Evidently she thought otherwise and her blue eyes sparked as she said, “No, I don’t think so. I might be old—I’m pushing seventy—but I have a fairly good memory about some things. You worked with Jim, as part of his construction business one summer, over thirteen or fourteen years ago.”
Bas’s stomach began feeling unsettled again. She certainly did have a good memory. “Yes, but I didn’t get into any trouble,” he said defensively.
The old woman laughed. “Not any of your own making, trust me. But whenever you worked outside at a construction site on those extremely hot days, you drew an audience every time you took off your shirt.”
She barked out another laugh and continued. “Yeah, I do remember that summer. You had all the young women acting like silly fools whenever they could take a peek at you. And I remember Marcella all but salivating whenever she saw you.”
She studied him for a moment then said, “I understand you’re going to be helping out at Mason’s Construction again.”
He took his Visa card out of his wallet to hand to her. News traveled fast in small towns. “Yes, ma’am, I am.”
“I’m glad you saw fit to come help Jocelyn for a while now that Jim’s gone. Lord knows she wouldn’t ask for it, even if she needed it,” Sadie went on to say. “And I’m curious as to what Leah’s going to do. I expected her to leave town right after the funeral.”
Bas put his charge card back into his wallet after she returned it to him. “She lives in California, right?”
“So we hear. Leah left here at eighteen. She hated this place, claimed Newton Grove was too small town for her. She wanted to see the world and headed to California.”
After a quick pause she added, “She broke Reese Singleton’s heart when she left. They’d been sweethearts. He’s a good man who didn’t deserve what she did to him. You’ll get to know Reese rather well over the coming months.”
Bas leaned against the counter. “I will?”
“Yes, he’s the foreman at Mason Construction. But he might not be there for too much longer.”
Bas lifted a brow. “Why not?”
“Because he’s better suited as a carpenter than a builder, and I heard that Jim left him a bunch of money to start his own business.”
Bas turned to follow Sadie up the stairs to his room. Once he got settled he would check out what was happening over at Mason Construction.
The nail was taking a beating as Jocelyn hammered it relentlessly into the wood. A part of her wished it was Sebastian Steele’s head.
If there was one thing she didn’t need it was aggravation, and the man had gotten next to her like nobody’s business. The nerve of him, thinking he could just waltz in and take over. Mason Construction was now hers and she would run things the way she saw fit, regardless of what he had to say.
It wasn’t as though she didn’t know what she was doing. Heck, she’d been reading blueprints practically since she could walk. Growing up, she’d spent hours at every job site with her father, learning each aspect of a builder’s trade, from the ordering of the supplies to the overseeing of each structural design. While many construction workers had their specialties, Jocelyn was truly a jack-of-all-trades. She handled a paintbrush just as expertly as any artist; she could fit a pipe together as well as any master plumber, and she worked with brick, stone, concrete block and structural tile with the skill of an accomplished mason. For years she had worked alongside her dad and his crew as a fill-in, doing whatever task was needed and learning just about everything she could, before school, after school, weekends, whenever. She practically lived at Mason Construction except for those summer months when Jim Mason would ship her and Leah off to Aunt Susan in Florida.
Their mother’s sister was as refined and proper as the words could get, and had been determined to pass those characteristics on to her nieces no matter how much they’d balked at the idea. After a while, Jocelyn and Leah discovered it was easier to just go with the flow and accept all the lacy, frilly dresses, the tea parties and the countless hours of walking with a book on their heads to perfect that graceful walk.
Now that she was a grown woman, Jocelyn appreciated her aunt’s teachings and guidance to a degree she’d never thought would be possible as a young girl. She was glad she’d had the chance to express her gratitude to Aunt Susan before she died a few years ago. Jocelyn thought about the deaths of the three people who’d meant a lot to her—her mother when she’d turned sixteen; her Aunt Susan around six years ago and now her dad.
“If you keep beating that nail to death you’ll whack it all the way through and bust up that board. Who ruffled your feathers today?”
Expelling a deep breath and clutching the hammer more tightly in her hand, Jocelyn decided Reese was right. There was no reason to take out her anger and frustration on a piece of wood.
She glanced up at him and knew he was waiting for an answer. It hadn’t taken much for the men who worked for her to tell she was in a relatively foul mood, which is the reason they had been avoiding her. Reese had been at lunch when she’d arrived. Evidently the guys hadn’t wasted any time giving him fair warning. Too bad all those deeply ingrained proper manners and stiff rules Aunt Susan had taught her weren’t working for her today, especially the one about a lady not letting a man get on her last nerve, at least not to the point of showing it. A lady kept her cool and handled a man with charm and diplomatic grace.
Today, thanks to Sebastian Steele, all she could say to that notion was hogwash!
After leaving Jason’s office she had gone home long enough to change into her work clothes, then joined the men at this particular jobsite. The only reason she hadn’t been here at the crack of dawn like they had was because the mayor had requested her presence at a meeting in his office at eight. He liked being kept abreast of the plans for the city’s Founder’s Day Celebration next month, and since she was this year’s chairperson, she had brought him up to date over bagels and coffee. And then there had been that ten o’clock meeting in Jason’s office, the one she wished she could delete from her mind.
Jocelyn put the hammer down, deciding at the moment it was rather dangerous in her hand. “If you must know, Sebastian Steele is the person who ruffled my feathers. He has to be the most infuriating man I’ve ever met.”
Reese smirked at her. “In other words, he wouldn’t let you have your way with anything.”
Jocelyn picked up the hammer again and hit it a couple of times in the palm of her hand. “You like your face, Reese?”
He grinned. “Yeah, I like my face, considering it’s the only one I got.”
And Jocelyn knew all the local girls thought it was a rather good-looking face, making him the most sought-after bachelor in town. But he was also the most elusive. She’d known Reese for six years, ever since his family had moved to Tennessee from Alabama when Reese was nineteen. The first time he’d seen her and Leah together out at the county fair, he had decided the then seventeen-year-old Leah, who was about to become a senior in high school, would one day be his wife. He was convinced he could erase the thought from Leah’s mind of ever moving away from Newton Grove.
He’d been wrong and had gotten a broken heart to prove it.
“Well, if you like it so much, then knock it off. I’m not in a teasing mood.”
“So I gather. Hey, this Steele guy can’t be all bad since Jim thought enough of him to leave him part of the company.”
Jocelyn frowned, narrowed her eyes, preferring not to be reminded of that. “Just because Dad liked him doesn’t mean that I have to like him, too.”