A Seal's Touch

Rolling her eyes, Cat slipped the phone into her pocket and got to work removing evidence of her slide across the floor. As she mopped, she went over the schedule, trying to figure out how she could be in San Diego and El Cajon at the same time. She was overseeing four jobs next week, two small enough that she could set up the crew and go, but as lead carpenter on one and job supervisor on the other, her presence was sort of vital. She wished Marco would get his act together and schedule these jobs right. She had no problem calling the San Diego couple and rescheduling, but then she’d have to listen to another one of Marco’s fanatical customer relation lectures.

Debating, she tucked the mop away.

“Hey, Mom? Is tonight Aunt Ceecee’s book club or is it next week?”

“You got problems with Marco again?” Lucia Perez tut-tutted as she arranged silk roses into a crystal vase. A mirror image of her youngest daughter, her hair was black where Cat’s was caught somewhere between brown and blond, her eyes brown while Cat’s were sky blue. And while all of Cat’s sisters had inherited their mother’s petitely lush curves, Cat was long, leggy and on the skinny side of slender. And much to Lucia’s dismay, Cat’s only nod to femininity was the long hair she kept pulled into a tail.

“No problems,” Cat said, denying her mom’s accusation. “I just needed to check something.”

“If Marco is going to put you in charge of all that work, he should let you be in charge. Selfish man. He’s just a figurehead. Like your papa, you do all of the work, take all of the responsibility. He takes all of the glory and the money.”

Cat loved her job as a contractor and once she’d gotten past the heartache of losing him, she’d loved following her father’s footsteps at Peres Construction. Sure, it’d be nice if she’d been able to step into her dad’s position, but she understood the necessity of proving herself—of working her way up the ladder—until she could take her dad’s place as Marco’s partner. It was bound to happen soon, too, with her uncle making noises about retiring.

She was close. So close.

But Cat was a smart woman.

Smart enough to know that close didn’t matter to her mother.

“That’s a pretty arrangement,” Cat complimented, also smart enough to change the subject. “Are you doing a flower show this weekend?”

“Leda and I are going to Vegas this weekend,” her mother said with a worrisome look in her eyes. “You should come with us. You could drive.”

Ah, there it was. Motherly pity. If she’d stopped at fixing the leaky kitchen faucet and replacing the furnace filters instead of reframing the crawl space vent, she might have actually escaped, pity unspoken.

Oh, the pity would still be there. Just not there, out loud. After all, Cat was single, childless, with nary a date on the horizon to fix that.

“Mom, I’m not tagging along with you and Mrs. Powell.” Before her mother could say anything, Cat held up one hand. “First off, you both like fighting over who drives too much for me to take that away from you. Second, I don’t gamble and don’t want to see a show. Third, I have to work this weekend.”

“Work?” Lucia pursed her lips, too ladylike to spit out the pshaw Cat knew was on her mind. “You know, if you were your own boss instead of working for that tyrant Marco, you’d be able to take time off. You’re a smart girl, a hard worker. Why haven’t you gone out on your own yet?”

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?

Oh, she could run her own company. And she’d be good at it. She was an excellent carpenter, a fair plumber and a decent electrician. She knew how to get respect from the crew, how to handle costing out jobs and what to send the accountant.

She’d learned all that at her father’s knee. She’d idolized him, admired him and wanted nothing more than to be like him. When her sisters were learning to flirt and wear makeup, she’d been learning the ins and outs of construction.

But she didn’t want her own business.

She wanted the family business.

Knowing her mother wouldn’t like that answer, she simply shrugged.

“Business is good,” was all she said. And it was. Real estate had bounced back over the past couple of years, but it still wasn’t near the peak it’d been during the bubble. Most people weren’t buying new, they were adding on, refurbishing or remodeling.

“You should be dating eligible men on weekends, not working. If you don’t date, how are you going to find your soul mate, Catarina? You waste your life swinging a hammer instead of dating, you’ll find yourself old and shriveled, alone in your twilight years without the joy of marriage or grandchildren to keep you warm.” Lucia stopped only long enough to take a breath before continuing her lament on her youngest daughter’s failings.

Familiar with the list, by the time it reached her choices in footwear, Cat could only sigh. She had four older sisters, each one of them fitting perfectly into Lucia Peres’s idea of what was acceptable. Three of them had provided grandchildren, two worked at the flower shop with Lucia and all four were unquestionably female, right down to their pierced ears and lipstick fetishes.

And then there was Cat.

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“You can’t be fine,” Lucia insisted as she tucked another flower into the vase. She stepped back to give the arrangement a narrow-eyed look then nudged a flower down an inch before shifting that look to her daughter. “You work too much, so you’re a slave to the business.”

Cat pursed her lips to keep from pointing out that her mom was spending Thursday evening with the dining room table covered in silk flower arrangements, undoubtedly to be used as window displays for the flower shop. Maybe it was only slaving if she used real flowers?

“I’m fine, Mom.”

“You don’t look fine. You look tired. Why are you not using face cream, Catarina? Or better, makeup? A nice bright lipstick would show off that lovely smile.”

“I was up late,” Cat returned in excuse. She’d ended up finishing the payroll reports for Marcus.

“When was the last time you went on a date?”

Did a beer after shift with the crew count? Unless they were all naked and ingesting the beer off each other’s bodies, Lucia would probably say no.

“I date.”

But her mother kept on going.

“You’re wasting your youth with that silly business. And it’s not even yours, Catarina. You’re wasting your youth on someone else.”

“I’m not wasting anything. I’m using my youth to build up experience and knowledge so when I run my own, I’ll be a success.” Cat paused. “Like Daddy.”

Lucia gave a heavy sigh, her eyes sad as she set the flowers aside to take Cat into her arms.

“Of all my daughters, you’re the most like your father. But you need to be you, Catarina. You need to live your life. Live your dreams.”

“I am living my dream,” Cat declared.

“Don’t you have dreams of children? Of a family?” Her mother threw her hands in the air. “Or, your father forgive me, of regular sex?”

Regular sex?

With a silent laugh, Cat let her mother’s lecture wash over her while she shifted her gaze to stare through the window at the Powell house.

Yeah.

She had dreams of amazing sex.

Mind-blowingly amazing, panty-meltingly hot sex.

But all of her dreams revolved around the only man she could imagine was capable of that kind of sex.

Taylor Powell.

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