She tilted her head and sighed. “Yes. Casual. Whatever. Eight it is.” With as much dignity as she could dredge up, she walked down the street, shaking her head and muttering to herself again.

“A date. With a stranger, and an annoying one at that. I must be insane. This is all Father’s fault. If he hadn’t upset me with his ridiculous marriage idea, I’d have never stopped to confront those men. Which means I’d have never engaged in conversation with Jake, and wouldn’t be having a date with him tonight.” She stopped at the coffee shop, her original destination after she’d stormed out of her father’s office. She’d merely wanted a chance to cool off, to gain some perspective, and needed to get out of Fairchild’s stuffy offices to grab a cup of coffee.

Then she’d run into those men. And Jake.

After ordering her latte, she took the steaming brew and sat at one of the small metal tables near the window, watching the red steel structure that would someday be a new high rise. Men worked on the upper levels of those skinny beams, walking the narrow steel structure with finesse and grace. She sipped her latte and watched for awhile, wondering if one of those figures up there was Jake.

Jake Dalton. Now there was expert construction. She’d known many handsome men, men with athletic bodies owed to hours in the gym with a high-priced personal trainer.

Men who went for weekly facials and had their hair cut by the best stylists San Francisco had to offer. They even got manicures and pedicures. All phony perfection that didn’t do a thing to turn her on.

But never had she seen a man so well put together as Jake. His lean body was a result of hard hands-on labor, his tanned skin not from a booth with ultraviolet lights, but from hours spent working outside. His hair was unkempt and mussed, not perfectly combed and styled. The kind of hair that would be soft, that a woman would want to run her hands through and know that her fingers wouldn’t get stuck in some kind of styling goo.

But he was utterly and completely wrong for her. They had nothing in common.

He was more annoying than a summer fly in the house and she’d probably want to swat him by the end of their date tonight.

Unfortunately, she’d never been more attracted to a man in her entire thirty years of life.

Which was the precipitator of her father’s conversation with her this morning that had set her off in the first place.

Her advancing age, as he’d informed her. The fact she wasn’t getting any younger and hadn’t once dated a man who was worthy of merging with the Fairchild family and producing an heir.

Merging. Like anyone she’d marry would be a business deal, not a love match.

She’d like to show him a merger. Wouldn’t he just have a fit when Jake Dalton showed up at the door tonight?

That alone would make the date worthwhile.

Though it wasn’t really a date.

“I hear you got a date for tonight.”

Jake cringed when he walked through the door of the construction trailer to find Bob Dixon grinning like he’d just won the lottery. The old man never failed to find ways to annoy him.

But without Bob, God only knows what would have happened to Jake. From day one Bob had been both his mentor and fiercest persecutor, ever since Jake had left home at sixteen and lied his way onto the construction crew Bob supervised.

Back then Jake had wondered if he’d even get hired on anywhere, and if not, how he’d manage the eating and roof over his head part.

All those years alone had made Jake resourceful. Bob had taken pity on the skinny kid with no skills and trained him. Bob Dixon had been more father to Jake than his own had ever been. So he put up with the old man’s bizarre sense of humor.

“And they say women are gossips?” Jake threw his clipboard on the desk and faced the other man.

Bob laughed, a big belly laugh that fit his lumberjack-sized frame. “Men are bigger gossips than women, sometimes. So, tell me about her.”

“Not much to tell.”

Bob raised a bushy brow. “You liked her enough to ask her out.”

“What? Am I wired for sound here?”

“Nah, the guys just listened in, and then, ya know how they talk.”

“Unfortunately, yeah. I know how they talk.” Their talking was what had gotten him involved with Miss High on the Hill in the first place. Just what he didn’t need in his life right now.

His mind should have been on business—on this job which was so critical to his fledgling company. The high rise was his first huge project, and if they did well there’d be more business coming their way. Enough that Jake would have to expand and hire more people.

Which meant growth, and that’s what he aimed for. Building his business was all he ever thought about. Usually, anyway. Except at the moment his mind was occupied by a petite wildcat in lamb’s clothing.

“Heard she gave them a hard time,” Bob said, spitting tobacco juice into a nearby cup.

Jake smiled and leaned back in the chair. “Yeah, she sure did. Took them on with no fear. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

And they’d well deserved it. Idiots. Bunch of grown men leering at a beautiful woman, and then shouting at her like teenagers out for a joyride to pick up chicks.

Not that he’d behaved any better. He shook his head, amazed at his own big mouth.

Like he didn’t have enough to worry about, he’d gone and asked the little tigress out on a date. He was way out of his league with that one. But her snobbish attitude got to him.

“Just the kind of woman you need. Somebody with a little fire, maybe light one under your too-long-a-bachelor rear end.” Bob winked at him, the wrinkles around his eyes smiling.

“I don’t need a woman at all.” Women were complications that he didn’t have time for. And he especially didn’t need a woman like Lucy Fairchild. He’d spent his entire childhood listening to someone rail at him about not being good enough, about not measuring up.

His father’s constant barrage of degrading comments still lived inside him, just waiting for failure to rear its ugly head and prove his father’s words true. How he’d never amount to anything. How he was useless and stupid, and as worthless as his mother.

Even years later, despite building a successful business, those words stayed with him, haunted him. They hid inside him, not growing, but never going away. He’d spent all these years trying to prove his father wrong. He might be a blue collar worker, but he’d make a success of his life.

“Come on, Bob. You know how busy I am. The last thing I have time for is a woman.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, boy.” Bob lifted his heavy girth out of the chair, which creaked in relief at its offloaded burden. On the way past Jake’s desk, he squeezed his shoulder. Jake looked up at him. “You’ve spent a lifetime runnin’ from that ghost of your daddy. You need to put that to rest. It’s time to find a good woman who’ll appreciate what you got to offer.”

Maybe Bob was right. Jake had spent all these years learning the trade, saving his money, working toward the day he could start his own business.

And when he had, he’d worked like the devil was chasing him trying to build it up.

Now he was thirty-five years old, and if he was going to get married and have kids, he probably should get out there and find a woman.

But Lucy Fairchild certainly wasn’t going to be that woman.

“She’s not my type.”

Bob laughed and spit. “That’s what we all say. Right up until they lead us down the aisle.”

“She’s a rich career girl. You know I don’t date girls like that.” He’d never let anyone make him feel the way his father had. No, he stuck to his own kind. Girls who weren’t born into money, who wouldn’t look down on someone whose blood wasn’t blue like theirs.

“Hey, you’re the one who asked her for a date. I guess you’re stuck.” True enough. Talk about a disaster. She’d probably expect some fancy, expensive restaurant that wasn’t in his budget. Too bad. She’d have to make do with the kind of place he liked to eat.

“Lemme ask you a question,” Bob said.

“Shoot.”

“If this woman’s such a snob, if she stands for everything you hate, why did you ask her to go out with you?”

“Hell if I know.”

But he did know. After Bob left the trailer, Jake sat at his desk and propped his feet up.

He knew exactly why. Because she was gorgeous. The first thing he’d noticed were her long legs and curvy body. Then her wild, curly hair that flew everywhere around her face, the tawny strands glittering in the sunlight.

Plus, she was interested in him. He’d been with enough women to recognize when one was attracted to him. Her sea green eyes had studied him, held him, measuring, assessing.

Wanting.

He knew all about want. There were a lot of things he wanted in life. Some he’d managed to get. Some he hadn’t gotten yet, and some he never would.

Not a betting man, he’d still lay a wager that he could get Lucy Fairchild. Maybe not permanently, but at least for a while. Which was all he had time or inclination for, anyway. Going out and having some fun with a woman was great. A woman who wanted anything more from him could look elsewhere. He didn’t know what Lucy wanted.

Probably nothing. She didn’t even really want to go out with him in the first place, any more than he’d wanted to go out with her.

The fact she wore a painful vulnerability on her face like some women wore hot red lipstick wasn’t his problem. If he spotted something in her akin to the aching loneliness he occasionally acknowledged within himself, then tough. He wasn’t her savior.

As it was, he could barely save himself.

She represented nothing but a challenge. And he liked challenges.

So, he’d show up at her doorstep tonight and see what happened. Take the rich girl out and show her a slice of life she’d probably never seen before. If nothing else, the night should be interesting.

Chapter Two

Lucy glanced at the grandfather clock in the front hallway and wrung her hands, mentally reviewing the speech she’d planned to give Jake when he showed up.

She wasn’t going out with him. Making that date with him today had been a huge mistake, and one she chalked up to a mind too preoccupied by her father’s notion of marrying her off. She hadn’t had her wits about her and stupidly agreed to a date she now had no intention of keeping.

It would be a waste of both their time. They had nothing in common, and she had too many other things on her mind to dally with a construction worker. No matter how sexy said construction worker was.

She tamped down butterflies that felt like the San Francisco 49ers defensive line ramming the wall of her stomach. How silly. As a courtroom lawyer, she had argued plenty of cases in front of a judge, jury and audience. The guys at the law firm referred to her as Fearless Fairchild.

So why was she nervous about giving the brush-off to one man? Why was she relentlessly pacing the front hall, scuffing her tennis shoes against the polished marble entryway? And why had she dressed this way, in a pair of dark jeans, a white pullover sweater and tennis shoes? This wasn’t her usual clothing choice for a first date.

A date she had no intention of going on.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered, then turned into the library and flopped into one of the burgundy leather chairs next to the fireplace. The scents of wood oil, old books and her father’s cherry pipe always calmed her.

She lifted her feet and propped them on the matching ottoman, tapping her fingers against the well-cushioned arm of the chair. The library was one of her favorite rooms.

Not only did it house all the classic books she’d loved to read as a child, but its dark, heavy paneling and scattering of comfortable chairs reminded her of her college literature department’s main hall.

She’d spent hours in there, reading and doing homework, always feeling a sense of home in the room. Plus, she’d loved the discussions they’d held there. From Chaucer to Shakespeare to the poetry of Keats and Thomas, she’d inhaled the classics.

But she’d only minored in English. Her major had been pre law, where she was, in her father’s often repeated words, destined to follow in her family’s footsteps and continue the great works of her ancestors, the Fairchilds.

Her father’s lecture still rung in her ears after all these years. Duty. Family. Law.

At times like this Lucy wished her mother hadn’t died when she was only six.

Sometimes she yearned to have someone she could talk girl things with. She certainly couldn’t bring her personal problems to her father. She could only imagine the horrified look on her father’s face should she ever ask him for dating advice.

She sighed. At least her turmoil over family and business had momentarily taken her mind off preparing her summary rejection of Jake Dalton.

The doorbell rang and her gaze shot to the mantle clock. She was impressed that he was actually on time. She rose, dreading the way she was going to hurt his feelings, but knowing it was a necessity.

Lucy rounded the corner and gasped. Wonderful. Her father had gotten to the door first and was currently engaged in conversation with Jake. Like she needed this complication. She could have sworn her father said he had a late meeting this evening.

What an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.

“I’m certain you must have the wrong house.” Raymond Fairchild stood stiffly at the door, no doubt mere seconds away from slamming it in Jake’s face.

“Not the wrong house,” Jake said. “Lucy wrote it on her card.” She peeked around the library doorway and spied Jake handing her business card to her father, a wicked smile on his face. Jake wore jeans—nice, dark clean ones, and a polo shirt that hugged his broad shoulders and showed off his biceps. She sucked in a breath and let it out again on a sigh. What an incredibly handsome man.