LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) (89 page)

“Hey, Addison,” one of the construction workers said as he helped me down from the cab of my truck. “Didn’t expect to see you until later in the week.”

“I wanted to see how we’re progressing.”

He stepped back, my hand lost in his much larger one. He was watching me with a little weariness in his watery green eyes. His name was Billy. He was in his late fifties, but he could work circles around any of the twenty-year-olds who often populated these sites with him. And those twenty-year-olds learned a lot from him, when they were smart enough to shut up and listen.

He'd taught Grant all he knew about drywall.

“Slowly,” he said. “The lumberyard refused to deliver that load of two-by-fours yesterday.”

“I know. I called them and got it worked out.”

“They say the company’s been slow about paying their bill for months.”

“It’s nothing for you to worry about, Billy.”

But he was worried. I could see it in the way he studied me with his permanent squint. Forty years out in the Texas sun had left its mark on Billy’s face—that squint being the least of it. Last year he had a mole removed from his jaw that turned out to be cancerous. The doctor told him to quit his job and take something inside. He refused. Construction was all he knew and he was loyal. He wasn’t about to leave us high and dry.

If he only knew.

He walked with me to the foundation of an apartment building that had just been dug two weeks ago. Already they’d set the plumbing and begun to frame the structure. It was one of our most massive projects. It was an apartment building that would be forty stories when it was completed. That was fairly massive for this part of the country where apartment buildings were three stories high and office buildings were usually less than twenty.

Too bad I wouldn’t be here to see it finished.

“How’s the new foreman doing?”

Billy shrugged. “He’s a foreman.”

I smiled. “Yes, I suppose he is.”

“We’re on schedule. The kid running the water pump is keeping up. Those are the only things I ask when starting a new project.”

I touched his arm lightly. “I’m glad, then.”

I spoke to the foreman for a few minutes and watched the men go about their business for a while. They didn’t like when I just stood there and watched them work, but they couldn’t say anything. The last man to say something to me about it found himself on the unemployment line that afternoon. I’d do just about anything for good employees, but I didn’t suffer fools lightly.

I was about to climb back into my truck, wondering if I would keep it when I no longer needed it. Maybe I’d sell it and get myself a sports car. Maybe I’d sell everything and leave the state. I’d heard Florida’s pretty nice year-round. Or Montana. I’ve always liked the idea of living somewhere where it snows once in a while.

“Addison!”

I turned and watched as Billy ran toward me.

“I forgot to ask earlier,” he said, not even slightly winded. “Did Grant ever catch up to you?”

The sound of Grant’s name on his lips was such a surprise that I had to grip the open door of my truck. It shouldn’t have been, but it was.

“Grant?”

“Yeah. He came by here a couple of days ago, asking about you.”

“Did he?”

“Dressed in a suit and everything. Said he’d had some luck in California.”

I nodded, feeling like I should say something, but at a loss.

“He said he’d come back to see if he could maybe fix a few mistakes he made when he was living here before. Told me how sorry he was to leave without giving any notice or whatever. Said he knew I’d expected more from him than that.”

“Big of him, coming back after all these years.”

Billy’s squint softened a little as he studied my face. “He was a good kid, Addison. And he’s become a good man. Offered to help me out with some of my medical bills. I guess he’d heard about all that from someone.”

“Did you take the money?”

“No,” Billy said, a soft, ironic smile touching his lips. “You know me. I don’t like taking something I didn’t work for.”

I knew that. He’d refused the money I’d offered him, too. So I called the insurance company we used for employee medical, asked them what I could do. But medical records are confidential. They wouldn’t take my money, either.

“Take the money, Billy,” I said, touching his hand lightly. “Don’t let your pride cause your family to go without.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“Me? I don’t need money.”

“No. But I saw the look on your face when I said his name. You still love him.”

I shook my head, but I knew he could see right through me. I’d known Billy since I was a small child, following my dad around like a puppy on a leash. He’d seen me with Grant, and then wrapped up in heartbreak. He knew.

“Give him a chance, kid. Let him explain what happened all that time ago.”

“And what if his excuse isn’t good enough?”

“What if it is?”

I leaned over and kissed Billy’s cheek.

“I’ll see you.”

***

I drove to our three other active projects. We normally had upwards of ten projects going on, each at a different stage of development. But now we only had four in active production and two on the drawing table in the architect’s office. In fact, my dad fired three of our staff architects last month because we simply didn’t have enough work for them.

We were once a strong company—the one everyone went to to build their dream office, their perfect apartment building. We even delved into the occasional home. But times change. Other companies offered more modern services. Environmentally friendly building materials. Internet and cable access built into the walls of offices and apartments. Computer-drawn architectural plans. Cheaper, more economical solutions. My dad refused to move with the times. He was one of those men who believed the old way is the only way. No matter how often we argued, he would never budge. And now, here we were.

His company, his decisions, I always told myself. And when I drove by some of the buildings he put up thirty and forty years ago, I couldn’t argue with him.

Some were a work of art.

I pulled my truck to the curb outside of the apartment building that was the first for me. It was nothing but an idea on paper when I went to work for my dad the spring before college. In a matter of weeks it became a foundation and then a bare-bones structure. By early June it was a ten-story structure with walls going up and plumbing going in.

This was the luxury apartment building Grant was working on when we met.

I often stood out here, leaning against the side of my truck and looking up at the building. Sometimes I thought of how it represented what we did right at Berryman Construction. Sometimes I thought it represented all the hard work and the long nights and the things my dad sacrificed in order to keep the business going all those years. And sometimes I thought it represented my relationship with my dad. How strong it was, but how there were a few vulnerabilities that should have been found and fixed long ago.

But, mostly, I looked at this building and thought about the relationship that was born here and should have blossomed like the surrounding neighborhood after this building went up.

It felt like everything in my life was crumbling at the foundation. I’d had all these dreams when I was young, but most of them centered on Berryman Construction. Even when I was with Grant and he talked about running away to California, I thought we would eventually come back and run the company together. The company was all I knew. It was all I wanted. It may seem odd, a girl wanting to inherit the family construction company, but not to me. It was my dad’s—the legacy he’d built up from nothing more than a tool belt and a little charm. It was the life I was supposed to live.

Now I felt like a ship that had suddenly come unmoored, drifting aimlessly out in the harbor. I needed my captain to come and save me from floating with the tide. I needed to have a purpose, needed to know where I was going. I needed this not to be happening.

“It turned out beautifully. Just as you’d always known it would.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin as Grant’s voice filled my mind. No warning.

“Have you seen the inside since it was completed?”

I closed my eyes and counted to five. But it didn’t help. The moment my eyes shifted and moved over his familiar face, my heart skipped a beat and my knees threated to turn to Jell-O.

“Are you following me around?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I could ask you the same thing.”

“First the bar…no, first one our construction sites. Billy says you went to see him.”

“He’s a friend.”

“Then the bar. And now here.”

“I live here.”

“You do?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, princess,” he said, using the nickname he only used when he was trying to piss me off. “I bought the penthouse apartment.”

I glanced back at the building, remembering one afternoon seven years ago when he took me up to the top of the building—before there was even a roof—and told me he was going to own it one day.

“Just how do you propose to do that? Daddy says this apartment is already sold to someone who paid so much they’d have to stay twenty years to make it worth it.”

“I guess I’ll just have to make an offer they won’t be able to pass up.”

“And what would that be?”

He shrugged. “I don’t plan to work construction all my life. I’m going to find something I’m really good at and I’m going to make millions doing it.”

“And then?”

“And then, I’m going to buy this place and set you up in here. Let you decorate it any way you want to. And then we’ll fill it with babies.”

“Babies?”

“Half a dozen, at least.”

I laughed. “Easy for you to say. You’re not the one who has to carry them.”

He lifted me from the waist and carried me to the makeshift table they’d been using to cut lumber on.

“I want a houseful of baby girls that look exactly like you,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose lightly even as he moved between my legs, pulling me tight against him. “And I want to give them the world, just like I’m going to do for you.”

“You must have made a hell of a good offer,” I said softly.

“More than you could possibly imagine.”

I glanced at him and realized he was watching me. Not only that, but I knew he knew I was thinking about that long-ago evening. I blushed, because my memory hadn’t stopped at the words we’d exchanged. There was so much more about that night that I’d tucked away in the back of my mind, refusing to replay it the way I did some of the others. Because that was the night I knew I loved him. It was the night I knew my life would never be the same. And that was the night he put me on a path that would end in the most devastating heartbreak I’d ever experienced.

“I should go.”

I pushed away from the side of the truck, intent on getting as far from him as I could. But he grabbed my arm and pulled me back, his eyes moving slowly over my face.

“Why are you here?”

“I think that’s my question,” I said. “I never left.”

He smoothed his hand over the side of my face. “If I’d had a choice…”

“You had plenty of choices, Grant.”

He nodded slowly, his eyes moving over me again. It was like he was trying to memorize me. Or maybe he was looking for the girl I was seven years ago. I was sure I’d changed. I didn’t see it, but I was sure someone who knew me as well as he did might. If he’d really known me as well as I’d thought he had…

“Come upstairs,” he said. “Let me show you what I’ve done with the place.”

“I have places I need to be.”

“It’ll only take a minute.” He stepped back and held out his hand. “Are you afraid you’ll be impressed?”

“You wish.”

I took his hand and let him pull me across the street. I knew the lobby of the building. It was still covered in the marble my dad and I had searched dozens of suppliers’ warehouses to find, still painted the same subtle creams and tan the owner had wanted. There was a little desk off to the side where a security man greeted visitors and accepted packages for the tenants. There was a security guard there now who lifted a hand in greeting to Grant.

“Good afternoon, Mr. McGraw.”

“John,” Grant said in a tone of voice I didn’t know. One filled with pretention and formality that the old Grant would never have used.

“You’ve certainly come up in the world,” I said the moment we were alone on the elevator.

“What makes you say that?”

“When I knew you, you wouldn’t have been able to afford the rent on a locker in this building, let alone the penthouse.”

He shrugged, concentrating on putting some sort of code into the elevator’s number pad that I assumed would take us to the top floor.

“Billy said you got lucky in California.”

“Is that what you really want to talk about, Addison? Where I got my money?”