“Do not laugh at me, Rhett,” she growled angrily. “None of this is funniest in the slightest, do you hear me?”
“Of course,” I nodded earnestly, but it did me no good when it was followed by another amused snort.
“Listen,” Sarah stuck her pointer finger out like an angry schoolteacher, “I came here and took this job with you because I thought it would be a nice change of pace, for once. But all you’ve done is humiliate me right from the very first minute! And you know what? That almost makes me want to quit!”
“Almost?” I replied, raising an eyebrow. “You haven’t even accepted the job yet. How can you almost quit a job you haven’t even said yes to?”
“You sure made it seem like I’d said yes!” She snapped. “Parading around and showing me things like this developmental property!”
Sarah was waving her arms too much. I knew what was going to happen before it even did, but there was no stopping it. With her foot stuck in the mud, she had no balance left.
SPLAT!
Mud burst out from all around her as she slammed backward, kicking both of her legs out for balancing and coating her entire body in mud. A tiny little droplet landed on my face, but I didn’t have the good sense to wipe it off before I burst out laughing.
“That was perfect!” I guffawed, bending over with my hands on my knees so I could try and catch my breath. The laughs were turning into hiccups now, and it was all I could do not to fall over myself.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Sarah demanded, trying and failing to stand up. The mud was too slippery.
Remembering that I was, at times, a gentleman, I ran over and stuck out my hand, but the angry blonde just slapped it away. Her hair stuck out at a million different angles, and there was a streak of mud running down her right cheek.
And, of course, the rest of her body was just coated with the stuff.
“Is this how you treat all of your employees?” She demanded, finally managing to right herself and springing to her feet in a tizzy.
“No,” I chuckled. “Just the cute ones.”
In an instant, her expression went from fiery angry to completely confused. “You think… I’m cute?”
Her voice was so timid she sounded like a nervous college girl at orientation.
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I thought that was obvious.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She shook her head, hard, flinging mud bits all around us.
Sarah was so close I could smell the mint on her breath. It was a Listerine strip, I was pretty sure. I loved those things.
I didn’t even know what I was doing. All there was was the scent of Listerine and those big blue eyes. I was leaning forward, completely unaware of what I was even doing, and our lips touched before she could pull back.
If she wanted to pull back.
The kiss was like magic. The world froze around us. The mud didn’t matter, the ever-present San Francisco wind didn’t matter, none of it mattered. All that existed was Sarah and me, lips locked in the middle of a field. I could feel the wet mud against my cheek, rubbing up and down with every move she made, grinding itself into my skin like a mud mask.
She was soft for someone who had such a hard outer shell. Her lips were moist and pillowy, latching onto me like we were made for each other.
I don’t even think I was breathing.
Then, suddenly, she pulled away, taking all of the magic with her.
“What. The. Hell?” She demanded, reeling backward and touching the tips of her fingers to her mouth.
I did the same, immediately missing her warmth. I couldn’t believe I’d just kissed her.
And it was even harder to believe that I desperately missed the feeling of her lips on mine. I wanted it back immediately.
“Sarah,” I started, prepared to offer some sort of explanation.
“No.” She whipped around, not willing to make eye contact with me anymore. “I should go. I’ll uh, call an Uber. Down the street.”
And with that, she was off, disappearing just as she had the other morning at the little deli shop.
I should have stopped her. Should have run after her and attempted to offer some sort of explanation for my absolutely unprofessional behavior. But, as I’d been discovering more and more, there was no explanation for the way I behaved when I was around Sarah. I couldn’t even understand it myself, let alone attempt to make it logical.
First, I offered the woman a job that didn’t even exist. Then, I took her out to a development for absolutely no reason, and now, I kissed her.
Something was wrong with my head.
Before I could delve further into the twisted psyche that seemed to have taken up residence in my mind, my cell phone rang, the chime echoing off the empty hills.
I glanced down at it, groaning when I saw my attorney’s name on the caller I.D.
I definitely shouldn’t tell her about that kiss, I thought. She’ll think I’m going to get sued for harassment next.
So, I put those invasive thoughts of Sarah out of my mind and attempted to answer the phone in what I hoped was a smooth, casual voice.
“Jessica,” I grinned into the receiver. “What is up?”
I sounded way too much like an air-headed Youtuber at that moment.
“Nope,” Jessica snapped instantly.
This was one of the things I loved about her. She was about as no-nonsense as they come, and that was something I definitely needed a lot of in my life.
“Okay, done with that,” I grimaced. “Why are you calling me in the middle of the day?”
“Well, if you were expecting good news, I hate to break it to you, but I’ve got none,” she replied. “What I do have is a problem. A big one.”
I sucked in a breath, glancing down the road and secretly hoping that Sarah was coming back. But it was still as empty as a ghost town.
“Alright,” I said. “Give it to me.”
“You’re being sued for defamation.”
Dumbfounded. That was the only thing I felt for a moment. Then, I instantly transitioned into attempting to decipher which of my many statements to the press could have fallen under the umbrella of defamation.
But there were none. I was very careful about it at all times. I didn’t want to end up like The Sun when they’d called Johnny Depp an abuser, only to turn around and realize two years later that they were wrong.
And then get sued. Which was exactly what was happening to me anyways.
“What happened,” I demanded, already on my way to get back into the Tesla and drive… somewhere. I just needed to think.
“Tony Gibbons is claiming that video you posted, uh, I have it here somewhere…” Jessica went quiet for a moment as she shuffled papers around, looking for the right one. “Oh, yep, this is it. A video titled “Confessions of the Real Estate World: Which Gurus are Lying to You?” Does that sound familiar?”
“Yeah, sure,” I nodded. “It’s my most viewed series. It’s where I expose the gurus who are lying to the public. I never said anything untrue.”
“Apparently, Tony thinks otherwise. He’s stated that your claim that he received money from his parents is patently false and has caused him to lose respect and money on his own social media channels.”
“Shit,” I groaned.