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She huffed. “My aunt warned me about you. She said you date a different girl every week. I told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about, but I guess I was wrong.” Yanking her jacket from her chair, she stormed off.
And he still didn’t know her name.
Well, this was just great. Now he was at the restaurant in the country club with no one to share his table with. And all he could think about was Ella and how she would be pleased to know how much he’d royally screwed up his date.
Ella had gotten into his head. This was her fault.
Anger merged with irritation and indignation. If she didn’t live on the opposite side of town, he might have just driven over there and told her… told her what exactly? He couldn’t exactly blame her for intruding into his thoughts. That was all on him.
In fact, she would probably draw some joy from it.
Oh, she’d definitely be thrilled to know that his date never made it past the first few minutes. She’d probably tell him it served him right for hitting on a girl he didn’t know—that he was better off asking someone out whose name he actually knew.
Someone like Ella.
That thought hit him over the head hard enough to make stars appear—or at least hefeltlike he could see stars. Itwas probably just the headache that was coming on. He’d not gotten much sleep lately, something he attributed to the pure exhaustion he’d been feeling since starting work on the barn.
But perhaps it was more than just the work.
Perhaps it had more to do with a certain someone.
Ella’s face flashed in the back of his mind. Those eyes, that cute little nose, her long hair and her shapely figure. All of it came together to make a very pretty picture.
Was it possible he’d sabotaged his own date simply because he was attracted to someone else? That had never happened before. What could it mean?
8
Ella
Ella hated the way she felt whenever Lucas showed up to the job site—mostly because she couldn’t help wondering what new bimbo he’d decided to take out on a date.
That wasn’t really a fair assessment. She shouldn’t be calling the beautiful women he was so obviously attracted to bimbos. They were gorgeous. She was jealous.
And she was so much better than this.
A few more weeks had passed since that Friday when Lucas had mentioned his date. Since then, he kept his social life private. And could she blame him? The last time he’d brought it up, she’d practically bit his head off.
She kept getting this feeling that she needed to apologize to him for her rotten mood all the time. But doing so went against their original agreement. Ella ended up watching him from adistance, noticing the way he worked with the men he’d gotten to volunteer.
None of them had been the guys who tormented her while in high school, and she wished she knew if he’d done that on purpose. If he had, then it would be easy to assume he knew what had happened.
Now, she found herself wondering if Lucas hadn’t been aware of just how bad things were back then. Was her memory failing her?
No. She knew for a fact that Lucas laughed when Taven had looked in her direction and made some kind of comment about her weight. It wasn’t hard to guess what he’d said. Taven had a history of calling all the girls who struggled with their weight a particular name. Along with that name also came a certain barnyard sound.
His laughter and those sounds had haunted her all the way up until her senior year, when she’d managed to get enough credits to graduate early and move away for college.
Ella’s heart cracked slightly with the memory, and she had to turn her focus away from Lucas and work on something else. Distractions. That was what she needed right now.
Today was a pretty standard day. The roof was on, and the men had put the weather barrier on it. Now they were busy with the shingles. The ones she’d picked weren’t exactly the same type that the structure would have had when it was built the first time around. These shingles would actually hold up for a good thirty years, if not more.
She stood back, watching the men move around the top and along the slanted side of the roof and couldn’t help but appreciate how it was coming along.
Her gaze landed on Lucas, and she couldn’t seem to drag it away. Today he’d stripped his shirt off and was working in just his jeans, boots, and his hat. It wasn’t out of the ordinary,or rather, it shouldn’t have felt as such because the other men had done it too. It was getting warmer with the sun rising into the sky. They didn’t have any shade, and while down where she stood it was a comfortable sixty-seven degrees, she could imagine that with the sun beating down on them they needed the extra breeze to keep them cool.
One of the men called out to Lucas for something and he stopped what he was doing to toss a tool toward him. He stretched his back and arms, and then his gaze ran over the area. Suddenly he was looking right at her, and she was frozen.
Ella couldn’t move. Even if her life depended on it, she wouldn’t be able to tear her eyes from him. He stood there, a stabilizing strap wrapped around his waist and holding him steady as he practically hung from the side of the building.
