King's Million-Dollar Secret. Maureen Child

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To Rory, Scott and Joaquin at Building and

       Construction Contractors, the heroes who rebuilt my

       kitchen, put up with my constant questions and

       made a palace out of a pup tent!

       Thanks, you guys.

      One

      Rafe King liked a friendly wager as much as the next guy.

      He just didn’t like to lose.

      When he lost though, he paid up. Which was why he was standing in a driveway, sipping a cup of coffee, waiting for the rest of the work crew to show up. As one of the owners of King Construction, it had been a few years since Rafe had actually done any on-site work. Usually, he was the details man, getting parts ordered, supplies delivered. He stayed on top of the million and one jobs the company had going at any one time and trusted the contractors to get the work done right.

      Now though, thanks to one bet gone bad, he’d be working on this job himself for the next few weeks.

      A silver pickup truck towing a small, enclosed trailer pulled in behind him and Rafe slanted his gaze at the driver. Joe Hanna. Contractor. Friend. And the man who’d instigated the bet Rafe had lost.

      Joe climbed out of his truck, barely managing to hide a smile. “Hardly knew you without the suit you’re usually wearing.”

      “Funny.” Most of his life, Rafe hadn’t done the suit thing. Actually, he was more comfortable dressed as he was now, in faded jeans, black work boots and a black T-shirt with King Construction stamped across the back. “You’re late.”

      “No, I’m not. You’re early.” Joe sipped at his own coffee and handed over a bag. “Want a doughnut?”

      “Sure.” Rafe dug in, came up with a jelly-filled and polished it off in a few huge bites. “Where’s everyone else?”

      “We don’t start work until eight a.m. They’ve still got a half hour.”

      “If they were here now, they could start setting up, so they could start working at eight.” Rafe turned his gaze to the California bungalow that would be the center of his world for the next several weeks. It sat on a tree-lined street in Long Beach, behind a wide, neatly tended lawn. At least fifty years old, it looked settled, he supposed. As if the town had grown up around it.

      “What’s the job here, anyway?”

      “A kitchen redo,” Joe said, leaning against Rafe’s truck to study the house. “New floor, new counter. Lots of plumbing to bring the old place up to code. New drains, pipes, replastering and painting.”

      “Cabinets?” Rafe asked, his mind fixing on the job at hand.

      “Nope. The ones in there are solid white pine. So we’re not replacing. Just stripping, sanding and varnishing.”

      He nodded, then straightened up and turned his gaze on Joe. “So do the guys working this job know who I am?”

      Joe grinned. “Not a clue. Just like we talked about, your real identity will be a secret. For the length of the job here, your name is Rafe Cole. You’re a new hire.”

      Better all the way around, he thought, if the guys working with him didn’t know that he was their employer. If they knew the truth, they’d be antsy and wouldn’t get the work done. Besides, this was an opportunity for Rafe to see exactly what his employees thought of the business and working for King Construction. Like that television show where employers went undercover at their own companies, he just might find out a few things.

      Still, he shook his head. “Remind me again why I’m not firing you?”

      “Because you lost the bet fair and square and you don’t welsh on your bets,” Joe said. “And, I warned you that my Sherry’s car was going to win the race.”

      “True.” Rafe smiled and remembered the scene at the King Construction family picnic a month ago. The children of employees spent months building cars that would then race on a track made especially for the event. In the spirit of competition, Rafe had bet against Joe’s daughter’s bright pink car. Sherry had left everyone else standing at the gate. That would teach him to bet against a female.

      “Good thing you let your brothers do all the talking at the picnic,” Joe was saying. “Otherwise, these guys would recognize you.”

      That’s just the way Rafe liked it, he thought. He left the publicity and the more public areas of the business to two of his brothers, Sean and Lucas. Between the three of them, they had built King Construction into the biggest construction firm on the West Coast. Sean handled the corporate side of things, Lucas managed the customer base and crews, and Rafe was the go-to guy for supplies, parts and anything else needed on a site.

      “Lucky me,” he muttered, then looked up at the rumble of another truck pulling up to the front of the house. Right behind him, a smaller truck parked and the two men got out and walked toward them.

      Joe stepped up. “Steve, Arturo, this is Rafe Cole.