Major Renovations (Ritter University #1) (2 page)

Like she’d ever let him.

But that red slowly sliding along her cheekbones told a different story. It told him that maybe— just maybe— she was interested. And hell, he’d take it. He couldn’t stop his grin. “They are big. I'm a big guy— all over.”

Heat burned in her eyes as she scanned him up and down. He could almost see her wondering. How big was he? Where?

Damn. Her gaze felt good. Better than good. Fan-fucking-tastic. He could practically feel the heat from her eyes slithering along his skin. And given the thoughts bouncing around his head... It took a lot of fucking strength not to reach out and run his hand along the curve of her waist, to see if— He took a deep breath. A lot of fucking strength.

“I bet.” Her interest disappeared as fast as it had appeared, and she turned her attention back to the tablet. “Too bad your ego is the biggest part of all.”

Or maybe not. He shook his head. Who knew what was actually running through her head right now? “How do you know that’s the biggest part?”

“Let’s just call it a hunch.” A cool stare replaced the heated gaze of seconds ago, and her rigid posture returned.

Temptation over. Damn. His skin pebbled from the newfound chill in the room.

“Um, we’ll need you to stay out of the way today. The electrical inspector is coming.” Her eyes were now riveted on the screen in her hand.

Damn tablet. He wanted to pull the thing away so she’d look at him just a little bit longer. “Good. Can you come get me? I’d like to be there.”

“You don’t need to be. I have it all under control.”

“I know that, but I am here to babysit, so I might as well earn my five dollars an hour.”

“You’re getting paid to be here?” She glanced up at him, her brows raised.

He didn’t buy her innocent look for a moment, but decided to let things go. For now. “No, it was a bad joke.”

“Do you need anything else, Mister Kaminski?” she nearly cooed, and looked back down at the tablet.

Mister Kaminski? Even his father wasn't Mister Kaminski. So, no. Just…no. “You can call me Ski.”

“Ski. I'll keep that in mind.” Her hips swung as she strode out of the room, ponytail swinging to the same rhythm. It was amazing. She could turn him to ice with one glare and then make his blood boil, all in two-point-five seconds flat.

~»ΨΡ«~

Chapter
Two

Sam

SAMANTHA THUNDER watched her crew hanging cement board on the kitchen wall. Her crew. She couldn’t seem to get used to that. She was twenty-one years old, and running her own crew. She should still be learning and taking direction from someone with more knowledge, more years, more experience. Not running the show.

But with her father taking a much-needed health break, she’d had to take over— make sure the jobs got done, the bills got paid, and the men had a paycheck each week. Without her here? Well, either her father would be a walking heart attack, or the men would be out of a job.

Neither was a good option. Neither was acceptable.

“Ms. Samantha.” Jordan leaned down from his ladder after he ran a screw into the concrete board. “We’re almost done with this. Is the mortar here?”

“Let me check.” Samantha swiped her tablet and brought up the day’s schedule. Appliance delivery at one this afternoon. Tile delivery at noon. Mortar at seven this morning. Six hours ago. Shit. How did she miss that? “One minute.”

She walked back through the house, and no matter how hard she tried, her eyes kept looking for Ski. Why was she even thinking about him? Especially right this minute— not one of the items on her schedule was
Ogle Ski
.

But wouldn’t that be fun? Those muscles, that face. She’d love to take a few minutes and— dammit. She should be focusing on her job, her father's legacy— the missing mortar. His spiked blond hair and angular jaw were nice to look at, but the truth was that she wasn't into guys like him. He was a jock. End of story.

She shook her head and walked into the bright afternoon sun. It was just after lunch. They only had about four more hours of work today and she needed to focus on the job. Focus on things like the bags of mortar sitting in plain sight on the front porch. Her chest compressed as air whooshed from her lungs. She hadn’t known she was even holding that in, but damn, she didn’t have time for setbacks. Every step was important. Every task was dependent on the one that came before it.

She pulled at a yellow paper sticking out from the top of the stack— the receipt— and shoved it in her pocket. If she lost that, she was so screwed. She hefted a bag of thin-set mortar and carried it through the house to the kitchen.

“There’s three more out there.” She dropped the fifty-pound bag to the floor, dust spattering the air.

Jordan slid down the ladder. “Thanks, Ms. Samantha. Bryan and Pete, go grab the rest of them.”

“Thanks, Jordan.” She smiled at one of the few people that respected her newfound authority. Okay— maybe not
respected
, but he didn’t find it necessary to call her out on her many mistakes. And there were many.

She made sure she still had the rogue receipt and headed to her truck. Without every single slip of paper, the tally of actual expenses would be off. Her father would be pissed. She’d be pissed. Pulling open the passenger door, she stuck the receipt into a folder and dropped her forehead onto the door— repeatedly— until the sharp pain made her stop.

She was trying, really trying. She was giving one hundred percent— and she still couldn’t get her shit together. How sad was that?

She was sinking in figurative wet concrete, kicking and flailing, her body slowly being consumed by gritty gray paste. She’d like to blame Barry and say he was pushing her head deeper into the muck, but dammit, she was screwing up all on her own. No help needed, thank you.

Of course, it might help if Barry got off his butt and helped her stay afloat. Yeah, right. Like he’d do that. She had a feeling he was waiting for the big screw-up. The massive one, the one that would force her father to put Barry in charge. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the old man was calling her father and giving status reports behind her back.

She’d always known she’d take over her father’s company someday. Hell, he’d put a hammer in her hand as soon as she was old enough to walk. But she never thought she’d be taking over so soon or so completely. Maybe in a few years, after she was established in her own career. When she could focus on both her dreams and his.

But with her father’s health scare…? No. That wasn’t something she wanted to think about right now. When her father finally agreed to take a break, she was surprised he hadn’t put Barry in charge. Apparently, Barry was surprised he wasn’t put in charge, too.

No,
surprised
wasn’t exactly the word. He was downright hostile.

She hated to admit it, but that hurt. Barry had been her father's most trusted employee for so many years. But it was more than that— he was family. He taught her how to use a circular saw when she was twelve. He let her drive the backhoe when she was fourteen. Her dad was royally pissed, but she’d loved it. And the two of them had shared a conspiratorial soda when Barry let her do it again, a week later, this time without telling her father.

So when she took over, she thought he’d be there to help her, guide her. She should be working on a way to get him on board. But how? Too bad they didn’t have a human resources department that could help with employee issues. Because she had no idea how.

“Samantha!” Barry stormed out of house and over to Samantha’s truck. “The plumber needs to talk to you. There’s a problem.”

Of course there was. “What kind of problem?”

“I don’t know. He wants to talk to the manager.” Barry hooked a thumb at her. “That would be you.”

“Could you please find out what the problem is?” She attached her stylus to the tablet sleeve.

“Fine. By the way, half the boxes of tiles are the wrong color.” Barry pulled a dark-brown tile from his pocket and handed it to her.

Of course they were the wrong color. What else was new? If it could go wrong, it would. She added
exchange tile
to the list in her tablet of things that still needed to be done. That list seemed to grow longer and longer. Shouldn’t it start to get shorter at some point? “I’ll exchange them later.”

Barry huffed and turned back to the building. “Later? They’re about to start tiling. I need them to get as far as possible before they go home tonight. Can’t you exchange them now?”

“I can’t. I have to talk to the plumber.” The knot behind her eyes pulsed and spread when Barry sighed heavily. She let her breath out and tried for calm. “Fine,” she told him. “If you deal with the tiles, I’ll talk to the plumber.”

“Fine.” He walked back into the house.

“Fine.” Tears clawed at the back of her eyes. Barry slamming her at every turn was getting old. She hated thinking about letting him go. But, crap, what else could she do?

She ran a hand over her face. What else could she do? Tequila. That would work. A couple hours more and she’d grab a beer. Or a shot. A little Cabo Wabo. Yeah, today was more of a tequila type of day. Between the job and Ski, she needed something to relax her, and a few shots of Cabo Wabo would do the trick.

Speaking of Ski… She rubbed her thumb over the dark brown tile. Dark brown with flecks of gold. She’d know this color anywhere. The color of Ski’s eyes.

Disgusted with herself, she walked back into the house and found the offending boxes of tile, dropping the square into one of them.

I’m not into guys like him. I’m not into guys like him.
Why couldn’t her brain remember that? He was a jock. No— even worse. A frat-boy jock. He was everything she wasn't attracted to. He was a spoiled, brainless, college popularity-whore. She'd done his kind before. Dated the football star and even the frat-boy. Both experiences sucked. They not only ended, they ended badly. His kind liked to string along the townie until the next woman came along, and she'd been the townie left alone with a broken heart.

Of course, it could have been worse. Her best friend, Carly, dated one of those college pretty boys. Now she was six months pregnant. On her own, no pretty-boy in sight. He’d graduated, leaving her scared and alone with a baby to raise.

No. Thank. You.

Samantha refused to be a part of that statistic, unwed with baby dread. Not her idea of fun. Especially with a football player who'd taken one too many hits. He was probably majoring in alcoholism and coeds. Who needed that?

She had a plan. She was going to get her father’s company on its feet, help it to be self-sufficient, and then she’d have time to do the kind of projects that interested her— namely, the electrical kind of projects.

Her father had thought it was cute when she said she wanted to take classes in electrical technology at a local college, and since she’d done it part-time, he couldn’t really say it kept her from working. But he’d thought she was crazy when she apprenticed part-time with Bob, his electrical contractor, over the winter. That was their slow season, though, and Thunder Construction hadn’t been busy, so he couldn’t complain about that, either.

But after that winter, she hadn’t been able to walk away. Well, she didn’t
want
to walk away. She wanted to finish her apprenticeship. She loved every part of learning how to safely harness electricity— from the creativity involved in planning the ideal placement of recessed lighting to the simple excitement of installing a new electrical outlet and then actually having it work.

When spring came, Bob had asked her to stay on and complete her training. But without her around, her father worked too hard, didn’t take care of himself— and she almost lost him. So she came back to Thunder Construction.

She’d taken a winter off and the cost had been too high. No matter how much she might want something else, this was her reality— making Thunder Construction a success. This was where she belonged.

No more selfish dreams.

~»ΨΡ«~

Chapter
Three

Ski

THE SOUND of the damn power tools the crew was using to fix the front porch roof buzzed and echoed in Ski’s head. And no matter how loud he cranked the TV, he couldn’t win the fight with the whirring and the whining and the pounding from outside.

Didn’t they ever take a break?
Gowno
.
Smoke a cigarette, eat some lunch, take a piss? Do anything that didn’t torture his eardrums?

Granted, the porch roof had been a lopsided mess, and all due to his frat brother, Keith. The dumbass had done one too many shots one night, and decided to show everybody he could parkour. He'd jumped out his bedroom window and landed on the porch roof, putting his foot right through it. And as Keith had sat there, lodged in the shingles, one of the supports cracked and the roof nearly tore away from side of the building. One of the brothers secured the sagging roof, but there was no way it would last another semester. It was the dangling porch roof of Damocles.

Bzzzzzzz...
The damn saw screamed and screeched outside the window. He grabbed the remote from the table and jabbed the volume-up button. Fucking useless. The volume was already pushed to the extreme. He jabbed the TV off. What was the point?

Maybe if they had working AC in the house, he could close the windows in his room and muffle some of the sound pollution. He grabbed his water and downed half the bottle. One thing he'd learned in his pre-med biology class— hydrate. Even with all the windows open and a fan spinning in the corner, sweat still dripped down his back. No way was he closing a window. He'd stew in his own juices. Not that he wasn't already.

He dumped the rest of the water over his head, and cool streaks slid down his chest. One thing he learned in ten years of wrestling— soak.

He tossed the bottle in the trash. This was ridiculous. He wasn’t even supposed to be here this summer. But with the frat treasurer hovering over his sick mother, and the president hovering over some horny hotties, neither could break away and— how did Samantha say it?
Babysit
.
Yeah. That's it.