Read Online Hard Irish by Jennifer Saints - Free Book Online

conversation and shook his head.  “Weird.”
    “What?”
    “The couple from L.A. coming to see the spec house.  They sound as if they’ve already bought it.”
    “Isn’t that a good thing?”
    James shrugged.  “I guess.  Unusual, given the economy.  They’ll be here in fifteen.”
    “My cue to head out.  I’ve an apology to deliver.”
    “I bet you my last dollar that your noble-ass is incapable of walking away from her,” James muttered.
    Jared pretended he didn’t hear.  Walking away from her was just until he could settle his professional bone with McKenna Construction.  It didn’t mean he wasn’t going to pick up where their kiss left off ASAP.
    He drove all the way to McKenna Construction’s main office thirty minutes into South Carolina only to discover that Roxanne McKenna wasn’t there.  Folks had to have recognized him from the bar fight last night, because he practically had to pull teeth to find out where Roxanne McKenna was.  She was back in Savannah at the Drake Hotel, already setting up her crew for the job.  The woman apparently didn’t waste a minute. 
    Jared spent the return trip rehearsing what to say without sounding like an idiot, but ended up empty handed.  Frustrated, he turned his thoughts to the job McKenna Construction had just outbid them on.  During the turn of the century, Anderson Drake had had all of George Washington Biltmore’s vision of creating an unforgettable estate, but only half the money and acreage.  Word was, to finish his dream, he’d made a deal with Chicago crime bosses during Prohibition and ran liquor through tunnels leading from the estate to the Savannah River.
    The association had cost him, though.  Five years later, Anderson Drake had been murdered, gunned down in the middle of the night, staining the foyer of his dream with his blood.  The murder went unsolved and the Drake Hotel joined several other Savannah landmarks as being “haunted.”  Over the years a couple of owners had met tragic ends at the hotel and two women guests had disappeared in the last decade.  It was whispered that Anderson Drake’s ghost was responsible.
    Jared chalked it up to bad luck and tourists wandering off into the surrounding marsh lands.  Gators lurked in the brackish water and were known to snatch an unsuspecting bystander if they got too close.  Recently, the hotel had been part of a bitter divorce battle between a philandering husband, Brian Bentley and his philanthropist wife, Tiffany Parker Bentley.  The wife won and she was gutting the place like only a woman scorned could.  News reports had the husband currently stewing in jail for assault.
    Jared pulled into the parking lot, surprised at the bustle of activity already surrounding the hotel.  McKenna Construction office trailers had been set up.  Industrial dumpsters were in place and delivery trucks with supplies lined the parking area.
    As he exited his truck, searching for the woman who’d snagged his attention even before she’d appeared on scene, he felt as if he’d been blown to Oz.  The site looked as if it had been underway for a week rather than a day.
    The hotel’s four wings and six floors were ringed by balconies sporting massive white columns and urns of bright flowers.  Inside, twenty-foot high ceilings, intricately carved molding, Italian Marble, and Byzantine glass mosaics dominated the first floor.  Jared’s hands and guts ached that he and James didn’t get the job.  Being able to renovate such a treasure would have been an experience of a lifetime.  Not finding Roxanne in the large lobby area, he decided to check the perimeter before braving the envy the upper floors of the hotel would deliver.
    Giving one last look at the drool-worth artistry surrounding him, he plowed into someone rushing into the hotel as he was exiting.
    The woman’s hard hat hit him mid-chest and she stepped back with a gasp.
    “Bloody hell, I need coffee.”  The buxom redhead wrestled