Page 1 of Working For Her Curves

CHAPTER 1

MARTY

We’re barely in the booth at Kincaid’s Early Bird before Leanna’s there, coffee pot in hand, hip cocked against the table edge.

“Mornin’, boys. You want the usual?” She always looks at me when she says it, a slow half-smile as she angles toward my side of the booth like Noah’s not even sitting there.

“Yes, ma’am.” Her hip nearly brushes my shoulder. Not an accident. I’ve done my damnedest to be polite and not lead her on, but Leanna is not subtle and she’s endlessly persistent.

She fills both mugs, and I keep my eyes on the table. She’s barely walked away before Noah is shaking his head.

“She’s begging you to ask her out.” He leans across the table like this is something I don’t already know. “You gonna tap that?”

I pick up my coffee. “I’m here for the summer. I don’t need complications. You know that.”

“Leanna’s not a complication. Leanna’s a sure thing.” He tears open a sugar packet with his teeth, dumps it into his coffee, stirs it with a butter knife. We’ve had this conversation at least three times a week since I arrived in Forge Creek, but he keeps at me like more pressure will change the answer.

“A sure thing is still a thing.” The coffee’s strong enough to strip paint, which is one of two reasons I keep coming back to this diner. The food’s the other. “I came here to stack cash. Not to get tangled up with someone I’ll leave behind when I leave in August.”

He lets it drop, though we’ll be right back here tomorrow. Despite this, Noah is the only person on this crew I actually like.

I pull the site schedule up on my phone. “Joe’s crew poured footings Friday. We’re setting anchor bolts if the concrete cured right.”

“It cured right. I drove past yesterday.” He drinks his coffee like he didn’t just admit to driving by the job site on his day off.

“You drove past the site on a Sunday.” My eyes come up from the phone. “It’s at the end of a dead-end road next to a creek.”

“I like to check on things,” he grins. The man drove twenty minutes out of his way on his day off to stare at concrete, and he’s sitting here like that’s what everybody does with their Sunday.

Leanna brings our plates and gives me the same slow look, same angle toward me, same complete disregard for Noah’s existence. Her knuckles graze my wrist as she sets down my plate. “Anything else, hon?”

“We’re good. Thanks.” I give her a quick smile and turn my attention to the plate.

She walks away, and Noah watches her go before turning back to me with his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. “She’s giving it away, and you won’t even pick it up.”

I clench my jaw. I like Noah, but there’s definitely a limit to how much of this I can take on a Monday morning. “I’m warning you—”

“Did you hear Adam got hammered at the Foundry Saturday night?” he says through a mouthful, mercifully letting it go. “Kayla took his keys, and he had to walk home.”

At least Kayla, the bartender at the Foundry, has some common sense. I look up at Noah. “From the Foundry? That’s three miles.”

“In flip-flops.” He grins and shovels eggs in his mouth.

Adam stumbling down the shoulder of freeway in the dark, flip-flops slapping asphalt, probably talking to himself the whole way. “Did anyone pick him up?”

“Brian saw him on the bridge and honked, but he said Adam waved him off.” Noah mimics Adam waving drunkenly and laughs. “Said he wanted the fresh air.”

Noah’s phone buzzes. He glances at it, then silences it. “Did you hear? Dale’s granddaughter is starting on-site today.”

Great. Last thing we need is someone in a blazer standing in the mud next to the concrete mixer. “Do you know what she’ll be doing?”

“No idea. Spreadsheets? I doubt our jobs are in jeopardy,” Noah smirks, then polishes off his breakfast.

Dale pulls me off the east framing with a two-word text—my office—and I’m standing in front of his desk before I’ve gotten the drywall dust off my forearms. The trailer is cramped and overstuffed, permits and site maps papering the wall by his desk.

“Got a situation.” He crosses his arms across his chest. “I’ve found an inventory discrepancy. The numbers aren’t adding up for this year.”

“How far off?” I lean against the filing cabinet.