Darlene Graham - Dreamless

He jerked a thumb at the chimney towering behind him. The thing peaked a full seventy feet in the air—tall enough to clear all three stories of the eleven-thousand-square-foot house and the tops of the massive black oaks sheltering it.

Down the hill, the rock crushers started up again, cutting off further conversation.

Darrell shrugged and Cassie smiled, waving him off. She surveyed the woods rising up behind the house, remembering the design challenges those huge trees had presented. The timber on this hill had cost her in more ways than one, but on the outskirts of Jordan, Oklahoma, a forested crest like this was dear.

Every home builder from here to Oklahoma City had tried to get his hands on this land, and Cassie, using extreme patience and her aunt Rosemarie’s social goodwill, had finally secured it for a fair price from the eccentric Sullivan sisters. In the deal, she’d promised that any tree over thirty feet tall would be preserved—a promise that had put her architectural skills to a real test. But C. J. McClean was always true to her word. Always.

In the end, she would make a killing off this exclusive housing development, but it was the quality and integrity of the homes, not the profit, that mattered to Cassie. The lasting beauty. Ever since she was a little girl, the one thing that had always made her spirits soar was the sight of a well-built, well-designed home positioned on a beautifully landscaped lot.

Pride rose in her chest as she backed up, giving the frame of the most recent house she’d designed a quick once-over. Board by board, stone by stone, her dream houses were becoming a reality. All custom-designed, all over ten thousand square feet, these majestic homes would grace this crest for generations to come. And her name, her good name, C. J. McClean, would stand solidly behind them. It was a hell of a dream—one she’d carried in her heart ever since the day her father had gone to prison. And now it was a thrill to see that dream materialize right before her eyes.

Darrell Brown would start the stonework on the Detloff family’s chimney today. The Becker place was already partially framed. At the highest and most westward cul-de-sac, country-and-western singer Brett Taylor’s enormous concrete slab would be poured by week’s end.

Barring rain, of course. Cassie frowned at the sky where soggy clouds threatened to band together and make trouble. It was already November and soon chilling rains would delay work on everything from concrete to brick masonry. At least she had this first house weathered in, which meant she could keep the indoor subcontractors busy through the winter.

She sighed. There was never any shortage of things to worry about in the building business. She sure didn’t need the likes of Jake Coffey adding to her stress.

She cut an angry gaze back to the red double-cab pickup as it raised a plume of dust, fishtailing round the development marquee.

While Jake Coffey’s truck pell-melled up the hill, Cassie marched to her own white one, the one with the Dream Builders logo stenciled on the door—a tasteful aubergine logo that she had designed herself.

Cassie McClean lived a life entirely of her own design. She enjoyed riding around town with the radio blasting so loudly on her favorite oldies station that even with the truck windows rolled up, the guys on the second-story roof could hear the pulse of the music. Everybody in the building business knew who she was. Big blond ponytail. Bouncy energetic stride. Too young. Too successful. Boss McClean’s only daughter.

She liked it that way…except for the Boss McClean part, that is. She shook off that thought.

She ripped open the truck’s door and snatched up her cell phone. When the noise at the bottom of the hill ceased again, she punched the speed dial for her lawyer’s office. She was determined to face this Coffey bully well armed.

“How’s our little countersuit shaping up?” She paced back to the curb and spied glints of red winking in and out of the bare trees as Coffey was forced to slow down on the steep, winding streets. Even the streets in The Heights were designed to contribute to the atmosphere of privacy, serenity, peace.

She nodded as she listened. When Mr. Jake Coffey parked that truck, he was, by George, in for quite a roaring earful.

“Excellent,” she said, after her lawyer had told her everything she wanted to hear. “Fax the letter.” She punched off and stepped up onto the curb.

The red pickup braked with a screech right in the middle of the cul-de-sac. A large, long-legged man in a cowboy hat and sunglasses muscled his frame out, slammed the door and strode toward her.

From the top of his dusty black Stetson to the tip of his scuffed brown boots, the man exuded virile masculinity. His bearing, his movements and what she could see of his face, his jaw, his mouth—all of it—looked handsome, sexy.

Cassie just hated that.

She deteriorated into a complete klutz around good-looking, sexy men. As C. J. McClean, she could hold her own with the rough-cut good old boys in the construction business any day. But around any eligible, attractive male she reverted to little Cassie, the awkward tomboy raised by her strange maiden aunt.

Jake Coffey was single, or so she’d been told. But why did he have to be so danged appealing?

He stopped on the pavement a yard short of her person, regarding her from behind reflective sunglasses. “Ms. McClean?” He did not remove his shades.

She kept her place up on the curb, which gave her only a slight boost against his massive build.

“Yes?” She was determined to keep this carefully civil. Deliberately cool. But she did not remove her sunglasses, either. Civil was one thing, but she refused to make this confrontation easy for him.

“I’m Jake Coffey. Owner of Cottonwood Ranch.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the spread at the bottom of the hill. “We’ve talked on the phone.”

She glanced at the logo on the pocket of his jacket—the same one was on his pickup—an unimaginative black silhouette of a horse’s head with Cottonwood Ranch in a semicircle of script wrapped below it. “I know who you are, Mr. Coffey.” She did not extend her hand.

They hadn’t “talked” on the phone the last time. They’d shouted. Well, she had shouted. He always kept his voice infuriatingly low while refusing to budge about anything. Lately, it had been this restraining order. “What brings you up to my turf?”

Cassie was glad she was wearing sunglasses because she almost rolled her eyes at her own baiting tone. Here we go, she thought, the klutzy tomboy is already acting defensive. Why couldn’t she ever just act normal?

He didn’t respond to her taunt. “Seems you and I have another problem this morning, ma’am.”

“We have a problem? I don’t have a problem.” Cassie spread a palm on the bib of her overalls. “My work is proceeding on schedule.”

He hooked his fingers in his back pockets and planted his booted feet wide, with his torso settled low on his hips and his pelvis thrust forward, like a man who sat atop a horse a lot, which she supposed he did. Under his worn denim jacket, tucked into a dusty pair of Levi’s, he wore a faded black T-shirt that stretched over a well-developed chest.

“Ma’am,” he repeated, looking over his shoulder in the direction from which the noise had started late yesterday, “we have a problem.” His soft voice belied his firm stance. He looked back at her.

His skin was weathered, tan, and he had a black five o’clock shadow though it was only eight in the morning. His full lips were chapped-looking and slightly pouty, turned down, as if he might spit out something vile at any moment.

A most unpleasant man. Most threatening.