Working Man. Melanie Schuster

settled in for the night.”

      “Get settled in? You’re not spending the night there are you? Why don’t you go to a nice hotel until this is all sorted out? That’s crazy, Cookie.”

      “I have my reasons,” she replied in an icy-cold voice. “Let it go, Johnny. I can handle my business all by myself. And whatever you do, don’t tell Daddy. The last thing I need is him coming to town with a caravan of Teamsters ready to hunt that lousy ferret down and hang him. I want him alive and well for his court date because I’m going to sue him so tough his great-grandchildren will still be paying off his debts.” She added a few colorful and profane sentiments before getting off the phone.

      Cha-Cha sensed her bad mood and came to sit in her lap. Dakota continued to sit on the floor for a few minutes stroking Cha-Cha’s incredible fur, sighing every so often. Then she shook off her angst and told Cha-Cha it was time to get busy. “We’ve got to get a few things out of the car and get something to eat,” she said as she tickled the big cat’s chin. “And then we have to get our plan in order. Ol’ boy picked the wrong sister to screw around with when he decided to pull this crap on me. Wherever he is, I hope he’s getting a good night’s sleep because it’s the last one he’s going to have for a long time.”

      Chapter 2

      Nick meant what he’d told his brother the day before. He intended to see Dakota again and as soon as he could arrange it. He’d called his insurance agent that afternoon and explained the situation, emphasizing that he didn’t want her to have to spend a single dime on the repair of her vehicle. “She’s new in town, so we need to make sure she gets the best body shop available to take care of her ride. It’s a new HHR, but I don’t really have that much faith in dealerships. When you talk to her company make some suggestions about repairs, okay?”

      Nick’s long-time agent was smiling for all she was worth on the other end of the phone. She’d known Nick for years and had never heard so much concern and caring in his voice, but all she said was “Will do, Nick. I’ll make sure she gets nothing but the best.”

      Satisfied that one thing on the agenda was taken care of, Nick moved to the next item. He was going to pay Miss Phillips a visit and he was even bearing flowers, something his sister-in-law had insisted on. He had to laugh when he remembered her exact words. Patsy was as sweet and Southern as she’d been the day Paul had met her some twenty years before and she demanded that the men in her family demonstrate good manners at all times. “Don’t go over there empty-handed with a mouth full of gimme and a handful of much obliged. Take her a nice plant or something. It’s the least you could do since you and my daughter managed to destroy her car and scare her to death.” she’d told him sternly. “And be extra nice to her because I have all her books and I want her to sign them for me.”

      He was still chuckling when he turned down the street on which Dakota lived, but the mirth died away when he saw where she was living. Another B. Jackson Production, the sign read. Oh hell, naw. How in the world did she get caught up with that crook? He frowned deeply as he surveyed the brick town homes that lined both sides of the street. They looked fine from the outside, but if he knew anything about Bernard Jackson, he knew the interiors of the houses were shoddily put together with substandard materials and workmanship. They were pure-d crap, and every reputable builder in the state knew it. Bernard Jackson was one of Nick’s main business competitors, and to say he couldn’t stand the man was a masterpiece of understatement.

      After a stint in the army, Nick had returned to Chicago and started his own construction company. He was a master contractor and builder, and had parlayed his expertise into a building firm with an impeccable reputation for expert work. Nick was into land development and real estate as well as residential and commercial building and he’d worked long and hard to make himself into one of the most respected men in the business. He did it by keeping every promise he ever made, by delivering every project on time and on budget and by working harder than anyone else in his company. He had nothing but contempt for men like Bernard Jackson, fast-talking con artists who won jobs by underbidding and then defrauding their clients by using cheap materials and taking shortcuts. The result was crappy houses that weren’t worth a quarter of what the clients ended up paying for them.

      He particularly hated Bernard because he was a good-looking guy with a snappy wardrobe and a habit of preying on lonely women who’d worked hard to save enough money to refurbish their homes, or worse yet, who’d saved for years to make their dream of home-ownership come true. Bernard was also known to pay off inspectors and appraisers, so his underhanded practices made him rich, instead of putting him in jail where he belonged. For reasons he couldn’t understand, the thought of getting his hands around Bernard Jackson’s neck and choking the life out of him was very compelling to Nick at the moment. How a woman who was as smart as Dakota Phillips was supposed to be had got tangled up with that lying, conniving, thieving jerk he had no idea, but there was no way Nick was letting him get away with it.

      By the time he pulled up in front of Dakota’s unit, he was hot as a firecracker. He glanced at Dakota’s bright-red HHR with the sad rear end and made a mental note to make sure she had transportation while it was being repaired. It didn’t occur to him that the body shop would see to that, he just didn’t want her to be inconvenienced. He was surprised to see her sitting on the front steps when he got out of his truck. She looked rather like a little lost girl sitting there with her elbows on her knees, staring down at her bare feet. Nice, pretty feet, too, with some kind of pinkish nail polish. No corns, bunions or other unsightly things were visible, which gave him a little thrill. Nick loved a woman with sexy feet. She was sexy all over, with her long curly hair flowing loose over her shoulders. She looked up at him approaching and he was thrown off guard by her look of utter hatred.

      “Who the hell are you?” she said in a distinctly unfriendly tone of voice.

      Nick kept walking until he was at the foot of the stairs. “I’m Nick Hunter. Remember the truck that bumped into you yesterday?”

      Dakota looked blank for a moment and then frowned even more. “Oh yeah, I remember. That was the first of three horrible things that have happened to me since I got to this wretched town. Yes, I remember your girlfriend slamming into me like I was invisible. It was a fun day,” she said drolly.

      A lesser man would have dropped off the flowers and scrammed, but Nick was too tough for that. He made a motion with his free hand and she actually scooted over to make room for him to sit next to her. “I came to apologize again for my niece’s part in the mishap,” he said, trying not to emphasize the word niece. Before she could react, he asked what the other two things were that had caused her to be upset.

      “The second thing was getting here and finding my newly refurbished townhouse is a piece of junk. It’s a pile of crap from top to bottom and if I ever get my hands on the so-called builder I’m not going to leave enough pieces for them to bury. I don’t know how things are done in Chicago, but there are laws against fraud and misrepresentation in D.C., and when I’m through with that piece of slime he’s going to be intimately acquainted with every one of them.”

      She didn’t raise her voice, but the calm, deadly words let him know she meant every single one. This impressed him, almost as much as her perfect complexion and her long silky eyelashes. “Well, that’s two things. What’s the third?”

      Dakota looked at him directly for the first time, her face a mask of weary disgust. “My cat, the lovely Cha-Cha, managed to lock me out of the house. I came outside to get something out of the car and before I realized the car keys were in the house, I heard the door slam shut and a loud click, which meant that girlfriend put her big fat paw right on the lock. So I’m out here with no keys and no cell phone and she’s in the house laughing at me.”

      Nick stared at her for a long moment and tried hard not to laugh, but when he turned to see Cha-Cha sitting on the windowsill looking innocent, he had to. He burst into laughter and surprisingly, Dakota didn’t seem to be offended. On the contrary, she shrugged. “Knock yourself out. If it was anyone else but me, I’d be laughing, too. You don’t happen to have a cell phone I can use, do you?”

      Nick