Читать книгу Saying Yes To The Dress!: The Wedding Planner's Big Day / Married for Their Miracle Baby / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride - Cara Colter - Страница 19

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BECKY LISTENED TO the sound of hammers, the steady ratta-tat-tat riding the breeze through the open window of her office. When had that sound become like music to her?

She told herself, sternly, she could not give in to the temptation, but it was useless. It was as if a cord circled her waist and tugged her toward the window.

This morning, Drew’s crew had arrived, but not his brother. They had arrived ready to work, and in hours the wedding pavilion was taking shape on the emerald green expanse of the front lawn. They’d dug holes and poured the cement they had mixed by hand out of bags. Then they had set the posts—which had arrived by helicopter—into those holes.

She had heard helicopters delivering supplies all morning. It sounded like a MASH unit around here.

Now she peeped out the window. In all that activity, her eyes sought him. Her heart went to her throat. Drew, facing the ocean, was straddling a beam. He had to be fifteen feet off the ground, his legs hanging into nothingness. He had a baseball cap on backward and his shirt off.

His skin was sun-kissed and perfect, his back broad and powerful. He was a picture of male strength and confidence.

She could barely breathe he was so amazing to look at. It was also wonderful to be able to look at him without his being aware of it! She could study the sleek lines of his naked back at her leisure.

“You have work to do,” she told herself. Drew, as if he sensed someone watching, turned and glanced over his shoulder, directly at her window. She drew back into the shadows, embarrassed, and pleased, too. Was he looking to glimpse her? Did it fill him with this same sense of delight? Anticipation? Longing?

Reluctantly, she turned her back to the scene, but only long enough to try to drag her desk over to the window. She could multitask. The desk was very heavy. She grunted with exertion.

“Miss Becky?” Tandu was standing in the doorway with a tray. “Why you miss lunch?”

“Oh, I—” For some reason she had felt shy about lunch, knowing that Drew and his crew would be eating in the dining room. Despite their agreement last night to be friends, her heart raced out of control when she thought of his rescue of her, and eating dinner with him on the picnic blanket last night, and swimming with him. But mostly, she thought of how their lips had met. Twice.

How was she going to choke down a sandwich around him? How was she going to behave appropriately with his crew looking on? Anybody with a heartbeat would take one look at her—them—and know that something primal was sizzling in the air between them.

This was what she had missed by being with Jerry for so long. She had missed all the years when she should have been learning the delicate nuances of how to conduct a relationship with a member of the opposite sex.

Not that it was going to be a relationship. A friendship. She thought of Drew’s lips. She wondered how a friendship was going to be possible.

There must be a happy medium between wanton and so shy she couldn’t even eat lunch with him!

“What you doing?” Tandu asked, looking at the desk she had managed to move about three feet across the room.

“The breeze!” she said, too emphatically. “I thought I might get a better breeze if I moved the desk.”

Tandu set down the lunch tray. With his help it was easier to wrestle the big piece of furniture into its new location.

He looked out the window. “Nice view,” he said with wicked amusement. “Eat lunch, enjoy the view. Then you are needed at helicopter pad. Cargo arriving. Many, many boxes.”

“I have a checklist. I’ll be down shortly. And Tandu, could you think of a few places for wedding photographs? I mean, the beaches are lovely, but if I could preview a few places for the photographer, that would be wonderful.”

“Know exactly the place,” he said delightedly. “Waterfall.”

“Yes!” she said.

“I’ll draw you a map.”

“Thank you. A waterfall!”

“Now eat. Enjoy the view.”

She did eat, and she did enjoy the view. It was actually much easier to get to work when she could just glance up and watch Drew, rather than making a special trip away from her desk and to the window.

Later that afternoon, she headed down to the helicopter loading dock with her checklist and began sorting through the boxes and muttering to herself.

“Candles? Check. Centerpieces? Check.”

“Hi there.” She swung around.

Drew was watching her, a little smile playing across his handsome features.

“Hello.” Oh, God, did she have to sound so formal and geeky?

“Do you always catch your tongue between your teeth like that when you are lost in thought?”

She hadn’t been aware she was doing it, and pulled her tongue back into her mouth. He laughed. She blushed.

“The pavilion is looking great,” she said, trying to think of something—anything—to say. She was as tongue-tied as if she were a teenager meeting her secret crush unexpectedly at the supermarket!

“Yeah, my guys are pretty amazing, aren’t they?”

She had not really spared a glance to any of the other guys. “Amazing,” she agreed.

“I just thought I’d check and see if the fabric for draping the pavilion has arrived. I need to come up with a method for hanging it.”

“I’ll look.”

But he was already sorting through boxes, tossing them with easy strength. “This might be it. It’s from a fabric store. There’s quite a few boxes here.” He took a box cutter out of his shirt pocket and slit open one of the boxes. “Come see.”

She sidled over to him. She could feel the heat radiating off him as they stood side by side.

“Yes, that’s it.”

He hefted up one of the boxes onto his shoulder. “I’ll send one of the guys over for the rest.”

She stood there. That was going to be the whole encounter. Very professional, she congratulated herself.

“You want to come weigh in on how to put it up?” he called over his shoulder.

And she threw professionalism to the wind and scampered after him like a puppy who had been given a second chance at affection.

“Hey, guys,” he called. “Team meeting. Fabric’s here.”

His guys, four of them, gathered around.

“Becky, Jared, Jason, Josh and Jimmy.”

“The J series,” one of them announced. “Brothers. I’m the good-looking one, Josh.” He gave a little bow.

“But I’m the strong one,” Jimmy announced.

“And I’m the smart one.”

“I’m the romantic,” Jared said, and stepped forward, picked up her hand and kissed it, to groans from his brothers. “You are a beauty, me lady. Do you happen to be available? I see no rings, so—”

“That’s enough,” Drew said.

His tone had no snap to it, at all, only firmness, but Becky did not miss how quickly Jared stepped back from her, or the surprised looks exchanged between the brothers.

She liked seeing Drew in this environment. It was obvious his crew of brothers didn’t just respect him, they adored him. She soon saw why.

“Let’s see what we have here,” Drew said. He opened a box and yards and yards of filmy white material spilled out onto the ground.

He was a natural leader, listening to all the brothers’ suggestions about how to attach and drape the fabric to the pavilion poles they had worked all morning installing.

“How about you, Becky?” Drew asked her.

She was flattered that her opinion mattered, too. “I think you should put some kind of bar on those side beams. Long bars, like towel bars, and then thread the fabric through them.”

“We have a winner,” one of the guys shouted, and they all clapped and went back to work.

“I’ll hang the first piece and you can see if it works,” Drew said.

With amazing ingenuity he had fabricated a bar in no time. And then he shinnied up a ladder that was leaning on a post and attached the first bar to the beam. And then he did the same on the other side.

“The moment of truth,” he called from up on the wall.

She opened the box and he leaned way down to take the fabric from her outstretched hand. Once he had it, he threaded it through the first bar, then came down from the ladder, trailing a line of wide fabric behind him. He went up the ladder on the other side of what would soon look like a pavilion, and threaded the fabric through there. The panel was about three feet wide and dozens of feet long. He came down to the ground and passed her the fabric end.

“You do it,” he said.

She tugged on it until the fabric lifted toward the sky, and then began to tighten. Finally, the first panel was in place. The light, filmy, pure-white fabric formed a dreamy roof above them, floating walls on either side of them. Only it was better than walls and a roof because of the way the light was diffused through it, and the way it moved like a living thing in the most gentle of breezes.

“Just like a canopy bed,” he told her with satisfaction.

“You know way too much about that,” she teased him.

“Actually,” he said, frowning at the fabric, “come to think of it, it doesn’t really look like a canopy bed. It looks like—”

He snatched up the hem of fabric and draped it over his shoulder. “It looks like a toga.”

She burst out laughing.

He struck a pose. “‘To be or not to be...’” he said.

“I don’t want to be a geek...” she began.

“Oh, go ahead—be a geek. It comes naturally to you.”

That stung, but even with it stinging, she couldn’t let To be or not to be go unchallenged. “‘To be or not to be’ is Shakespeare,” she told him. “Not Nero.”

“Well, hell,” he said, “that’s what makes it really hard for a dumb carpenter to go out with a smart girl.”

She stared at him. “Are we going out?” she whispered.

“No! I just was pointing out more evidence of our incompatibility.”

That stung even worse than being called a geek. “At least you got part of it right,” she told him.

“Which part? The geek part?”

“I am not a geek!”

He shook his head sadly.

“That line? ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s from a soliloquy in the play Hamlet. It’s from a scene in the nunnery.”

“The nunnery?” he said with satisfaction. “Don’t you have a fascination?”

“No! You think I have a fascination. You are incorrect, just as you are incorrect about me being a geek.”

“Yes, and being able to quote Shakespeare, chapter and verse, certainly made that point.”

She giggled, and unraveled the fabric from around him.

“Hey! Give me back my toga. I already told you I don’t wear underwear!

But it was her turn to play with the gauzy fabric. She inserted herself in the middle of it and twirled until she had made it into a long dress. Then she swathed some around her head, until only her eyes showed. Throwing inhibition to the wind, she swiveled her hips and did some things with her hands.

“Guess who I am?” she purred.

He frowned at her. “A bride?”

The thing he liked least!

“No, I’m not a bride,” she snapped.

“A hula girl!”

“No.”

“I give up. Stop doing that.”

“I’m Mata Hari.”

“Who? I asked you to stop.”

“Why?”

“It’s a little too sexy for the job site.”

“A perfect imitation of Mata Hari, then,” she said with glee. And she did not stop doing it. She was rather enjoying the look on his face.

“Who?”

“She was a spy. And a dancer.”

He burst out laughing as if that was the most improbable thing he had ever heard. “How well versed was she in her Shakespeare?”

“She didn’t have to be.” Becky began to do a slow writhe with her hips. He didn’t seem to think it was funny anymore.

In fact, the ease they had been enjoying—that sense of being a team and working together—evaporated.

He stepped back from her, as if he thought she was going to try kissing him again. She blushed.

“I have so much to do,” she squeaked, suddenly feeling silly, and at the very same time, not silly at all.

“Me, too,” he said.

But neither of them moved.

“Uh, boss, is this a bad time?”

Mata Hari dropped her veil with a little shriek of embarrassment.

“The guys were thinking maybe we could have a break? It’s f—”

Drew stopped his worker with a look.

“It’s flipping hot out here. We thought maybe we could go swimming and start again when it’s not so hot out.”

“Great idea,” Drew said. “We all need cooling off, particularly Mata Hari here. You coming swimming, Becky?”

She knew she should say no. She had to say no. She didn’t even have a proper bathing suit. Instead she unraveled herself from the yards of fabric, called, “Race you,” ran down to the water and flung herself in completely clothed.

Drew’s crew crashed into the water around her, following her lead and just jumping in in shorts and T-shirts. They played a raucous game of tag in the water, and she was fully included, though she was very aware of Drew sending out a silent warning that no lines were to be crossed. And none were. It was like having five brothers.

And wouldn’t that be the safest thing? Wasn’t that what she and Drew had vowed they were going to do? Hadn’t they both agreed they were going to retreat into a platonic relationship after the crazy-making sensation of those shared kisses?

What had she been thinking, playing Mata Hari? What kind of craziness was it that she wanted him to not see her exactly as she was: not a spy and dancer who could coax secrets out of unsuspecting men, but a book-loving girl from a small town in America?

* * *

After that frolic in the water, the J brothers included her as one of them. Over the next few days, whenever they broke from work to go swimming, one of them came and pounded on her office door and invited her to come.

Today, Josh knocked on the door.

“Swim time,” he said.

“I just can’t. I have to tie bows on two hundred chairs. And find a cool place to store three thousand potted lavender plants. And—”

Without a word, Josh came in, picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Stop it. This is my good dress!” She pounded on his back, but of course, with her laughing so hard, he did not take her seriously. She was carried, kicking and screaming and pounding on his back, to the water, where she was unceremoniously dumped in.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” Drew demanded, arriving at the water’s edge and fishing her out.

The fact that she was screaming with laughter had softened the protective look on his face.

Josh had lifted a big shoulder. “Boss, you said don’t take no for an answer.”

“No means no, boss,” she inserted, barely able to breathe she was laughing so hard.

Drew gave them both an exasperated look, and turned away. Then he turned back, picked her up, raced out into the surf and dumped her again!

She rose from the water sputtering, still holding on to his neck, both their bodies sleek with salt water, her good dress completely ruined.

Gazing into the mischief-filled face of Drew Jordan, Becky was not certain she had ever felt so completely happy.