My heart was in my throat. Incapable of speaking, I simply stared back at him like a mindless idiot.
“Obviously you didn’t review my application,” he said, still looming over me. He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “If you had, you’d know a few things about me. Because you didn’t and you don’t, I’ll hit the highlights. I was born and raised here. I have nearly fifteen years of construction experience. Ten of them were spent overseeing the construction of homes that would make this ugly son of a bitch look like an Italian cracker box. Based on my experience, I’d suggest spending a little less than a hundred grand on flooring. It would make the home appeal to a wider market, and it would only cut your commission by a few percent. If you’re too stubborn, too money hungry, or just too goddamned blind to see the benefit in making that change, leave it the way it is.” He tossed the datasheet in front of me. “I’m sure you’ll sit on it for another hundred and eighty days.”
He was Alpha with a capital A.
To minimize my discomfort from my wet panties, I wagged my knees back and forth and hoped he couldn’t sense my state of arousal.
I gave him an apologetic look. “You’re telling me that I can get that floor done for less than a hundred grand?”
“Between fifty-five and ninety, depending on what you want to put in place of what’s there. It won’t be the quality of the rest of the home’s interior finishes, but it’ll get the home sold, and that’s what matters.”
I sold homes. I didn’t build them. I had no idea what real-world construction costs were. When I’d asked for previous clients, the prices I’d been given were ten times what he was suggesting.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He arched an argumentative eyebrow.
I swallowed a lump of humility. “Can you get me an exact quote?”
“I can get you a damned good one,” he replied. “As long as you’re not opposed to having a few tattooed bikers in there doing the work. Before you ask and piss me off even more, yes, they’re licensed.”
Feeling defeated—and horny as hell—I glanced around the room. Three wide-eyed women and one stern-looking man were staring back at me.
“Does anyone else have something to add?” I asked.
The meek silence that followed was deafening. If no one had anything constructive to say, I desperately needed to change my panties. I closed the folder.
“Meeting adjourned,” I squeaked.
Chapter Five
Devin
Herb Riley was a family friend. Following my father’s death, he and I became rather close. He insisted at the time of my incarceration that I list his home as my residence. Unlike state prison, federal prison requires approval of an inmate’s proposed residence prior to them being released. If the residence is preapproved, the transition from incarceration to freedom is seamless.
A former brigadier general in the US Army and a decorated combat veteran, Herb wore his gray hair in a crew cut, woke every morning at four thirty, and briskly walked the neighborhood’s four-mile footpath prior to breakfast each day. He was opinionated, argumentative, and entertaining. One thing he wasn’t?
Delicate.
“First she talks to you like you’re some punk kid,” Herb said. “Then she spends the next week and a half parading by your desk in tight dresses while giving you the stink eye?”
“Pretty much,” I replied. “I keep waiting for her to apologize, but she hasn’t. Not yet, at least.”
“If she treated me like that, I’d have told that bitch to go fuck a goat.”
“Just dive right into a bestiality conversation right there in the meeting?” I chuckled at the thought. “In front of all those other women? That would have gotten me some points for originality, I suppose.”
He gave me a contemptuous look. “I was being facetious.”
I raised my cup in a toast. “I was being a smartass.”
“Comes natural, doesn’t it?”
“More or less.”
“Your dad was a smartass,” he said, laughing as if recalling my father’s lack of a filter. “Mouth got him in trouble on numerous occasions. Son of a bitch had a temper, too. When he built that house for me on the south end of town, he punched the stonemason right in the cocksucker. Dropped him like a sack of shit, right there in the kitchen.”
Following a long bout with breast cancer, my mother passed away when I was in high school. My father died of a heart attack fourteen years later, nearly three years before I went to prison. Losing him caused a downward spiral of my emotions. My life soon followed. Hoping to save myself from complete destruction, I joined a motorcycle club.
Being in the club gave me a sense of belonging. The men I rode with were the siblings I never had. The MC soon became my family—one I was prohibited from returning to until my federally mandated supervised release was over.
“My father’s high blood pressure cost him his life,” I said. “I’m trying to keep my temper at bay.”
His wiry brows pinched together. “Biting your lower lip doesn’t change your DNA. You are who you are.”
He was right. Despite my desire to refrain from losing my temper, it seemed to eventually rear its ugly head. I’d used sex as an outlet in the past, but my options in that respect were currently nonexistent.
I carried my plate to the sink. “While we’re on that subject, do you know any of the other girls who work for Teddi?”
“Are we done talking about that inconsiderate bitch you’re working for?”
I rinsed my plate and put it in the dishwasher before turning to face him. “For now, I suppose.”
“You want to know if I know one of those gals?”
“Katelyn Winslow. She’s one of the agents. She goes by Kate.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Winslow?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
He lowered his gaze. He rubbed the backs of his sun-spotted hands. “Can’t say I do. Why?”
“The guy she was seeing punched her in the face. Guess he lives here in—”
He spun around. “He did what?”
I didn’t like it any more than he did. “You heard me,” I said, taking my seat. “He smacked her in the face.”
“Sounds like there’s someone besides your employer who needs to be taught a lesson on the difference between right and wrong. If I find that cocksucker, I tell you what. I’ll butt-fuck him.”
“You’re out of your mind, old man.”
He glared. “According to who?”
“Me.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re going to fuck a guy in the butt?”
“Sounds like that prick needs it.”
“While you’re talking about sticking your cock in a guy’s poop shoot, your wife’s turning over in her grave.”
“Butt-fucking isn’t sexual,” he argued. “You do it because you’re angry at the recipient, not because you’re attracted to them.”
When Teddi snapped at me during the meeting, I wanted to bend her over the table and fuck her like she owed me money. Since then, I’d thought about it on numerous occasions for no other reason than to teach her a lesson about how she treated me.