brother Matt’s height, but not taller than Colin. Still, since she was five three and wearing a pair of Keds, Mr. Stare Happy dwarfed her.
She looked over the edge of the sunglasses she hadn’t bothered taking off. She did a complete sweep of the man with the lion’s voice and came to rest on his amused eyes. “I’m sorry, last night was a blur. My brother got married . . . there was champagne.”
He reached a hand out. “Dameon.”
Unable to stop herself, she chuckled. “With a voice like that, I’m not surprised.”
“Excuse me?”
That was rude. Her little cat and mouse pretending to not recognize him was one thing . . . “Grace.” She shuffled the bag to her hand holding the coffee and shook his hand. It was warm, and firm . . .
She swallowed.
He looked at their hands before he let her go.
“A pleasure meeting you, Dameon. I’m sorry I don’t remember you from last night.”
“Pleasure’s mine,” he said.
She nodded toward the door. “I gotta go. I left my car in the parking lot. Wouldn’t want to get towed.”
“Because of the champagne and the blur?” he asked.
She waved the coffee cup in the air. “Yes. Those two things.” With the back of her hand, she pushed her sunglasses higher on her nose. “Enjoy your stay in Santa Clarita.”
He watched as she retreated. “I will.”
Even outside, she felt his eyes. Damn if she couldn’t stop herself from making sure he was watching.
Their eyes met, much like they had the night before, and Grace smiled.
CHAPTER TWO
“Hudson?” Her boss, the head of the civil engineering department for the city, knocked on her office door once, called her name, and entered.
“Morning, Richard . . . thanks for knocking this time.”
Richard was thirty years her senior and still lived in the dark ages when it came to working with women in the office who weren’t clerical.
He pushed past the door and dropped a two-inch-thick file on her desk, displacing the paperwork she was currently working on. “We have a new developer coming into the city. Bought a bunch of land in and around San Francisquito Canyon.”
Grace opened the file, glanced at the first page. From the thickness of the preliminary file, she knew it wasn’t a small job. “Looks extensive.”
“It is. Thought it was time to give you something with more meat in it.”
“Define meat.” She had a bad feeling that Richard’s meat would mean unpaid overtime. She already had a full fifty hours’ worth of work on her desk every week and had only recently shaved her days down by a half an hour. She was the only female civil engineer in their department. For five years she’d been proving herself to Richard. To have him insinuate that she needed to prove herself yet again was insulting.
“Several acres. Residential and commercial with a ton of infrastructure and open space considerations.”
None of which sounded like any meat she hadn’t yet chewed.
“Possible zoning changes,” he added.
“Sounds like work for a team and not one person.”
From the tip of his balding head to the redness of his gin-blossom nose, Richard stared down at her.
“A team starts with one person.” He leaned over as if to take the file. “But if you don’t think you can hack it . . .”
She placed her hand over the file. “I didn’t say that.”
He righted himself. “Good.” Turning to leave he added, “Become familiar with the file before we meet with the developer.”
“When is that?”
He cleared the door.
“Two hours.”
Her head shot up in alarm. “What?” That was insane. “How long have you known about this meeting?”
“A week.”
Yeah, she didn’t buy that. “And you waited till now to give this to me?”
Richard gave her a look out of the corner of his eye. “You were a little busy wedding planning and taking extra time off.”
Oh, that was rich. Half of the people that worked in their building had been at the wedding. It helped that Colin was a supervisor for the public works department and knew just about everyone in the city. Between him, her firefighter brother Matt, and their retired law enforcement father, the safest place to be in Santa Clarita had been the hotel ballroom.
Yet here Richard was snarling about her involvement as if it was a girl problem he couldn’t understand.
“Fine.” She glared at the file. “You can close the . . .” She was talking to herself. Richard was gone.
“Two hours,” she muttered.
She crossed her office to close the door and knew her entire plan for the