King's Million-Dollar Secret

“Or …?” Mike asked.

A slow smile curved his mouth. Mike couldn’t see it, but he must have heard it when Rafe answered, “You really don’t want to know, do you?”

“Things happen, Rafe,” the man continued to try to defend himself. “I can’t stay on top of every supplier I have, you know.”

“Don’t see why not,” Rafe countered. “I do.”

“Right. Well, I’m betting that every once in a while someone stiffs the Kings, too.”

“Yeah, they do.” He glanced around his office at King Construction, already moving on from this particular problem. “But it doesn’t happen often and it never repeats itself. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation, Mike. I took your explanation last time, but this is your second chance. I guarantee you, we’ll never have this discussion again. If you can’t get the supplies to us in five hours, King Construction will find a new supplier for this job.”

“Now just wait a minute, let’s not be hasty.”

“You get one second chance with King Construction, Mike,” Rafe told him flatly. “And this was it. Now, you have the materials there, as we agreed, or I’ll put the word out to every construction outfit in the state that you can’t be trusted. How many jobs you think you’ll get then?”

A long moment of tense silence passed while the other man did some fast thinking. Rafe knew what was going through the guy’s mind. He’d already ruined his rep with the Kings, but he still had hundreds of other construction outfits to do business with. Unless he messed this up further.

“It’ll be there,” the man said, but he didn’t sound happy about it. “You’re a hard man, Rafe.”

“You should’ve remembered that, Mike.”

Rafe hung up then, leaned back in his desk chair and spun it around until he could look out the window at the ocean scene stretching out in front of him. The King Construction building sat directly on Pacific Coast Highway and each of the brothers had an office with a view. One of the perks of being an owner.

Another perk was reaming guys who failed them.

Standing up, Rafe leaned one hand on the window, feeling the cool of the glass seep into his skin. Was he a hard man? He supposed so.

His ex-wife sure as hell thought so.

Just another reason for him to keep his distance from Katie Charles.

A woman like that didn’t need a hard man in her life.

“Now, isn’t this a nice view?”

Katie rolled her eyes and laughed at her grandmother. “You’re impossible.”

Emily O’Hara grinned, fluffed her stylishly trimmed silver hair and then winked at her granddaughter. “Honey, if you don’t like looking at handsome men, they might as well bury you.”

They were standing at the edge of the yard, watching the action. The men worked together seamlessly, each of them concentrating on a certain area, then helping each other out when needed. Naturally, Nana had noticed Rafe right away, but Katie could hardly blame her. The man was really worth watching.

Katie’s gaze went directly to Rafe, on the opposite side of the yard. Since that morning when she’d stood up for him to Joe, Rafe had been avoiding her. She couldn’t quite figure out why, either. Maybe it was a guy thing, embarrassing to have a woman defend his honor? She smiled to herself at the thought.

“Well, well. I can see now that you’re doing plenty of noticing.” She draped one arm around Katie’s shoulders. “He’s quite the hunk, isn’t he?”

“Hunk?” Katie repeated with a laugh.

“You betcha. The question is, what’re you going to do about it?”

“What can I do?” Katie watched Rafe as he grinned at something Arturo said and she felt a delicious flutter in the pit of her stomach.

“Honestly,” Nana said with a shake of her head, “youth really is wasted on the wrong people. Katie, if you want him, go for it.”

“He’s not a cookie I can grab and wrap up.”

“Who said anything about wrapping him up?” Nana laughed and advised, “I was thinking more that you should unwrap him. Just grab him and take a bite. Life’s too short, honey. You’ve got to enjoy it while you can.”

“Unbelievably enough,” Katie said, “I’m not as freewheeling as my grandmother.”

“Well, you could be.” Nana shook her head and said, “I loved your grandfather, honey, but he’s been gone a long time and I’m still alive and kicking. And, so are you. You’ve been burying yourself in your work for so long, it’s a wonder you can step outside without squinting into the sun like a mole.”

“I’m not that bad!”

“Didn’t used to be,” her grandmother allowed. “Until that Cordell twisted you all up.”

Katie frowned at the reminder.

“There’s a whole wide world full of people out there and half of them are men,” Nana told her. “You can’t let one bad guy ruin your opinion on an entire gender.”

Is that what she was doing? Katie wondered. She didn’t think so. Sure, Cordell King had hurt her, but she wasn’t hiding. She was working. Building her business. Just because she hadn’t been on a date in … good night. She hadn’t been on an actual date with an actual man since Cordell and that was more than six months ago now.

How had that happened?

She used to be fun.

She used to call her friends and go out.

She used to have a life.

“Oooh, here comes the cute one,” her grandmother whispered.

Katie came out of her thoughts and watched Rafe approaching them. He wasn’t cute, she thought. He was dark and dangerous and so sexy just watching him walk made her toes curl. Golden retrievers were cute.

Rafe was … tempting.

“What’d you say his name was?”

“Rafe. Rafe Cole.”

“Hmm …”

Katie looked at her grandmother, but the woman’s expression was carefully blank. Which usually meant there was something going on in Nana’s mind that she didn’t want anyone else to know about. But before Katie could wriggle the information out of her, Rafe was standing in front of them. She made the introductions, then Rafe spoke up.

“I just wanted to tell you that we’ll be shutting down early tonight. Joe’s got a meeting and he wants Arturo and Steve there.”

“Not you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No reason for me to be there. I’m just a worker bee. Anyway,” he said, with a smile for her grandmother, “it was nice to meet you.”