Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series) (6 page)

Just like
her house. Her one hope to prove her father wrong--to prove she could succeed on her own without him or any man--going up in flames.

"Thank you, Roman St. John."

Tess frowned at the mess her burnt toast had made of Roman's floor. Would serve him right if she didn't clean up. After all, if not for his defective equipment, her house wouldn't have caught on fire. If not for the fire, she wouldn't have been forced to move into
his
house. And if Roman hadn't abandoned her--hadn't left her to make her own breakfast, there wouldn't be burnt toast on his kitchen floor right now. She'd even had to sacrifice her first cup of coffee putting out the flames.

In her rebellious pique, she opted for making herself a fresh pot of coffee first.
While it brewed, she went around opening windows to air out the place. After all, she was the one who'd have to breathe the fumes all day if she didn't. To get to the window in Roman's bedroom she had to go around his bed--his massive four-poster that screamed 'marriage bed'.

She skirted the big bed, eyeing it as she headed for the
door. There wasn't so much as a wrinkle in its cover. Tess snorted. She'd bet Roman even folded his underwear.

She
paused by the dresser and opened a drawer. Sure enough. His shorts were folded into tight little squares. She shook her head. "You're going to make some neat-nick woman very happy, St. John."

Of course,
it wouldn't be her. She wasn't neat.

She wasn't husband hunting either.
She was just a woman snooping through a man's underwear drawer, a very virile man's underwear drawer.

Neat or not, St. John was a man's man.

And not just because he wore plaid shirts, a hard hat, and a tool belt. He had a physique sculpted by physical labor and an ass made for his carpenter jeans.

Closing the drawer,
Tess mewed in contentment. The marriage bed loomed before her and her mew turned to a resigned sigh. There could never be anything between her and Roman in the bedroom save for smoldering sex. Too bad because he really wasn't such a bad guy, judging by their phone conversations that had often wandered away from the job at hand into areas of general architecture. He was compassionate and generous, traits she'd witness one afternoon after he'd sent his crew home and he stayed to build new porch steps for the very elderly Mrs. Antonetti across the alley. Then there was the way he always managed to make Kitt's infant daughter smile by making silly faces or cooing at her.

She sighed.
He was a natural with kids, not that paternal talents were even on her radar screen when vetting men. Still, he was a nice guy--a good guy. The fire at her house an accident and no reason to leave his kitchen a mess. Just as it wasn't his fault all she and Roman could share was a fondness for similar architecture, steamy sex, and that they both liked to read in bed.

S
he fingered the reading material piled high on his nightstand. There were magazines dedicated to renovating older homes and a fat volume on building codes. And then there was that thin little book he'd been reading last night when she'd come to him for a nightlight, the one with the faded title he'd said was about a woman like her. She picked up the book and turned it over in her hand.

"Shakespeare.
I'm impressed, St. John," she murmured as she squinted to read the faded title. But impressed wasn't the word that came to mind once she made out the words.
The Taming of the Shrew
.

He'd compared her to a shrew
! How
dare
he? And after all the hassle and headache he'd caused her!

"Arrogant oaf."
She slammed the book down on the nightstand.

"Pompous, patronizing neat freak!" she growled at the dresser with its drawer of precisely folded underwear.

"Condescending Cro-Magnon," she howled, hammering wrinkles into Roman's bedspread. "You think I'm a shrew? You haven't begun to see how shrewish I can be and to start with, you can clean your own kitchen!"

She stormed out of the bedroom in search of something to write on.
"Let it never be said of Theresa Louise Abbot that she didn't give a man exactly what he deserved."

She snatched up the stick
y note pad, but quickly discarded it. The yellow square was far too small for all she had to say to her contractor. Remembering he had an office, she raced up the stairs and into the room across the hall from the guest bedroom. She headed straight to the desk wedged in under the eaves, snatched a pen from a racquetball can next to the computer, a sheet of paper from the storage shelf beneath the inkjet printer and started to write.

Dear Mr. St. John:

No. Too polite.

Roman St. John didn't deserve polite.
She crumpled up the sheet of typing paper, tossed it over her shoulder, and snagged another.

Look here, St. John!

The paper tore beneath the ferocity of her exclamation point. She balled up the paper and sent it after the first, snatched up another, and set pen to page. This time, the pen left nothing but scratchy little lines and faint dashes where letters should be.

Scowling, Tess dug in the racquetball tin for another pen.
But all she came up with were pencils. No pencil lead would stand up to her writing. Not today.

She opened the top drawer of the desk and retrieved a fresh pen.
Now, what to write?

She stared at the orderly surface of the desk.
Computer, printer, scanner, mouse with mouse pad, racquetball can pencil holder, bills lined up in a file holder and books squarely braced between a set of pewter bookends. A place for everything and everything in its place. She was beginning to hate orderliness.

She swiveled in the chair, scanning the rest of the room.
Identical in layout to the cozy bedroom where she'd slept, it was crowded, but organized. Pencils, erasers, and slide rule stationed on a drafting table in front of the dormered window overlooking the back yard. Wastebasket and low storage shelves lined up beneath the sloping wall like a preplanned subdivision of identical middle-income housing. Two filing cabinets flanked the doorway, not unlike a well-appointed entry to a grand estate. Even his contractor's license and a photo of a big old farmhouse hung above the desk as level as any well-built house’s foundation.

But no college degree.
No awards. Such certificates and plaques plastered her father's office walls. Yet Roman St. John was a building contractor who'd come with the highest of recommendations. Well-earned recommendation, judging by the work he'd done for her before the fire. No moneyed parents backing him, near as she could tell. Just a business built by the man's own blood and sweat.

"No, no, no," she muttered.
"I am not going soft on him. He's simply a less educated version of my father. And he called me a shrew, albeit implied. He must pay, and with far worse than a mere scathing letter."

She stared at Roman's computer.
Oh yes, there was much worse she could do to him than call him a few choice words.

She booted up his computer.
There were any number of files she could mess up, provided they weren't password protected.

She tried one and smiled when it flashed open.
"Oh St. John, you trusting fool."

She perused his accounting ledger, his quarterly profit and loss statement, and his estimate sheets.
He could have charged his customers more, but he still made an ample personal income. A major portion of which he saved, she noted as she snooped further. More browsing and she amended
saved
with
invested.

A man with security on his mind.
She wasn't surprised. He was a man with his eye on a future that included a wife and children. A family man. He'd called himself just that many times while they worked together.

As much as that designation smacked of her father, she couldn't make herself mess with the financial accounts of a man carving out a life for a family.
Besides, any numbers she changed today wouldn't likely be noticed until tax time and she wanted immediate payback.

Tess closed the financial accounts and searched Roman's device manager for something more to her liking.
She could alter his calendar where he'd listed all his jobs, but he also recorded his appointments in the day planner he carried with him. The man excelled at organizational skills.

She could mess with his program files.
But, did she really want to do him irreversible harm?

But, he'd argued endlessly with her over the renovation of
her
house. He'd left her stuck in the boonies.

And h
e'd all but called her a shrew.

She could change the date on his computer.

Too juvenile.

But she was miffed. Hell, she was mad.

She opened his word processing program without finding so much as single letter. No personal journal. His emails were full of family correspondence, though. Nothing elaborate. Just short notes. Keeping in touch sort of things. Nice, that he kept in close touch with his siblings and parents. She moved on…and found his CAD program.

"Pay dirt."

Tess' fingers flew over the keyboard, opening files, scanning pages of schematic drawings. It was an earlier, simpler version of the drafting program she'd worked with at her father's firm, but familiar enough to her.

She studied a meticulously drawn electrical layout.
But it wasn't Roman's neatness that impressed her now. He'd laid out a complicated routing as efficiently as any licensed electrician. No wonder he'd stuck his nose into the argument she'd had with the electrician rewiring The Castle and, to her astonishment, supported her point. He actually knew his stuff. Still, later, privately, she'd informed Roman she could handle her own disputes…even though it had taken Roman's intervention--a man's intervention to make the electrician do the job to her specifications.

Nic
e to have someone at your side to lean on now and then.

But also galling to need a man in order to get another man to listen to what she wanted.
Besides, he was probably just showing off.

She
pulled up another set of files. These included layouts for additions and garages, as well as floor plans to houses, and one labeled Dixie's restaurant kitchen. Curious, she opened the file. The blueprint depicted a commercial kitchen that was both functional and compact. Commercial building was far more complicated than residential mostly because of codes. Add that Roman had had to build the restaurant kitchen onto an old farmhouse…

Tess
studied the farmhouse photo above the desk. She could see exactly where he'd added the kitchen. He hadn't charged his sister for labor, either. There hadn't been anything in his statements referencing any commercial properties.

She smiled. Family was supposed to support family
and that was a good thing. Too bad her family never got the memo.

Her smile faded and she exited the file.
One labeled The Castle caught her eye and she opened it. She wasn't surprised to see floor plans of her house, being he'd been the highest bidder on the property until she'd come along. She studied his plans. Other than giving the ground level a slightly more open floor plan and modernized kitchen, he'd made only minor alterations to the lower two floors. The big changes on his plan were to the attic, the third floor. A huge playroom dominated the space. It was a great use of the space for someone planning to raise a brood of children in that house.

In comparison,
she had wanted it for an investment, her design marrying modern day convenience with yesteryear's grandeur, the emphasis on elegant living and entertaining space for the professional-minded. Not exactly what an old fashioned family man had in mind. Her design priced the house right out of a small contractor's price range, too.

Correction.
Make that
would have
priced it out of Roman's range. She could forget about her prospective upscale buyers now that The Castle was a smoky, water-logged ruin.

Could that be Roman's angle? Could--would he have damaged the house so he could buy it at
salvage price?

It didn't make sense. He'd
done too much work on it already. Besides, he couldn't have predicted how much the fire would damage and he respected the house too much to destroy it.

But, even without ulterior motives,
he'd still cost her the first entry into her architect's portfolio as an independent. Left her without a project with which to show her father she didn't need to play the
supportive little woman
to any husband in order to be successful.

"Damn you, St. John."

She considered tinkering with the CAD program, replacing his plans with hers. It would ruin hours of his work…if he even needed it anymore. The house may be beyond repair. Or he may not be interested in taking on such a large restoration project.

As for restoring the property for her…
Even if the house was salvageable, St. John Contracting wouldn't be awarded the renovation job, just the bill for rebuilding.