“Sounds fine,” he said. “There’s only one thing wrong with your logistics.”
“What’s that?”
“It would be impossible for the kind of unit you designed to hold any kind of weight.” He pointed to my drawing. “It would implode once you placed anything heavier on it—even a stack of clothes.”
“I guess that’s where you come in,” I said, throwing up my hands. “You’re supposed to help steer me in the right direction.”
“You mean you trust my judgment?” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m not just some deadbeat that pounds nails into wood?”
My pulse picked up. “I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to,” he scoffed. “I can see it in your expression.”
I clenched my fists. “No, you can’t!”
“Just drop it,” he said, handing back my notes.
“No, I don’t want to drop it. Tell me what in the hell you mean.”
He glared at me for a long, painstaking moment before finally speaking again. “Do you remember that day a couple months ago when you walked by the construction site where I was working?” I nodded. “The guys were getting rowdy. That’s what they do—they work hard all day and blow off steam by acting stupid.”
I folded my arms, unsure of where he was going with this. “Nice way to make excuses for them.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do. Just telling it like it is,” he said, gritting his teeth. Obviously I frustrated him the same way he frustrated me.
“I could tell what you were thinking by the damned look on your face,” he said, pacing around the space.
“They were being pigs,” I said, trying to defend myself. No way was I in the wrong. “When guys act like that, they don’t deserve my respect.”
“Point taken,” he said. It looked like he was going to say something else, but then he restrained himself.
“Whatever. Let’s just get moving and clean this space up,” he said in a clipped voice.
It sounded like he wanted to get a million miles away from me, and I still didn’t understand what I’d done wrong.
I remembered that day he’d just brought up vividly. I’d been walking home from Happy Hour at Gruby’s, where my roommate Courtney worked. I hadn’t been out in a long time. Fact is, I rarely went out. But my other roommates, Indy and Misha, convinced me to meet them there and I had a really good time. When their boyfriends showed up, I took off to walk home, feeling pretty lighthearted.
When I turned the corner and passed this construction site, I began hearing catcalls. I scowled and ignored those hard-hatted idiots until they began shouting stuff that really struck home. Things that reminded me of rumors my only boyfriend in high school spread about me—after he took my virginity and dumped me.
“She’s got a stick up that fine ass.”
“Bet she’s never been laid properly.”
“I could show her a thing or two.”
And then a voice rang out. “Guys, knock it off.”
I turned toward the sound. It was Blake Davis and I was stunned into silence. He was sporting stubble, dirty fingernails, and clunky work boots. He looked so different from his casual clean T-shirt and jeans attire from his days at the university.
“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t do that girl in five seconds flat,” the guy sitting next to him had blurted out.
Blake’s gaze met mine, his eyes hard and unyielding. “Never in a million years. Not my type.”
My breath had caught. His words made me feel lower than the mud on his shoe. I forced my chin up high and continued walking home. My hands shook the entire way.
Since then, I’d always wondered why his words had affected me so much.
Add that to his confrontation tonight, and I wasn’t sure we’d ever be able to come to enough of a mutual understanding to work together on this project.
We spent the next hour in silence as we moved boxes to the back room. Well, technically, I slid them toward the back and he lifted and carried them. He was surprisingly strong, and as he raised each box, I couldn’t help appreciating his taut and muscular forearms. Working construction obviously had its benefits.
I decided we needed a bucket and supplies to give the place a thorough scrub-down. I wrote down a list of items and headed out the door to the small market down the street that stayed open past nine. Blake followed, mumbling about getting some bottles of water.
As Blake and I moved through the aisle that displayed detergents, he pointed to the floor cleaner in my hand that had a bright pink label and said, “Did you plan to match your cleaner to your outfit?”
I gaped at the pink Converse sneakers I’d completely forgotten I was wearing. With a skirt. Like some used-up fashionista on someone’s worst-dressed list.
“Stop thinking so hard,” he mumbled close to my ear. “I was only joking. Lighten up.”
I spun on him. “Pretty sure you could use some lightening up of your own.”
Just then I heard someone call my name. I looked up and saw my mother’s committee friend heading down the aisle toward me. Her heels were high, her lips bright red, and her outfit immaculately put together. I glanced at Blake as my skin broke out in a panicked sweat. Sure enough, she’d tell my mother she’d seen me out late with some guy, looking disheveled, and then I’d be subjected to the Spanish Inquisition.
Blake seemed to pick up on my rising alarm and in a huff he said, “Don’t worry, princess, you can pretend not to know me and I’ll do the same. Meet you at the cash register.”
Before I could even react, he was gone, and my mother’s friend was in my face asking me questions. I could barely concentrate because I’d been too busy thinking about Blake’s words. Was I really that uptight? Why did I care so much about how I looked or what people thought about me? At what point had my life become so orchestrated?
As soon as my mother’s friend was gone, I snatched a different floor cleaner from the shelf and met Blake at the front of the store, where he stood with a bucket and mop. I placed the sponges and soap on the counter and turned to look at him.
He stepped in front of me, before I could say anything else. “I’ve got it. You can hand my receipt in to Jaclyn so I can expense it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but his eyes tore into mine and I clamped my lips shut. “Don’t even say it, princess. I make way more money than you do. Unless you’re living off your daddy’s trust fund or something.”
I drew my hands into fists as he greeted the cashier. I stood behind him, breathing heavily and staring at the back of his head. His hair was perfectly wavy and for the first time I noticed a piercing on the top of his ear. It was a silver hoop and I had the urge to yank on it and tell him he was wrong. So very wrong about me.
We walked back in silence, me fuming beside him and refusing eye contact. As soon as I stepped back into the shop, I got busy cleaning the floors. An hour later we were both on our hands and knees scrubbing the baseboards and I was silently cursing the fact that I was getting my Prada outfit dirty. I probably did look like a princess, constantly rolling up and adjusting my skirt. It was my own dang fault for refusing to change into different clothes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Blake scowling. All at once his arms shot to the back of his neck, and he began tugging his shirt over his head. His flat and tight stomach was on full display before the second shirt that was hidden beneath fell back over his abs.
I pretended not to look too long and instead took a deep breath, focusing on my task. Suddenly that same shirt was in front of my face. “Here, put it under your knees.”
“What? No, I don’t need—”
“Yeah, you do,” he said. “I can tell you really care about your clothes. They probably cost a lot more than my damned T-shirt.”
Was this his way of apologizing or making fun of me?
“It doesn’t matter,” I whispered.
He thrust it closer to me. “Please, take it.”
I stared at his shirt a few moments more before grasping it, smoothing it out on the floor, and then placing my knees on top of it.