Desire by Design - By Paula Altenburg Page 0,35

mess, the bathrobe she wore hadn’t come from any Victoria’s Secret catalog, and the expression on her face warned of storm fronts ahead. She looked rumpled and sexy.

Nothing was going to happen to her.

“You are not following me around,” Eve said. The roses in her arms reflected the fire blossoming on her cheeks.

“Of course not.” He sat gingerly on a bottom step, easing his injured leg out before him. “I won’t have to follow you. We’ll be working together.”

“I work on a number of projects, not just City Hall. You can’t come to all of them.”

“I have a laptop. I’m mobile.” His leg throbbed. Maybe not as mobile as usual, but mobile nonetheless.

“She says she doesn’t want you following her around all day,” Uncle Bob interrupted, his voice mild. “There are anti-stalking laws in this country, you know.”

Those laws didn’t seem to bother Eve’s ex-husband.

“Thank you, Bob,” Eve said, her tone so sweet Matt almost laughed. She sniffed the flowers in her arms. “And thank you for the roses, too. They’re lovely. What’s the occasion?”

“Those aren’t from me. I found them on the doorstep.” Bob plucked an envelope from his suit pocket. “The card says they’re from some guy named Claude.”

A look of revulsion crossed Eve’s face. If there had been any doubt in Matt’s mind how she felt about her ex-husband, there was none now. He made a mental note never to bring her roses, too. Besides, Eve was more of a bird-of-paradise kind of woman, all fire and sunbursts. This Claude guy didn’t know anything.

Except for how to terrorize a woman. Matt’s blood pressure edged up several notches.

Eve handed the flowers back to Bob. “Here. Why don’t you give these to your secretary?”

Uncle Bob scooped up the flowers, opened the door, and set them on the doorstep outside, displaying one of his rare moments of tact. Eve, all soft and wide-eyed and mussy-haired, chewed on her lip and looked like she couldn’t decide whether or not to burst into tears. Matt hoped she chose not to. If she did, he was going to have to hold her, and she wouldn’t like that. Especially in front of his uncle. She tried to seem tough on the surface, but he couldn’t shake the image he had of her crouched alone in the dark with only a nail gun for protection.

“Did you have something you wanted me for?” Matt asked, prodding his uncle’s memory in an effort to change the subject. The sooner Uncle Bob left the better.

“What?” Uncle Bob appeared confused for a moment as he turned his attention from Eve back to Matt. “Oh, yes.” He ran a hand over his thick, silver hair. “Council is putting some pressure on me to find out what the new building is going to look like. How soon do you think you can have a presentation ready? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but the demolition is already scheduled, and next week we’ll begin moving records and office space into temporary quarters. Once the site is cleared, we can begin construction.”

Uncle Bob looked happy. Matt wished he could say the same for Eve. Twin vertical furrows appeared above her pixie nose.

“What demolition?” she asked.

“We’ve made arrangements for the old Hall to be imploded,” Uncle Bob told her. “Then we’ll build the new Hall on the same site.”

The furrows deepened. “Imploded?”

“That’s what’s done when the demolition of a large building might damage its neighbors.” Uncle Bob spelled it out as if he were speaking to a child, and not a person far more familiar with the construction industry than he was. Matt threw up mental hands. Not much wonder his uncle rubbed her the wrong way. He really was a moron.

“I know why it’s used.” Her pink-tipped toes tapped on the tiled floor. “But a new site has already been bought, and Sullivan Construction agreed to site preparation as part of the bid.”

“It was agreed that the current property remains the best choice to build on because it’s centrally located,” Uncle Bob said. “Since the old building has already been decommissioned, we can bring it down and start over.”

“You work fast,” Eve said. “And quiet, too. I’ll bet this bit of information hasn’t hit the newspapers yet.”

Uncle Bob beamed. “Thanks. It hasn’t.”

Matt wondered if his uncle realized she wasn’t issuing him a compliment.

“Have you given any thought to how this is going to affect the budget?” she asked next. “You can’t go around changing things without talking to Connor. He has a