Truth and Humility (4 page)

His heart flipped a little when those brown eyes flashed.  It made him think of Derek, how things used to be.  The friendship they shared another lifetime ago...years before that Bennett bastard murdered his fiancé.

“I can handle myself,” Danny responded with a hint of temper. 
And I can handle you.
  Her visual message had gotten across because he grinned at her.  Once again, she nearly gurgled like a star-struck groupie.  He had a commanding presence that was extremely sexy coupled with the good looks.  Tall, broad-shouldered, tanned and macho with gorgeous black eyes that regarded her beneath full black eyebrows.  A small hooked scar beside the left one kept him from being too pretty, which added to the appeal.  How did he get it, she wondered, before her eyes moved down the straight nose and charming laugh-lines.  Something about the short, corded necklace he wore enhanced the tough exterior and she imagined that the even-white smile could be quite heartbreaking when he wanted it to be.

“We’ll see,” he replied, his voice serving up a challenge.  “I’ll take it from here, Tom.”

“Sure thing.”  Tom’s retreat was a bit reluctant and unsure.

Danny noticed, fought the urge to swallow nervously now that she’d been turned over to this brute.  Not even an introduction.  Was she expected to earn that, too?

The work site was full of crap and materials gutted from the inside of old factories and office buildings.  Anything valuable like copper, stainless steel, electric motors or circuit boards would be separated and recycled, the rest hauled to the dump.  So far, she’d only been exposed to the salvage yard and it’s meager crew, despite the fact she’d applied for – and gotten, she thought – the position with the demolition teams.

The first whistle blew when the handful of workers noticed her slender curves as she walked by.  Production came to a halt.  Danny would have been amused, but not as she followed in the wake of Conan the Destroyer.  The whistles quickly turned to catcalls, then to blatant attempts to get her attention.  The one time she spared a glance, she was met with a lewd gesture of which she promptly answered with one of her own.  Her middle finger (backed by an impertinent smile) elicited laughter and “ooooooh’s” and an “Any time, baby!” but she knew their attentions would mellow once they got to know her.

“Hey look, she brought her dolly’s tools.”

“You made a wrong turn, sweetheart, Toys-n-More is
that
way!”

The teasing comments launched at her rapched atfrom almost every direction rolled off her back with ease.  Her tools were some of her most prized possessions and could easily out-screw, out-hammer, and out-drill anything those men carried on their hips.  They’d learn that soon enough.

The man she followed stopped in front of a vintage water tower that flanked the far end of the site.  It was a gorgeous structure, the round wooden storage tank resting on a square platform that was decorated with an ornate guardrail.  It looked as if it had been built with the house sometime in the 1800’s, but the wood had been treated in order to preserve it against the elements.  Obviously, it was no longer in use.  A protective chain link fence surrounded it like an old museum piece – a relic from a better time when two families lived as one.

“We’ll start with something simple.”

Danny wanted to pinch Conan’s head off.

Austin sensed her anger and all but fed it.  “This water tower has been here since the house was built.”

“You want to tear it down?” she asked incredulously, her hand keeping her hardhat firmly in place as she gazed up at the structure.

“Of course not.  The Cahills have kept it preserved, but the name plaque needs to be restored.  Now, the steps aren’t stable, so you’ll have to wait for Stan to bring the cherry picker around.  Think you can handle that?”  He ate up her steely glare like candy.  This was going to be
too
easy.

“Is the rest of the structure stable?”

“As far as I know.”

“I don’t really need a cherry picker.”

Yep.  Simple.  Hands on hips, he glanced pointedly at her with a look that dared her to disobey.  “Wait for Stan, princess.  He can give you a hand.”  He turned to leave her there, but sized her up one last time before doing so.

Danny knew that sexist comment was meant to test her, to humiliate her.  She watched him retreat back to his trailer of electrical cabinets.  Despite the look of disdain, she noticed the man had one fine ass as he strutted across the yard in his tight jeans and work boots.  Two hundred pounds of solid muscle mass.  And those black eyes had been so intense, serious as a stroke of bad luck and ready to rip her apart if she so much as sneezed like a girl.

Who was this guy?  What position did he hold at Cahill Salvage?  Because if she was taking this kind of crap from a grunt, she’d have to come up with some riotous payback.

The minutes ticked by.  Unaccustomed to sitting down on the job, Danny paced in the dirt for a while then made a few passes around the base of the tower to eyeball it’s simple X braced design.  It stood approximately eighteen feet, roughly two stories high, and there was no sign of wood rot or hardware rust.   The thing was sound.

Still no cherry p8"> no cheicker or babysitter named Stan.  Didn’t her résumé state her eighteen years of experience?   Tom must have blown it off as a typo once he took his first look at her.

She checked her watch.  Twenty minutes had passed.  This was ridiculous.  As she entertained the idea of scaling the tower – babysitter Stan be damned – she walked to the fenced-off border of the site behind the tower.  That chain link fence was there to prevent anyone from falling down the steep wooded embankment below, but she wondered how well it would hold up against a runaway forklift.  With a sigh, she scanned the grounds one more time for Stan and his cherry picker.  Nothing.

“Screw Stan,” she muttered, and took her first damning step.

The anticipated sound of crashing debris reached Austin’s ears like sweet music.  Not bothering with a visual confirmation, he hopped down from the trailer, shrugged back into his white undershirt and ambled toward the water tower.  His one regret was missing the show.  But the look of abject misery on Danny Bennett’s delicate face – her flyaway hair devoid of hardhat – was absolutely priceless.  Well worth the sacrifice of the clay antique that had graced the water tower for over a century.

“Mizz Connor!”

Danny’s blood went cold.  Still clutching broken pieces of weathered clay in her hands, she peered sheepishly over the side of the platform.  The shadow beneath his hardhat masked the look she knew was there.  “I - I didn’t touch it, I swear!  It just…
fell!”

It was one of the most humiliating moments of her life.  Her walk of shame.  Witnessed by the same meatheads that had teased her so mercilessly before.

Forced to follow the brute to whatever unforeseen horrors awaited her in the offices, Danny was positive she was about to be fired on her first day.  She had more skill in her pinky finger than anyone here on his best day.  She was used to giving orders, not taking them, especially from sexist pigs.  This went about as far against her grain as a drag queen at a Republican convention.

They reached the walkway and entered the door to the right of the commons room.  As they walked through the first office toward another in the back, Conan what’s-his-name delivered instructions to a coarse looking woman at the front desk.

“Sue, I’m going to need the appraisal for the water tower and a copy of Dan Connor’s application.”

“Sure, boss.”

Boss?
  Great.  Now she was certain this man was no grunt.

A security monitor behind Sue’s desk confirmed she’d probably been observed weighing her sanity at the gate earlier that morning.

“Have a seat, Miss Connor.”

The door clicked shut behind him and Danny’s blood rushed to her ears as she slowly lowered herself to a swivel chair facing a very nice, very organized mahogany desk.  Never having been in this position, she didn’t quite know what to expect.  And then all thought process came to a stuttering halt as soon as she spied the nameplate.

If Austin had any doubts Danny Connor was a Bennett, they were dispelled as soon as he noticed the color leave her face.  He picked up the nameplate that had her locked up, looked at it disinterestedly then returned it to the desk in a place she could see it better.  “You know…it just occurred to me I never introduced myself.”

Austin Cahill

Chief Operating Officer, Safety Director

Her golden brown eyes stuck to the plate for a moment, then slowly traveled upward to meet his.  “Austin Cahill,” she said with a nervous swallow.

“Danny Bennett.”  His gaze never strayed, drinking in every emotion that crossed her stricken features.  “Welcome to hell.”

It was the worst possible scenario for a Bennett...and she was living it.  Every nerve ending went up in smoke when she realized she’d walked right into a trap of some kind.  The “grunt” was a Cahill.  And he knew who she was before she walked through the gates.  What was he even doing working in the salvage yard?  Cahills had a reputed aversion to physical labor,
especially
in a dirty, repugnant, glorified garbage dump.  Their strength was their wealth, their ability to pay others to do the work, to do the thinking.  It’s what made Cahill Corporation the booming business it was today.  Just a few years ago, their board of CEO’s decided to add explosive demolition to their repertoire of services, doubling their reported annual revenue.  And all they had to do was order it.  Snap their fingers.

The Bennetts, on the other hand, earned their own money with hard work and skill, skills that had been handed down through the generations since Niles Bennett started tearing down buildings in the mid 1800’s.  Their strength was in their numbers and in their ability to achieve the impossible.  They were experts, the hardest of workers, and through time they grew quite a large business.  Not nearly as large as the Cahill’s, but large enough to hire over seventy outside employees in order to keep up with the steady flow of contracts; however, each team was always supervised by a Bennett.  The family was always involved, always in charge.

Bennetts got their hands dirty and loved every minute of it.  And now they, too, had just added a new department to their rnteepertoire of services.  At Derek’s urging (because Danny knew her father would deny her if she asked) their father agreed that there was an increasing need for welding and repair work.  So off to school she and Derek went to become certified in just about every kind of welding that was available.  Finally, she was creating things, fixing things, building things.  And she fell in love with it.  Fell in love with school, her restless brain thirsting for knowledge, for the chance to get a degree and build things for a living.  Suddenly, the new welding and repair department wasn’t enough for her.  She needed more until her father accused her of never appreciating what he’d already done for her.

I can’t help but think it’s because you’re a female, Danielle,
he’d said
.  You’re brothers are all about the business.  You are all about you!

But that wasn’t it at all.  Was it so wrong to wish to broaden her horizons?  Just because her eight brothers were satisfied with their lives, did that mean she must be shackled to the sledgehammer for the rest of hers?

As Danny thought of this, she was also forced to consider her current predicament.  Her attempt to broaden her horizons had landed her in the worst place a Bennett could imagine…at the mercy of a Cahill.

She covered her eyes with her knuckles and groaned.  “He works.  Crap.”

Austin raised a brow.  “Something you weren’t counting on?”  No answer for that one.  “You wanna hear something ironic?”  Her hands plopped down and she glared.  “You can thank your brother for that.  Always admired your family’s work ethic.”

Her voice was sharp as knives.  “Why didn’t you just tear up my application?”

Austin sat down behind the desk and opened a drawer.  “You mean the application you loaded up with misinformation?”

“I didn’t lie about anything, I just didn’t…
complete
it.”