Her Dirty Builders (Men at Work #10) - Mika Lane Page 0,20

terrible thing to do, and that you owe Camille an apology.”

Was she serious?

It was one thing that my mother had pressured me to take Camille Vale out on a date. I really hadn’t wanted to, but Mom had explained she owed Mrs. Vale a favor.

Yup. My mother was pimping me out.

But it was another thing entirely that she thought it was okay to get into the business of my sex life.

Such as it was.

“Okay, Mom. Let’s do this. If you agree not to try to fix me up with any more of your friends’ daughters, I promise not to have sex with them and never call again. Do we have a deal?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line as she glared at me.

I was pretty sure she’d be staying out of my love life after that.

Jesus, I hated being fixed up, and I hated even more being fixed up by my mother. It wasn’t that Camille Vale hadn’t been a nice woman to spend an evening with. She was smart, attractive, and a successful lawyer. We’d enjoyed a couple drinks, and gotten a late bite to eat. She invited me back to her place, a beautiful, modern condo on the top floor of a new building. I was all in.

And I might even have asked her out for a second date, not that I really had time for that sort of thing, except, during our post-fuck cuddle, she started on what I called ‘the marriage talk.’ There wasn’t much that chased me away faster than a woman who went down that road.

It just rubbed me the wrong way. Like she was testing me. I was waiting for her next inquiry to be about how much money I made.

So that was the end of that.

And two weeks later I was getting shit over it.

I had enough problems in my life.

Hell, just the previous week, I showed up at the home of a potential client who needed to have her roof replaced.

But when I arrived, she answered the door in a sheer robe and a lacy thong.

I explained I’d come back when her husband was home.

Had my dad gone through this shit?

15

CASE

I was running some quick errands before I spent the rest of my down time on schoolwork when I spotted Esme coming out of the local card shop. I was too far away to say hi, and thought better of hollering across the street. I figured I’d watch her for a bit.

Yeah, it was borderline stalkerish, but I was curious about her, and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t remember her from high school. She seemed like just the kind of girl I would have liked.

She must have been on her lunch hour, because I knew we were close to the renovated building where elevators had once been made. I remembered what a dump the abandoned place had been when I was a kid, and to see it now, all spruced up and full of businesses, well that made any builder like me sing. We loved seeing new life breathed back into our work.

With a small shopping bag in hand, Esme wove through the lunch-hour pedestrians, long hair whipping around her face, cute as hell in her funky dress and clean white sneakers.

She still wasn’t especially warm to me, and while I wasn’t entirely sure why, I was happy to be helping her fix up the house that she should never have bought. It was a shame she didn’t have the budget for us to really tear into the place. It certainly had the potential to be the gem it once had been.

Hell, if I had the money, I’d buy it from her just for the chance to restore it.

But as it was, I was still digging out the hole of debt Dad had left for me to deal with. There was no money—or sense in—imagining things were any different.

Esme stopped in front of the local florist’s window, which gave me some time to catch up, but when I was still a few shop fronts away, I slowed. Some guy walked up to her and started up a conversation.

With her back to me, I could only see the guy smiling and Esme nodding. If he were chatting her up, I wasn’t about to interrupt. But I wasn’t above getting close enough to listen to their conversation.

“So why don’t you give me your number?” the guy said.

Damn. He was going for it. Couldn’t fault a guy for that.

“Oh. Thanks. But I… don’t