Working Man Read Online Free

Jackson, he knew the interiors of the houses were shoddily put together with substandard materials and workmanship. They were pure-d crap, and every reputable builder in the state knew it. Bernard Jackson was one of Nick’s main business competitors, and to say he couldn’t stand the man was a masterpiece of understatement.
    After a stint in the army, Nick had returned to Chicago and started his own construction company. He was a master contractor and builder, and had parlayed his expertise into a building firm with an impeccable reputation for expert work. Nick was into land development and real estate as well as residential and commercial building and he’d worked long and hard to make himself into one of the most respected men in the business. He did it by keeping every promise he ever made, by delivering every project on time and on budget and by working harder than anyone else in his company. He had nothing but contempt for men like Bernard Jackson, fast-talking con artists who won jobs by underbidding and then defrauding their clients by using cheap materials and taking shortcuts. The result was crappy houses that weren’t worth a quarter of what the clients ended up paying for them.
    He particularly hated Bernard because he was a good-looking guy with a snappy wardrobe and a habit of preying on lonely women who’d worked hard to save enough money to refurbish their homes, or worse yet, who’d saved for years to make their dream of home-ownership come true. Bernard was also known to pay off inspectors and appraisers, so his underhanded practices made him rich, instead of putting him in jail where he belonged. For reasons he couldn’t understand, the thought of getting his hands around Bernard Jackson’s neck and choking the life out of him was very compelling to Nick at the moment. How a woman who was as smart as Dakota Phillips was supposed to be had got tangled up with that lying, conniving, thieving jerk he had no idea, but there was no way Nick was letting him get away with it.
    By the time he pulled up in front of Dakota’s unit, he was hot as a firecracker. He glanced at Dakota’s bright-red HHR with the sad rear end and made a mental note to make sure she had transportation while it was being repaired. It didn’t occur to him that the body shop would see to that, he just didn’t want her to be inconvenienced. He was surprised to see her sitting on the front steps when he got out of his truck. She looked rather like a little lost girl sitting there with her elbows on her knees, staring down at her bare feet. Nice, pretty feet, too, with some kind of pinkish nail polish. No corns, bunions or other unsightly things were visible, which gave him a little thrill. Nick loved a woman with sexy feet. She was sexy all over, with her long curly hair flowing loose over her shoulders. She looked up at him approaching and he was thrown off guard by her look of utter hatred.
    â€œWho the hell are you?” she said in a distinctly unfriendly tone of voice.
    Nick kept walking until he was at the foot of the stairs. “I’m Nick Hunter. Remember the truck that bumped into you yesterday?”
    Dakota looked blank for a moment and then frowned even more. “Oh yeah, I remember. That was the first of three horrible things that have happened to me since I got to this wretched town. Yes, I remember your girlfriend slamming into me like I was invisible. It was a fun day,” she said drolly.
    A lesser man would have dropped off the flowers and scrammed, but Nick was too tough for that. He made a motion with his free hand and she actually scooted over to make room for him to sit next to her. “I came to apologize again for my niece’s part in the mishap,” he said, trying not to emphasize the word niece. Before she could react, he asked what the other two things were that had caused her to be upset.
    â€œThe second thing was getting here and finding my newly