answered the phone, though his insurance agent’s talk of rising liability rates sobered him up pretty quickly.
Chase paced back and forth across the doorway for a few minutes, arguing his case, but it was no use. The agent swore it was an across-the-board increase and nothing to do with Extreme Excavation’s records. “Our goddamn safety record is spotless,” he insisted one last time, glancing through the glass to be sure the secretary hadn’t overheard him and covered her ears.
Her eyes were on him. She was watching, but she wasn’t scowling. Jane the secretary was staring at his chest.
Chase froze and watched her as his agent babbled in his ear. When her gaze finally rose to his, she blinked rapidly before snapping her eyes back to the computer screen.
Well.
He turned his back on her and wrapped things up with his agent, then glanced quickly over his shoulder to try to catch her again. No such luck. The woman was fully focused on her work.
When he tucked the phone back into his pocket, Chase realized that there was a smear of gray dust across the front of his dark blue T-shirt. Maybe that’s what she’d been looking at. “Shit,” he muttered, strangely disappointed that she hadn’t been indulging in a fantasy of getting dirty with a blue-collar worker.
Shrugging, he headed back inside just as Quinn Jennings emerged from his office.
“Hey, Chase,” the architect said, hand outstretched.
Chase shook his hand and took the folder Quinn offered. “Thanks, man.”
“Sorry I forgot to leave it with Jane. Next time you’d better call her.”
“That’s just what she said.” Chase dared a look at her, but Jane ignored the conversation.
“Well, apparently I’m trainable after all,” Quinn said with a laugh. “Keep it as long as you need.”
“Shouldn’t be more than a few days.”
A hand popped into his view and snatched the file from his fingers. “I’ll take that,” Jane said. “I’ll need to make a copy before it leaves this office.”
“Um…understood,” Chase answered the back of her head. She was already at the copier.
While Quinn excused himself to head out to a site, Chase checked out Jane’s ass, but her straight gray skirt didn’t offer much of a view. She was tall, and either curvy or a little chubby, but Chase was a man, and a little softness on a woman didn’t scare him at all.
“Here you are, Mr. Chase.”
He blinked and took the file. “It’s just Chase,” he repeated, though he was beginning to suspect she was quite clear on the matter and simply didn’t approve.
“Have a good day,” she said in answer.
Unwilling to be so obviously dismissed, Chase opened the file and flipped through a few of the papers. “Your boss is good at what he does.”
“He is.”
He looked over a couple more drawings of the mountain home, then cut his eyes toward Jane. She didn’t notice. She was too busy staring at him again. This time it was his arm that had caught her attention, either his biceps or the ink stretched across it. Somehow he suspected it was the black bands of his tattoo.
His heart thumped in excitement. Maybe Miss Prim and Professional wanted to take a little walk on the wild side. Luckily, Chase was in just the mood to accommodate her curiosity.
“Jane?” he said softly, startling her enough that she jumped.
A blush warmed her cheeks as she turned back to the computer. “Is there something more I can help you with?” Despite her pink face, her voice was perfectly cool.
“Yes, actually.” He closed the file and approached her desk. “How about dinner tonight?”
Although she froze, Jane didn’t look up. “What about dinner tonight?”
Ah, of course. This woman would require something a bit more formal. Fine. He’d play along. “Jane Morgan, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner tonight?” Hell, he even gave her a little bow to top it off.
Jane was unmoved. Literally. Her fingers hovered above the keyboard again. “What?”
“Would you like to go to dinner?”
Her hands finally dropped, banging against the keyboard. “No, I would not.”
Chase wasn’t exactly surprised, but he felt oddly heavy with disappointment, all the same. “Are you sure?”
She licked her lips again and tossed a brief look his way. “Thank you, but I’m sure.”
Damn, her lips were downright sultry now, flushed pink and glistening with moisture. Chase cocked his head. Yeah, her lips were sexy as hell. “Well, if you’re sure,” he said, stalling.
“I am.” Jane took a deep breath, put her shoulders back and began to type.
“Right,” he muttered. “Have a good day, then.” And there was nothing Chase could do but leave.
THE OFFICE DOOR eased closed with a little hiss. Jane kept typing gibberish. She waited, counting to twenty, before she slid her hands off the keyboard and dared a glance at the glass door. The man’s truck was turning out of the lot. She was alone.
Letting out a deep breath, Jane slumped in her chair. “Oh, crud.”
What had just happened?
Despite the scene over lunch with Greg and her mother’s phone call, Jane’s day had been proceeding at its normal professional pace. A rush of calls after lunch from contractors driving back to work sites. The quiet buzz of a well-run workplace for a few more hours. That disastrous lunch hour had hardly put a hitch in her stride.
And then he’d walked in.
The sight of him filling the doorway had shocked the life out of her. He wasn’t big in a body-builder kind of way, but he was tall. Probably six foot three or four, with a wide, solid frame that took up more space in a room than it should. His brown hair was short, nearly a buzz cut, but so thick it looked soft to the touch.
Jane shivered at the thought.
Three solid hours of freedom and she was already thinking about an inappropriate man. She shouldn’t have broken it off with Greg. Greg was educated, ambitious and mannered. He wasn’t big and tattooed. He didn’t drive a dented, dusty truck. He didn’t work for an hourly wage at a dead-end job and wear steel-toed boots and dirty T-shirts that clung to his muscles while he labored.
Her skin tingled and Jane muttered, “Oh, crud” again. This Chase guy was exactly the type of man she didn’t need in her life. The kind of man who made her skin tingle, not to mention other less visible parts of her. No, he was not the kind of man she needed, but he was the kind she wanted. Raw and primal and big.
“I will not be my mother,” she insisted to the computer screen. “I
