Cord, Madison’s soft streak succumbed to self-preservation. “It would throw off my schedule.”
“You don’t ever make exceptions?”
“I’m not in a position to do that,” she replied, pretty sure Cord Kendrick didn’t eat many meals from a catering truck. If he had, he’d have some idea of how important it was to stay on time. “I have people who will be waiting for me for their break.”
“What about the people here?” he asked with the ease of a man who knew exactly which buttons to push. “We need a break, too. But we’re in a meeting no one can leave and we really need coffee. We need those muffins, too.”
“Isn’t there a coffeemaker in the trailer?”
“It’s broken. Look,” he said, having failed to elicit her sympathies, “I’ll give you a fifty-dollar tip. Just bring the order. It won’t take that long. Okay?”
Madison could practically feel her back stiffen as she set down the cardboard box she’d started to fill and glanced toward the long white trailer. It was as clear as the patches of blue in the early May sky that Cord Kendrick felt whatever he was doing was far more important than her schedule. It seemed just as apparent that he felt his money would get him anything he didn’t want to bother getting by persuasion.
For a moment she was sorely tempted to tell him he was just going to have to go without today. As she let her more practical nature take over, she grudgingly admitted that, just this once, she could be bought.
Ever since she’d started her catering business, she had dreamed of expanding it. In the past six months, that dream had become an obsession. She wanted to cater parties. Big ones. Little ones. Maybe even weddings, where the food she presented could be elegant rather than everyday. She’d done a couple of small events already. Not that a birthday party for the McGuires’ nine-year-old could be called an event, but the Lombardis’ oldest daughter’s engagement party had been rather nice. She desperately needed equipment, though. Having to rent serving pieces ate up all her profit. And fifty dollars could help buy the professional double chafing dish she had her eye on.
Aside from that, if she hit the lights right on Gloucester, she usually had a couple of minutes to spare.
“It’ll take me at least five minutes to get there,” she finally said.
“You’re less than a minute away if you drive.”
“It’ll take me that long to close up and drive around the cordoned-off area across from where you are.”
“Forget going around. Just pull up to where it’s barricaded and park across from the stack of trusses. Ignore the sign.”
“What sign?”
“The one that says No Admittance. And bring one of those coffees with…”
“Cream,” she completed, then sighed because she rather wished she hadn’t just let him know she remembered that. “Does anyone else take anything in theirs?”
She heard him ask. Then she heard him tell her they had sugar and powdered cream there before he thanked her and hung up.
She didn’t know why his thanks surprised her. Maybe it was because he seemed a little impatient this morning. Maybe it was because it seemed pretty clear that he expected his wishes to be met so thanks weren’t necessary.
Suspecting that not many people did deny him what he wanted, annoyed that she’d just done what everyone else probably did and caved in to his expectations herself, she finished boxing up the muffins and filled cups, closed the side of her truck and drove it at a crawl past girders rising from huge concrete slabs and the giant orange crane now swinging its boom toward a stack of steel beams.
Because she was always careful to park only in areas where she and her customers would be safe from traffic and heavy equipment, she was very conscious that she was going where she normally wouldn’t go. She was now close enough to the actual construction to see individual sparks fly from welders’ torches and feel the vibration of a back-up horn blaring as a churning cement truck edged toward massive wood forms. A forklift rolled past, carrying a large blue drum on a pallet.
Ahead of her, wooden barricades blocked vehicle access to the construction trailer. Assuming that the cars parked near the trailer had entered from the street on the other side, which she had originally thought to do herself, she looked around for the sign Cord had mentioned. She couldn’t see it, but the stack of trusses that would eventually be part of a roof was impossible to miss.
Parking across from them, she shook off the niggling feeling that she shouldn’t leave her truck there and slipped out, carefully balancing the box so she wouldn’t tip the coffees. She would only be gone for a minute. Two max, she thought, stepping around the barrier.
It was then that she noticed the sign. The wording on the barrier faced the trailer and its parking lot. From there, the words No Admittance Without Authorization and Hard Hat Area practically screamed at her to go back.
Turning, she picked up her pace, her athletic shoes leaving curvy little patterns in the dirt and the three wooden steps that led up to the long white trailer’s door.
She didn’t have to knock. The door bearing a plaque that indicated the trailer to be the construction office opened before she could even decide if she needed to.
Cord’s big body filled the doorway. Yesterday’s designer Italian had been replaced with designer American. Aware of the Ralph Lauren logo on the sweater pushed to his elbows, she glanced from the wall of his chest past the lean line of his jaw. She had no idea if his smile was for her or for what she carried, but he looked tired, handsome and definitely anxious to get his hands on caffeine. “Am I ever glad to see you,” he murmured, and relieved her of the box. “Come on in.”
He turned away, leaving her to stare at his broad back a moment before she stepped inside. As she did, Matt Callaway rose from a long blueprint-covered table where three other men gathered. All seemed to be talking at once. A middle-aged woman wearing the look of a harried den mother cradled a phone against one shoulder while she pulled incoming faxes from the machine behind her desk and fed them directly into a copy machine. The smile she gave Madison was quick and decidedly grateful.
While one of the other men retrieved the copies and passed them out, Matt reached for his wallet. “Thanks for bringing this,” he said to her. “It’s not a good morning for the coffee machine to be out of commission.” He nodded to where Cord and the others were lifting foam cups from the box. “We have a little problem this morning and none of us can leave right now.” A good-natured note entered his voice. “There are also some of us who had a late night last night and are a little more desperate for caffeine than the others.”
“Hey, I was here on time,” Cord defended, his tone as affable as his friend and business partner’s. Lifting a cup toward the secretary to let her know it was hers, he set it on her desk. “If I’d known you wouldn’t have coffee here, I’d have brought some myself.” He reached into his own pocket. “I’ve got this,” he insisted. “I owe her a tip, anyway.”
Stepping in front of Madison, Cord held out a hundred-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” he said.
Madison blinked at the face of Benjamin Franklin. Beside her Matt had already turned to pick up his coffee and was asking one of the men about some sort of design change. The others were peeling the lids from their cups as they looked over the pages coming
