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  My buddy Rowdy St. James lifted his eyebrows at me as I stared at her while he introduced us. Sayer Cole. Even her name was elegant and sophisticated-sounding. She was an enigma, this pretty woman that seemed like she should be in anyplace but this bar with the two of us. She’d shown up out of the blue a couple of months ago claiming to be his half-sister, claiming that they shared a father, claiming that all she wanted was to be in his life and have some kind of family of her own. She looked too delicate to be that brave. Came across as way too proper to have said “fuck it all” and picked up her life to move it someplace unknown without being sure of her welcome. She looked like silk, but if my guess was right about her it was silk wrapped around steel.

  Luckily Rowdy was a good guy. After the shock of discovering he wasn’t alone in the world, and once he realized he had someone tied to him by blood forever and ever, he had warmed up to the idea of having a sister and appreciated that the sister was Sayer.

  I liked Rowdy a lot. He was a stand-up guy and a good friend, but I had a feeling I was going to like his newly found big sister even more. In my usual tactless way I asked him without looking directly at the knockout blonde, “So you have a sister? A hot, classy sister?” A sister that was also a lawyer so beautiful and smart.

  I expected a giggle from her or an eye roll at the outlandish compliment, but what I got was a wide-eyed stare of disbelief as eyes bluer than anything I had ever seen on earth danced between me and her brother like she wasn’t sure what to do with herself or with my overt interest in her.

  I thought that I had gone too far, pushed the beautiful stranger too far out of her comfort zone. I was a big guy and knew I looked far wilder and rougher than I actually was. I figured it might be too much for a woman already obviously out of her element and depth to take.

  Instead, Sayer surprised me and I could see by the way he stiffened that she surprised Rowdy too. While she wasn’t exactly overflowing with welcome and warmth, she did ask me about the current project I was working on after Rowdy explained I was a general contractor and had rebuilt the new tattoo shop he worked in. She seemed genuinely interested, and when I told her that my specialty was rehabbing old houses and giving them new life, her eyes practically glowed at me. I wanted to touch her to see if she felt as smooth and polished as she looked. I wanted to leave streaks of dirt on her perfect face to mark the fact that I had touched her, that she had let me touch her. It was a primal and visceral reaction that I couldn’t explain and I liked the way it felt. Liked the weight and heft of it in my blood even if I knew the feeling wasn’t likely to be returned.

  She told me all about a fantastic but crumbling Victorian she had purchased that was falling down around her. She asked me for a business card and I saw Rowdy stiffen across the table. I sighed and rubbed a hand over my already messy hair. I watched her eyes follow the light cloud of dust that escaped the strands. I was great at my job, loved what I did but I couldn’t do anything with her or for her without laying everything on the line. Especially not with Rowdy giving me the death glare from just a few feet away.

  I dug the card out of my wallet and when I handed it over our fingers touched. I saw her eyes widen and her lips part, just barely. She looked a little dazed when I grinned at her.

  “You take that card, but understand that the man giving it to you has a past.”

  She blinked at me and cleared her throat. “What kind of past?”

  It wasn’t something I liked to tell a beautiful woman when I first met her. It was something I liked to work up to, liked to prove it was behind me, but with this one it seemed like I wouldn’t get that chance.

  “I tell everyone that I do any kind of work for or that considers hiring me on for a project that I have a criminal history. I spent time locked up for a few years and while I’m not proud of it I can’t deny it happened. I was a hotheaded kid and it got me in trouble, but I’m the best at what I do, so I hope that doesn’t discourage you from giving me a call.” Hopefully for more than some construction.

  Usually I got a concerned frown followed by a hundred questions about what had led me to serving time. I got none of that from the stunning blonde. She tilted her head to the side and considered me silently for a long moment before reaching down and slipping my card in her purse. If anything I could have sworn she was wearing a look of sympathy when she told me softly, “I see it every day from the inside. Sometimes the system simply gets it wrong.” A slight grin turned her mouth up at the corners, and I wanted to lean over and kiss it. “People make mistakes. Hopefully they learn from them.”

  I don’t know that “wrong” was accurate in my case so much as misguided, but the complete lack of judgment or censure coming from her made me want to pull her into my arms and hold on to her even more. I had made a mistake, a huge one, one that I was forever going to have to carry around with me, but I had learned from it, was still learning from it. That kind of understanding from a total stranger was so rare, especially coming from someone in the legal field. I wasn’t accustomed to someone looking at me and seeing me, just me, not an ex-con loser, after I explained where I had been. It was wildly refreshing and attractive. I couldn’t quite get a handle on what made the woman tick, but I would welcome any opportunity she gave me to figure it out. I found her outwardly flawless and pristine demeanor tempting to taint with my dirty hands and ways, and there was something about the way she watched me, the way she turned towards me like she was drawn to me that made me think maybe I wasn’t alone in the inexplicable pull department.

  Rowdy left and she stayed.

  We had a couple more beers and talked some more about her house and what she wanted done with it. She already hired one contractor but felt like the guy was ripping her off. It happened a lot in the industry so I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy was taking her for a ride. Spending time with her was easy. She was fun to talk to and really fun to look at. I really wanted to get my hands on her house and of course on her, and I felt like she was maybe, kind of, slightly leaning in the same direction when I made the mistake of asking her about her past.

  I asked about where she had been before she found out about Rowdy and decided to move to Denver so that she could get to know him. I was curious what kind of life she had where she could leave everything behind and not be missed. Really I wanted to know if she had a boyfriend or husband stashed somewhere, but the simple inquiry must have touched a nerve. The next thing I knew she had paid out the tab for both of us and disappeared into the night. She went from glowing and bright to frigid and untouchable in the span of a heartbeat.

  I figured I blew my shot by being too blunt as always. I assumed she probably did have someone else in the picture and had been friendly and polite only because I was good friends with her brother. I thought I would never hear from her again and was baffled why the thought of that made my chest ache and my heart feel like it weighed two tons.

  Imagine my surprise when she called me and hired me to renovate her house a week later without a bid, without a contract, without even knowing if I was half as good as I claimed to be.

  Of course I accepted, but I knew once I was inside I would need to knock down and rearrange more than just the walls of the house, in order to get at something beautiful and lasting.

  Sayer

  6 months later

  “Can’t sleep?”

  The soft question sent the glass of white wine I’d been chugging like it was cheap beer falling from my fingers and clattering noisily to the beautifully refinished hardwood floors under my bare feet.

  The glass shattered and wine cascaded everywhere as I put a hand to my chest and looked over my shoulder at the pale ghost of the young woman I was currently sharing my newly renovated living space with. Her light brown eyes were huge in her face, and, like always, she looked like a delicate fawn ready to bolt at any noise or quick movement I might make.

  I took a deep breath to calm myself down and gingerly picked myself out of the broken glass minefield so I could ge
t a towel and the broom to clean up the mess. “Why aren’t you asleep, Poppy?”

  I knew the answer. The old Victorian I bought just a few weeks after relocating to Denver was huge, had three different levels, was made of sturdy wood and had heavy, solid doors on each room. None of that was enough to keep the sounds of this young woman’s screams of terror as she had nightmare after nightmare from reaching me. They weren’t as frequent as when she first moved into my home. In fact they hardly ever pulled me from my own troubled dreams anymore, but every now and then I would hear her voice through the walls, hear heartbreaking sobs echoing across the rafters, and my brittle heart wanted to snap in two for her.

  She pushed some of her long caramel-colored hair behind her ears and lifted an eyebrow at me. “Bad dream. How about you, Sayer? Why are you still up?”

  I cleared my throat as I bent down to sweep the glass up.

  It was late.

  I was really tired.

  I had a full day at work tomorrow and I needed to be up early enough so I could swing by the gym before I went into my office.

  I had also agreed to have drinks with a fellow attorney after my final court appearance of the day. It was a semi date I had already rescheduled twice, so I couldn’t reasonably back out again without looking like a complete jerk. Doing any of that on a few hours of sleep was less than ideal, but I was getting used to running on fumes lately. I too was having dreams that woke me up in the middle of the night, that left me shaken, heated, and too wound up to stay in bed.

  Only my dreams weren’t terror inducing—-they were good. Oh so fucking good. They were better than good. They were the best dreams I had ever had. Hell, the dreams were better than any kind of actual sexual experience I had ever had while wide awake. They were the kind of dreams that had me jerking up from a dead sleep while I panted and sweated. I woke up twisting in my sheets and touching myself because the man that starred in each and every single one of them was nowhere around.

  Control was everything to me, and Zeb Fuller made me want to lose it even when he was sound asleep in his own bed all the way across Denver.

  I’d paid him a fortune to turn this broken down, sagging, sorry excuse for a house into a stately, soaring, and magnificent home, and so Zeb had his hands all over my real-life dreams, not just my naughty midnight ones. He had finished the last of the remodel a couple of weeks ago and ever since, I found myself missing the sounds of hammering, drilling, and the rumble of his deep voice. All the dirty, sexy things I secretly wanted him to do to me were chasing me into dreamland, making for rough mornings and some serious dark circles under my eyes. I was pale anyway, so there was no hiding the evidence of Zebulon Fuller’s effect on me.

  It was stupidly simple. I had a crush that I couldn’t shake, and it terrified me.

  It made me feel off-balance, unsure, and so damn sexually frustrated I wanted to pull out all of my long, blond hair by the roots just for a distraction.

  I swore softly as a piece of glass slid across my fingertip when I bent down to usher the mess into the dustpan. I stuck the bleeding digit into my mouth and grunted in annoyance at myself. I had learned before I could walk that showing any kind of emotion was a weakness, a fatal flaw that would end with you in tears as the victor stood over your broken, weeping form with a look of pity and disgust on his face. I shouldn’t have jumped when Poppy startled me. I was supposed to be honed of more glacial stuff than that. I didn’t react to anything—ever. Poppy was still staring at me with wide-eyed curiosity so I pulled my finger out of my mouth and wiped it on the yoga pants I had worn to bed.

  “I was having weird dreams, too. I thought a glass of wine would help put me back to sleep.” My tone was frostier than I meant for it to be, but old habits were hard to break. It was habit and it was armor.

  She shifted her weight a little and again I was reminded of a timid woodland creature always ready to flee from danger. She was so pretty, so delicate, and no one should have had to endure the things this young woman had been through in her short lifetime. Poppy Cruz was only a few years younger than my own twenty-eight, but when her amber eyes assessed me with a knowing that felt ancient, it seemed like she was eons ahead of me in both life and experience. Even though I had been raised by a father who was a tyrant, and had had to put my mother, who loved him and tried to please him right up until her last breath, in the ground before I was old enough to drive. My formative years had been spent trying to live up to standards I could never reach and mourning the loss of a woman I loved and loathed equally.

  “You’ve had a lot of sleepless nights since Zeb finished all the work on the house. You seem … unsettled.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes in exasperation with myself but held it back. I shouldn’t seem any way to anyone. My cracks were starting to show and that unnerved me to no end.

  Was “unsettled” another word for horny enough to climb the walls? Because if so, then yes, I was most definitely unsettled. And ridiculous. I’d never had the mere thought of a man distract me or cost me much-needed shut-eye before. I was supposed to have more restraint than that.

  I dumped the broken glass in an extra plastic shopping bag and then tossed it all into the trash. It took a few more minutes to wipe up the wine that was on the floor and that had splattered on the cabinets and bottom of the fridge.

  “I guess I got used to living in the chaos of construction. Everything seems so neat and tidy now. So new. I’m sure I’ll get used to it. This is my dream home, what I always wanted. I think maybe the fact I finally have it is still settling in. That’s all.” I had grown up in a home where what I wanted or needed wasn’t permitted, so the fact that I had something that was just mine, that was tangible, solid and real, something that was untouched from the taint of the past still took my breath away when I thought about it.

  I made sure everything was back to being spotless and snatched a bottle of water out the fridge before turning back to Poppy, when she quietly said,

  “I thought maybe you were missing having Zeb around. He’s kind of hard to ignore.”

  He most assuredly was hard to ignore.

  Tall, tattooed, and built like a guy who hauled heavy stuff around and swung a hammer like Thor should be, Zeb was impressive to say the least. But it went beyond the work-hardened muscles, low-slung tool belt and the flirty charm he liked to throw around so effortlessly. There was something rock steady and so certain that shined out of his dark green eyes when he looked at the world around him and the people in it. There was an inherent confidence and assuredness that poured off of him when he looked at a person, like he knew without a doubt whatever he was bringing to the table was a thousand times better than anyone else in the room. God, I could hardly handle how hot it was when he smiled and rubbed his hand over his neatly trimmed beard. Especially when that smile and a knowing smirk was directed right at me.

  I had never been into beards, and. I always thought I preferred a well-groomed, well-dressed man. A man who looked great in a suit and tie and knew all about expensive cologne and hair product in the proper amounts.

  As it turned out, what really flipped the switch on my usually inactive libido was a guy who looked like he could cut down a tree with one swipe, had unruly dark brown hair that looked like it rarely saw a comb or brush let alone any type of product. It was a guy who made a sweaty T-shirt and torn jeans look like high fashion and that kept me awake all night long while I fantasized what those work-toughened hands would feel like sliding across my naked skin.

  I didn’t know what Zeb Fuller had done to me or to my common sense. All I knew was that he was keeping me up at night and making me resent every single time I turned icy and cold when he flirted with me. I hated that I couldn’t act normal around him because all I wanted to do was rip his clothes off and climb all over him. I wasn’t familiar with any of those emotions, so as a defense I locked them all down.

  My awkwardness and ineptitude in the face of Zeb’s overt masculinity meant that I could never find an
y words beyond polite pleasantries and clichéd platitudes, which, I had no doubt, gave him the impression that I was nothing more than a stuck-up bitch. I never intended to treat him like the hired help, but somehow that’s exactly what I had done, and now the job was finished, Zeb was long gone, and I was having phantom orgasms simply thinking about having his hands and mouth on me while I tossed and turned in my very empty and very lonely bed.

  So yeah, I missed having him around. I missed watching him, hearing him, and even smelling that unique scent that all men that worked hard for their money seemed to have. Sweat and accomplishment mixed in with something that just screamed hard work and sex appeal.

  I pushed my long hair back over my shoulder and raised my eyebrows up at Poppy in a questioning expression similar to her own.

  “You didn’t seem to mind him roaming around the house while he was here.” I said casually.

  Poppy had had a horrible experience with her abusive ex-husband, and in the aftermath the beautiful young woman had shied away from all physical contact with the opposite sex, including my brother, with whom she had grown up. It was crippling and when I started work on the house I worried how Poppy was going to handle having so many strange men in and out of the place that had been her sanctuary since she started to recover from her abduction.

  Initially she handled Zeb and his crew banging around the Victorian by never leaving her room. She spent all day locked in there with a dresser in front of the door until one night when I was supposed to get home early to look at paint samples with Zeb but was running late. When I finally got there, I was stunned to find the bearded giant and the fragile flower with their heads bent together while they looked at paint samples in my torn-apart kitchen. I was so stunned that when Zeb mentioned Poppy really liked an unusual shade of reddish orange for the walls I blindly agreed to the choice, even though neutral and serene was much more my personal style.