So Wright (The Wrights 1)

She looked around the inside of the metal shipping container. It didn’t matter whether or not her welds were pretty for this project. They would be covered in insulation, drywall, and siding as the container transitioned into a home, but she was a perfectionist, and she took a great deal of pride in her work.

She couldn’t say it was even the swerving weld that really bothered her. It was more about how Gypsy’s pop-up routine had cast a shadow on Miranda’s amazing night with Jack.

She’d never stayed the entire night with a man. Not even when she’d been young and she’d classified a guy as her boyfriend. She’d always needed her space. Her independence. After caring for others nearly her entire life, Miranda was done with commitment and obligations.

Jack Jonathan Taylor of Manhattan might be a very, very different kind of man for Miranda, but he was still a man.

“Damn, what a night,” she murmured. He’d turned into so much more than a nervous, conservative city slicker when she’d gotten him into bed. He’d been funny, sarcastic, and irreverent. Confident and erotic. He turned her into butter on a hot skillet one minute, a fireworks display the next.

She rarely thought about a man after she walked away from a hookup, yet she couldn’t get Jack off her mind. And even though she wanted to see him again, wanted to go on the date he’d begged for all night, wanted to end up in his bed again, she knew there was no point. All she had to do was look beyond another night with him to know all possibilities of something more shattered like glass. Right along with her heart if she invested herself.

Thinking about something more was as realistic as a pig with wings.

She tapped the weld with her hammer, and the oxidation chipped free, revealing a shiny silver jagged line. She shouldn’t have been listening to music while she worked. On a large jobsite, she usually didn’t. But when she was working alone, music fueled her creativity, kept her focused. So much for trying to keep her mind off the man who’d rocked her world or the sister who’d scarred it. “Hashtag fail.”

Marty paused at the container’s doors and propped a forearm on the metal side above his head. He was one of the fittest older men she knew. And that said something, considering the number of hardworking men she worked with. He stood just under six feet and weighed in at one hundred and eighty pounds of muscle, which included his prosthetic leg earned in the Gulf War. His hair was long, wavy, and mostly gray. He tamed the mane with a tie at his neck or a baseball hat. Today, he used both.

Miranda rolled to her butt and leaned against the nearest wall. “We’re almost out of welding wire. We’re so close to being done, I’d hate to lose momentum. We’ve got a lot of vets depending on us to keep that completion date. Do you have any donors lined up?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but I’ll ask up the food chain.” The look on his face told her there was little chance of an investor popping up to cover the cost of as much metal as they’d need to finish the welding portion of these last thirty homes.

She picked up her coffee and groaned when she felt how little there was left. “If you head into town, would you get me another one of these?”

Marty wore cargo shorts today, and his carbon fiber prosthetic, complete with a blade foot, looked sleek and modern beside his frumpier, battered running shoe and black tube sock pulled up to midcalf.

“Didn’t think a city boy would keep you up to all hours,” he said.

Miranda finished off the last swallow of coffee and grinned. “Neither did I.”

“They do say New York never sleeps.”

She laughed. “They’d be right.”

“How’s he different?”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ve never known you to turn a hookup into an overnighter. There must be something special about him.”

Discomfort niggled up her spine. To get Marty off the topic, she went bold. “Just great in bed, I guess.”

Marty crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the metal wall. A sure sign he wouldn’t be going anywhere until she gave him more.

She was caught between telling Marty to fuck off and gushing about Jack. Miranda decided on a middle-of-the-road attitude. “He’s here helping his family out. He came into the bar, and we hit it off. There’s no drama to tell.”

When she didn’t go on, he said, “And?”

“And…I don’t know,” she said honestly, unable to pin down the details of their chemistry. “He’s…sweet.”

Marty laughed. “When have you ever gone for a sweet guy?”

Never. She was too edgy for a beta. But Jack was no beta. He might have appeared that way in the beginning, but all that changed in the bedroom. “He’s…” She struggled to describe him in a way that would make sense of these lingering feelings. “He’s quick and funny. He cares about his family, didn’t run when I brushed him off—like three times. He’s handsome, he’s got a great body, and he knows how to use it.” Oh, did he know how to use it. “What more could a girl want?”

“Are you asking or stating?”

She gave him a look.

“When are you seeing him again?”