“Can you do me a favor?”
Devyn and Talia are sitting at the conference table in my office, remnants of lunch pushed aside. It’s a need, a hunger, that I haven’t felt in a long time, to go over, drag her out of her chair, and kiss her with my entire heart and soul poured into it.
She asks the question so nonchalantly, not realizing I would do whatever she asked, whenever she asked. A quick question thrown at me as I walk into my office as she sifts through the papers from the investigation.
“Whatever you need,” I say, my voice scratchy.
Beau followed me into the office, and he smirks, his eyes on Talia who ignores him. Only a day into it, and there’s already trouble in paradise.
Devyn smiles, knowing me, pegging me for a sappy slob. She heard it in my voice, and her eyes meet mine acknowledging my feelings.
“Can you go out to the site and look at the crane’s warning system? I asked Tony why he ignored the warning signals, and he said there weren’t any. I’m trying to find who questioned him after he woke up in the hospital, but I’m not getting anywhere.”
“Fred McAllister, the OSHA rep who filmed the clip that’s online. He questioned everyone. I’ll find a copy of it for you,” Beau says, stepping behind Talia’s chair and resting a hand on her shoulder. She freezes, then relaxes.
Devyn catches the exchange. “Thanks, I appreciate it. Tony was adamant he didn’t do anything wrong. He followed the crane’s manual and added the weight the table indicated. He said he didn’t use outriggers or bearing plates because it hadn’t rained enough the day before to need them.”
Beau frowns when she says this, and I try to think back, but that time is hazy. What I know is from watching the same clip as everyone else.
“The mud was deep, Devyn,” I say.
“He said the crane was parked in a puddle and made the mud appear deeper than it was. I wasn’t there, obviously, but Talia and I watched clips from other viewpoints, and I think he might be right. The ground doesn’t look as soggy in other areas of the site. In fact, the area where the boom hit you, had the ground been softer, had a little more give, you might not have been hurt as badly as you were. Anyway,” she continues, wanting to avoid arguing as much as I do, “can you check out the wiring and see if anything was tampered with?”
I haven’t been out there since the ambulance carted me away, leaving cleanup and everything else to Beau. I would do a lot for Devyn, but I really don’t want to do this.
Beau skims his fingers along Talia’s jaw before stepping away from her. “I’ll go with you. Meetings are done for the day. Are we doing dinner?”
The four of us eating dinner together. I like the sound of it. “Devyn?”
She catches Talia’s eye. “Sure. You can tell me some Cedar Hill gossip.”
“Beau will have to do that. I don’t know anything about what’s been going on here. Why do you want to know?” I give in and lean over, nudging her cheek with a finger asking her to look at me. When she does, I press my lips to hers. She sighs against my mouth, and I harden when her breath fans my face. “Doing a little freelance work?” I ask when I break the kiss, rolling my shoulders and telling my dick to settle down. He’ll get his turn soon enough.
“Something like that.” She wrinkles her nose. “Do you know what to look for?”
Beau shakes his head. “Nope. We’ll have to drag a crane engineer with us.”
“Will that be a problem?”
“No. Stay here until we come back, okay?” Devyn grins, and I don’t believe it for a minute. “Fine, but at least use Mack. I don’t want you hurt, I mean it. He’ll wait for you downstairs if you need to go anywhere.”
“Thanks.” She blows me a kiss as Beau and I step out of my office, and if I wouldn’t have caught shit from Beau for it for the rest of my life, yes, I would have been the cheesy asshole who pretends to snatch it out of the air and put it in his pocket. Instead, I point at both of them and say, “Behave.”
The last thing I hear before shutting the door is them laughing.
“Christ, you have it bad,” Beau says as he pulls onto the street from the underground parking garage. “You were never this obnoxious when you met Renata.”
“I’m not obnoxious,” I say, leaning against the seat, staring out the window. My stomach has started to do this sick roll, and it will get worse with every passing block.
Beau gives me side eye and grunts in disagreement, but I’m too busy breathing steadily through my nose hoping to keep my coffee from coming up to argue with him. He calls an engineer from the company we purchased the crane from, and he says he can meet us at the site in fifteen minutes. I’m only doing this to humor Devyn, not that I would say it to her face. The crane had just gone through a maintenance check before the lift. I went over the plan with my foreman and Tony several times before the actual lift occurred, and everything had been in working order.
We sit in silence as Beau navigates the streets.
It’s heading toward quitting time, and traffic’s bumper to bumper as people try to go home as quickly as possible after a long workday. The vehicles thin as we near the site, this part of Cedar Hill not as built up as other areas of the city.
My blood hums in my veins and sweat runs down my back. At some point, I still would have needed to come out here, but in doing this favor for Devon, I’m facing the site sooner than I wanted to. It will be one more thing to appease Beau, who’s been harassing me to come out since my doctor’s official announcement I was healing well and could resume my normal activities.
After Stevie shot at Devyn and Beau arranged a ride for them, he’d sent someone to pick up the SUV he left behind, and there’s nothing here now but stray cars belonging to people who had to park away from their places of work either because they couldn’t afford to buy a parking pass or were too cheap to bother with the fees. He parks along the curb behind a car that looks similar to Devyn’s, and I swallow a lump in my throat. She could have gotten killed out here, and it would have been my fault for not trying to rein her in.