“Hey!” Sean leaned out and reclaimed his phone. “I’m setting up a meeting for later.”
“How about instead you pay attention to this one?” Rafe countered.
“Fine. I’m listening. Give me my phone.”
Rafe tossed it over, then turned his gaze to Lucas. “So?” Rafe asked. “You know anything about Katie Charles?”
“Name sounds familiar. Who is she?”
“Customer,” Rafe said, picking up his beer and leaning back in the Adirondack chair. “We’re redoing her kitchen.”
“Good for us.” Sean looked at him. “So what’s bugging you about her?”
Good question. Rafe shouldn’t have cared what Katie Charles thought of the King family. What did it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Still, ever since leaving Katie’s house earlier, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. And it wasn’t just the flash of heat he felt when he was around her that was bugging her. She was pretty, smart, and successful, and she hated the Kings. What was up with that?
“Katie Charles,” Lucas was muttering to himself. “Katie Charles. Kitchen. Cookies.” He grinned and said, “That’s it. Katie’s Kookies. She’s building a real name for herself. She’s sort of a cottage industry at the moment, but people are talking about her.”
“What people?” Rafe asked, frowning. “I’ve never heard of her before.”
Sean snorted. “Why would you? You’re practically a hermit. To hear about anything you’d have to actually talk to someone. You know, someone who isn’t us.”
“I’m not a hermit.”
“God knows I hate to admit Sean’s right. About anything. But he’s got a point,” Lucas said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “You keep yourself shut up in that penthouse of yours most of the time. Hell, I’m willing to bet the only people you’ve actually talked to since last week’s meeting are the room service operator and the crew you worked with today.”
Rafe scowled at Lucas, but only because he didn’t have an argument for the truth. He didn’t have time to date every model in the known universe like Sean. And he had no interest in the corporate world of movers and shakers like Lucas. What the hell else was he supposed to do with his time?
“Oh, yeah,” Sean said with a grin. “I forgot about that bet you made. How’s it going, being back on a job site?”
“Not bad,” Rafe admitted. Actually, he’d enjoyed himself more than he had expected. Being on a site with hardworking guys who didn’t know he was their boss had been…fun. And there was the added plus of being around a woman who made his body tight and his brain fuzz out. Until, of course, Katie had confessed that she hated the King family.
“So,” Sean asked, “if you had such a good time, why do you look like you want to bite through a box of nails?”
“You do look more annoyed than usual,” Lucas said with a shrug. “What’s up? And what’s it got to do with Katie Charles?”
“Neither of you knows her?”
Sean and Lucas looked at each other and shrugged. “Nope.”
“Somebody does.”
“Somebody knows everybody,” Lucas pointed out.
“Yeah, but the somebody who knows Katie is a King.”
Sean snorted. “Doesn’t narrow the field down by much.”
“True.” Hell, there were so many King cousins in California, they could probably start their own county.
“What’s the deal?” Lucas picked up his beer, leaned back in his chair and waited. “Why’s she bothering you?”
“Because,” Rafe told him, standing up to walk to the balcony railing, “she hates the Kings.”
“Hates us?” Sean laughed. “Impossible. Women love King men.”
“That’s completely true,” Lucas said with a self-satisfied smile.
“Usually, maybe,” Rafe said, his gaze sweeping across the froth of waves on the darkening ocean. Although his ex-wife would probably argue that point. “But this woman doesn’t. Hell she barely could say the word King without shuddering.”
“So why’d she hire us if she hates us so much?”
He turned to look at Sean. “Our company’s reputation, she says. But she’s not happy about it.”
“And you think somebody in the family turned her against all Kings?” Lucas asked.
“What else could it be?” Rafe looked at him and shrugged.
“The real question here is,” Sean said quietly, “why do you care?”
“That is a good question.” Lucas looked at Rafe and waited.
Too good, Rafe thought. Hell, he didn’t know why he cared, either. God knew, he didn’t want to. He’d been down this road before and he’d already learned that not only didn’t he know how to love, but according to his ex-wife, he was actually incapable of it.
So why bother with romancing a woman when you knew going in it was doomed to fail? No, he kept his relationships easy. Uncomplicated. A few hours of recreational sex and no strings attached.
Better for everyone when the rules were clear.
Yet, there was Katie.
She stirred him up in a way he’d never known before, though damned if he’d admit that to anyone else. Hard enough to get himself to acknowledge it.
“Yeah, it is a good question,” Rafe muttered. “Too bad I don’t have an answer.”
Katie was getting used to the noise, the dust, the confusion and the presence of strangers in her house. One week and she could barely remember what quiet was like. Or privacy. Or being able to move around her kitchen to the sounds of late-night radio.
Now, her kitchen was an empty shell of a room. She glanced out one of the wide windows into the backyard and sighed. There was a small trailer parked on her grass, its doors wide open, revealing tools and equipment enough to build four kitchens.
Pickup trucks belonging to Steve, Arturo and Rafe were also parked on her lawn and the piles of her discarded kitchen were getting bigger. Broken linoleum, old pipes, her sink—a beautiful, cast iron relic—lay tilted atop one of the mountains of trash and just for a second, Katie felt a twinge of panic.
This had all seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now though, she had to wonder if she’d been crazy. What if the new kitchen wasn’t as good as the old? What if her new stove didn’t cook as reliably? Where would she ever find another sink so wide and deep? What if her business went belly up and she’d spent her savings on a kitchen she wouldn’t be able to afford?