Foundation

by Lainey Davis

  Tim pivots to our upcoming meeting, noting a few different ideas from the publicity people at the baseball team HQ. Most people seem to want Augusto to focus his charitable giving on building baseball opportunities in a country where there really isn’t much baseball. I am leaning that direction, too. I sort of tune Tim out worrying about Isaac freezing his fingers in the snow while he measures my yard.

  Yesterday, he looked really fucking hot squatting in those jeans and peering into the trench. I squirm a bit in my seat, remembering how I’d come downstairs to find him gone, the package for the vibrator I ordered sitting on the counter. He must have signed for the delivery, and I’ve already called the company to ream them out for their indiscrete packaging. At least I didn’t have the thing shipped to me at work!

  Isaac knows I ordered a vibrator, I think as Tim talks about legal mumbo jumbo. Isaac doesn’t know I think about him while I use it. Or that it doesn’t help.

  When we wrap up our meeting, I head into my office and look up Isaac’s phone number, wondering if his business card number will ring his cell or his desk phone. His deep voice answers, “Zack Brady,” and I get so irritated again by his nickname that I forget I’m calling to be nice to him.

  “Why in the hell do you go by Zack when your name is Isaac?”

  I hear him exhale. “I assume this is my favorite client calling?”

  “Yes!” I shriek, and then I have to get control of myself. I fire up the treadmill under my desk and start pacing, feeling instantly better as I start moving my legs. “But really. Your nickname is ridiculous.”

  “If you must know, my oldest brother couldn’t say my full name when I was a baby and I’ve gone by Zack ever since.”

  “You’re saying a baby could pronounce ZACK but somehow not EYE-ZACK?” I start walking faster. I have no idea why I’m so focused on his nickname. It’s just that he’s such an Isaac. Dark and sexy and grouchy. Zacks are outgoing and perky.

  He sighs. “Did you have questions related to your rotational landslide or did you just call to criticize me?”

  Smug little shit, I think. But secretly I love that he’s not intimidated by my smart mouth. “I was calling about your work environment,” I tell him. “I’m going to set up a contractor lock on my house so you can get in to get warm and, I don’t know, pee. And stuff.”

  “You want me to pee in your house?”

  “Well I don’t want you to whip it out and piss in the river!” And now I’m thinking about Isaac Brady whipping out his dick and I have to turn up the speed on my treadmill so I can calm down by walking even faster. I hear him rustling some papers around.

  He clears his throat. “I have been going back and forth with your homeowners insurance—“

  “Yes,” I interrupt him. “I know those fuckers are refusing to pay anything. My friend Emma says I need to figure out who to sue for your fee.”

  “Well, yes, that’s what I wanted to talk with you about—“

  “I have an appointment with Juniper Jones,” I tell him, starting to huff a bit. I kick off my heels and feel my calf muscles relax while the treadmill keeps cranking under my desk. My mother would be absolutely horrified to learn I have a treadmill under my desk so I can pace when I get irritated, but everything I do horrifies my mother. The fact that I get irritated. The fact that I work in a non-secretarial career. I shake my head and concentrate on what Isaac is saying.

  “Juniper is a magisterial judge,” he says. “I’ve testified in cases before her in the past.”

  “You have?”

  “Well of course I have,” he says. “I told you. I usually handle industrial or large corporate projects. So when a coal mine is forced to meet government regulations, I need to testify—“

  “Ok, ok, I get it. You’re very smart and important. I just thought Juniper could recommend a lawyer.”

  “Well,” I can hear him rapping on his desk in the background. He sighs. “Beltane has several attorneys on retainer. I can get someone on the case to help out.”

  Wow. This is so unexpected that I hop off the treadmill and stand on the carpet in my tights. “You can do that?”

  “It’s literally what you’re paying me for.” He pauses and laughs. “Or, it will be once I make sure someone can actually pay my fee.”

  “Very funny.”

  “That’s why I laughed.”

  Who is this guy? “Ok, well, I’ll text you the code for the contractor lock and you can let yourself in and out whenever you need.” We hang up and I close my eyes, maybe wishing he wasn’t the son of the man evidently trying to infiltrate my new strategic initiative at work. In other circumstances, I might tackle Isaac Brady to the ground and jump his bones. I sigh, reminding myself that I can’t get involved with this guy, even if his banter is hot as fuck.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Zack

  I RATION MY visits into Nicole’s house. I let myself go in there to use her bathroom and only pause in the kitchen to get warm for five minutes. Anything past that, and I start fantasizing about her. The sight of her running shoes by the back door gets me hard.

  Her briefcase propped against the end table by the front door gets me hard.

  Every single thing in this house either reminds me of her smart-ass mouth or her incredible competence at everything apart from running. The other day, I was inside and overheard her completely dismantle a reporter over the phone. There I was, mid-piss, watching my dick spring to life at the thought of her yelling.

  Today I’m meeting our property lawyer, Justin, at the house. I stop by the hardware store to buy a few sets of shoe covers. Ordinarily, we’d just be hanging out in a portable trailer to discuss this stuff, but I want to make sure we don’t trash Nicole’s floors.

  And there I go again, thinking of her refinishing them herself. I close my eyes, trying to chase away the image of her in cutoffs, kneeling as she uses the drum sander, her tits shaking with the vibration of the power tools. My dick is pretty chapped from the daily, frantic masturbation sessions I’m scheduling each morning when I wake up. “Fuck,” I mutter.

  I sit in my truck and pull out some of the zoning notes I got for nearby construction projects. Something seems off about the condo project a few properties down, but I can’t figure out what just yet. I’m deep in thought about it when Justin raps on my window. I jump.

  “You ok in there, big guy?” Justin calls my brothers and me “big guy” when he’s in a good mood, as if we aren’t all lanky. I hop out of the truck and gesture toward Nicole’s front door.

  “Good to see you,” I say as I type in the code on the lock box. His brows shoot up as I hand him the shoe covers. I shrug. “It’s a residential gig,” I tell him. “Don’t want to wreck the client’s floors.”

  “The client,” he says, and then whistles as he looks around Nicole’s house.

  “She did all this herself,” I tell him, not sure why I’m bragging about Nicole’s obvious artisinal skill at hands-on remodeling. He runs his hand along the mantle that has to be original to the house, the intricate carvings in the wood gleaming under the soft glow of the recessed overhead lights. I again admire the finish on the hardwood floors, thinking about her squatting over them spreading the oil. Is it normal that this turns me on so much?

  Justin and I spread out at Nicole’s dining room table—an amazing piece, made of reclaimed wood, that suits the room absolutely perfectly. It actually has me reconsidering the dumpster-dive furniture I’ve had in my place since I first bought it after grad school.

  Justin shows me all the research he’s done on previous urban landslides. “It’s always due to water,” he says, like I don’t know this already. But Pittsburgh hasn’t had any torrential rains recently and the previous summer wasn’t even all that wet, considering.

  “There’s no natural reason this particular piece of property should be sliding into the Allegheny River,” I tell him, gesturing at Nicole and her neighbor’s back yard.

  Justin’s eyes gleam. “I know. No n
atural reason. So we need to figure out which of these developers didn’t do their diligence with their rainwater management,” he jabs his thumb at the neighborhood plans showing new construction projects.

  “Oh, no big deal,” I tell him. “We just need to inspect the plumbing and sewer systems for tens of thousands of square feet of multi-unit residential housing.”

  Justin rocks back in his chair, and I kick him with my blue-booty-covered foot. I might murder him if he scuffs Nicole’s floors. He rolls his eyes. “One of these guys has got to be draining their roof water into the soil. That was what happened with that Glaston landslide, remember?”

  A few years ago, a new manufacturing plant was just pumping their rainwater into the hill behind their facility, and the hill slid down onto the highway. That was the first project my dad and uncle let me take the lead on mitigating. When I discovered the rainwater situation and partnered with Justin so the state could sue the Glaston company, my dad gave me a bonus check that paid for my truck.

  Justin and I study the plans for a bit and make notes. I decide I’ll head out to take readings tomorrow at first light so I can see what’s happening with nearby buildings. If I’m honest, I’m pretty excited to test some of the new equipment we got to check stability and soil composition. I’m midway through explaining our new pneumatic shear machine when I see Justin perk up and stare at something behind my head.

  Turning around, I see Nicole, and the first thing to fall out of my mouth is, “Oh. It’s you.”

  “Yes, shocking for me to be in my own home, I know,” she throws her stuff down on the table. She’s dressed impeccably again, as she always seems to be for work. This woman is so complex. The contrast of her refined businesswear with my image of her mudding drywall is almost too much for my dick to handle in my jeans.“Will you all be staying for dinner since you’ve made yourselves so comfortable?”

  Justin laughs and stands, introducing himself. I catch him scanning her body and resist the urge to growl out loud. His eyes dart over to me and he coughs. “I’m going to head out, Brady,” he says. “Call me as soon as you’ve tracked those numbers.”

  He makes his way out the door while Nicole leans into her fridge so that all I can see is her ass in the pencil skirt she wore to work today. I breathe slowly through my nose, trying like hell to not walk over there and smack it.

  When Nicole emerges from the fridge with a cheese stick, she seems confused to see me still sitting at her table in my shoe covers. “I wasn’t actually inviting you to dinner,” she says.

  “Don’t you want to hear about what we did today?”

  “Have you located the person who will pay to fix my fucking yard?” She raises an eyebrow at me, but I can barely tell because her curly hair covers half her face from when she was bent over in the fridge. My eyes dip to the tailored blouse that nips in at her waist below her stunning cleavage.

  I shake my head, biting my tongue, and stare up at her ceiling. As I’m admiring the lighting, a thought occurs to me. “Did you do all the electrical work yourself, too?” My body clenches as I wait for her response. There’s “good at renovations,” and then there’s fucking around with electrical stuff.

  She bites her cheese stick and frowns at me. “I pulled out all the knob and tube wiring myself and hired someone to rewire once I had all the fixtures mapped out,” she says.

  I relax. “My cousin will be relieved to hear it.”

  “Not sure why you’d tell her.” Nicole reaches for a banana and leans against the counter, just staring at me and chewing. I feel my heart racing and I need to say something to her, but I also feel a strange urge to bust her balls the way she does mine.

  “Want to go for a run?” As soon as I say the words, I’m shaking my head. First of all, I already put in six miles today and my legs are feeling it. Second, what kind of idiot question is that?

  Nicole tilts her head to the side and blows a puff of air at the hair falling over her face. “Don’t you usually trot around with your brothers?”

  “They’re with their mom tonight,” I say, and clench my body again. I have no idea why I said that. Why I invited personal discussion, especially after she made it clear I shouldn’t be talking about her house with Orla.

  She bites the banana, a move so phallic I have to believe she’s doing it on purpose. “You have a different mom than your brothers?” She stares at me as she chews.

  I just nod. “My dad collects wives.” I’m definitely not interested in going into more specifics, and I’m both relieved and terrified when Nicole sighs, shrugs, and says, “Ok, but is it safe to run at night? It’s pitch black dark outside.”

  I grin. “I’ll protect you.”

  That gets a laugh. “You gonna run in those bootie things?” She points at my shoe covers. I grin.

  “I’ve got my running stuff in my truck,” I tell her. “Give me five minutes.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nicole

  I CAN’T BEGIN to understand why I agreed to go for a run with Isaac Brady. I mean, an additional run. We’re supposed to meet again for a group run this weekend, but this feels unnecessary. Except…this skinny bastard looked so fucking cute in those blue shoe covers and my cold, dead heart melted a little when he explained that he didn’t want to mess up my floors.

  He comes out of my bathroom wearing black running pants that aren’t skin tight exactly, but definitely show me which side his junk hangs toward. I nod, approvingly. I also had gone upstairs to change while he ran out for his stuff.

  “So what all do we take with us for a night run?” I look around, as if I’ve got fancy flashlights or something.

  Isaac gestures outside. “This is a city, Nicole. There are street lights.”

  “We’re just going to run on Butler Street?” I’m horrified. I hadn’t considered that we’d run on the main road, where people are out eating at trendy, cute restaurants or waiting in line to get tattoos or some shit.

  I pick up my keys and thread them between my fingers to stab potential abductors, wondering if I’ve lost my mind.

  Isaac takes my keys from me and clunks the massive network of keychains on the counter. “We can use the contractor code to get back in,” he says gently. I slide my cell into the pocket on my leggings as he watches.

  We head outside and I draw in a shaky breath. It’s cold out here.

  “We’ll go slow,” he says. “You’ll warm up soon, I promise.” He lets me set the pace and we run for a few blocks up to the main road, where he’s right. It’s bright as day out here between the neon lights from the shops and the street lights.

  I’ve been practicing and I can already tell I’m getting fitter. Or maybe less bad at running. Either way, I’m going faster than last time.

  “Remember, talking pace,” he says. His deep voice sounds patronizing, and I fucking hate that I passed out the last time we exercised together because I was too damn stubborn to let him see me struggling to catch my breath.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I spit at him.

  “See? You’re talking just fine.” I can tell by the way he moves that he’s holding back, and I hate him for being fitter than me. “Now what are you going to talk about?”

  We come to a red light and Isaac pulls to a stop. I realize we’ll probably be doing this a lot, given how short the blocks are. “This is nice—getting breaks,” I tell him, and I mean it. By the time the light changes, I’m ready to start running again, and I actually smile, enjoying myself as we weave in between some people coming out of a bar.

  “You doing ok,” he asks, swerving a bit around some construction tape where they’ve got half the sidewalk torn up.

  I nod and when we get to the next red light, I put my hands on my hips, drawing in deep breaths, letting him see how hard I’ve been working even at this snail pace, but oddly not caring so much. He points toward the river and says, “My brothers and I run on that trail sometimes. Cal always manages to find rail ties. He makes them into shit. Bottle openers
and stuff.”

  I’m pretty sure that’s the most words I’ve ever heard him string together. “It must be nice to get along with your siblings,” I respond, puffing along. The next light is green when we get there. “My sister and my mother don’t really approve of me. At all.”

  “Hm,” he says. “Guess we have that in common.”

  “You don’t go take your mom out to dinner?”

  He makes a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a cry. He looks over at me and I brush my hair back from my face to meet his eye. He frowns. “She walked out on my dad and me when I was a baby,” he says. “Haven’t heard from her since.”

  “Shit,” I say. The next light is green again, so we keep going. This has to have been at least a mile. “Well,” I spit out, feeling like I need to have some sort of comeback to that, but not sure this is the time for black humor. “I can’t say I’d prefer that to weekly lectures about my fat ass and my ‘alternative lifestyle.’” I make air quotes as I realize I’m not struggling to breathe or make jokes.

  Huh, I think. I’m really getting better at this.

  I can see The Abbey ahead. I love that place. It used to be a funeral home, and they totally redid it to make a kick-ass bar-restaurant-coffee shop combo. It’s sort of ridiculous, and the food is amazing, and I love to sit there and work sometimes, alternating a glass of wine with an iced coffee just because I can.

  Isaac sees where my eyes land and he raises a brow at me. “Want to stop to hydrate?”

  “Holy shit, yes,” I say. I grab his arm and run faster until I’m tugging open the door to the bar. I’m not even out of breath. The hostess looks at us and makes a face, and only then do I remember that we’re wearing running clothes and, frankly, Isaac smells like his were worn already.

  He doesn’t seem phased that we’re in a trendy place looking like we just finished jazzercise. “We’re just here for drinks,” he says, placing his hand on my back and guiding me over toward the bar. I stare at his arm, stunned by how good it feels on my back. I don’t typically go out with men who take charge like this. I definitely don’t go out with guys who wear workout gear to a trendy bar. Not that I’m “out” with Isaac. We just happen to be getting a drink after a training run for some corporate nonsense our bosses are forcing us into.