Jill Shalvis - Messing With Mac

“What?”

“You can call me Mac. That’s my name.”

“Really? It’s not Mr. Attitude?”

His lips twitched. “I respond better to Mac.”

“Okay, then. Mac.”

He stood there politely enough, and…waited for something. At his raised brow, she realized he was waiting for her to leave.

Too bad he didn’t know her better, or he’d already know she did only as she pleased, not as expected. “I didn’t approve for the demo to begin today,” she said.

“You signed the contract.”

Yes, she had. She’d sold her beloved Queen Anne headboard to give him the first payment of many, but she’d agreed upon tomorrow. Damn it, she needed today.

Apparently deciding they were done, Mac turned and walked away, moving with the easy, loose-limbed stride of a man who knew the value of patience. With that patience, he hoisted up the sledgehammer and brought it down on the south wall. And then again. His arms strained and stretched, his muscles working in perfect synch, taut and sleek with sweat as he completely ignored her while simultaneously stripping down the wall to the framing.

Unable to help herself, she stared, utterly fascinated by the unrestrained violence of what he was doing. By the hone of that well-built machine that was his body. “Um…excuse me?”

The sledgehammer continued to rise and fall with amazing regularity. What kind of strength did that entail, she wondered, watching with utter fascination as Mac’s muscles flexed and flowed. Another shiver wracked her frame, and it had nothing to do with a chill. The room was hot. He was hot…and so, suddenly, was she.

Definitely, it had been too long since she’d had any sort of physical release besides her handy, dandy, trusty vibrator. “Mac?”

He never even looked at her, which was a bit disconcerting. Taylor had matured at an early age, her long, gangly body turning into a man’s wet dream. In all the years since, she’d never failed to turn a head.

And yet she was being completely ignored now. Vexing. So was the cell phone ringing in her pocket. Pulling it out, she put it to one ear, finger in the other to hear over Mac, and yelled, “Hello?”

“I have bad news,” said Mrs. Cabot, the owner of a very upscale antique shop in town.

“Bad news?”

Sledgehammer raised, Mac turned.

Their gazes locked.

It was like a chemical reaction. Unintended. Unavoidable. He had the most amazing eyes, and for the first time in her life, Taylor lost her place in a conversation. Chewing her lower lip, she wracked her brain for working brain cells, but her pulse tripled when Mac’s gaze dropped from hers, and locked on the movement of her mouth.

This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t attracted to her. She wasn’t attracted to him. That would be bad, very bad, but while she’d promised herself to never again engage her heart after the devastating loss she’d once suffered, she was no monk.

But even so, sex had become a very fond, distant memory.

She licked her lips, a nervous habit. Again, her contractor’s gaze flickered downward, becoming hot, focused and filled with frank sexual curiosity.

Oh boy. With sheer will power, she concentrated on her phone conversation. “What’s the bad news?”

Mac set the sledgehammer on the floor. In deference to her call? No, that would mean he had a considerate streak.

He was probably just done.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Cabot said. “But you lost your bid on that nineteenth-century chandelier.”

Instantly forgetting about Mac, she gripped the phone. “What do you mean? Who else bid on the chandelier?”

“You were outbid by…” Papers rustled. “Isabel W. Craftsman.”

Taylor might have guessed. There was only one person in town who would have coveted that piece as much as she had, and that was her own mother.

It only had been Taylor’s greatest heart’s desire to own it, but hey, she figured her mother knew that, too. Her mother was highly educated, incredibly brilliant and had eyes in the back of her head. Bottom line, she knew everything, she always had.

Well, except how to be a mother. Shocking how she’d screwed that up, but maybe Taylor was partly to blame. She’d always resented her mother’s vicious drive, sharp ambition and ability to multitask everything in her world except when it came to her own daughters.

When Taylor had graduated from college and had moved out of the house, she’d decided to be the grown-up and let it all go. She’d told her mother so, saying she’d forgiven her for all the missed events, the forgotten birthdays, the lack of any physical attention whatsoever. She didn’t know what she expected, but it hadn’t been to be cut off by her mother’s cell phone. Her mother had held up a hand to Taylor, answered the call, dealt with some business problem, then absently kissed the air somewhere near Taylor’s cheek and walked away.

Having completely forgotten they were in the middle of an important conversation.

After standing there in seething resentment, Taylor had shrugged and moved on. She’d had to. Not every mother was cut out to be a warm, fuzzy type, and she needed to get over it.

Then a few years ago Isabel had done the unthinkable, she’d gotten married again, and had dropped everything for one equally ambitious, equally cold-blooded Dr. Edward Craftsman, brain surgeon. Taylor had gone to the wedding, and if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she would never have believed it.

Her mother lived for this man, gushing all over him. Constantly. Kissing, hugging, leaning, more kissing.

It burned just thinking about it. So did her mother buying this chandelier from beneath her. “Thank you,” Taylor said into the phone. And as if it were no skin off her nose, she dropped the phone back into her pocket. Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it. She’d wanted that chandelier with a ridiculous passion. Served her right, wanting something so badly. Hadn’t she learned that nothing, nothing at all, was worth the heartache?

She had other things to worry about. Like she had a building in disrepair, and a man was reminding her of things far better forgotten.

Mac had tossed the sledgehammer aside, but he hadn’t been idle. There was now a shovel in his hand and he was loading debris into a wheelbarrow with the same narrow-minded intensity he’d swung his sledgehammer.

Eyes narrowed, she set her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. “We never solved the problem of why you’re here a day early.”

He kept loading until the wheelbarrow was full to bursting. Slowly he straightened, then eyed her with that light brown gaze, completely inscrutable now, without a trace of that intense sexual speculation.

Had she only imagined it?

“I didn’t think twenty-four hours would make any difference to you,” he said. Tossing the shovel aside, he grasped the handles of the wheelbarrow and lifted. Muscles strained. Tendons corded.

Taylor tore her gaze away. “I needed this last day before the hell of the next three months of construction and renovation. You’ve ruined it.”

He swiped a forearm across his forehead, looking tired, sweaty and temperamental. “I think that phone call ruined it.”

Deep within her, a pesky lone hormone quivered. “I’d really like you to go and come back tomorrow.”

That got his attention. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“You need to be alone bad enough to disrupt the start of your own renovation?”

“I do, yes.”

“Fine.” Dropping the wheelbarrow, he propped his hands on his hips. “Have your way, Princess. Tomorrow it is, but don’t even think about pulling this again. I’m not going to postpone this job further, no matter what kind of day you’re having.”

Princess? Had he just called her Princess? She’d show him princess! Reaching up, she yanked off her wide-brimmed hat, which once upon a time had cost her-make that her grandfather-a bundle. She’d die before explaining that her fair skin required she protect it from the harsh summer sun, especially since he seemed like a man to mock such a weakness. “Tomorrow will be just fine,” she said through her teeth, hat in her fist.

Mac stretched his shoulders, which put a strain on his T-shirt, not that she was noticing, and rubbed his eyes. “Good. I’m outta here. But since I am, and since steam is still coming out your ears, why don’t you do both of us a favor.” Retrieving the sledgehammer, he held it out. “Start pounding walls. Consider it anger management.”

She stared down at the tool, having never in her life so much as lifted a screwdriver. She might have blamed her uptight, pretentious family for that, though she’d been on her own for awhile now, and could have made the effort to learn such things.

Should have, because it would feel good to swing the thing with authority and knowledge, surprising that smirk off his face.

He wriggled the sledgehammer enticingly.

Odd how a little part of her tingled to touch it, hoist it over her head and let loose. Barbaric, yes, and suddenly very appealing.

“You know you want to,” Mac said in a low, husky dare. “Touch it.”

She cocked a brow and looked at him from beneath lowered lashes. “So…are they all the same size?”

His eyes sparked, heated and flamed.

And one question was answered…she had most definitely not imagined that intense sexual speculation.

“I thought size didn’t matter to a woman.”

She lifted a shoulder. “That’s just the story some woman started in order to appease her poor husband who didn’t have…the right equipment.”

“Hmm.” He lifted the sledgehammer again, his eyes amused now. “The right equipment, huh?”

“That’s right.”

He looked at the sledgehammer with a new light, then back into her eyes. “Seeing as I have the right equipment, are you going to go for it?”

Oh yeah, she was. For the sledgehammer, anyway.

What could it hurt? She had aggression coming out her ears; for her grandfather, who was probably sitting on a cloud laughing down at her right this very minute, for her mother, who would rather do anything than be a mother, for her dwindling bank account, for the chandelier she’d lost out on…for being alone in all this.

For just about every damn thing in her entire life, she needed that sledgehammer.

Mac held it out.

Her fingers itched.

His eyes sizzled with the dare, and a potent, heady male heat.

“Fine.” She set her hat back on her head, snatched the tool from him, then swore in a very unladylike way as the thing jerked both her arms down with its weight, slamming the heavy sledgehammer to the floor.

Mac tsked. “Sorry, I thought you were stronger than that.”

TAYLOR’S ACCUSING EYES speared Mac, and he had to bite back his grin as he lifted an innocent shoulder.

She let out a rude sound, and with determination and aggression blaring out her eyes, she hoisted the sledgehammer up…and nearly fell to her very finely dressed ass. Stumbling back a step, she spread her legs out a little for balance, then sent him a triumphant smile.

It stopped his heart.

Funny, that, since he’d have sworn the organ in question had dried up from abuse and misuse.

Taylor turned her back on him and with all her might, swung the sledgehammer into the wall. When drywall fell and dust rose, she let out a cocky laugh, whirling back to make sure he was looking.

Oh, he was looking. He’d been looking since she’d first sauntered into the room, just as he had a feeling men always looked at Taylor Wellington.

He’d bet his last dollar that she knew it as well. She was a pricey number, all fancy labels and perfect grooming. Stunning, too, with her blond hair, see-through green eyes and a body meant to bring a grown man right to his knees. She had long, willowy curves, outlined in mouthwatering detail beneath the silky sundress that made his hands itch to mess her up. It was crazy, but he had the most inane urge to toss off her hat, sink his fingers into her hair and shake a little, to eat off her carefully applied lipstick that smelled like peaches and cream, to run his hands over that cobalt silk and see if she looked as good undone as she looked done.

But he recognized a spoiled socialite when he saw one. Oh yeah, he did. He’d been there, bought the T-shirt, and because of it, he wasn’t tempted.

Well, maybe a little tempted, but he wasn’t an idiot. She was upset because of some silly little bid she’d lost for a damn light fixture, when Mac had his entire future riding on a bid as well. A bid with South Village’s town council to get in on the area’s renovation and preservation acts. South Village wasn’t some prefab pedestrian neighborhood like Universal’s City Walk, but a genuine historical district in the middle of extensive restoration. He had bid on several of the upcoming jobs that would hopefully set up his business and reputation. Now that was something to get a little excited over, and he was trying not to think about how badly he wanted to be awarded those bids.