up and drive around the cordoned-off area across from where you are.”
“Forget going around. Just pull up to where it’s barricaded and park across from the stack of trusses. Ignore the sign.”
“What sign?”
“The one that says No Admittance. And bring one of those coffees with…”
“Cream,” she completed, then sighed because she rather wished she hadn’t just let him know she remembered that. “Does anyone else take anything in theirs?”
She heard him ask. Then she heard him tell her they had sugar and powdered cream there before he thanked her and hung up.
She didn’t know why his thanks surprised her. Maybe it was because he seemed a little impatient this morning. Maybe it was because it seemed pretty clear that he expected his wishes to be met so thanks weren’t necessary.
Suspecting that not many people did deny him what he wanted, annoyed that she’d just done what everyone else probably did and caved in to his expectations herself, she finished boxing up the muffins and filled cups, closed the side of her truck and drove it at a crawl past girders rising from huge concrete slabs and the giant orange crane now swinging its boom toward a stack of steel beams.
Because she was always careful to park only in areas where she and her customers would be safe from traffic and heavy equipment, she was very conscious that she was going where she normally wouldn’t go. She was now close enough to the actual construction to see individual sparks fly from welders’ torches and feel the vibration of a back-up horn blaring as a churning cement truck edged toward massive wood forms. A forklift rolled past, carrying a large blue drum on a pallet.
Ahead of her, wooden barricades blocked vehicle access to the construction trailer. Assuming that the cars parked near the trailer had entered from the street on the other side, which she had originally thought to do herself, she looked around for the sign Cord had mentioned. She couldn’t see it, but the stack of trusses that would eventually be part of a roof was impossible to miss.
Parking across from them, she shook off the niggling feeling that she shouldn’t leave her truck there and slipped out, carefully balancing the box so she wouldn’t tip the coffees. She would only be gone for a minute. Two max, she thought, stepping around the barrier.
It was then that she noticed the sign. The wording on the barrier faced the trailer and its parking lot. From there, the words No Admittance Without Authorization and Hard Hat Area practically screamed at her to go back.
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