby’s station. The electrician in the rafters, a portly man with a pale pink hard hat protecting his head, glanced down with a distracted smile. “When we went to repair it, we realized it went all the way down to the foundation.”
Kat knew just enough about these things to see dollar signs flash in front of her eyes. “Oh God. How much?”
Dale hooked his thumbs into the tool belt slung low on his hips. His camouflage cargo pants dipped. The man had the kind of physique that all the men wanted and all the girls drooled over. Kat hadn’t picked him for his muscles, but she’d admit to appreciating the view.
It made bad news a little more tolerable. “Roughly five to seven grand.”
Kat crunched the numbers in her head. “We’re still in budget.”
“If,” Dale said firmly, “the foundation can be repaired. If not, it’ll have to be torn out and replaced. Costs could skyrocket as high as thirty.”
“Oh, God,” she said again, and covered her face with her hands. “When will you know?”
“Soon as Tabby’s done.”
On cue, another curse fractured the dappled air.
Kat felt sick. Thirty thousand on top of the twenty thousand the loan sharks wanted. Impossible. She didn’t have that much money.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Harris,” Dale said, clapping his hands together. A cloud of plaster dust erupted from his palms, swirled through the air. It wasn’t so thick that she needed a mask, but she noted the one hanging down his back. Working in the stuff was probably much harder than visiting.
“Okay.” She fished a notebook out of her bag. “Let’s assume worst case scenario.”
“I’d rather assume best,” Dale replied, flashing even white teeth in a smile she couldn’t help but think of as supportive.
What a sweetie. Her contractor was reassuring her.
It felt good. Optimism had dwindled abysmally low in the Harris home. Kat sighed. “Okay, you’re right.” She gave him her best smile—the one that radiated sunny sincerity. “You’re awesome, you know?”
He looked up at the ceiling. She couldn’t be sure in the light, but she thought she saw a stain of color on his cheeks. What a doll.
“Let’s assume best case,” she said, grinning. “How long will it take to fix the foundation?”
“The average repair takes about two days.” Dale lifted his voice. “Soon as Tabby’s done, we’ll have that all hammered out, but”— his voice softened again—“frankly, I don’t expect it to take more than one day.”
Another clang of metal scraped against cement. “Fuck you, Simmons!”
He rolled his eyes. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Kat laughed, making a note in the figures she’d already painstakingly calculated. “It’s fine.” The knot of worry in her chest eased. “So, we’re in budget if we’re looking at an average repair.”
“For time and cost,” Dale confirmed. He plucked a pair of rough gloves from his back pocket. “Keith hasn’t reported any electrical issues, so we’re go, there.”
Something fragile, something warm and altogether like hope wriggled in her chest. She forgot to breathe, just in case it winked out. “So,” she managed. “When can I start putting in the appliances in storage?”
Dale pulled the gloves on. “If all goes well? Six weeks.” He hesitated. “My sister runs a cleaning business. I’ll ask her to come help.”
“Oh, no, I—”
“Let’s call it a service,” Dale added, grinning down at her with slow, easy affability.
Way too nice.
Kat swallowed hard. “Tell your sister I’d be pleased to offer her discounts at my salon when it’s open.”
“I will, then.” He hesitated. “Have you decided what to call it?”
Kat shook her head ruefully. “Not yet.”
“Screw you, you measly son of—” Tabby’s voice cracked into a shouted, “Dale!”
Kat winced.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” she said, and made good her exit before anything else went wrong. Once she pulled the tarp back into place and let herself out the front door, she stood in the sunshine pouring down into the boutique shopping center she’d chosen and tried not to let her worries overwhelm the delicate thread of hope she clung to.
Dale seemed optimistic. Maybe that was his job, to sell her on needed work and force her to pay whatever it ends up being, but she couldn’t think like that. If she started assuming that everyone thought like she did, Kat would never leave the house.
No, she chose Dale and his crew because the online reviews were good, and mostly by locals. They trusted him, which meant she would, too.
Her livelihood was as much in his hands as her own.
But thirty grand extra?
“Please,” she muttered, tipping her face to the wide blue sky. The sun warmed her face, humidity wrapping her in a stifling cloud. “Please only be five thousand.”
She didn’t know if there were any gods of construction, but just in case, she threw a little prayer for them, too. At this point, she’d try anything.
Her phone vibrated in her back pocket. The sound of glass shattering earned a sideways glance from a few shoppers passing by.
She smiled sheepishly, shrugging, and checked the text from her mother. Stop for ice cream and wine.
“Seriously,” she sighed, and pocketed her phone again. They needed more than that. She’d get enough for dinner for a few days, too.
Cracked foundation or not, they’d have to eat.
Almost immediately, her phone thrummed in tandem with a pop song. It wasn’t her mother’s ringtone. She pulled the device out, half-turning away from the stream of shoppers milling by. The number on her screen was unfamiliar. She thumbed acceptance for the call. “Hello?”
“Hello, Kat.”
The foliage climbing the brick side of the salon swayed gently in a breeze that softened the worst of the heat. It did nothing for the sudden warmth that blossomed under her skin. “Adam. I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
“Never,” came the reply, low enough that she regretted her choice of words.
Was that a threat or a reminder?
She angled her phone against her shoulder and dug in her purse for her sunglasses. “What can I do for you?”
His chuckle surprised her. “I can think of a lot of things.” She’d just bet. “I can’t talk long, I’ve got a meeting in five.” The line crackled. “Be there in a minute, Jordan.”
She frowned, sliding her sunglasses on. The alley she faced dimmed to a soft blue hue. “Are you calling because you missed my voice?”
“I’m calling because you promised to take me out,” he replied, his voice dropping to a murmur. “Where are we meeting on Thursday?”
Shoot. She’d forgotten that part. Mostly. After he didn’t call the first day, she’d consigned that whole conversation to the same hell as the deliciously dirty dreams she’d entertained the night before.
Adam had no business toying with her.
So, why’d he have to go and track down her number? She sighed. “MacKinnon’s,” she said shortly, peering down the sidewalk leading deeper into the shopping center. The restaurant was one of her favorites, the kind of hole in the wall place the locals hid from tourists. She’d stumbled across it a couple months back and had fallen in love. “Seven o’clock. Do you—”
“I’ll find it,” he said, cutting her off. A masculine murmur filled the line behind him as he added, “See you in a couple days.”
The tone was too brisk to be anything like the promise her insides were determined to make it. She managed, “Okay,” before he ended the call, leaving her staring at her phone in bemusement.
So Adam had found her number. She wondered if the sandy-haired man she’d seen him with at the party had been the one talking to him in the background. Busy, huh? Too busy, obviously, to flirt with her in front of his big business cohorts, anyway.
Kat slid the phone into the back pocket of her shorts, shaking her head.
She couldn’t decide which part of her life annoyed her the most. Her mother’s bad habits? The cracked foundation in her salon? The loan sharks?
Or Adam freaking Laramie?
Pared down, her only real problem was deciding what priority to assign everything. The loan sharks wouldn’t wait forever. Her mom had a little money stashed away, but she couldn’t ask her mom to sink everything she had left into Kat’s dream.
And Dale’s team needed to get paid, in theory from the money earmarked for just that. No matter what, if she used it to pay the loan, then she’d default on the work Dale and his crew did.
Unacceptable.
That left one real option—beg the banks for a loan. A legal one.
An illegal loan wouldn’t show up on any credit history. Even if her mother had listed her as a guarantor, it wouldn’t matter. That’s not how these things worked.
Then again, she wasn’t sure what would show up. Kat didn’t have a lot of credit history. In theory, that should at least give her enough impetus for a starter loan. Granted, most of those were only a couple thousand, but that could be all the difference between eating and not.
Borrowing money at all left a sour taste in her mouth. It triggered every deep-seated issue Jack Harris had forced in his daughter—loans are just free money, he’d say. Only an idiot ever gets one.
Which was why he used the names of other idiots.
But that wasn’t the real world. Loans were part of life, right? Part of growing up. As Kat walked away from the site of her future, she set her shoulders.
Banks existed to loan people money. Maybe they were every bit as corrupt as Jack Harris always said, but it didn’t matter. She’d apply for loans over the next couple of days.
The sick feeling in her stomach didn’t go away. Had she bitten off more than she could chew?
* * *
Yes. As she sat on her bed and stared at her closet two days later, Kat admitted that she’d bitten off way more than she could chew. And the killing bite tasted like Adam Laramie.
Her first impulse was to call Nadine for dating advice.
Her second was to put the smartphone down before she dialed.
Her third was to stand in front of her closet and stare at the row of colorful dresses she’d picked up over too many cons gone terribly right and think about all the ways this was going to end painfully.
The past couple of days had been something of a blur.
Through sheer strength of will, she’d managed to put everything aside but the necessity to swallow her pride and beg banks for money.
And cement a few clients, while she could. In between things, she’d emailed Kira a list of methods to stretch out her color, and suggested a few alternate styles that would really make her model bone structure pop.
The former Kira could do herself. The latter, she’d need a stylist’s help.
No idiot, Kat had included her cell phone number.
She’d also visited the two large banks in Sulla Valley and was denied immediately. Not enough credit, in theory. But they hadn’t allowed her to drum up a co-signer, either—not that she had one to rely on.
Her mother wasn’t exactly a sterling example of good credit, and she refused to ask Nadine to put her credit score on the line. Her friend still lived with her parents, and she didn’t work. Kat didn’t know a lot about the Sherwood house financials, but she was pretty sure Nadine’s income depended on her mom and dad.
In a way, Kat envied that. It was the opposite of her own life.
Well, she had a few applications out to some online banks. There was still hope.
Nadine had sent her the numbers for two more friends looking for a good stylist, and a list of local “hair artists” that would be her prime competition when it came to any elite clientele.
She’d scoped out one already. No problem. The girl was nice enough, but conservative.
The other, a guy who worked out of his house, had a good reputation but only worked part-time to supplement his college courses.
Either way, not really a serious threat.
The other places didn’t cater to the upper echelons, and people like Nadine didn’t just wander to the mall for a trim.
Dale had eventually sent her an email with the revised scope. The news wasn’t great, but it wasn’t thirty thousand dollars worth of bad either. The final estimate for the repairs hovered around eight thousand.
She had no other choice but to approve the repair. Any more issues, and she’d be over budget.
These days, Kat felt like her heart lived in her throat.
She leaned against the closet door.
She’d avoided the guys from Wallace & Roane so far, but only because she hadn’t pulled together any sort of deposit yet. There was nothing to pull from, not if she hoped to pay rent and utilities this month.
That hadn’t stopped them from taping notices to her front door.
Her mother might have been able to offer a deposit, but asking Barbara to part with money for something other than a new thing was like prying a favored toy from a screaming toddler. Kat had enough anxiety already. She wasn’t prepared for that fight.
She didn’t have enough ammunition for it.
They were in this together. Barbara had borrowed to keep Kat from spending all her money. Maybe it wasn’t the most logical decision, but it meant a lot. She couldn’t ask her mom to give up everything else for her.
Fact was, the money was already stretched thin.
As legacy went, her father didn’t leave much.
Kat didn’t know where all the money he’d ever stolen had gone. She didn’t like to assume her mom had spent it all over the years.
Even if she had, it’s not like they hadn’t helped.
They’d all spent. And moved, and grifted and spent more, and moved again.
Kat rubbed at her forehead, dragged her hand down her face and fought the urge to put on her pajamas, blow a little extra money on a tub of ice cream and crawl into bed.
