Miranda rolled off him, and Jack moaned as he straightened out his clothes and pried himself from bed. She swiped back to the images of the building. Something she was far more comfortable with. “Bring your computer back with you. I want to see your other projects.”
He tossed a smile over his shoulder on the way out. Miranda rolled to her back and closed her eyes. She needed to end this. She really needed to end this. For both of them. He was starting to look at her with that dreamy quality that usually made her want to run. Her subconscious was betraying her with fantasies of a family of her own. The fact that she wanted to stay right here, tangled in high-thread-count sheets with this amazing man, was one hell of a red flag.
When Jack thanked whoever had brought the meal and closed the hotel room door, Miranda forced herself upright, grabbed one of Jack’s dress shirts from the back of a chair, and slid it on. It smelled like him, felt like him. She fastened three of the middle buttons, then brought the fabric to her face and inhaled, wishing she could memorize all this. Because soon, it would all be over.
Just as the loss began to register, he appeared with a tray of food in one hand and a laptop in the other. “Energy,” he said, indicating the food, then gestured with the laptop. “And a little downtime entertainment.”
12
Escaping Gypsy had been easier than Miranda had expected. For the last three days, she’d gone to the Warrior Homes site directly from her Pinnacle day job to inch the project along. By the time she’d returned home a little past eight and taken a shower, Gypsy was passed out on the sofa, which led to the likelihood of her job as a club manager being yet another lie.
Now, as Miranda sauntered toward her truck in the parking lot of Pinnacle’s construction site along with four of her coworkers, she spotted Gypsy sitting on the open tailgate and swore under her breath.
Miranda could easily deal with confrontation on a professional level. Even on a personal level if that conflict involved facts. Emotions were a whole different animal. One she’d rather leave caged. But it looked like the tiger had escaped Miranda’s mental zoo.
“Who’s the babe at your truck?” Michael was one of the welders on Miranda’s team. He was six and a half feet of twenty-eight-year-old muscle with a nice face and a killer smile. A literal magnet for women.
“My sister.” Miranda added a warning to her answer and met every man’s gaze in turn. “Don’t even think about it.”
That was all she had to say for all of them to scatter to their vehicles with mumbled goodbyes.
Gypsy was swinging her feet and smiling as Miranda approached. An intense flashback struck Miranda. One of Gypsy as a young girl, sitting on a park swing, doing exactly what she was doing now. The realization of how much they’d lost over the past twenty years lodged a stone of regret in her gut.
She stopped at the bumper of her truck, hoping Gypsy had come to tell her the visit was over, and she was moving on with her life. “Hey.” She pointed to the gray powder in the bed and made a mental note to bitch at Alex for letting his guys leave it dirty after they’d used it. “That looks like cement powder. You don’t want that on your clothes.”
Gypsy didn’t seem to care. She gave the truck bed a cursory glance and shrugged. Her gaze drifted to the men as they continued off the jobsite in small groups. “You sure do work with some serious hotties.”
“You think they’re hot because you don’t work with them. If you had to listen to their guy talk all day, you’d never date again.”
Gypsy laughed. “Probably true.”
Miranda hefted her equipment over the side of the truck and into the bed. “Tired of the couch? Headed out of town?”
Gypsy’s legs stopped swinging. She braced her hands against the edge of the tailgate. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that. Thought I could catch you here before you went to your next project.”
This wasn’t what Miranda wanted to hear. Before she could answer, her cell dinged with a message. Miranda pulled her phone from her back pocket, hoping for a text from Jack, but it was Pete, the vet who watched the Warrior Homes work site during the day asking about access for a roofing team.
She tapped out a return message, keenly aware she hadn’t heard from Jack in over twenty-four hours. They’d been texting from the moment he left. Nothing heavy, just flirty snippets that reinforced their fiery attraction and kept her thinking about him. But his texts had dropped off abruptly, and Miranda wondered if someone else had caught his interest. Another architect or a designer or a project director. Someone with an education, who could relate to him on his Ivy League level.
Her insecurities flared whenever she let her mind wander too far. Insecurities that didn’t rise to the surface with other men. She wasn’t sure if that was because she cared more for Jack or because he simply triggered her in ways other men didn’t. Whatever the reason, she didn’t see it as a good sign.
Miranda pushed her phone into her pocket and looked at Gypsy. “What’s up?”
Her sister lifted her chin toward the phone. “Your new guy?”
“I don’t have a new guy.” Miranda leaned her hip against the truck. “You’re here because…?”
“Because you’re so damn good at avoiding me.”
“You go to bed at eight o’clock. I don’t even have to try.” Despite telling herself to keep her distance, she asked, “Do you feel okay? Are you coming down with something?”
“Oh no, I’m fine. I think I’m just worn out from the stress.”
Miranda crossed her arms and waited. If Gypsy didn’t jump at the chance to tell Miranda she was leaving, then she was probably here to tell her she was staying. And Miranda had a lot of mixed feelings about that.
“How’s your veterans project going?” Gypsy asked.
“Good, but we’re running out of welding wire. We might stall on the last group of homes to complete the community until we find a donor.”