Her Man Upstairs Read Online Free PDF Page B

for the day.
    Right. Looking like she’d just finished a five-mile run. That would really impress the heck out of Cole, wouldn’t it?
    Â 
    By the time Cole got back to the small marina with a take-out supper consisting of barbecue, fries, hush puppies and slaw, the last vestige of daylight had faded. And second thoughts were stacking up fast. Not about the work itself, although it had been a while since he’d done any actual construction work. That wasn’t what had him worried.
    As he stepped aboard his aged thirty-one-foot cabin cruiser, he waved to Bob Ed, who was outside sorting through a stack of decoys under the mercury-vapor security light.
    The friendly guide called across the intervening space, “You see her?”
    â€œI saw her.”
    â€œYa gonna do it?”
    â€œWe’re still negotiating,” Cole called back.
    Nodding, Bob Ed went back to checking out his canvasbacks. He was a man of few words. Which was just as well, Cole thought, amused, as Bob Ed’s better half appeared to be a woman of many. Cole had met her only briefly, but she’d made an indelible impression.
    What bothered him, Cole admitted to himself once he was inside, the lights on and his small space heater thawing out the damp cold, was the Owens woman. Or rather, his reaction to her. Before meeting her he would have sworn he was permanently immunized. Trouble was, Marty Owens and Paula Weyrich Stevens, his high-maintenance ex-wife, were two different species. If Paula had ever lifted a hand to do anything more strenuous than polish her nails, he’d missed it. Even for that she usually depended on a manicurist. Paula’s idea of a perfect day started at noon with a three-daiquiri lunch at the club, followed by a shopping marathon, followed by dinner out with whatever poor sucker she could reel in to escort her while her poor slob of a husband worked late. Actually, Cole had been consumed those late nights with digging into the mess at Weyrich, Inc.
    Marty Owens, on the other hand, varnished bookshelves in her spare time and tried to cover the smell by setting a pan of cinnamon on fire. She walked a friend’s dog—at least, Cole assumed she did it for a friend. If she was hard up enough to do it for money, she probably couldn’t afford the remodeling job she wanted done.
    On the other hand, if she didn’t get it done, what would happen to her business? Reading between the lines, he could only conclude that she was pretty close to the edge. And, like a certain ex-builder he could name, looking for the best way to revive a career that had collapsed through no fault of her own.
    Not that he could swear to that last, but from what he’d seen so far, Ms. Owens was industrious, intelligent and not afraid to get her hands dirty. The fact that she was also sexy without making a big deal out of it wasn’t a factor in any decision he might make. No way.
    Definitely not.
    As for the demise of his own career, Cole freely accepted the blame. All he’d had to do was turn a blind eye to what he’d uncovered—the good-old-boy bidding system, the under-the-table payoffs, the shoddy workmanship that had eventually resulted in three deaths and a number of injuries when the second floor of a parking garage collapsed due to insufficient reinforcement.
    Oh, yeah, he’d blown the whistle on Joshua Weyrich, but by that time his marriage to Paula was washed up anyway. Looking back, about the only thing he and Paula had ever had in common was a serious case of raging hormones. Once that had died a natural death, there’d been nothing left to sustain a relationship. The only reason they’d stayed together as long as they had was that breaking up required more time and energy than either of them was willing to spend.
    But once he’d blown the whistle on her father, détente had ended. He had gladly ceded to Paula the showy house they’d been given as a wedding present,