Nailing Mr. Nasty (Campy Romances Series Book 2), page 11
“Constantly.”
As she expected, it wasn’t in rough form. At least, the ground floor seemed to be in working order. The front door opened to a spacious living area where a navy sectional took up the middle of the concrete floor and a flat screen television dominated a brick wall across from it. Taylor trotted in from a room behind the kitchen, his tongue lolling out and his tail wagging. Jack bent to pet the dog while Sam sauntered to the open kitchen that sported a huge island that doubled as a dining table. A fireman’s pole separated the living room and kitchen.
With a hoot of delight, she hooked a hand and knee around it and kicked off, circled it with her body, turned upside down, then right side up, and finally planked, her body straightening, horizontal to the floor. With her muscles screaming, she relaxed and stood beside the pole, running one hand up and down it as she smiled slyly at Jack’s slack-jawed astonishment.
“I’m out of practice. I took classes in pole dancing last year,” she confessed. “It’s great exercise and fun.”
He shook his head slowly. “Jesus H. Christ.”
“No. Just little, old me.” She laughed and headed for the stairs, pleased beyond measure to have rattled him. “So, what’s up here? Your bedroom?”
“Yeah, but it’s really not ready . . .” A muttered oath finished off the sentence since Sam was already halfway up the stairs and not paying attention to his protestations.
On the landing, she admired the photos of old firehouses lining the walls. The first room held a pool table, gallons of paint, some lumber, and tools. The next room contained two big garbage cans full of papers, drywall pieces, and other scraps. A gutted bathroom separated those two rooms. At the far end, she found the master bedroom with its own bathroom. A Navajo rug, printed in gray, black and mulberry symbols covered most of the hardwood floor. A king-sized bed took up the center of the room. The frame was formed by interconnecting tree branches and the four posts were gleaming tree trunks.
“This is beautiful,” she whispered as she let her fingertips slide across the polished wood.
“A pal of mine makes those and I’ve always wanted one,” he said, smiling with pride. “It’s one of a kind.”
“It certainly is,” she agreed as she took in the rest of the furnishings. “This is all very rustic,” she observed. “I like it.” She turned in a circle, giving the room one more perusal, then went downstairs with Jack following her. At the front door, she faced him. “See? That wasn’t so terrible, was it?”
“What? This tour or the errand?”
“The tour.”
He shrugged. “About the errand . . . I’d rather it not become a topic of conversation on the job sites.”
She reared back, blinking at him in dismay. “You really think you have to tell me that, Jack?”
He raised one hand, placating her. “Don’t go off like a rocket. I just wanted to make it clear.”
“Well, you have.” She turned, but he caught her wrist, arresting her movement. Her gaze swept to his and held. Something feral flared in his eyes for an instant before he lowered his lashes to extinguish it.
“Thanks, Sam.”
“You’re welcome.” His fingers slipped slowly away from her skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake. One touch, she thought. One slight touch and she felt it all the way through her like she’d been zapped. “Good night.”
He leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “Drive safe. If possible, in that contraption.”
She shook her head, giving a little chuckle as she went to her car. He stood in the doorway and watched as she drove away. On the way home, she fantasized about returning to his place where he’d be waiting for her in his firehouse. He’d take her in his arms and they’d end up in his big four-poster where they’d press flesh and put out the flames raging between them.
In a few weeks Lucy would return to her job and Jack Nast would no longer be Sam’s boss. What excuse would he have then not to give in to his desires? Because holding himself back from her wasn’t only about her being on his payroll. It was almost as if he were afraid to let loose around her. Did she actually have Mr. Nasty running scared or was she allowing her fantasies to overtake her good sense?
In a few weeks, she’d have her answer, like it or not.
Chapter 9
Punch List
Trying to keep his mind on the punch list in his hands instead of how cute Sam looked in her red corduroy slacks and red-and-white-striped, oversized sweater, Jack forced his gaze away from her shapely backside and stared blindly at the paper. Ogling her was becoming a habit. A bad, bad habit. A woman shouldn’t be that attractive in casual clothes. Should be a law against it. She wasn’t even trying to look sexy, but she gave him sex on the brain. Even staring at the sheet of paper he held, he was thinking of how her shapely, tight, sweet ass would feel in his hands as he sank into her.
Awww, hell!
“Nobody would hold it against you if you took up with her,” Ron drawled beside him. “They’d be jealous, yeah, but nobody would be surprised.”
He glanced at Ron, who was leaning against a stack of cement blocks, a grin turning up the corners of his mustache. “What are you jabbering about?”
Ron nodded in the direction of Sam, who was sharing a laugh with a couple of the work crew while they took a late afternoon break. “Striker. Who’d you think I was talking about?”
“You nuts? She’s on my payroll.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like you’re old enough to be her daddy and you’re taking advantage of her youth and inexperience. You’re both grown, know what you want, how to get it, and how to walk away if it goes bad on you.” He crossed his ankles and ran a hand over his beard. “I like her. She’s a good gal, you know? Low maintenance. Not clingy. Good head on her shoulders. A bod for sin.” His eyes twinkled under his dark eyebrows. “There’s that.”
“Yeah, there sure is that.” Jack shook his head. “Naw. I don’t need the aggravation.” Drawing in a deep breath, he tried to center himself again. “She did me a solid last weekend.”
“Oh? What?”
“The old man tied one on. Mother called and wanted me to go get him. Sam was around and she followed me to the bar so I could drive his truck home.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I would have helped out.”
“I knew you all were at the game that night.” He nodded in the direction of Sam. “She hasn’t said a word about it to anyone, so we can add trustworthy to her list.”
“I figured as much. Lucy is a good judge of character and she counts Sam as her best friend. You took Sam fishing?”
“Right. That wasn’t a date, though.”
Ron chuckled and tugged at his beard. “Did I say it was? She good at catching ʼem?”
“Damn good.”
“And she’s good at her job. She’s smart. Caught on here right quick. Hell, I don’t know why you aren’t tapping that, Nast. I can tell that she’d be receptive. In fact, I would have bet money that night at Hurley’s that you and her hooked up afterward.”
“God knows I wanted to,” he grumbled under his breath.
“Did she stiff-arm you?”
“No. I told you. She’s an employee, Ron.”
His big shoulders lifted in a shrug and his face was a mask of confusion. “If that’s how you want to play it. If it were me and I was free to mingle, I’d be putting the moves on her. We’d have some fun and if it fizzled out . . .” He shrugged again. “No regrets.”
“I get the feeling that she’s looking for something permanent. That’s not me.”
Ron shoved away from the cement blocks. “There it is. That’s the real crux of it, Nast. You see yourself as a burden and that’s bullshit, man. Pure bullshit. Every family has their skeletons in the closet and their crosses to bear. Yeah, your old man is a—” Someone shouting Sam’s name in the front of the house cut off the rest of his lecture. “Now what?”
Jack walked with Ron to the front door where several of the crew stood on the porch and looked south along Swan Lake Drive.
“What’s going on?” Ron asked.
“Looks like someone worked over Sam’s car,” Shorty, one of the crew, answered. He stood on tiptoe to see past the taller guys.
“What the hell?” Jack shouldered past them and spotted Sam ahead of him, standing by her car that was parked at the curb two houses down. Shards of glass sparkled on the street around it and the car was lopsided. As he drew nearer, he saw the large dents in the hood, roof, and sides. The windshields were shattered and the tires had been slashed. Coming up beside Sam, the tears brimming in her eyes made his gut churn and his blood boil.
“Who did this?” he demanded, glancing around at members of his crew scattered about, all staring slack-jawed at the car.
“I heard hammering,” Cal Smithy said. “But I thought it was someone on site. Hell, we hear that all day. Then I heard glass breaking and I knew that shouldn’t be, so I came out here. All I saw was the back of a car pulling away and skipping over toward Peoria. It was a black car. A sedan. That’s all I can tell you.”
A woman emerged from one of the houses and waved at them. “Excuse me! We have a security camera that probably filmed this if you need it!”
“I need it!” Sam said, moving toward her. “Thank you! Did you see them doing it?”
“No. I came out and saw a car speeding away and that’s when I noticed the glass in the street and your car all banged up. I’m shocked that someone would do such a thing in broad daylight!”
Sam heaved a sigh. “Guess they didn’t worry about getting caught.”
“My husband is rewinding the security film. Come on in, please.”
“I’m going with you,” Jack said, cupping Sam’s elbow as they followed the woman into her house. “Could have been some teenagers with too much time on their hands.”
“I doubt it.”
He chanced another glance at her. Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears and the tip of her nose was pink. But her face was white and her lips trembled ever so slightly as if she were in shock. Anger built in him, bit by bit. He hoped to hell he could see a license plate number on the video or anything that they could use to identify the vandals because, by God, he’d make them pay. The car was probably better off, but Sam loved that pathetic bucket of bolts.
They were led through the stately home to a study where a balding man sat at a desk and keyed a computer. He glanced up and delivered a grim smile.
“Hello.” He half stood and shook their hands. “Jim Tafford. Sorry to meet under these circumstances, but we did get a good picture of what went down out there. Here. Take a look for yourself. You know this guy?” He turned the computer around and pressed a key.
Jack and Sam leaned in to watch the screen. A black Lexus pulled alongside her car and a burly man stepped out of the passenger side. He wore jeans and a gray t-shirt that stretched across his massive chest and hugged his muscled arms. In one hand, he held a mallet, which he hoisted as a smile cracked across his face. Then he set to work, destroying Sam’s car within the span of a few minutes. He pulled something from his jeans pocket and bent down, making shoving motions – driving a knife into each one of her tires.
“That bastard,” Jack muttered, looking sideways at Sam. “You know him? You recognize that car?” He knew she did before she spoke. He could tell by the tight set of her mouth and the narrowing of her eyes.
“I don’t know him, but I know who is driving the car.” She straightened. “Brad Rumsfield.”
“I knew it.” Jack rapped his knuckles on the desk top. “Where does Rumsfield work?”
“At an insurance agency on Skelly Drive.” Her fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding him next to her, worry creasing her forehead. “Why?”
“I’m going to pay him a visit.”
“Jack, no.” Her fingers tightened on him.
He smiled and shook her off, then turned to the helpful neighbor. “Thanks, pal,” he said, shaking his hand again. “I appreciate you sharing this.”
“We appreciate the excellent work you’ve done on that house,” Tafford rejoined. “It’s the gem of the neighborhood now. Hope you can make these fellows pay to fix her car.”
“They’ll pay,” Jack assured him, already stalking to the front door. He gave a nod to Mrs. Tafford on the way out and made a beeline for his truck.
“Jack! Jack, wait!”
He glanced over his shoulder at Sam running to catch up with him, but he didn’t shorten his stride. Nothing she could say or do would change his mind. There was hell to pay and he was itching to collect. Weeks of his body humming with sexual tension compounded with his father embarrassing him in front of a woman he wanted to impress gathered inside him like hot lava. He knew he was on the verge of losing it and he didn’t care. He needed to vent and he’d just been handed a reason to blow.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” Sam said, reaching out and snagging the back of his shirt, but it slipped from her grasp. “Please! This is my business. My car.”
“Hey, boss man!” Ron appeared near Jack’s truck. “Where you going?”
“To even a score. I might end up in jail, Ron. Bail me out, will you?”
Ron gave him a wink and nod. “Be glad to.”
“Ron! Stop him!” Sam wailed. “This has nothing to do with him!”
Jack dug in his heels and whirled to face her in a spurt of anger. He leaned down until his nose was almost even with hers. Her eyes were red-rimmed from holding back tears. “They did this on my job site, sweetheart. My job site and to one of my employee’s cars.”
“It’s kind of you to get involved, Jack, but I can—”
“You want me to come with you?” Ron asked, cutting her off.
“No.” He spotted Taylor loping to the truck. “Taylor and I can handle these candy asses.” Jack straightened away from Sam and yanked open the truck door for Taylor to jump in ahead of him.
“I’m coming with you,” Sam said, sprinting around to the passenger side.
He climbed in, shut the door, and sent home the locks. He shook his head at her, holding her angry gaze through the windshield. “No, you’re not.” Then he revved the engine and sped back out of the driveway and along the circular Swan Drive. He chuckled at the image in his rearview mirror of Sam stomping the ground and waving her small fists in the air. Oh, she was hopping mad. And so was he.
“Taylor, go lie down in the back, boy.” Pulling his cellphone from his pocket, he stopped at an intersection and keyed in Rumsfield’s name while Taylor turned in a circle three times before plopping down on his blanket and pillow on the back bench. Locating the business address, Jack got directions, and set off with his blood singing in his veins and vengeance writhing through him. He hated cowards and that’s what he was dealing with. Real men didn’t take mallets to a woman’s car. That was kid stuff. Rumsfield and his sister hadn’t been able to shake Sam with their threats, so they’d resorted to destroying her property. Well, he’d put a stop to that. In fact, when he was through, they’d think twice before ever even uttering Samantha Striker’s name again.
What had really set off fireworks in him was seeing the tears glimmering in Sam’s eyes over that stupid car. The pain on her lovely face had wrenched his heart. That car was a token of the affection she had for her former employer. She knew as well as he did that the Thing was hideous, but her devotion to it knew no bounds. That brand of loyalty and respect touched him in places he thought were immune to tenderness. She had a way of blindsiding him. Like with that pole dance she’d done at his place. Out of the blue, the girl had wrapped around the fireman’s pole like a stream of water, slipping up and down, that toned body of hers flexing and taunting him. Damn, she was dangerous! And now he was leading a charge to right wrongs done to her.
He thought back to the video of the burly guy applying the mallet to Sam’s car and the glee on his face while he’d done it. Anger peaked into fury as Jack whipped the truck into the parking lot beside the insurance company’s six-story building. He glanced around for a good parking space and spotted the Lexus and two people sitting in it. A grin kicked up one side of his mouth at his good luck at finding both men still in the getaway car. He wouldn’t have to go inside the building searching for them, making it that much easier to kick butt and rearrange faces. Reaching inside the console between the truck seats, he grabbed something to level the playing field of two of them against one of him. He’d learned as a kid to go into a fight prepared. Strike first and make it count. That’s how he rolled.
Gripping the door strap in one hand and the dashboard of Ron Santorini’s pickup in the other, Sam sat ramrod stiff in the passenger seat as Ron drove in the direction Jack had headed minutes before. With her car out of commission, she’d snagged Ron and begged him to follow Jack to the insurance company where Brad worked.
“Jack won’t do anything crazy, right?” she asked for the tenth time since they’d peeled out of Swan Drive.
Ron chuckled and draped his wrist nonchalantly over the top of the steering wheel – the polar opposite of her anxiety-ridden posture. “Depends on your definition of crazy, I guess. He was primed and ready to pound something – or someone.”
She groaned. “I don’t know why he’s doing this. I can handle my own business.”
“He’s doing it because he’s Jack Nast,” Ron drawled. “You don’t poke the bear unless you want a fight on your hands.”
“Nobody poked him.”
“Oh, yes, they did.” He slanted her a glance and a grin. “He knows that guy and his sister have been pestering you and now they beat the hell outta your car right under his nose? It’s like they threw down the gauntlet. Old Brad boy is going to get a taste of the Nasty way of settling scores.”
She groaned, recalling the video of the muscular, bald man swinging a mallet and picturing that weapon landing on Jack’s head. They had to stop him before he was hurt or even hospitalized! Obviously, the man with the mallet was some kind of hired thug. He had a knife! He could kill Jack! She swallowed a sob that squeezed into her throat and her eyes misted over for a second. When they cleared, she saw the insurance building where Brad worked as an adjuster up ahead.
