The Man for Maggie

As for Nick, she decided there was only one way to find out how he felt.

Ask him.

NICK SAT at the drafting table in his office, trying to focus on the floor plan and the list of materials he’d need, but concentrating on Maggie’s renovations was difficult when all he could think about was Maggie.

Why on earth would she have been looking at those yearbooks?

He tried to remember if he even owned copies. If he did, he hadn’t seen them in years.

He definitely liked the idea that she’d been looking at them though. It meant she had more than a passing interest in him.

So?

So…he didn’t know why that mattered but he still liked the idea. On the other hand, what if Allison had put her up to this? Was he really such a bad person that Allison Peters had to turn up and make his life miserable? Maybe he’d stored up a bunch of bad karma and now it was payback time.

Right. That sounded like something Maggie would say.

He knew how his family would react to him taking someone so unorthodox to the wedding. He indulged himself in a sly grin. Yes, sirree. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was actually looking forward to a family function. But would Maggie survive a formal encounter with the Durrance family? She could always tell them their horoscopes, he thought with amusement. That alone would be worth the price of admission.

His conscience kicked him in the gut. Ticking off his family was not a good reason for asking a woman to go out with him. Especially Maggie.

He didn’t know why but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But the sooner you finish this estimate, he reminded himself, the sooner you’ll get to see her again.

He was busy punching numbers into his calculator when Brent Borden, his longtime friend and only employee, came in and tossed a roll of blueprints on the top of the filing cabinet. “Hey, boss. How’s it going?”

“Good. I’m working up an estimate for Miss Meadowcroft’s remodeling job.”

“Sure hope we get that one. She sounds like a hot little number, from what everyone’s saying.”

“Yeah, well, she wants to turn her house into a spa, and there’s a very good chance that Durrance Construction will get the job.”

“All right! We can use the work, and here’s hoping Miss Meadowcroft will be spending lots of time on the job with us.”

Nick glared at him. “She lives there, so I think it’s safe to say that she’ll be around. And it’ll help to remember that she’s a client.”

Brent’s eyes went wide, then he burst out laughing. “I see,” he drawled. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Man, you have never given a damn if someone hustled a pretty girl on the job site. I seem to recall that when we were hired to work at the massage parlor—”

Jeez. Nick should know by now that past mistakes always came back to bite him on the butt. “Maggie Meadowcroft isn’t running a massage parlor. Her house is in a respectable neighborhood and she’s a very nice woman—”

Brent was still laughing. “You sly dog. You’ve already put the moves on her!” He held up a hand and Nick reluctantly met his friend’s high-five.

“Let me guess,” Brent speculated. “A little pizza. A lot of beer. Wham, bam, thank you—”

“Hang on a minute. You got this all wrong.” He might as well spill it, since Brent would hear about it sooner or later. “I haven’t gone out with her. I just asked her to go to my sister’s wedding.”

Brent let out a long, low whistle. “You invited her to meet your family? Man. Either she’s really special or you really have it in for her.”

Nick sighed. “If I didn’t have a date, Leslie and Allison were going to line me up with one.”

Brent stopped laughing. “Allison?”

“Allison Peters,” Nick said. “From high school. Remember?”

“Uh, yeah.” Brent made a face that pretty much summed up Nick’s feelings about that whole fiasco. “What about her?”

“She lives next door to Maggie, and she’s my sister’s bridesmaid and she just happened to drop by Maggie’s this morning with the news that Candice Bentley-Ferguson is newly divorced and once again hot to trot. Oh, and did I mention, also one of my sister’s bridesmaids? What was I supposed to do? Let myself get lassoed into taking her?”

“Quite the dilemma. Which you resolved by asking the new ‘client’ to go with you?”

Wiseass. It’s not as though Brent had never gotten himself into a jam. “Okay,” he agreed. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But you know my family. And Allison. What I was I supposed to do? Let them set me up with Candice?”