Nailing Mr. Nasty (Campy Romances Series Book 2), page 6
“ . . . here hungover and think I want you on this job site?” Jack asked, his face thrust near the other man’s.
“Uh-oh,” Ron said from behind Sam. “That’s Wally, the new hire I was talking about. He picked a hell of a time to slink in to work.”
“My alarm didn’t go off,” Wally said, looking irritated and insulted all at once.
“Do I look like someone who gives a damn about your flimsy excuses?” Jack flung up a hand, waving off the man. “You’re done. I told you when I hired you that you’d better get your ass to work on time or don’t bother showing up.”
“Fine!” Wally kicked at the grass in a snit. “Everyone said you’re a horse’s ass and they’re right! I don’t wanna work for you.”
“Lucky for you, you don’t work for me.” Jack stomped across the yard and his squinty glare landed on Sam and Ron. “What are you two gawking at!”
Sam felt Ron backtrack, but she stood her ground, refusing to be bullied by Mr. Nasty. “At you throwing a fit. Another fit.” Even though his thunderous stare sent a shiver of apprehension through her, she steeled herself against it. “I have an email from the tile guy. He says he can’t get that blue glass pattern you wanted until next week. Do you want to wait for it or pick out something else?”
He gave a little shake of his head as if slinging his thoughts into order. Stopping in front of her, he puckered his brow and looked at her as if confused by her refusal to be cowed by him. “I can wait,” he said, finally. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”
That didn’t sound good. She eyed him, trying to discern whether he was mad at her or just mad in general. “Okay. So, talk.”
He glanced around, then motioned for her to follow him. Feeling like she had lead weights in her boots, she trudged behind him in the direction of his truck parked in the driveway. He opened the driver’s door, reached inside, and grabbed a white envelope off the dashboard. Turning back around, he held it out to her.
“Got this in my home mail yesterday. You should see it.”
What fresh hell was this? Sam wondered, taking the business sized envelope from him and sliding out a cream-colored sheet of stationery. The moment she saw the red letters across the top, her heart froze and then thundered in her ears. Bradley Rumsfield. T.L.’s nephew. She held her breath as she read the terse letter:
Dear Mr. Nast;
As a fellow businessman, I thought I should inform you that you have an opportunist and a woman of questionable character working for you. Ms. Samantha Striker worked for my late uncle, the award-winning author T.L. Balfour, as an assistant. She managed to take advantage of his advanced age and kindness to finagle herself into his last will and testament.
Since my uncle’s death, the enormity of this woman’s deceit continues to plague our family. It is a vile form of elder abuse to convince someone you’re supposed to be helping to leave you money and property. We had no idea of her treachery until the reading of the will. We, of course, are contesting it.
In the meantime, I felt it only decent to let you know of her duplicitous nature so that you won’t fall prey to her. The fact that she continues to be employed after coming into a large sum of money is evidence that she might be a professional con artist out for the thrill more than for the spoils.
If you would like to discuss this further, please call or email me.
Sincerely,
She folded the paper with fingers that trembled and felt heat simmer in her cheeks and neck as she gave the offending correspondence to him. “What do you want me to say?” She forced her gaze up to his. He was watching her, obviously taking stock. “I’m not completely surprised by this. Brad and his sister despise me.”
He slipped the paper back into the envelope without looking at it. “You going to sue him?”
“For w-what?”
“Libel. You have a case for that here, I think. If he says this stuff to my face, you can sue him for slander while you’re at it.”
She felt a bittersweet smile tease the corners of her mouth. He was taking her side. Just like that. She wanted to fling her arms around his neck and kiss him, but she knew he would not welcome that, no matter how much she’d enjoy it. “I’m going to ignore him. My attorney says that Brad and Deanna have no solid case against me. Even T.L.’s own lawyer won’t testify that I exerted any control over T.L. and his decisions about who would inherit what. I knew he was leaving his car to me because he told me he was, but I was shocked to my marrow when the will was read.”
He pushed the envelope into her hand. “Keep this. You don’t owe me an explanation. Your business is your business so long as it doesn’t interfere with mine.”
She bobbed her shoulders. “I just don’t want you thinking that I’d do something like that. You know, use my feminine wiles with someone like T.L.” She puffed out a chuckle. “As if he’d let me!”
“Why do you care what I think?”
Looking up, she found that he was studying her with that perplexing scowl of his. ‘I don’t know. I just do. Your opinion matters to me.”
One dark brow lifted and his eyes sparkled with something she couldn’t quite identify. “Really? Well, I sure as hell don’t know why.”
She stuffed the letter into the back pocket of her jeans as mischief tickled her tongue. “Beats the hell out of me, too. You’re about as easy to befriend as a porcupine and as pleasant to be around as a bad odor.” She gave a helpless shrug. “There’s no accounting for it.”
He nodded and those sparkles multiplied. “Glad we got that settled. Let’s get to work. Your time is my money.”
She stared at his back for a few seconds as he walked away, shoulders swaying and a swagger in his gait. She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Why did she give a damn about his opinion of her? Made no sense. Just like her growing attraction to him. No sense at all, and she needed to apply the brakes and fast. Getting all horny for her boss – especially when that boss was Jack Nast – was sheer lunacy.
Chapter 5
Nasty Business
Friday night and the construction crew converged at The Brothers Hurley Tavern and Grill to celebrate Ron and Imelda’s fifteenth anniversary. Opened only a few weeks ago downtown, the place was spacious enough for a couple of private meeting rooms and a second floor rooftop patio/party area. That’s where they’d ended up, along with a hostess named Roxie and a karaoke machine. Heaters on stands dotted the area to temper the October gusts.
Sitting at a table near a makeshift stage with Imelda, Ron, Margot, and Walt, Sam noticed that none of them were drinking liquor. They all had soft drinks. All, except for her. She sipped at her margarita and felt like a backslider at an AA meeting. Didn’t help when Jack straddled the only extra chair at the table and took a swig from his bottle of root beer. Dressed in worn jeans, leather belt, chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up to this elbows, and cowboy boots, he was sinfully attractive – without even trying! Just came natural to him, she guessed.
She took another sip of the margarita, knowing it would be her only drink that evening. She had learned in college that she could get drunk on fumes. This one cocktail would give her a buzz if she didn’t eat something along with it. On cue, a waitress set a basket of corn chips and two bowls of salsa on the table and Sam dived right in. As she munched, she idly wondered if the others didn’t order alcoholic drinks in deference to Ron, who was a recovering addict. She’d never seen Jack with anything stronger than coffee. Had he struggled with addiction at some point in his younger days, too?
“Fifteen years,” Jack drawled, elbowing Ron, who sat next him. “You’re a lucky dog, Santorini.”
Ron chuckled and draped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Don’t I know it. Mellie’s prettier now than she was back in high school!”
“Stop,” Imelda chided with a big grin. “That is such a lie. My backside is twice as wide as it was back then.”
“I know.” Ron wiggled his black brows. “And I love it. What’s that old song about Baby’s Got Back?”
“No, no,” Walt broke in with a laugh. “The best song about that is from the movie This is Spinal Tap. Big Bottom.”
“Right, right,” Jack agreed, and he, Walt, and Ron sang a verse.
“Big bottom. Drive me outta my mind! How can I leave this behind?”
“Oh, my Lord,” Margot said, her eyes growing as big as saucers as she slapped playfully at her husband and her laughing brother. “That is so corny.”
“What do you expect? It’s Spinal Tap,” Walt noted, then glanced around at the others. “Margot doesn’t appreciate the genius of that film.”
“Genius?” Margot scoffed with a toss of her pink-streaked hair.
“Hey, if you boys want to sing, come on up here and let’s fire up the karaoke machine,” Roxie said into the live microphone that sent out a little screech before her words came through. Her brassy blond hair stuck out on either side of her head in sloppy pigtails. Odd for a woman who was clearly on the far side of forty. Decked out in tight black leather pants and a red crop top, she winked at them and motioned with her long, long red fingernails for them to join her on the stage. They all shook their heads – all but Ron. He planted a big kiss on his wife’s cheek and stood up.
“I’m going to serenade you, babe,” he announced as he made his way to the stage. “It’s our fifteenth anniversary,” he told Roxie.
“Awww, that’s so sweet.” She looked over the area as members of the construction crew applauded, hooted, and whistled at Ron. Strings of colored lights overhead threw shards of green, red, and yellow across the stage. “Fifteen years married. Damn. That’s a long time. What do you want to sing to her, Mr. Romantic?”
He turned away from them to consult with Roxie. After a minute, he nodded enthusiastically and faced the tables again, his gaze finding Imelda’s. “You’ll like this one, Mellie.”
Roxie adjusted the machine and stood back. “Take it away! Anyone want to sing along, go for it.”
The first notes sounded, but weren’t familiar to Sam. She switched her attention between Ron and Imelda, her heart melting at the obvious love in their expressions. Above Ron on a big flatscreen and to his right on a smaller one, the lyrics to the song blinked to life. Sam sighed, recognizing the song now – the romantic, timeless Maybe I’m Amazed. Knowing a little about their history, Sam couldn’t imagine a more fitting song for Ron to sing to his Mellie. He had a good voice and he sang with heart. Before he was finished, tears flowed down Imelda’s round cheeks. Sam blinked, realizing that her eyes brimmed with tears, too.
Grabbing her drink, Sam started to take a big gulp of it before realizing that the glass was empty. Staring at it, she blinked, stupidly. She’d downed that whole thing while Ron had been singing. So much for her plan to sip it slowly and eat a lot of chips along with it. She gathered in a big breath and the room wavered ever so slightly. Yeah. She had a buzz.
“Want another?” a waitress asked, reaching for her glass.
“No!” Sam answered more loudly and shrilly than she’d meant to. She swallowed down her bubble of panic. “No, thank you. Water. Could I have some water, please?”
“Sure.” The waitress stared pointedly at the tall glass of water sitting in front of her. “How about that one?”
“Oh!” Sam laughed at herself. Where had that come from? She wrapped a hand around the cold glass and gulped some, hoping to clear her head of the hazy, silliness scampering inside it. Across the table, Jack’s half-lidded gaze followed her every move, making her feel overheated and self-conscious.
“Who’s next?” Roxie asked as the applause for Ron died down.
Ron took his seat again and accepted a kiss from Imelda.
“Honey, that was so beautiful,” Imelda whispered to him, holding the lower half of his bearded face in her hand. “I love you so much.”
“I’m going to hurl in a minute,” Jack grumbled, folding his arms over the top of the chair and resting his chin on them. Sparkles of mischief in his eyes gave away is true feelings.
“Jackie!” Margot admonished him. “Don’t be such a meanie. I think it’s wonderful that Ron and Imelda aren’t shy about demonstrating their love.”
“There are cheap motel rooms for that on Eleventh Street. They rent ʼem by the hour,” Jack said, getting a chuckle from Ron.
“Yeah, and you’d know all about that, Jack. Pay him no mind, Mellie,” Ron said. “He’s jealous. I go home to you and he goes home to a dog.”
“Which one of my lady friends are you calling a dog?”
Ron let out a whooping laugh. “Taylor! Taylor, the actual dog.”
Lady friends. The plurality of that statement rang clear in Sam’s fuzzy brain. So, he had multiple lady friends staying over. She knew about the Frenchie, but who were these others and were they still in the picture? Was someone waiting at home for him now? Nah. He would have brought her with him tonight, right? Wouldn’t leave a lady heating up his sheets while he put away root beers with the guys.
“Who’s next?” Roxie taunted. “Come on. Let’s have another song. Someone get up here.” She glanced around the rooftop, and then inexplicably, locked gazes with Sam. “You look like a gal who likes to have a good time.” She wagged the mic. “Show these snorrendous yokels why blondes have more fun.”
Feeling everyone’s attention whip around to her, Sam went blank for a few seconds, but then, in the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Jack’s smirk and roll of his eyes. Oh yeah? Oh yeah?! Planting her hands flat on the table, she pushed to her feet, almost knocking her chair over. Casting a withering glare at Jack, she marched to the stage, up the three steps, and stood beside Roxie. It was then that she wondered what the hell she was doing. Too late.
“Way to go. What’s your name?”
“Sam.”
“Sam,” Roxie repeated in the mic, getting applause and shouts of encouragement. “Looks like you know some people here.”
She nodded. “All of ʼem.”
“All right. You have a friendly audience then. What are you going to sing?”
“Sing.” She swallowed the nerves that tickled her throat. Oh, God. She was expected to sing.
“Here’s a list of songs. Anything there strike your fancy?” Roxie shoved a plastic covered sheet into Sam’s hands.
Running her eyes down the list of titles, they all blurred as the realization of what she was about to do hit her. She rocked a little on her feet, but then was glad for the liquid courage keeping her from fainting dead away. She’d never done karaoke before. A title seemed to float up from the sheet, bringing with it memories of high school. In her senior year, she and three girlfriends had taken part in a production dubbed “All Time Favorites” that featured songs from every decade. Their act had gained them plenty of hoots and whistles.
Nasty Boys.
OMG, she freaking loved that song. Loved the old video of Miss Jackson strutting her stuff, giving that gorgeous girl pout of hers, making those nasty boys salivate for her. She and her girlfriends had watched it dozens of times until they had every move down, every syllable memorized, every slinky feeling etched into their muscles.
“This!” She tapped the title, and Roxie chuckled.
“Well, all right, sistah!” Roxie turned away to set up the song while Sam confronted the sea of wavering faces.
Oh, shit.
She couldn’t do this. In the high school act, she had been in the background with two other girls while the prettiest girl of the foursome took center stage. Now she was alone on center stage! She could not stand up here and sing and dance and . . . Gimme a Beat! The throbbing intro notes rang out like a heartbeat after an orgasm. They wrapped around her like velvet ropes, catching her, imprisoning her, and then freeing her.
Her hips swung left, right, as she drove her fingers through the sides of her long hair. Her upper lip lifted in a way that would have made Elvis himself swoon, and her gaze swiveled until it located the face of Jack Nasty Boy Himself. He looked a little surprised and a little intrigued. There was a glint in his eye – a feverish glint that amped up her bravado. Buckle up, Jackie.
The Paula Abdul dance steps flowed through her and the lyrics fell off her tongue like bittersweet honey. Using every bit of the small stage, she pranced, dipped, hip thrusted, jazz walked, and flung her hair in wild abandon as she sang the simple and provocative lyrics. Her voice wasn’t great, but it was on par with Janet Jackson’s and she knew she managed to insert the sexiness the song required.
When she came to the talking part, she changed it up, keeping her gaze locked with Jack’s, who no longer appeared surprised or intrigued. Now he was aroused. That was evident in his smoking gaze and his unsmiling, slightly parted lips. His expression reminded her of a stalking beast: intent, single-minded, and hungry. Hungry for her.
“No, my first name ain’t Baby,” she said with just the right touch of haughtiness. “It’s Miss Striker. Samantha, if you’re nasty.”
Jack responded with a slow, sexy, panty-dampening smile that almost put her off her game. She centered herself and addressed the audience.
“Ladies,” she invited with a sweep of her gaze and adlibbed, “who’s that driving those nasty pickups?”
Bless Roxie. She threw up her hands, signaling the women to join her in shouting, “Nasty boys!”
“Who’s that swinging those nasty tools?” Sam continued, getting laughs from the onlookers as the women shouted back, “Nasty boys!”
“And who’s that thinking those nasty thoughts?”
“Nasty boys!”
“That’s right!” She nodded, gave another hip thrust in Jack’s direction, and hissed, “Oh, you Nasty Boy!”
He was on his feet first as the applause rolled across to her. For a few moments, she was blinded by the smiles and shining eyes all around her. Laughter rode on the light breeze and cooled her heated skin. Sam gathered the remnants of her Janet Jackson audacity as she made her way off the stage. A hand came into her vision – a broad palm with a scar running across it – and she looked up into Jack’s smoldering, blue eyes.
