the eraser end of a freshly sharpened pencil against his tidy desk calendar. The weak winter sun sneaking through the window behind him picked out strands of copper in his well-mannered chestnut hair, a head of hair that Charlie, with her out-of-control carrot curls, never ceased to envy. Just as she never ceased to envy the way his clothes neatly outlined his long, rangy frame, while hers simply buried what little there was of her figure.
Today he wore a dress shirt and tie, and she spied a new leather jacket hanging from the mirrored wall rack behind him. “Going somewhere?” she asked.
“Already been.” His expression brightened with the trace of a smile. “I stopped by that new hotel going up south of the marina—you know, Quinn’s job. He liked my sketches. He’s going to show them to the architect, see if he might be interested in using my design for the water feature near the entrance.”
Charlie didn’t respond to David’s smile with one of her own. Quinn was one of the busiest contractors in Carnelian Cove, a dour, hard-working man who probably didn’t appreciate David traipsing around his job site, artwork in hand.
Her brother cleared his throat, and then he flipped the pencil in his hand and drew a box around a calendar item. “And then I’ve got a business appointment.”
“Here?”
Obviously annoyed, he flicked an impatient glance in her direction. “This is a place of business.”
“Yeah. Right.” She tossed her chin at the jacket. “Where did you get that?”
“The city.” He took a deep breath and blew it out with a martyred sigh. “Is that why you barged in here? To comment on my wardrobe?”
Charlie shifted forward. “You loaned out two of our trucks this morning.”
He shrugged. “Earl called me at home last night and asked for them.”
And she’d just made sure Earl would never pull that stunt again. “How many times have I told you not to make a move without checking with Gus first?”
David jammed the pencil into a bristling mass of writing tools corralled in a slick chrome cup. “Gus isn’t the boss around here.”
“He’s the dispatcher, and when it comes to which truck goes where, and when, that’s more important than whose name is on whose check.”
“Damn it, Charlie—”
“Just shut up and listen, for once.” She came out of her chair, slapped her hands on his desk and leaned over him. “I let you declare yourself president of Keene Concrete because I hoped it would change your attitude. It’s time for you to start acting like you give a damn what happens to it.”
“Don’t you lecture me.”
“Someone’s got to.”
He clenched his jaw, and she knew he wouldn’t budge on this. Not today, anyway.
“Aw, hell.” She spun away and moved to the window to stare at the wide, gravel-coated yard. Outside, Buzz pulled beneath the batch plant to load his truck for the preschool playground job, and Lenny rumbled by in the transfer with sixteen yards of sand headed for Delores Fregoso’s riding arena.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she said in a near whisper. “Don’t sabotage this. Please.”
“I’m not sabotaging anything. I’m trying to find a way for all of us to get what we want. All of us, Charlie. Not just you.”
She turned as he stood to pull his jacket off its hanger. “There are going to be some changes around here,” he said. “Whether you like them or not.”
TWO HOURS LATER, CHARLIE leaned back in her chair with a groan that morphed into a yawn. Time for another dose of caffeine. She tugged her coffee mug from under a stack of Department of Motor Vehicles forms and trudged toward the reception area. Around the corner, she heard a deep murmur followed by Gus’s wheezy chuckle. Someone was busy charming her dispatcher. Someone with a syrupy Southern drawl in his smooth, low-pitched voice.
That stranger, the guy who’d been staring at her in Earl’s gravel yard that morning. He leaned against the counter as if he’d been born with the laminate attached at the hip. His jeans were white at the seams, poised on the edge between ragged and stylish, his wool shirt faded enough to show some use but soft enough to advertise its pedigree. The outfit may have said everyday working guy, but she suspected the labels whispered weekend leisure wear.
He straightened and turned to face her, and she couldn’t help but stare at the flesh and blood embodiment of every bittersweet promise and mortifying low point in her brief and forgettable dating career. There was the lean-muscled build of that high school wrestler, the one who’d been such a perfect fit during a long, slow number at the homecoming dance—the one who’d lost his dinner all over her first formal gown. There was the wavy, dark blond hair of that sexy grad student, the one who’d whisked her away for her first taste of grown-up excitement—the one who’d ducked out in the middle of a double date, doubling her mortification. There were the dark blue, crinkle-cornered eyes of the man who’d been her first serious love affair, the one who’d said he was serious about her, too—the one who’d stood her up for Christmas dinner at her parents’ house four years ago.
And then the lean, sexy, blue-eyed stranger standing at her counter smiled, and his tanned skin stretched and molded in a wonderful combination of sharp cheekbones and square jaw and deeply carved grooves far too manly to pass for dimples. Okay, so the grooves were something new. And that look in his eyes that was making her stomach twist in a breath-robbing knot—no one’s eyes had ever looked at her in quite that way before. As if they were peeling away her clothes and counting every freckle on the skin underneath.
She hated it when guys made her stomach knot up. It gave her heartburn.
Gus gestured with his coffee mug. “This here’s Jackson Maguire, Charlie. He says he has an appointment with David.”
Jackson Maguire thrust his hand forward. “Call me Jack.”
She placed her hand in his, noting a healing nick on his thumb and the calluses rubbing against her palm. This was a man who used his hands for work, but the careful weight of his grip gave the impression of precise and practiced manners. An interesting man, this Call-Me-Jack Maguire. A man of intriguing contrasts and textures.
“Charlie Keene,” she said, and then she pulled her hand from his and shoved it into her pocket, where it would be safe.
“Do you know when David’s due back?” Gus asked her.
“He mentioned he had an appointment,” she said, “but all I know is that it was set for sometime after lunch.”
“I’m afraid I’m early,” said Jack. “Y’all just go about your business, now. Never mind me. Gus, here, is keeping me plenty entertained, in between all those phone calls he handles so well.”
Maguire winked at her. A slow burn kindled in her cheeks, and she knew she’d soon be wearing the same blush he’d seen on her that morning. She covered it with a nod and a shuffle to the coffeemaker.
“Pretty busy place here, even in the afternoon,” Maguire rambled on in his amiable way. “Trucks coming and going, steady as can be. I would have thought things might
