Merry and Bright Read online

  “Run into drywall?”

  “Run into stuff, period.” Someone had opened a window, and the evening breeze came in, as well as the sounds from the street six floors below. Traffic, an airplane, a sudden blare of a horn so loud she jumped.

  “Just a car,” he said.

  “In the tone of an F.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “All car horns are in the chord of F.”

  He did that eyebrow arch thing again.

  “Jesus, Mags. Stop talking!” Janie demanded in her ear.

  “Okay, I’ve really got to go.”

  “Wait!” Janie yelled. “Ask him out first, you promised! You have to do him, and get him to do you—”

  Maggie slapped her phone shut before Jacob could hear her crazy sister. Yes, he was Mr. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But what was she supposed to do, say Hey, how do you feel about me jumping your bones? Probably she should start with a dinner invite and work her way up to the jumping bones part. Yeah, that was it, that was how normal women did these things. Okay. She took both a big breath and a small step backward for distance, but Jacob curled his fingers into the front of her jacket and caught her up against him.

  Not that she was complaining, but... “Um—”

  He gestured to the bucket of nails she’d nearly stepped in, and she winced. His body, plastered to hers, was as hard as it appeared. And warm. Very, very warm. “Thanks.”

  “Maybe you should just stand real still,” he suggested, and let go of her.

  “Yes, except I don’t stand still very well. I only do still when I’m lying down.”

  He arched a brow, those deep chocolate brown eyes lighting up with amusement to go with the heat still there, making her realize the double entendre she’d just said. “You know what I mean.”

  He just smiled, and turned his head toward a crew member who came up to him with a McDonald’s bag.

  “Burgers on the run.” Jacob took the food. “Thanks.”

  Maggie’s mouth once again ran away from her brain. “There’re one hundred seventy-eight sesame seeds on each of those hamburger buns.”

  He leaned back against the wall, all casual like, in direct contrast to her uptightness. “One hundred seventy-eight, huh?” He was clearly biting back a smile. “Exactly?”

  “Or thereabouts,” she muttered, wondering how it was she could be so smart and yet not be able to keep her mouth shut.

  “So you graduated early to become a sesame seed counter?”

  “No.” She laughed. “No. I’m sort of a chemist.”

  “How does one become a sort of chemist?”

  Yeah, still amusing him. Terrific. Just what she wanted to do, amuse the gorgeous man, at her own expense. “Okay, it’s not sort of. It’s really. I’m really a chemist.” Wow, so much better. Now all she had to do to complete her humiliation was ask him out. No sweat. “So—”

  But he pushed away from the wall, calling out to one of his workers. “Dave, not there, over a foot! Check the specs!” He glanced back at Maggie. “Do me a favor and watch where you walk in here tonight.”

  Yes, she’d just watch where she was going, she thought with a sigh as he walked away. That was her. Always watching. Never doing. She opened Tim’s office door. “Your car’s in my way.”

  He looked up with concern. “You didn’t bump it?”

  “No, of course not.”

  He rushed off to check on his precious baby, and Maggie followed at a slower pace, calling back her sister as she went. “He walked away from me.”

  “Who, your Mr. Wrong? Did you ask him out?”

  “No, I ran out of words.”

  “You tell him that car horns are in the chord of F and you can’t find the words to ask him out? God, you need help.”

  “I know!”

  2

  When the alarm went off well before dawn, Jacob groaned, squelched the urge to toss the thing out his window, and rolled out of bed. He strode naked to the shower, which he cranked up to scalding.

  This eighty-hour workweek shit had to stop.

  After pulling on his last set of clean clothes—damn, he really needed a night at home to catch up—he headed to work, already on his cell phone with his crew, who wanted to get this job finished as badly as he did. He wanted to fly to New Orleans as scheduled in two days, hang out with his family, and possibly do the stacked blonde his brother had set him up with for New Year’s Eve.

  Simple needs, really. Except there was a glitch. Christ, he hated glitches, and he had the mother of all glitches staring him in the face. He had to finish this job before anyone could leave. He’d signed a contract with Data Tech and he had two days left on that contract. Two days or he’d lose his ten percent bonus—only thanks to delay after delay, they had at least a week’s worth of work still to be done in that two days.

  Not good odds, but then again, he’d faced worse. Much worse.

  He left his house, skirted the jammed L.A. freeways like a pro, and was on the job before the sun had even thought about coming up. And since he had a kick-ass crew, they’d joined him without complaint.

  Okay, there was complaining, but they all wanted that ten percent bonus as badly as he did, so they bitched and worked at the same time. After they finished this building, they were jumping right into another job on Fourth Street. Business was good. Actually, business was great.

  So why he felt so damn restless, he really had no idea. Maybe the trip would help. He could see his mom and sister, and make sure they were doing okay in their new place. He could see his brother and catch up.

  And get laid.

  Yeah. All systems go on that one. After moving to New Orleans in his senior year of high school, he’d come back out to Los Angeles five years ago with his best friend and partner, Sam. They’d started out in the hole, practically having to beg, borrow, and steal jobs, but they’d managed. And then they’d gotten their first big contract, and that had led to two more, and they’d been on their way.

  Then Sam had gone home for his brother’s birthday and had gotten killed in Katrina, and things hadn’t been the same for Jacob since. He’d been left with five large contracts already signed, when all he’d wanted to do was go home and wallow. In hindsight, those jobs had probably saved his sorry ass. Even if this one just might kill him. But he wanted that damn bonus. It’d help both his mother and sister pay off the mortgages on homes that no longer even existed, and it would ease their tight financial situation.

  He was busy laying out some electrical lines when he heard the click click clicking of heels and knew it was 8:03 exactly, because at 8:03 every single morning, she appeared. Maggie Bell, his new favorite “sort of” chemist with the encyclopedia brain filled with odd facts.

  She’d grown up. Filled out. And looked damn good. She wore black pumps today, her long legs covered in sheer silk, a business skirt and blouse, and since it was December and chilly, an overcoat, open and flapping behind her as she rushed along, working her cell phone, sipping her caffeine, and balancing a briefcase. She looked a little bit harried, a little bit late, and in spite of the fact that she screamed class, also just a little bit messy.

  God, he loved that part. He had a feeling if the right guy came along and took that pen out from behind her ear, then slid his fingers into her hair and kissed her long and hard and wet, she’d melt. That fantasy alone had gotten him through the past two months.

  As he did every single morning, he stopped whatever he was doing to watch. She didn’t disappoint. Today her honey-colored hair was piled on top of her head in what looked to be a precarious hold. She didn’t wear much makeup that he could tell, but her lips were glossed. Her eyes were covered by reflective sunglasses but he knew them to be a light blue, and that in five seconds they’d focus in on him and she’d stumble just a little. Then her mouth would tremble open in a perfect little O, and time would stop, just literally stop.

  And then she’d blink. Her eyes would cool, as if she’d just remembered that they were virtual str