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Rose’s painted red lips thinned and she adjusted the black leather belt cinching her waist. She reached forward and grabbed the directory that Dr. Greyson had left behind.
“Forget it.” Tory shrugged. “I’ve already maxed out my eligibility for student loans, along with every grant and scholarship known to mankind.”
“But you haven’t even tried to find alternative funding,” Rose argued with a snort.
“Rose,” Tory began slowly. “All you’ll find in that directory is a bunch of weird stuff. Scholarships for blue-eyed women with Spanish surnames born in the month of May. Grants for anyone born under the same star as some philanthropist’s Maltese.”
She followed the sound of the deep, throaty chuckle. Having J. D. Porter laugh when her whole world was shattering didn’t sit well.
“Amused?” she asked tartly. “I’m so glad you find my crisis funny.” She stood and braced her hands on her hips. “I need some air,” she told Rose. “If I don’t get away from him, I might just take out my frustrations on your useless son.”
She stormed out of the room, the vision of J.D.’s dancing gray eyes vividly etched in her brain. He had laughed at her! She fumed as she stepped into the early-June humidity. What kind of unfeeling jerk would laugh at a time like this? “Jackass Deluxe,” she grumbled as she stalked through the overgrown gardens behind the property.
The tall, damp grass licked at her ankles above her socks, leaving a sheen of moisture on her white aerobic shoes. The air was thick with the scent of the wild vines growing along the brick exterior of the dependency.
The scent inspired memories from the past. Memories of when her family had owned this place. She had been a ten-year-old princess and this had been her kingdom. Her hand reached out to touch the coolness of the weather-beaten stone wall. A small lizard skittered along the surface, then disappeared behind the growth of vegetation threatening to overtake the dilapidated building.
She was thrilled that Rose and Shelby had decided to restore the outbuilding of the Charleston single house. The dependency, which had once served as both kitchen and servants quarters, had been neglected for more than a hundred years. Her only misgiving was the man hired to do the work.
J. D. Porter was an architect known for his dramatic, modern structures. She frowned, imagining what Mr. Steel-and-Glass Towers might do to this historically significant structure. Cringing, she allowed her fingers to admire the stone. J.D. didn’t appreciate or even understand historical preservation. He didn’t appreciate Rose, either. He was charging his own mother an hourly rate for the renovation. “That man is a piece of work.”
“Thanks.”
Tory spun around and her hand flew to her mouth. Wide-eyed, she looked into the relaxed face and instantly felt her cheeks burn. “I didn’t...hear you,” she stammered.
J.D. shifted so that his large body cast a long shadow over Tory. Deep lines appeared on either side of his eyes as he squinted against the sunlight.
“I take it you’re being squeezed out of the world of academe.”
Tory felt her shoulders slump forward. “It seems that way.”
“What will you do?”
She shrugged and dropped her gaze to the front of his shirt. It was a stupid move, she realized too late. Her eyes lingered at the deep V where he’d neglected to button his shirt. A thick mat of dark hair curled over solid, tanned skin. She swallowed and forced her eyes to the ground.
“I may have to wait a year or so until I can get another grant.”
He shifted his weight again as his thumbs looped into the waistband of his jeans. “What about your family? Can’t they help with your tuition?”
“Interesting concept, coming from you,” she said as she met his eyes. “I don’t really have any family.” Needing to change the subject, Tory asked, “How can you charge your own mother top dollar?”
His expression grew dark, and something vaguely dangerous flashed in his eyes. “I’m a businessman, Tory. Not a philanthropist.”
Heartless creep! her mind screamed. “She’s your mother.”
“Biologically,” he qualified.
“It still counts,” Tory told him with a saccharine smile.
Lifting sunglasses from the breast pocket of his shirt, J.D. placed them on the bridge of his slightly crooked nose. Tory was left to view her own reflection in their mirrored lenses.
“Want to give me a hand?”
“What?” she fairly squealed.
Her voice caused an immediate smile to cut the sharp angles of his face. “Assist me?”
“Doing what exactly?”
“I’m open for suggestions,” he countered with a wolfish grin.
“And I’m outta here,” she answered as she took her first step.
“Hey,” he said as his large hand closed around her arm. “I was just teasing you. No need to get huffy.”
“I don’t care for your brand of teasing, J.D. Everything that comes out of your mouth has some sort of sexual meaning behind it.”
“I’ll behave,” he promised, one hand raised in an oath.
“I’ll bet,” she told him wearily.
“Honest. I just want you to hold the tape while I measure.” He produced a shiny metal tape measure in support of his statement. “I need to get the dimensions of the outhouse so I can finish that ream of paperwork the historical society requires.”
“It isn’t an outhouse. It’s called a dependency. And the forms are necessary,” she told him with great hauteur in her voice. “We have to maintain the historical fabric of the city.”
His mouth thinned in a definite sneer. “Just because something is old, that doesn’t make it worth saving.”
“I’d save you, Mr. Porter.”
“Think I’m old, huh?”
“Not old,” she said with an exaggerated bat of her long lashes. “Historically significant.”
The skin of her upper arm tingled where his fingers gently held her. It was annoying that she felt herself respond to him, but she silently vowed not to show any reaction. She suspected J.D. would enjoy knowing his touch affected her—and she wasn’t about to give him that much power.
“Will you?”
“What?” she answered, wondering if he had psychic powers in his arsenal.
“Help me measure.”
“It’s almost noon,” she hedged. “The lunch crowd cometh.”
“So does Susan.”
“Susan isn’t working this shift.”
“She is now,” he stated. “Rose thought you might like to take the afternoon off in light of your sudden financial upheaval.”
“How is losing a day’s tips supposed to make me feel better?”
Nodding his dark head, J.D. used his free hand to stroke the faint growth on his deeply clefted chin. “Good point. Tell you what,” he said with a sigh, as if he were about to announce a change in world leaders. “I’ll pay you the going rate for helping me measure.”
“How generous,” she gasped. “Sure you can spare seven-fifty an hour?”
He leaned down, so close that Tory could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear. “For you? Anything.”
Her resolve not to react to this man disintegrated when the scent of his cologne lingered in the mere inches separating them. Shrugging away from him, Tory could still feel the imprint of his callused fingers against her skin. A smart person would cut and run. But then, a woman with less than a hundred dollars in the bank didn’t always act intelligently.
“Has your mother already called Susan?”
“Yes, Rose called.”
She stifled the urge to ask him why he wouldn’t call Rose “mom” or “mother.” “Then give me the tape.”
Reaching behind him, J.D. again produced the tape measure as well as a folded sketch of the dependency’s exterior. “Here,” he said, handing her the drawing and a mechanical pencil. “We’ll start on the south wall. We’ll measure it, then you mark the drawing.”
“Fine,” Tory said. She kept the bent end of the tape between her fingers as he took long strides through the dense foliage. He had a great derriere, she mused. Tight and rounded above those long, muscular legs. Absently, she fanned herself with the sketch, trying to convince herself that the heat she felt in the pit of her stomach was probably nothing more than the effect of having drunk too much coffee.
The strip of metal tape acted like an umbilical cord, connecting her to the large man. Dutifully, she followed his instructions as they spent the better part of an hour documenting the contours of the old building. She attributed her dry throat to the stifling early-summer heat. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that her eyes had been riveted to his body the entire hour. She wasn’t the type to be interested in things like the washboard-like muscles of his flat stomach, or the gentle slope of his back where his broad shoulders tapered at his waist. No—such things were irrelevant to a woman like Tory.
“You look hot.”
“I beg your pardon?” she yelped.
His smile was slow and deliberate. “I was referring to the temperature.” He swabbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “It must be near ninety.”
“Must be,” she agreed as she swallowed her guilt.
“Need a break before we tackle the interior?”
“Not me,” she told him. She wanted to get this over with—quickly. “The inside is a disaster.”
“I know. I took a cursory look when I was putting together the budget for the project.”
“I’m sure your estimate was high,” she said without looking at him.
“I’m sure it was reasonable.”
Ignoring the slight edge to his voice, Tory moved to the near-rotten door and grasped the knob. The door wouldn’t budge.
“Let me,” J.D. said, coming up behind her so that his thighs brushed her back.
Tory stepped out of his way almost instantly, feeling branded by the outline of his body.
J.D. wrestled with the humidity-swollen door for a short time before finally pulling it free of the frame. Reaching into his back pocket, he produced a small flashlight and directed the beam in front of them.
The air inside the building was stale and musty. “Let’s start on the left,” J.D. suggested.
The interior was a long, rectangular-shaped space with bowed stone walls and a few rotted timbers piled at the far end. Bars of yellow light filtered in from the boarded windows, imprisoning J.D. as he placed the measure against what was left of the old flooring.
“Sixty-three feet, seven inches,” he called.
Tory was about to mark the diagram when she noted the inconsistency. “The tape must be twisted.”
She heard his boots scrape as he checked the length of the tape. “Nope.”
“Then that back wall is three feet deep,” she told him.
J.D. took the sketch from her, his eyebrows drawn together as he looked from the drawing to the room, then back to the paper.
“This doesn’t make sense.”
“You must have measured incorrectly.”
He offered her a baleful stare before walking off to the back of the room. “Hold this,” he called, handing her the flashlight as she came up behind him.
Using his pocketknife as well as his fingers, J.D. loosened the stones by scraping away the limestone mortar.
“What are you doing?” Tory asked.
“I’m trying to find the other three feet.”
An oddly unpleasant odor accompanied the shower of small rocks as he created a small opening in the wall.
“Give me the light.”
J.D. stuck his arm through the opening, then she heard him suck in his breath.
“What?”
His arm came out of the hole and he faced her slowly. His expression was hard, his eyes wide. “We’d better go back to the Tattoo.”
“Why? What’s behind the wall?” she asked, frustration adding volume to her litany of questions.
“A body.”
Chapter Two
“I think he’s probably some poor, unfortunate homeless person who wandered into the building to escape the winter chill,” Susan was saying. The woman’s brown eyes were wide as she excitedly continued expounding her theory. “He must have been sick. And he probably assumed he was suffering from nothing more than a bad cold.”
“I think you’re letting your imagination run wild,” Tory cautioned. The pout the other woman offered was at odds with her athletically lean face. Susan was a runner and it showed in her slender build. She was forever hounding Tory about the lack of physical activity in her life. Thankfully, the discovery of the skeleton had provided a diversion from Susan’s usual boring reprimands on the perils of passivity.
“No,” Susan insisted, looking to J.D., who gave a small nod of encouragement. “He must have crawled in through the window before succumbing to bacterial pneumonia.”
“Bacterial pneumonia?” Tory echoed, feeling her eyebrows draw together.
“Sure,” Susan replied. “It’s very deadly if not treated. And it kills really fast.”
