Night Heat (Forged of Steele 2)

Bas turned to follow Sadie up the stairs to his room. Once he got settled he would check out what was happening over at Mason Construction.

The nail was taking a beating as Jocelyn hammered it relentlessly into the wood. A part of her wished it was Sebastian Steele’s head.

If there was one thing she didn’t need it was aggravation, and the man had gotten next to her like nobody’s business. The nerve of him, thinking he could just waltz in and take over. Mason Construction was now hers and she would run things the way she saw fit, regardless of what he had to say.

It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what she was doing. Heck, she’d been reading blueprints practically since she could walk. Growing up, she’d spent hours at every job site with her father, learning each aspect of a builder’s trade, from the ordering of the supplies to the overseeing of each structural design. While many construction workers had their specialties, Jocelyn was truly a jack-of-all-trades. She handled a paintbrush just as expertly as any artist; she could fit a pipe together as well as any master plumber, and she worked with brick, stone, concrete block and structural tile with the skill of an accomplished mason. For years she had worked alongside her dad and his crew as a fill-in, doing whatever task was needed and learning just about everything she could, before school, after school, weekends, whenever. She practically lived at Mason Construction except for those summer months when Jim Mason would ship her and Leah off to Aunt Susan in Florida.

Their mother’s sister was as refined and proper as the words could get, and had been determined to pass those characteristics on to her nieces no matter how much they’d balked at the idea. After a while, Jocelyn and Leah discovered it was easier to just go with the flow and accept all the lacy, frilly dresses, the tea parties and the countless hours of walking with a book on their heads to perfect that graceful walk.

Now that she was a grown woman, Jocelyn appreciated her aunt’s teachings and guidance to a degree she’d never thought would be possible as a young girl. She was glad she’d had the chance to express her gratitude to Aunt Susan before she died a few years ago. Jocelyn thought about the deaths of the three people who’d meant a lot to her—her mother when she’d turned sixteen; her Aunt Susan around six years ago and now her dad.

“If you keep beating that nail to death you’ll whack it all the way through and bust up that board. Who ruffled your feathers today?”

Expelling a deep breath and clutching the hammer more tightly in her hand, Jocelyn decided Reese was right. There was no reason to take out her anger and frustration on a piece of wood.

She glanced up at him and knew he was waiting for an answer. It hadn’t taken much for the men who worked for her to tell she was in a relatively foul mood, which is the reason they had been avoiding her. Reese had been at lunch when she’d arrived. Evidently the guys hadn’t wasted any time giving him fair warning. Too bad all those deeply ingrained proper manners and stiff rules Aunt Susan had taught her weren’t working for her today, especially the one about a lady not letting a man get on her last nerve, at least not to the point of showing it. A lady kept her cool and handled a man with charm and diplomatic grace.

Today, thanks to Sebastian Steele, all she could say to that notion was hogwash!

After leaving Jason’s office she had gone home long enough to change into her work clothes, then joined the men at this particular jobsite. The only reason she hadn’t been here at the crack of dawn like they had was because the mayor had requested her presence at a meeting in his office at eight. He liked being kept abreast of the plans for the city’s Founder’s Day Celebration next month, and since she was this year’s chairperson, she had brought him up to date over bagels and coffee. And then there had been that ten o’clock meeting in Jason’s office, the one she wished she could delete from her mind.

Jocelyn put the hammer down, deciding at the moment it was rather dangerous in her hand. “If you must know, Sebastian Steele is the person who ruffled my feathers. He has to be the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”

Reese smirked at her. “In other words, he wouldn’t let you have your way with anything.”