Page 2 of Working For Her Curves

“Far enough that I called my granddaughter, Poppy.” He leans back in his chair, and it groans under him. “She’s good with this. I want her going through invoices, delivery receipts, purchase orders. Do a proper audit and figure out what the hell is happening. She’s here in Forge Creek for the summer. Maybe longer.”

My weight shifts off the cabinet. I’m not sure I like the sound of where this is headed. “And I’m here because—”

“I want you to walk her through the site. Show her the records trailer, answer her questions. You’re not the bookkeeper, but you know more than framing. You know how the invoicing and deliveries work, and I trust you to answer her questions and make sure she gets what she needs.”

My shoulders tighten. I don’t want to babysit someone who may not know the difference between a nail and a drill bit. “Dale, I should be on east framing—”

“Joe can handle it,” Dale says, waving away my objection. “You’ve got this.”

There’s no use arguing with Dale Briggs when his jaw sets like that. Even after being here for a couple months, I’ve learned that when Dale decides something, that’s the end of the story, and it’ll take an act of God to change his mind.

I cross my arms. “Fine.”

“Good.” Dale nods toward the door. “She should be—”

The trailer door opens behind me. I turn around and nearly fall over.

The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen is walking into the trailer. I stare at the line of her throat as it curves into her collarbone, the way her shirt skims her waist and then finds the flare of her lush hips, the curve where fabric pulls against her chest as she moves.

Fuck.

My blood drops to my groin, and I have to make sure my mouth isn’t hanging open. She’s standing in the doorway with a laptop bag over her shoulder, scanning the trailer the way you’d scan a site before you step onto it—the maps on the wall, Dale’s desk, me—and when her eyes get to me, she pauses. It takes me a second to realize I’m standing up straighter and pushing out my chest, like I’m trying to win her attention.

I should look away. I’m standing in Dale Briggs’s office getting hard over his granddaughter, and I need to stop. Instead, I’m fixating on the few strands of dark hair that have come loose from where she’s pulled it back, and the way the light hits the angle of her jaw.

This woman is the kind of danger that makes me both ache to touch her and also wish Dale chose someone else for this job.

“Poppy, sweetheart.” Dale stands, and his voice goes warm in a way I’ve never heard from him on site. “Come in. This is Marty Conway. He’s your guy while you untangle what’s happening with the invoices.”

She steps into the trailer and gives Dale a quick hug, then stands next to him and turns those eyes back on me. She takes another long look at me, and her expression sharpens.

She extends her hand. “Poppy Briggs.”

Her grip is firm and her hand is warm. I have to force myself to release it. She tilts her chin up as she looks at me, making me uneasy in a way I haven’t been in a long time. Desire electrifies me, but I recognize the kind of woman she is, and I know all the reasons why I should stay away from her. Not least because she’s Dale’s granddaughter.

“Poppy’s just finished her business degree,” Dale smiles. “I’m trying to convince her to come work for me.”

“We’ll see, Grandpa. Let’s get through this summer and this inventory problem first.” She opens her laptop on the edge of Dale’s desk, angles the screen so both of us can see it, and pulls up a color-coded spreadsheet. “The Q2 procurement numbers are sixteen percent off baseline. I don’t think it’s a rounding error, and that’s where I want to start my research.”

She says it to Dale, and the authority in her voice is so fucking hot that it feels like my brain is in meltdown. Gorgeous? Competent? Smart? A trifecta for my dream woman.

Dale claps his hands once. “Good.” The grin that cracks through his beard says he’s enjoying this more than he should. “I’ll leave you two to get started. Holler if you need anything.”

We all leave the trailer.

Poppy and I stop and squint into the sun.

“Show me where the records are,” she says. “Let’s get started.”

CHAPTER 2

POPPY

Marty pulls the door to the records trailer shut behind us. His shoulders take up most of the gap between the filing cabinets, and when he moves past me and his body brushes against mine, the question I had lined up just vanishes. This man is built to a scale that makes this trailer feel like a closet, and work is definitely not what I want to be doing with this man.

“Apologies,” he says, taking a step back from me. “Procurement’s on the left wall. Purchase orders up top, invoices middle, delivery receipts bottom.”

“And your change orders? Filed with the original POs?”