Cara Colter – Saying Yes To The Dress!: The Wedding Planner's Big Day / Married for Their Miracle Baby / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride (страница 21)

His guys, four of them, gathered around.

“Becky, Jared, Jason, Josh and Jimmy.”

“The J series,” one of them announced. “Brothers. I’m the good-looking one, Josh.” He gave a little bow.

“But I’m the strong one,” Jimmy announced.

“And I’m the smart one.”

“I’m the romantic,” Jared said, and stepped forward, picked up her hand and kissed it, to groans from his brothers. “You are a beauty, me lady. Do you happen to be available? I see no rings, so—”

“That’s enough,” Drew said.

His tone had no snap to it, at all, only firmness, but Becky did not miss how quickly Jared stepped back from her, or the surprised looks exchanged between the brothers.

She liked seeing Drew in this environment. It was obvious his crew of brothers didn’t just respect him, they adored him. She soon saw why.

“Let’s see what we have here,” Drew said. He opened a box and yards and yards of filmy white material spilled out onto the ground.

He was a natural leader, listening to all the brothers’ suggestions about how to attach and drape the fabric to the pavilion poles they had worked all morning installing.

“How about you, Becky?” Drew asked her.

She was flattered that her opinion mattered, too. “I think you should put some kind of bar on those side beams. Long bars, like towel bars, and then thread the fabric through them.”

“We have a winner,” one of the guys shouted, and they all clapped and went back to work.

“I’ll hang the first piece and you can see if it works,” Drew said.

With amazing ingenuity he had fabricated a bar in no time. And then he shinnied up a ladder that was leaning on a post and attached the first bar to the beam. And then he did the same on the other side.

“The moment of truth,” he called from up on the wall.

She opened the box and he leaned way down to take the fabric from her outstretched hand. Once he had it, he threaded it through the first bar, then came down from the ladder, trailing a line of wide fabric behind him. He went up the ladder on the other side of what would soon look like a pavilion, and threaded the fabric through there. The panel was about three feet wide and dozens of feet long. He came down to the ground and passed her the fabric end.

“You do it,” he said.

She tugged on it until the fabric lifted toward the sky, and then began to tighten. Finally, the first panel was in place. The light, filmy, pure-white fabric formed a dreamy roof above them, floating walls on either side of them. Only it was better than walls and a roof because of the way the light was diffused through it, and the way it moved like a living thing in the most gentle of breezes.

“Just like a canopy bed,” he told her with satisfaction.

“You know way too much about that,” she teased him.

“Actually,” he said, frowning at the fabric, “come to think of it, it doesn’t really look like a canopy bed. It looks like—”

He snatched up the hem of fabric and draped it over his shoulder. “It looks like a toga.”

She burst out laughing.

He struck a pose. “‘To be or not to be...’” he said.

“I don’t want to be a geek...” she began.

“Oh, go ahead—be a geek. It comes naturally to you.”

That stung, but even with it stinging, she couldn’t let To be or not to be go unchallenged. “‘To be or not to be’ is Shakespeare,” she told him. “Not Nero.”

“Well, hell,” he said, “that’s what makes it really hard for a dumb carpenter to go out with a smart girl.”

She stared at him. “Are we going out?” she whispered.

“No! I just was pointing out more evidence of our incompatibility.”

That stung even worse than being called a geek. “At least you got part of it right,” she told him.

“Which part? The geek part?”

“I am not a geek!”

He shook his head sadly.

“That line? ‘To be or not to be.’ It’s from a soliloquy in the play Hamlet. It’s from a scene in the nunnery.”

“The nunnery?” he said with satisfaction. “Don’t you have a fascination?”

“No! You think I have a fascination. You are incorrect, just as you are incorrect about me being a geek.”

“Yes, and being able to quote Shakespeare, chapter and verse, certainly made that point.”

She giggled, and unraveled the fabric from around him.

“Hey! Give me back my toga. I already told you I don’t wear underwear!

But it was her turn to play with the gauzy fabric. She inserted herself in the middle of it and twirled until she had made it into a long dress. Then she swathed some around her head, until only her eyes showed. Throwing inhibition to the wind, she swiveled her hips and did some things with her hands.

“Guess who I am?” she purred.

He frowned at her. “A bride?”

The thing he liked least!

“No, I’m not a bride,” she snapped.

“A hula girl!”

“No.”

“I give up. Stop doing that.”

“I’m Mata Hari.”

“Who? I asked you to stop.”

“Why?”

“It’s a little too sexy for the job site.”

“A perfect imitation of Mata Hari, then,” she said with glee. And she did not stop doing it. She was rather enjoying the look on his face.

“Who?”

“She was a spy. And a dancer.”

He burst out laughing as if that was the most improbable thing he had ever heard. “How well versed was she in her Shakespeare?”

“She didn’t have to be.” Becky began to do a slow writhe with her hips. He didn’t seem to think it was funny anymore.

In fact, the ease they had been enjoying—that sense of being a team and working together—evaporated.

He stepped back from her, as if he thought she was going to try kissing him again. She blushed.

“I have so much to do,” she squeaked, suddenly feeling silly, and at the very same time, not silly at all.

“Me, too,” he said.

But neither of them moved.

“Uh, boss, is this a bad time?”