Merry and Bright (2 page)

Outside, she drew in a breath of the cool L.A. evening air and headed to her car as her cell phone rang. It was her sister Janie, a UCLA professor who did
not
have the geek gene. Nope, Janie had somehow snagged a normal life for herself. She’d married and brought two beautiful kids into the world, and was determined to make sure Maggie did the same.

“Hey, Mags.” Janie’s mouth was clearly full. “Sorry, chocolate stuck in my teeth.”

“Don’t tell me you’re still eating leftover Halloween candy.”

“A Baby Ruth bar. Sinful, I’m telling you. Why do you think they call it a Baby Ruth? Why not a Baby Jane or something?”

“It was supposedly named for Grover Cleveland’s baby daughter.”

“Your brain works in the oddest ways.”

“I know.”

“Uh-huh. And do you also know if you’re coming for Christmas Eve?”

“Bringing the pumpkin pie.”

“Spending the night?”

“Wouldn’t want to miss Santa.”

A lie, and they both knew it. Maggie just didn’t want to be alone in her condo on Christmas morning. “What am I supposed to get you for Christmas, by the way? You already have everything you could want.”

“You could bring a date.”

When Maggie laughed, Janie sighed. “Well, you could
try.
Your Mr. Right is just right around the corner, I know it.”

“Yes, but which corner?” Maggie stopped beside her sensible Toyota and searched for her keys, blowing out an irritated breath when she realized she was completely blocked in by Tim’s
not
sensible Porsche. “Dammit.” She whirled back to the building. “I have to go kill my boss.”

“Invite someone from work,” Janie said. “Not the boss you’re going to kill, but the other one.”

“I want
him
to ask
me
out. But my Mr. Rights all seem gun shy.”

“Then invite a Mr. Wrong.”

“You mean
purposely
go out with someone who isn’t right for me?”

“Honey, you’ve gone two years without sex. What do you have to lose by changing tactics? I mean, honest to God, your good parts are going to wither from nonuse.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do, just take off my clothes and have wild sex with the first guy I come across?”

“Yes,” Janie said. “The first
wrong
guy, the one you wouldn’t normally go out with.”

“You want me to have sex with Mr. Wrong.”

“Use a condom.”

Maggie laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Seriously serious. You need to go for the first Mr. Wrong to cross your path—as long as he’s not an ax murderer or rapist,” she qualified. “And probably he should have a job and love his mother.
That
can be my Christmas present—you having sex with Mr. Wrong. Promise me.”

Since that was as unlikely to happen as having sex with a Mr. Right, Maggie laughed as she walked back into the building. Back on the sixth floor, she dodged through the obstacle course of construction equipment. The construction crew was desperately trying to finish before Christmas, and apparently they were working late tonight. Still on the phone with her sister, she ducked under a ladder, over a cord, and then around a huge stack of unused drywall, catching her shoulder on the sharp edge. She heard the rip of her coat and sighed as she dropped her briefcase to look.
“Dammit.”

“What?” Janie asked. “Mr. Wrong?”

“No! Jeez. Hold on.” She bent for her briefcase, just as someone beat her to it, scooping up the loose change that had spilled out.

“Thanks—” Maggie lifted her head and froze at the wide chest in her vision.

A chest that once upon a time she’d dreamed about in chemistry. She took the coins from Jacob’s big, work-roughened palm, her nerves suddenly crackling as well as all the good spots Janie had mentioned, which meant that they hadn’t withered up, at least not yet. “Three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies,” she said. “$1.19.”

“That’s fast math.”

Yes, her brain always sped up when she was anxious. Plus, there was the other thing. She was also a little revved up. Sexually speaking. Which was Janie’s fault, she decided, for putting the idea of hot sex in her head in the first place. “A dollar and nineteen cents is the largest amount of money in coins you can have and still not be able to make change for a dollar.”

He blinked, then nodded. “That’s . . . inter--esting.”

“It’s fact.” Oh, God.
Shut up.

“Who’s that?” Janie whispered in her ear. “Who are you talking to? A man? It’s got to be a man because you’re spouting off useless trivia like you do when you’re nervous. Oh! He’s your Mr. Wrong, isn’t he?
Ask him to have hot sex with you!
”

“Hush,” Maggie said, and Jacob blinked again. Oh, God. “Not you.” She stood, and he did the same, giving her a quick peek of him close up and personal. His scuffed work boots, the mile-long legs and lean hips, covered in Levi’s, all faded and stressed white in all the right places, of which there appeared to be a tantalizing many. God bless denim . . . “Thanks, Jacob.”

At his surprise, she nodded. “Yeah, we know each other, or used to. Chem 101, your junior year at South Pasadena High. Before you moved to New Orleans.”

“Maggie Bell?” His eyes warmed. “I remember now. You came up directly from eighth grade, right? You saved my ass that year.”

“Jacob . . .” Janie whispered in her ear. “I don’t remember a Jacob. Is he cute?”

Yeah, he was cute. Cute like a wild cheetah. As in look but don’t touch. And while she stood there, still enjoying his jeans—what was with her?—her mouth ran loose. “Until you and your crew started retrofitting the building, the dress code around here was pretty much limited to white lab coats.”

His mouth quirked. “I can’t climb ladders in a white lab coat.”

“No, no it’s okay.”
So okay
. “I get tired of looking at all that white anyway. So it’s good that you’re not.”
Oh, just shut up already!
“Wearing one,” she added weakly.

“You should probably not talk anymore,” Janie said, ever so helpfully over the phone.

Maggie bit her lip to keep it shut. He was so close, so big. And she felt a little like a doe caught in the headlights.

“You tore your coat,” he said, and fingered the hole.

At his touch, her body tightened, and her mouth opened again. “It’s okay. I tend to do things like this a lot.”

“Run into drywall?”

“Run into stuff, period.” Someone had opened a window, and the evening breeze came in, as well as the sounds from the street six floors below. Traffic, an airplane, a sudden blare of a horn so loud she jumped.

“Just a car,” he said.

“In the tone of an F.”

“Excuse me?”

“All car horns are in the chord of F.”

He did that eyebrow arch thing again.

“Jesus, Mags.
Stop talking!
” Janie demanded in her ear.

“Okay, I’ve really got to go.”

“Wait!” Janie yelled. “Ask him out first, you promised! You have to do him, and get him to do you—”

Maggie slapped her phone shut before Jacob could hear her crazy sister. Yes, he was Mr. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But what was she supposed to do, say
Hey, how do you feel about me jumping your bones?
Probably she should start with a dinner invite and work her way up to the jumping bones part. Yeah, that was it, that was how
normal
women did these things. Okay. She took both a big breath and a small step backward for distance, but Jacob curled his fingers into the front of her jacket and caught her up against him.

Not that she was complaining, but... “Um—”

He gestured to the bucket of nails she’d nearly stepped in, and she winced. His body, plastered to hers, was as hard as it appeared. And warm. Very, very warm. “Thanks.”

“Maybe you should just stand real still,” he suggested, and let go of her.

“Yes, except I don’t stand still very well. I only do still when I’m lying down.”

He arched a brow, those deep chocolate brown eyes lighting up with amusement to go with the heat still there, making her realize the double entendre she’d just said. “You know what I mean.”

He just smiled, and turned his head toward a crew member who came up to him with a McDonald’s bag.

“Burgers on the run.” Jacob took the food. “Thanks.”

Maggie’s mouth once again ran away from her brain. “There’re one hundred seventy-eight sesame seeds on each of those hamburger buns.”

He leaned back against the wall, all casual like, in direct contrast to her uptightness. “One hundred seventy-eight, huh?” He was clearly biting back a smile. “Exactly?”

“Or thereabouts,” she muttered, wondering how it was she could be so smart and yet not be able to keep her mouth shut.

“So you graduated early to become a sesame seed counter?”

“No.” She laughed. “No. I’m sort of a chemist.”

“How does one become a
sort of
chemist?”

Yeah, still amusing him. Terrific. Just what she wanted to do, amuse the gorgeous man, at her own expense. “Okay, it’s not sort of. It’s really. I’m really a chemist.” Wow, so much better. Now all she had to do to complete her humiliation was ask him out. No sweat. “So—”

But he pushed away from the wall, calling out to one of his workers. “Dave, not there, over a foot! Check the specs!” He glanced back at Maggie. “Do me a favor and watch where you walk in here tonight.”

Yes, she’d just watch where she was going, she thought with a sigh as he walked away. That was her. Always watching. Never doing. She opened Tim’s office door. “Your car’s in my way.”

He looked up with concern. “You didn’t bump it?”

“No, of course not.”

He rushed off to check on his precious baby, and Maggie followed at a slower pace, calling back her sister as she went. “He walked away from me.”

“Who, your Mr. Wrong? Did you ask him out?”

“No, I ran out of words.”

“You tell him that car horns are in the chord of F and you can’t find the words to ask him out? God, you need help.”

“I know!”

2

W
hen the alarm went off well before dawn, Jacob groaned, squelched the urge to toss the thing out his window, and rolled out of bed. He strode naked to the shower, which he cranked up to scalding.

This eighty-hour workweek shit had to stop.

After pulling on his last set of clean clothes—damn, he really needed a night at home to catch up—he headed to work, already on his cell phone with his crew, who wanted to get this job finished as badly as he did. He wanted to fly to New Orleans as scheduled in two days, hang out with his family, and possibly do the stacked blonde his brother had set him up with for New Year’s Eve.

Simple needs, really. Except there was a glitch. Christ, he hated glitches, and he had the mother of all glitches staring him in the face. He had to finish this job before anyone could leave. He’d signed a contract with Data Tech and he had two days left on that contract. Two days or he’d lose his ten percent bonus—only thanks to delay after delay, they had at least a week’s worth of work still to be done in that two days.

Not good odds, but then again, he’d faced worse. Much worse.

He left his house, skirted the jammed L.A. freeways like a pro, and was on the job before the sun had even thought about coming up. And since he had a kick-ass crew, they’d joined him without complaint.

Okay, there was complaining, but they all wanted that ten percent bonus as badly as he did, so they bitched and worked at the same time. After they finished this building, they were jumping right into another job on Fourth Street. Business was good. Actually, business was great.

So why he felt so damn restless, he really had no idea. Maybe the trip would help. He could see his mom and sister, and make sure they were doing okay in their new place. He could see his brother and catch up.

And get laid.

Yeah. All systems go on that one. After moving to New Orleans in his senior year of high school, he’d come back out to Los Angeles five years ago with his best friend and partner, Sam. They’d started out in the hole, practically having to beg, borrow, and steal jobs, but they’d managed. And then they’d gotten their first big contract, and that had led to two more, and they’d been on their way.

Then Sam had gone home for his brother’s birthday and had gotten killed in Katrina, and things hadn’t been the same for Jacob since. He’d been left with five large contracts already signed, when all he’d wanted to do was go home and wallow. In hindsight, those jobs had probably saved his sorry ass. Even if this one just might kill him. But he wanted that damn bonus. It’d help both his mother and sister pay off the mortgages on homes that no longer even existed, and it would ease their tight financial situation.

He was busy laying out some electrical lines when he heard the
click click clicking
of heels and knew it was 8:03 exactly, because at 8:03 every single morning, she appeared. Maggie Bell, his new favorite “sort of” chemist with the encyclopedia brain filled with odd facts.

She’d grown up. Filled out. And looked damn good. She wore black pumps today, her long legs covered in sheer silk, a business skirt and blouse, and since it was December and chilly, an overcoat, open and flapping behind her as she rushed along, working her cell phone, sipping her caffeine, and balancing a briefcase. She looked a little bit harried, a little bit late, and in spite of the fact that she screamed class, also just a little bit messy.

God, he loved that part. He had a feeling if the right guy came along and took that pen out from behind her ear, then slid his fingers into her hair and kissed her long and hard and wet, she’d melt. That fantasy alone had gotten him through the past two months.

As he did every single morning, he stopped whatever he was doing to watch. She didn’t disappoint. Today her honey-colored hair was piled on top of her head in what looked to be a precarious hold. She didn’t wear much makeup that he could tell, but her lips were glossed. Her eyes were covered by reflective sunglasses but he knew them to be a light blue, and that in five seconds they’d focus in on him and she’d stumble just a little. Then her mouth would tremble open in a perfect little O, and time would stop, just literally stop.