Love Ahead

296 Pages·2016·2.05 MB·English

by  Urban Madeleine

Published by
Dreamspinner Press
4760 Preston Road
Suite 244-149
Frisco, TX 75034
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Love Ahead Copyright © 2008 Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux

Cover Design by Mara McKennen

This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is
illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon
conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others.
No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the
publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 4760
Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

Released in the United States of America
June, 2008

eBook edition available in Adobe PDF, MobiPocket and MS Reader formats.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9817372-5-6
To my Boo, for his unending support
and excitement on my behalf.
~Madeleine

Under Contract | 1

A loud clang, crash, crunch, and tinkle was not what Ted Lucas wanted to
hear on a bright and sunny Monday morning. Not at all.
He rolled his chair back from the blueprints, grabbed his hard hat,
and ducked as he jumped out of the trailer, skipping the stairs altogether.
He ran around the corner of the huge cinderblock foundation and stopped
in his tracks.
“Goddammitalltahell! What’s going on out here?” he yelled at the
top of his lungs.
Everyone stopped. Some looked confused, some looked amused,
and some had that ‘deer-in-the-headlights-oh-my-God-I’m-going-to-die’
look on their faces.
Nick Cooper stood with his foot on a length of pipe from the
bundle that had crashed to the ground. He looked up at the bobbing White
Hard Hat of Doom when it came tear-assing around the corner and raised
an eyebrow.
“Morning, boss,” he greeted with a calm smirk, knowing the
cheeky greeting wasn’t likely to smooth Lucas’s feathers any. He’d
ceased trying to smooth the man’s feathers about a week after first
meeting him. It was a bit more interesting to ruffle them every now and
then.
Lucas practically growled, looking over the mess: a bundle of
piping spilled off a cart, two sets of drywall sheets smashed, a window
broken, and probably a fucking partridge in a pear tree shitting
somewhere. He looked around at the workers milling about, lips
compressing. “Boo!” he suddenly screeched – and most of the men
jumped and scuttled off.
Sanders, the electrician who had received one too many shocks
over the years, passed clean out from the scare.
2 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

“What the hell, man?” Cooper muttered as he watched his crew
beat a hasty retreat. “I have to find a new job,” he grumbled, bending to
heft a nearby rock and stick it under the pipes to keep them from rolling
further.
Hands clenching into fists, Lucas walked over and started to shift
the trolley so they could stack the pipe back onto it. “We’re already two
weeks behind. I’ve got supply delays, a skittish electrician, a mudder who
streaks, and now this,” he said under his breath. “I’m gonna get skinned.”
Cooper glanced behind him and frowned down at the unconscious
electrician. “He’s like one of those goats that passes out when you clap.
You think we should check his pulse?” he asked casually. “Man, that’d
shoot the company insurance to shit, huh?” he asked a little evilly.
“Jesus Christ, Cooper, don’t tempt fate,” Lucas practically begged,
pushing his hard hat back and rapping his forehead against the thick bar
handle on the trolley.
“You know, maybe if you didn’t shout everything you said, half
your crew would still have their hearing,” Cooper pointed out as he wiped
his sleeve over his dirty cheek.
Lucas looked like he was chewing on something sour. “Hell. Half
of ’em are deaf anyway from all the machinery,” he muttered, bending
over again to help the other man pick up the heavy pipes.
“What’d you say?” Cooper shouted, barely keeping a straight face
as he tilted his head and cupped his ear.
The foreman just rolled his eyes. Not too many people got away
with prodding at him like Cooper did. It was probably because Cooper
was damn good at what he did. It didn’t hurt that he was almost as tall as
Lucas, although he didn’t carry the same muscle mass. It also didn’t hurt
that Lucas thought about him at all hours….
Within several minutes they had the pipes and glass cleaned up,
and some brave souls flitted in to start replacing the drywall. Sanders was
dragged into the shade until he woke up.
“What happened, anyway?” Lucas asked. It was 9 a.m. on a
Monday. He shouldn’t be tired already. It made him cranky.
Under Contract | 3

“I don’t know, it wasn’t my day to babysit,” Cooper answered with
a matter-of-fact shrug. “I just saw the pipes running away and threw
myself in front of them. I deserve a bonus, I think,” he told his boss with a
sad nod.
Lucas’s head snapped up, and he looked Cooper over carefully.
“You don’t look hurt. Are you hurt?” He started walking to the side,
looking the other man up and down. No blood. No bones sticking out.
No gashes or tears in his clothes. Just the usual dirt and sweat.
“Mental anguish,” Cooper drawled, the smirk finally surfacing as
he readjusted his heavy work gloves and glanced sideways as the boss
man looked him over.
The foreman sighed and crossed his arms, trying to hide the intense
relief that flooded him. “Anything else, Mr. Assistant Smartass
Foreman?”
“No, sir, Mr. Hardass Foreman, sir.” Cooper snickered and
sketched a mock salute and bow as he turned to go back to work.
Growling again under his breath, Lucas stalked back to the trailer.
He’d better not stay or he’d catch himself ogling. That wouldn’t be good.
To take his mind off his rather inappropriate thoughts, he reminded
himself that he still had to find the discrepancy in those manifests, which
reminded him that he hated paperwork. He’d much rather be out swinging
a hammer or driving a frontloader or drawing blueprints from scratch.
The rest of Monday passed without any other mishaps, and after
reviewing the section reports, Lucas was feeling a bit better. Apparently
Cooper had lit a fire under some of the men, because several of the crews
had made up two to three days’ work today. Grabbing for his hard hat,
Lucas realized he still had it on his head. Sighing, he left the trailer – for
only the second time that day, he thought miserably – looking for his
assistant.
At that moment, his assistant was up to his elbows, literally, in
drying plaster mix. Cooper knelt in front of the bucket, lips pressed
tightly together, praying to God that they would find the chisel before
Lucas came out of his trailer. It was almost quitting time, and he’d be
prowling out here any second.
4 | Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

Lucas looked around the building, checking the rooms, before
heading out back. He saw Cooper from behind before he saw anything
else, and he immediately quashed his first response – a decidedly physical
one – to Cooper’s body. It was a response that he tried not to admit even
to himself that he had (and had and had and had), and he moved on. “Hey,
Cooper, you know, from behind it looks like you’re up to your… el…
bows… what the hell?”
“You weren’t exactly supposed to see this,” Cooper responded
grumpily as he glanced to the side, trying to turn and see the man without
actually lifting the bucket full of plaster up to do so.
The foreman just stared. It was so hysterically funny that he
couldn’t even laugh. He actually bit his lip. Hard. “Do I even want to
know?”
“I did it before I could think about it, okay?” Cooper said
defensively as the runner finally came jogging up with the chisel. “Be
careful with that fucking thing, man, remember my fingers are down
there,” Cooper growled. His usually amiable personality, especially
compared to Lucas’s typical pissiness, did a lot toward making the men
like and respect him. That meant that when he shouted or growled, well…
the men quaked.
He turned back to glance at the boss as the trembling chisel was
placed against the hardening plaster. “One of the guys dropped his damn
wedding ring in it, and I reached in to grab it before it could dry up. Then
when I couldn’t get my hand out, I reached in with the other to pull it out,”
he admitted, hoping the flush of embarrassment was covered by his deep
tan. The stupidity of the act was due mostly to the fact that he hadn’t
gotten more than three hours of sleep last night, but he didn’t mention that.
It was hard not to offer it as an excuse, though.
Lucas actually winced when he heard the first crack of the plaster.
“That’s still going to hurt like hell,” he murmured, accompanied by a
sideways glare from Cooper. “Once you’re free, come over to the trailer.
I’ve got some solvent to get the shit off without pulling off all the skin.”
“Yeah, okay,” Cooper grumbled, flushing deeper as he turned back
to watch the slow progress of the chipping. “Someone get a fucking knife