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When my voice trailed off, he crossed his arms over his chest. “What?”
“Impossible,” I yelled. “I take it back. I don’t want you here.”
“Too late, Cunningham.” He turned toward the bedroom, apparently done with this conversation now that I wasn’t getting attacked or whatever. “Mack should be here for his interview any minute, by the way.”
I froze. “Mack?”
He paused in the doorway. “Yeah.”
“Mack Kipling?” I asked with dismay.
His brows bent over his dark eyes. “Yeah.”
“No,” I moaned. “You didn’t.”
“What’s the matter with him? His website was great, and he doesn’t live that far from here. The plumber who came to install the new water heater told me about him.”
Would it be immature to stamp my foot on the ground? Probably.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
It was obvious Burke wasn’t used to hearing me swear—because I rarely did—but boy, oh boy, did this warrant it. My stomach got quivery again, and not in a good way.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Oh, there was no pleasant way to tell this story. But there was also absolutely no way in hell I was letting him be the guy in charge of renovating the Campbell House.
I rubbed my forehead. Simple. Simple and straightforward would have to do the trick. “We went out on a date about a month ago. He introduced himself at the hardware store, and when he asked, repeatedly, I told him we could grab a drink.”
Burke’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
With a hard swallow, I held his gaze as best I could. “It didn’t go well. At all.”
“Why not?” he barked.
The sound of a diesel engine punctuated the silence, and I swore again. Burke didn’t move his eyes from my face.
“We can’t hire him,” I said. “Please.”
“What did he do?”
The truck parked in front of the main house, and I blew out a short, hard breath. “He made me really uncomfortable. He was ... pushy.”
Oh.
Oh my.
If I thought I’d seen Burke’s grouchy thundercloud face before, I was very, very mistaken.
“How was he pushy?” His voice was low and quiet.
Something dangerous was flashing in his eyes, and my throat went dry. I tried to swallow, but it wasn’t easy.
There was this deep-seated instinct to brush it off because I hadn’t really gotten hurt, but that was really frickin’ stupid. And it served no one for me to downplay the fact that Mack Kipling was kind of an entitled dick. So I didn’t.
I managed the swallow and took a deep breath. “After listening to him talk about himself for an hour, I was very, very done. He didn’t like that I was ready to leave after one drink, and he sort of ... followed me out to my car to voice his displeasure over the evening ending that way.”
“Did he, now?” The question was glacial. Burke’s gaze moved from my face out to the massive truck rumbling in front of the house.
