Prodigal Prince Charming

Turning, she picked up her pace, her athletic shoes leaving curvy little patterns in the dirt and the three wooden steps that led up to the long white trailer’s door.

She didn’t have to knock. The door bearing a plaque that indicated the trailer to be the construction office opened before she could even decide if she needed to.

Cord’s big body filled the doorway. Yesterday’s designer Italian had been replaced with designer American. Aware of the Ralph Lauren logo on the sweater pushed to his elbows, she glanced from the wall of his chest past the lean line of his jaw. She had no idea if his smile was for her or for what she carried, but he looked tired, handsome and definitely anxious to get his hands on caffeine. “Am I ever glad to see you,” he murmured, and relieved her of the box. “Come on in.”

He turned away, leaving her to stare at his broad back a moment before she stepped inside. As she did, Matt Callaway rose from a long blueprint-covered table where three other men gathered. All seemed to be talking at once. A middle-aged woman wearing the look of a harried den mother cradled a phone against one shoulder while she pulled incoming faxes from the machine behind her desk and fed them directly into a copy machine. The smile she gave Madison was quick and decidedly grateful.

While one of the other men retrieved the copies and passed them out, Matt reached for his wallet. “Thanks for bringing this,” he said to her. “It’s not a good morning for the coffee machine to be out of commission.” He nodded to where Cord and the others were lifting foam cups from the box. “We have a little problem this morning and none of us can leave right now.” A good-natured note entered his voice. “There are also some of us who had a late night last night and are a little more desperate for caffeine than the others.”

“Hey, I was here on time,” Cord defended, his tone as affable as his friend and business partner’s. Lifting a cup toward the secretary to let her know it was hers, he set it on her desk. “If I’d known you wouldn’t have coffee here, I’d have brought some myself.” He reached into his own pocket. “I’ve got this,” he insisted. “I owe her a tip, anyway.”

Stepping in front of Madison, Cord held out a hundred-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” he said.

Madison blinked at the face of Benjamin Franklin. Beside her Matt had already turned to pick up his coffee and was asking one of the men about some sort of design change. The others were peeling the lids from their cups as they looked over the pages coming from the copier and talking about variances and bearing loads. The numbers and phrases they threw around wouldn’t have made any sense to her even if she hadn’t been so distracted by the man watching her from an arm’s length away.

She caught hint of his soap, and of aftershave lotion laced with citrus and spice. Two relatively fresh nicks on the underside of his carved jaw indicated a close and hurried encounter with his razor.

“You said fifty,” she reminded him, not wanting to notice such personal things about him. It sounded as if he’d had a late date last night. Rushing to make his meeting on time could easily account for why he’d missed breakfast. “With the muffins and coffee that’s only seventy-one dollars.”

There were slivers of silver in his compelling blue eyes. She didn’t want to notice that, either.

Someone’s cell phone rang. Across the room the fax machine beeped. “Consider the difference a delivery fee.”

Her voice dropped. “That’s very generous.”

“I’m very grateful,” he said, echoing her phrasing as she took the bill and slipped it into her waist pack. “You have no idea how I’ve fantasized about those muffins.”

His smile was all the more dangerous for the hints of fatigue that might have tugged at any other woman’s sympathies. But his notorious charm was wasted on her. She’d heard too much about it. It also had nothing at all to do with the jolt that had her flattening her hand over her heart.

An echoing boom shook the trailer from ceiling to tires. Windows rattled. Conversation died. Surrounded by the vibrating cacophony of crunching metal and something heavy collapsing just beyond the trailer’s walls, Madison wondered for a frantic second if they were having an earthquake. But just as suddenly as the sound hit, it stopped.

The men began speaking at once. Two engineer types headed for windows. The rest headed for the door.

Cord reached the door first, throwing it open so hard that it bounced back on its hinges. Matt was right behind him, hard hat in hand and shoving Cord’s at him as soon as his feet hit the dirt.

Caught in the surge of bodies as everyone else now rushed out, Madison found herself hurrying down the steps then stepping aside so she wouldn’t be in the way or get knocked over in the ministampede of foremen and the secretary coming through the doorway. Everyone else seemed to realize that whatever disaster had caused the noise was man-made rather than natural, but Madison barely had a chance to hope that no one had been hurt before she looked to where the wall of men now blocked the No Admittance sign.

They couldn’t go any farther.

The crane that had been lifting long steel I-beams had lost its load. Right on her truck.

Chapter Two

Utter disbelief kept Madison rooted right where she stood. Mouth open, too stunned to speak, she stared at the pile of crisscrossed beams that had just annihilated her vehicle. Other than those twenty-foot-long, two-ton girders of tempered steel, she couldn’t see anything but part of the white cab’s cratered roof and a spray of glittering glass shards that had been its windows and headlights.

Her first thought as she screamed, “My truck!” and panic sent her into motion was to save what she could of her food. As she darted toward the men, her second was that she smelled gasoline.

Shoving her way past the barrier of bodies and the barricade, intent on saving what she could, it vaguely occurred to her that the gas tank had ruptured.

“Hey, lady! Stay back!”

“Somebody stop her!”

She had no idea who’d yelled at her. “That’s my truck!” she cried again, only to feel something hard clamp around her arm.

That iron grip stopped her cold.

Disbelieving, distraught, she whirled to see Cord holding her back as the other men slipped past the barricade.

“What are you doing?” she screamed, struggling to break his hold.

“I’m saving your neck!” The heat of his palm burned into her, his grip as unyielding as his tone. “That claw is still swinging up there, and the beams it dropped aren’t stable. If one lands on you, it’ll break half the bones in your body.”

Even as he spoke, a long, heavy girder slipped from the top of the pile. It slid to the dirt with the groan of metal and a resounding thud that had men jumping back as if they’d been jerked by strings. Someone yelled for someone else to put out his cigarette. Overhead, the huge black claw that had held the beams swung from its cables like the pendulum of a clock.

Madison’s glance fell back to what was left of her truck and the dark pool slowly seeping from under it. With a shiver, she realized a single spark could turn the pile of collapsed metal into a bonfire.

“You’re lucky you were bringing the coffee,” Cord muttered above her. “If you’d been inside there, you’d have been history.”

Shock turned to incredulity.

“You think my bringing you breakfast saved me from being hurt?” Adrenaline surged as her eyes collided with his. “Are you delusional? If I hadn’t delivered that order, I would have been halfway to my next stop by now. That’s clear over by the docks, miles away from that…that…thing,” she concluded, waving her free arm at the crane.

“Hey,” he soothed. “Take it easy.”

Easy? “How am I supposed to do that?” she demanded, offended that he would even suggest it. “Because I did deliver that order, I’m not going to make that stop or any of my other stops. My truck has been reduced to a manhole cover, and the food I got up at three o’clock to make is mush. That truck is my livelihood, Kendrick, and the people at my stops depend on me to be there on time.”

Her outstretched arm reminded her that he still had her other one shackled. Not caring at all for the patient look he had the nerve to give her, she jerked back. Hard.

Suspecting that she hadn’t freed herself so much as he had let her go, not liking the idea that he held power over her in any form, she spun away, only to spin right back. He actually thought he’d helped her?

“I never should have listened to you,” she insisted, her chin up, her voice quavering with anger and the anxiety that got a firmer grip with each passing second. “I should have stuck to my schedule and not paid any attention to anything you offered or anything you said. You’re the one who told me to park there. Right there. In that very spot,” she reminded him, poking her finger toward the pile. “You even told me to ignore the warning sign. So, don’t you dare act like you’ve done me any favors.”

She was furious. She was distraught. She clearly blamed him and him alone for what had happened.

She also looked as if she could go for his throat because she’d done what he had asked. Fearing she might do just that, anxious to avoid a scene, Cord ignored the lack-of-sleep headache brewing in the base of his skull and started to reach for her again.

She immediately stepped away. Since calming her down by touch didn’t appear to be an option, he made his manner as placating as he could.

“You’ll get another truck,” he assured her. “I’ll buy you a new one and you’ll be back in business in no time.”

Her eyes flashed at his attempt to appease. The bits of gold in their liquid brown depths reminded him of flame. “I need to be back in business now,” she informed him. Her hand darted toward the pile of rubble again “Throwing your money at this isn’t going to fix it. You can’t replace a catering truck the way you can a car. New ones have to be ordered.”

“So I’ll order one.”

“It took me three months to get that one! What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”

Cord opened his mouth to reply. Having no idea what to say that wouldn’t just add fuel to her fire, he shut it again. Jamming his hands into his pockets, he watched her walk off. Stalk, actually, though even angry, she moved with a feminine grace that held his focus on the slender line of her back, the gentle flare of her hips, her long, long legs. She did more for cotton knit and denim than most women did for cashmere and silk. Definitely more than many of the women he’d met over the years. Especially the models. There was a softness about her curves that told him she at least had some meat on her bones.