Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series)

TAMING TESS

Book 1: The St. John Sibling Series

b
y Barbara Raffin

Copyright © 20
13

All rights reserved by author. The reproduction or other use of any part of this publication without the prior written consent of the rights holder is an infringement of the copyright law.

Cover Art/Design by Cover to Cover Designs
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This is a work of fiction. People and locations, even those with real names, have been fictionalized for the purposes of this story.

Lady, if I don't finish your remodeling job by the end of the week, you can move into
my
house.

The words
Roman St. John had spoken only days ago to Tess Abbot ricocheted around his brain as he stared into the flames devouring the third story of her house, the construction project he'd been within hours of finishing before it caught on fire. Whatever had possessed him to make such a ridiculous boast to the woman?

From the curb b
ehind him, his truck horn blared. He glared over his shoulder at his client who sat in his truck leaning on the horn. Six weeks of that woman's constant haranguing, that's what had goaded him into being stupid enough to gamble on the reliability of his crew and to propose the ridiculous, that she move into his house if he didn't get her job done on time.

Besides, it hadn't seemed such an outrageous boast at the time he'd
made it. He had a reputation as a contractor who got his jobs done on schedule, even when the client was a pain in the behind control freak like Tess Abbot.

Now, here he was, less than twenty-four hours away from getting rid of the client from hell
and his doofus cousin Raymond goes and sets fire to The Castle, by which the Victorian mansion of a house was known. If the man ever stuck another cigar in his mouth, Roman vowed to cram it down Raymond's throat, ash end first.

Honk.
Honk. Hooonnnk
.

And if
his client didn't stop honking his truck horn in his ear, he was going to super glue her fingers to her harpy tongue. He stepped around to the driver's side of the truck and jerked open the door.

"What now?"

She squared her shoulders, folded her arms across her compact breasts flattened further by the tight weave of a skin-tight, spandex tank top, and lifted her pert chin to the imperial angle he'd come to know all too well in the weeks working for her. "I smell like the bottom of an ash tray. I want a bath and clearly my bathroom is no longer usable, thanks to your crew's carelessness."

"
What do you want me to do about that?"

The
strobe lights of the fire truck filling the Castle's driveway flashed through the evening dusk and across a face that was flawless save for a smudge of soot on one cheek and the flecks of ash salting her dark hair. She'd pulled her dark mane back into a tight ponytail high on the back of her head, as she always did for her daily run. But, the day she'd opened her front door to him so he could begin renovations on The Castle, her hair had been loose, a glorious dark mane cascading down over her shoulders. Until that day, they'd communicated via phone calls, emails, and texts, her voice lush and inviting, her ideas and plans smart. Their conversations had had him thinking beyond an architect/contractor relationship. Given finding a wife and starting a family ranked at the top of his latest five-year plan, falling in love would have been an appropriate course of action. But…

"St. John.
You do have a bathroom in your house, don’t you?"

And there she went with another of her endless digs.
Good thing he hadn't voiced his feelings the day they met, because six weeks of working with Tess had proven her to be anything but the type of woman with whom he wished to spend the rest of his life. The woman he'd come to know via phone had disappeared behind one who kept looking over his shoulder--second guessing him and
always
there because she lived on the construction site.

Not that he didn't respect her point of view.
She was a good architect, knew her stuff. But, even when a sub-contractor dismissed her opinion and he backed her up, had she appreciate his support? No. She'd curtly informed him she was capable of handling her own problems.

The red light washed
across her face again, making him think less than charitable thoughts about his client. A crime, that's what it was for a woman to have a body that wouldn't quit and a tongue to match.

"
Please let me put you up in a nice motel for the night," he said, hoping the woman had cooled off enough by now to realize the absurdity of moving into his house with him. They squabbled like cats and dogs.

"Your idea of
nice
no doubt rents by the hour in this town," she lobbed back at him.

And
now another of the never-ending digs for the small community in which he'd chosen to build a business and raise a family. No doubt about it, she was two horns shy of a she-devil. There wasn't enough water in all the Great Lakes framing the state of Michigan to wash that fact away. He swung himself up into the driver's seat.

"Pine
Mountain may be a small town in a forgotten corner of Michigan's Upper Peninsula," Roman said through his teeth, "but--"

"--It has clean air and quiet living," she simpered back at him, "not to mention it's a great place to raise kids.
Yada, yada, yada. Personally," she droned on, "I find quiet vastly overrated."

"Some quiet right now would be
vastly
refreshing," Roman grumbled, throwing the truck into gear.

"Look, St. John, I'm the one who's been burned out of her house with nothing more than the clothes on her back.
And whose fault is that?"

Roman winced.
Of all the people to have screwed up with, why did it have to be with the harpy from hell?

Then
again he should be more tolerant of the woman since she'd come home from her evening run to find her house on fire--a fire for which he likely was responsible? He owed her more than a little compassion.

"Look," he tried one last time as he pulled away from the curb and edged around the
backend of the fire truck that blocked Tess' car in her driveway. "We may not have any hotels in the area, but there are several Triple A motels."

"I'm used to five star accommodations."

The woman was unrelentingly stubborn. No wonder he couldn't help but spar with her at every turn. No wonder he'd dubbed her
Princess
by the end of the first week working with her.

Still, early evidence indicated he was responsible for her predicament. Maybe if he offered an olive branch of help, she'd be more reasonable.

"I know a clean-up crew I can get in here as soon as the Fire Chief clears the scene."

"You burn up so many of your projects you have a cleaning crew on stand-by?"

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "I just happen to know them. They've got topnotch water extraction equipment."

"How nice of you to recommend
your
friends to clean up your mess. This is beginning to sound like a scam."

Okay.
Trying to be a nice guy to Tess Abbot wasn't working. Time to try a different tact.

Turning hard from the side street onto the main
thoroughfare, he said, "You'll accept nothing less than five star, huh?"

"That's right."

If the woman demanded five star accommodations, he was a free man. One look at his modest digs and she'd beg him to take her to a motel, any motel.

#

The minute they left the city limits, Tess should have demanded Roman St. John turn his truck around and take her back to town, but who could tell where city ended and country began? Not a Chicago bred girl like her, that's for sure. Even downtown Pine Mountain seemed sparsely lit in comparison.

Yet, here she was, driving into the descending gloom of nightfall with a man who was
trouble with a capital T. All hunkness aside, Roman St. John and his
great place to raise kids
attitude sounded too much like her father, who still lived by the antiquated standards of a fifties’ man. Daddy-Dearest believed women belonged in the bedroom not the boardroom.

She
scowled, recalling the moment she'd realized her father had never intended for her to take over the family architectural firm. That the only way she would ever be recognized for her talent as an architect would be if she went out on her own.

And now
the refurbishing job she'd intended to use as the jewel in the foundation of her business with was in flames. She no longer had a salable property ready to flip into the hands of a couple of potential high-end buyers-in-waiting let alone a photographable project for her portfolio. Her father would declare that she'd failed to go it on her own--the father who'd promoted lesser men ahead of her,
men
being the operative word. The father who'd refused to give her a recommendation to present to other architectural firms when she'd left his.

The
father who'd informed every loan institution within a hundred mile radius of Chicago that they could not rely on him to underwrite any loan they gave the youngest of his three daughters. He'd probably even warned them that she, being a female, would undoubtedly default on the loan because he believed no woman could build a business on her own.

"You'll come crawling back to me before the year is out," he'd shouted after her as she'd stormed out of his office th
e day she'd finally realized the extent to which her father would go to keep her at heel.

Fortunately, she had
great-aunt Honey to turn to. Aunt Honey had never let any man get in her way. Aunt Honey had been a career woman before it was fashionable and traveled her own flamboyant path in life undaunted by the naysayers.

Aunt Honey owned a house three hundred miles away from her father's influence--the kind of house whose renovation would be a shining star in any architect's portfolio.
A smile tugged at the corner of Tess' mouth. Honey's reign as the grand dame of the local community players had lasted a decade and a half before the wanderlust had once again beckoned her. But fifteen years of summer visits had been long enough for Tess to learn an appreciation for fine old houses.

She'd bought
The Castle from Aunt Honey at fair market value even though her aunt had offered it to her for less. It was the only fair thing to do since there'd been another buyer interested. Besides, anything less and her father would likely dismiss her success as having been subsidized by family.

She'd even gone the conventional route in financing the purchase rather than take Aunt Honey up on her offer of a land contract.
A bank loan kept her independent, but it also meant she had to turn a profit before year's end when her balloon payment was due.

That end-of-year deadline is
partly why she'd hired St. John, a contractor with a reputation for getting things done on time--a contractor known for his quality of workmanship and reliability. That and the fact Aunt Honey had recommended him herself. Between the tight timeline and Aunt Honey's high praise, she'd actually hired him sight unseen to renovate the Victorian era mansion. When she found out he was the other buyer she'd bought the place out from under--

"No hard feelings,"
he'd assured her. "I understand Honey selling to family."

I
t also meant he already knew the place well and that saved her a five hour drive from Chicago to show him the job. She faxed him her blueprints for the changes. They hammered out pre-job details via email, texting, and phone calls. That deep, assuring voice on the other end of the phone line had made her wonder far too much about the man it belonged to. She was still a woman with needs, after all, even if she weren't looking for happily-ever-after with any man.

And
, when she'd opened the mansion's front door and looked into Roman St. John's chiseled-by-thirty-something years face, she knew he was everything his telephone voice had promised and more. Visions of a hot tryst danced in her head.

But,
the first words out of Roman's mouth, once he'd determined she was indeed
the
Tess Abbot who'd hired him, took him down to the level of every man who'd ever doubted her.

"You're a lot younger than I expected."

"Don't let my looks fool you, Mr. St. John," she'd leveled back at him in her best authoritative tone. "I graduated top of my class and am board certified architect in three states. Got those certifications on my first try at each test. I know what I'm doing."

"I didn't mean--"

She'd cut him off with a terse, "Of course you didn't."

He only diminished further her opinion of him
during their first walk-through when he'd lingered in the original nursery off the master bedroom which Honey had used as a dressing room and Tess slated to be converted to a state-of-the-art walk-in closet.

"A
sweet little space," he'd said. "Convenient for a young couple starting a family."

"It's not like I'm removing
the house's Victorian charm," she'd countered, readily defensive. "I'm just making an old fashioned nursery into a closet more functional for today's buyer. Besides, why are you so sentimental about it? If you'd gotten The Castle how else would you have made money off it than converted it to apartments?"

"
Wasn't planning to make money off it," he'd said. "I was going to make The Castle into my family home."