Caleb Hayden didn't want her here; that much was obvious.
His demand for total control irritated Julia like sandpaper
on sunburn.
Unwilling to be pushed out of her own project, she edged up
behind Caleb as he addressed the group of construction
workers and waited to ask a question. There was a
possibility she found so many questions to ask because she
knew it bugged the heck out of Caleb. Still, her name was on
the loan papers.
"The next load of cement should be here any minute," he told
the group of men. "Double-check to make sure the forms are
ready. We don't want any delays." Wanting to get her
question in before the group dispersed, Julia leaned forward.
Just then, Caleb turned, his movement catching her unaware.
Julia's recoil sent her off balance. She felt herself teeter
backwards as Caleb's hand shot out to catch her...and missed.
Arms flailing, she stumbled back and went down,
spread-eagled in a cement puddle the size of downtown Dallas.
The construction crew peered down at her in a stunned
silence that slowly dissolved into barely-muffled guffaws.
Overwhelmed, it took Julia a minute to realize that, other
than being submerged in cement, she was basically unhurt.
Filthy and chagrined, but essentially undamaged.
This accident could only add fuel to Caleb's determination
to keep her off the lot. Never mind it was her house he was
building, he wanted total control and made no bones about it.
Thoroughly disgusted and embarrassed, Julia struggled to get
up, acknowledging the men's amusement with a rueful smile.
The cement emitted a wet, slurping noise as she levered
herself into a sitting position. The rude noise was
apparently too much for the crew. They howled with laughter.
Caleb stood in front of her, unmoving, and somehow she knew
he was not amused. Julia's gaze rose reluctantly from the
toes of the sturdy work boots in front of her, up past
powerful thighs, an incredibly flat stomach and shoulders
that would do justice to a linebacker. Briefly, she snatched
a look at his face. In the group that ringed the puddle,
only Caleb wasn't lost in laughter. And, damn him, even from
this position, he looked indecently good.
Still not meeting his eyes, Julia ducked to swipe at a speck
on her nose but only succeeded in smearing more cement on
her cheek. A powerful hand suddenly grasped her wrist, and
Caleb yanked her unceremoniously out of the puddle.
Julia stood in front of him, cement trickling down her
stockinged legs, her skirt plastered to her bottom. Wet
cement clung to her short hair and muddied the nape of her
neck. Hunching her shoulders, Julia shivered. Oh, if only
she could lose consciousness. At least fainting seemed more
likely than the earth opening up and swallowing her whole.
Caleb's voice sliced across the men's laughter. "I'm sure
Dr. Adams appreciates your concern, guys. As soon as you can
control yourselves, you have a house to build. Dan," Caleb
shot a glance at his second-in-command, "get someone to
cover this hazard!"
He turned back quickly to where Julia huddled against the
cool spring breeze, her pumps filling with dripping cement.
The face looking down at her was sardonic, but the corners
of his mouth twitched. He drawled, "We'd better get you
cleaned up before the acid in that cement eats holes in your
beautiful hide."
Julia looked up, startled. He captured her wrist again and
spun her away from the still-chuckling group of men.
Her...hide...was beautiful? Was that a compliment?
Threading his way through the freshly poured footings that
rimmed the perimeter of the pier-and-beam house and lined up
like soldiers in the middle, Caleb pushed her across the
site. His hand was firm in the small of her back. He stopped
in front of a small travel trailer which had been on the lot
since the day they'd started on her house. A temporary
faucet stuck out of the ground, providing both a water
hookup for the trailer and a source of water for the crew.
Caleb turned on the spigot.
"You might want to step around behind the trailer," he
suggested dryly.
Following the direction of his lingering gaze, Julia looked
down at herself. Beneath the splashed cement, her silk
blouse clung to her body like an old habit. Even the rosette
lace of her bra was defined in grainy gray detail.
"Behind...the trailer?" Moving awkwardly in her now-squishy
heels, she made her way around to the comparative privacy
afforded by the trailer. She was hardly around the corner
when a morning-cold stream of water splatted against her back.
"Yeeeeiiikesss!!"
"Sorry, petunia. But we've got to get the gravel off out
here," Caleb asserted, humor threading through his husky voice.
"You s-sound s-sorry," Julia retorted sarcastically through
chattering teeth without turning around. The cool spring
morning had turned distinctly frigid. She could feel the
steady sweep of water like ice up and down her back.
Caleb laughed before he chided, "Now is that any way to talk
to the man who rescued you?"
"You were the one that bumped into me," Julia snapped back.
She felt like a fool. Caleb left her feeling that way more
often than not, but this situation could only confirm that
she was nothing more than a nuisance.
"Accept my apologies, petunia." The scorn returned to his
voice. "Construction sites aren't usually designed for
princesses in three-inch heels and three-piece suits. Next
time make an appointment when you want to check up on us and
I'll watch over you better."
"I don't need watching over," Julia retorted, reluctantly
obeying the pressure of his hand to turn around. Keeping her
head down, she refused to meet his eyes.
The water stream turned gentle as he moved closer.
A large hand tilted her chin up as water flowed over her
hair. Julia closed her eyes. Heat radiated from his big
body, across the short distance between them. She could feel
his hands brushing at the clumps tangled in her hair. The
water from the hose poured over her shoulders. Seconds
seemed to stretch into hours as he directed the flowing
water over her body, drenching every stitch of clothing in
the process. The fabric of her skirt shrunk with each
moment, clinging to her skin sensually.
Consciousness of the cold faded and Julia felt the quick
rise and fall of her chest, knowing with an embarrassed
certainty that her tightened nipples were plainly visible.
She ducked her head lower, furiously hoping to hide the
confusion that Caleb's nearness always created in her.
She found it unacceptable, this trembling awareness in her
belly. Caleb was nothing like the man she'd loved and lost
so many years ago. Steven's love brought her to life and
inspired her to dream. But he was gone now, dead for ten
years, and here she stood, her senses on red alert for a man
who seemed to have no heart at all.
At last, Caleb dropped the hose.
"Come on, you can use my trailer to get out of your wet
clothes." His voice was rough as he turned her around. In
contrast to the chilly air, his hand was as warm as August.
Julia followed him around to the door, sloshing ahead as he
opened it. His hand firm against her back, he practically
shoved her up the steps. Julia halted abruptly inside the
door. Surprised, she looked around as a puddle grew at her
feet.
Caleb climbed into the trailer behind her, brushing against
her backside as he reached back to close the door.
"I thought this was an office." Julia glanced over her
shoulder. "Someone lives here?"
Steady blue eyes met hers. "Me."
"Oh." Her eyes swept the small area again. "You do a lot of
traveling in your line of work, I suppose."
"Yeah."
The trailer was compact, with a tiny kitchen with seating
around a small table and a short hall off to the left that
led, she assumed, to a sleeping area. Whatever she had
expected, this was not it. The small space looked cluttered,
but stopped short of being untidy. A bookshelf mounted above
the table held a row of worn books. A pair of work boots sat
on the floor.
He lived here? Six-foot, broad-shouldered Caleb in this
minuscule space?
Caleb moved past her. "There's a shower in the bathroom."
He opened a door a few feet down the hall. "Use plenty of
hot water and make sure you scrub every inch of yourself. I
wasn't kidding about the acid burning. Get it all off."
"I'm a doctor. I know about cement burns," Julia snapped,
sloshing toward the bathroom.
"Yeah, I almost forgot." The door slammed shut behind him.
Julia turned toward the trailer bathroom with a sigh,
wrestling with the skirt button at her waist. Maybe building
her dream home was all a big mistake.
She'd come to the house site almost every day, usually
stopping by before she went to the office to see her
patients. The meadow was lovely in the morning when the sky
was just filling with a pale, soft light. When she was here
alone in the early morning quiet, it all seemed perfect.
Only later did she question her sanity.
Why was a single woman with no family building a house? Not
just any house, either. The house of her fantasies was a
4,000-square-foot log home. Her father thought she was nuts.
Peeling off her drenched clothes, she tugged at pantyhose
that had doubled in length. Turning on the water, Julia
stepped into the cubicle. The shower was barely big enough
to move around in and she found herself wondering how Caleb
managed to wedge his big body into this space.
Caleb Hayden had made a powerful impression on her from the
first. But then Caleb wasn't the kind of man anyone easily
overlooked. Purely from a feminine perspective, his physical
confidence and sheer strength were a pleasure to watch in
action.
Julia measured her mental picture of him. She'd guess him to
be close to six feet tall, but the size of his shoulders
gave the impression of width rather than height. His dark
blond hair was thick and unruly. Brawny and rugged, he
looked more than a little untamed. And he bothered Julia
more than she wanted to admit.
He was nothing like Steve. While not spectacular to look at,
Steven had been a pillar of strength to an insecure,
eighteen-year-old girl. Most importantly, he'd genuinely
cared about her and never pushed her further than she wanted
to go. It had been Steve's concern for her youth, his
insistence on her complete readiness that had kept them from
consummating their love.
"On our wedding night," he'd whispered as their passions rose.
Only they'd never made it to that glorious moment.
A bicycle accident snuffed out his life and left Julia with
only memories and a huge dream. She'd wanted to be a doctor
and Steven was the first to tell her he knew she could do
it. His confidence and love had made up for a childhood of
criticism.
Although grief had blinded her through most of her college
years, the pain had eased eventually and left in its wake an
unshakable conviction in the power of love. Steve's love had
healed her and one day she knew she'd love again.
But in the meantime, Julia avoided macho he-men whose
emotions scared them more than death. And Caleb exuded the
kind of masculinity that made her want to relocate to
another state.
She knew she was an oddity, a virgin at the age of thirty.
But medical school had consumed her every waking hour, so
intent was she on fulfilling Steve's belief in her. So she
was left with an innocence belied by a wealth of clinical
knowledge.
Scrubbing at the film of cement on her skin, Julia's
treacherous imagination supplied pictures of Caleb in all
his naked power shoe-horned into the tiny shower stall, the
water's spray running against his taut, muscled body, the
satin of his tanned skin. Why was it that dangerous men came
so nicely packaged?
Julia's skin suffused with a sudden flush of warmth.
The clean, familiar smell of him was all around her.
Irritated, she reached to turn up the cold water. How the
heck did she know how the man smelled anyway? They hardly
got within handshaking distance of each other.
Determined to subdue her wayward thoughts, Julia turned into
the stream of cool water, letting it rush over her as she
scrubbed the residue of grainy cement out of her hair.
If anything, Caleb was more of an irritant than a
temptation. From their first meeting three weeks ago, she'd
recognized that besides intelligence and skill, he had an
unusual attitude toward the employer-employee relationship.
He thought he was God, responsible to no one.
When it came to how he ran a project, he was decisive and
opinionated, and it didn't matter one speck who disagreed
with him.
Unfortunately, it took a fair amount of expertise to handle
a building project this specialized. Log home construction
experts weren't lined up at her door begging for the job.
If she hadn't needed the man to build the house of her
dreams, he'd he out of a job so fast his head would spin.
Julia tugged at the shower curtain where it gaped and went
back to scrubbing her hair. Caleb wasn't anything like she'd
expected a foreman to be. But she was stuck with him.
Shampooing her hair for the second time, Julia brooded.
From the way his eyes lingered on her, he clearly had a
healthy appreciation of female anatomy. But she'd known from
the first that he wasn't thrilled to be building the house
for her. He was never rude, but he had made their roles
clear. He was in charge, and she was a burden he had to bear.
Regardless, after her clumsy tumble into the cement, she'd
have to do battle to get on the lot again. Despite the fact
that he'd bumped into her, Caleb would claim she was a
liability.
Fifteen minutes later, Julia stepped out of the shower, a
turban-wrapped towel on her head and another tucked around
her body, barely covering her from breast to thigh.
Realizing for the first time that she had nothing to wear,
Julia considered the possibilities. There wasn't anything
extra in the car today and her clothes were certainly in no
condition to be worn.
Stepping out of the bathroom warily, Julia looked into the
kitchen. Although the thought of wearing Caleb's clothes
against her bare skin was oddly disturbing, she needed
something other than a towel in which to drive home.
The kitchen was empty. Since there wasn't a lot of space in
the trailer where he could hide, she assumed Caleb had gone
back out to work. Tucking the corner of the towel more
securely between her breasts, Julia glanced around and saw
nothing she could borrow to cover her nakedness.
She was still pondering when Caleb suddenly opened the door
and stepped into the trailer.