I sigh. “I lost track of time. My office is a fucking wasteland of shit not getting done and I got neck-deep in reports. I’m sorry—for real. I should’ve come straight here from the house.”
“Thank you for coming,” Jaxi says as she untangles herself from Boone. “I appreciate you being here.”
“We’re family. It’s what we do.”
I pause to take in my youngest brother. I can see a blip of sadness about Dad not being here and it causes my chest to tighten.
“Hey, Boone,” I say.
He raises a brow.
“Fuck Dad.” I punch him in the arm as I walk by.
“See you in the office tomorrow,” he says.
He’s smiling when I turn around.
“That’s still so weird coming from you,” I say.
He grins as he hops off the stool. “Holt said that human resources is interviewing for your executive administrative assistant position tomorrow and he’ll see if he can find someone to work for me too.” His grin grows wider. “I’m going to have my very own secretary.”
I roll my eyes. “Welcome to the big leagues, kid.”
His laughter follows me to the door. I give them both a little wave before stepping outside into the cool evening air.
I make my way to my car, my stomach rumbling from the lack of an actual dinner and wonder why I didn’t just box up some food from the party. But as soon as my gaze lands on the damage to my Rover, my thoughts whisk away from food.
My body turns its attention elsewhere as my conversation with Shaye filters through my brain.
“I was thinking about what you were going to do with those.”
I groan as I climb into my car. “Shaye, you have no fucking idea.”
The engine comes to life with the push of a button.
“No fucking idea,” I repeat as I put the car in reverse and back down the driveway. “And that’s wholly irritating.”
I slam the car into drive, leaving a blast of rubber on the road behind me.
Three
Shaye
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say to no one in particular.
The storage area to The Gold Room is a wreck. The supplies that were delivered on Friday still sit in cardboard boxes—well, most of them. Some of them spill over onto the floor. Pantry items are askew on the large metal shelves along the wall and something wet with a blue shine has pooled under the shelf where we keep the dish soap.
“This is wonderful,” I mumble, trying not to break my neck on the slick surface.
I hang my purse in the locker with my name spelled out with children’s magnets and then slam it. The sound must echo through the kitchen because Nate’s head pops around the corner.
“Thank fuck you’re here,” he says, annoyance embedded on his handsome features. “I was getting ready to come looking for you.”
I smile because he would’ve done exactly that.
Nate Hughes is good people. We met at a bar—ironically not his bar, The Gold Room. It was late one night a few months ago and I was at an impasse. Tequila sounded like an acceptable answer. It was as good of a solution as any in my clouded, this-may-as-well-be-total-rock-bottom moment. Nate and his brother, Dominic, just happened to be there. Before the night was over, Nate had quietly labeled me as one of his tribe—a ragtag bunch of misfits, for the most part—and offered me a part-time job.
I accepted. The rest is history.
“I would’ve left to avoid this mess too.” I wrinkle my nose as I look around the room. “What the hell happened here?”
“Murray.” Nate gives me a pointed look as he fills the doorway with his broad shoulders. “He was in one of his moods and tried to start shit with Paige over a fish sandwich. Things got a little … heated.”
Imagine that. “And messy, it appears.”
The corner of his lip twitches. “It’s not as bad as it could’ve been. I didn’t break his face.”
I shake my head. We both know he’d never hurt Murray. Murray is like a son to him, despite the fact that Nate’s not actually old enough to be his dad.
“I fired him,” he says, as if this shores up his point. “I love the guy, but he can’t act a fool to Paige. I won’t have it.”
“So he’ll be back, when? Tomorrow?”
“Probably not until Friday.” He smiles sheepishly. “He’ll be out of money and full of apologies by then.”
“You’re weak, Hughes. Weak.”
He laughs and steps into the room. “Forget Murray. How are you? Any broken bones? Do I need to go hunt anyone down?”
My skin tingles as I think about Oliver.
It’s such a shame that the universe wasted a perfectly good meet-cute on me.
“I’m fine,” I say. “My car is currently held together by zip ties though.”
As if on cue, images of Oliver and his unintentional smolder fires through my brain. I wonder vaguely if I’m always going to have a Pavlovian reaction to the word zip ties.
My stomach clenches.
There could be worse things to endure.
“I’m fine,” I reiterate.
Nate’s brow furrows. “Okay. Want me to look at your car?”
“Nah,” I say, taking a waist apron off a shelf. “It’ll be fine.”
I tie the apron around my middle and ignore Nate’s piercing gaze. He doesn’t say a word but he doesn’t have to. I know what he’s thinking.
Nate’s irritation over my refusal to accept help from anyone is no secret. His heart is as big as his shoulders and rebuffing his attempts to help never goes over smoothly. But I love that about him.
“Hey, I have some good news for you.” I fiddle with the ties at the small of my back. “Your girl here has a job interview tomorrow. And that’s a damn good thing because the temp job the staffing company told me they had for me—the one at the Creamery? They made a mistake.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah. But the good news part of this is that one of the resumes I sent out over the past couple of weeks panned out and I have an interview in the morning.”
Nate smiles. “That is good news as long as that means I won’t lose you around here.”
“I’m not going anywhere. This is the only night job I’ll ever have.”
“Good.”
I laugh as my hands fall to my sides. “Trust me when I tell you that working two jobs—three if I can find a third that can coordinate with the other two—is not where I wanted to be at thirty years old. I’ll require this second job for the foreseeable future.”
He takes a deep breath almost as if he already regrets what he’s about to say and Nate Hughes regrets very little of what comes out of his mouth.
My nerves fizzle back to life as I open my locker. I don’t need more lip gloss but I also don’t need to stand in front of him like a target waiting to be shot.
Just as I put the cap back on the tube, he sighs.
“Dominic told you that Camilla could help you,” he says warily.
I fire a glare over my shoulder. “Stop.”
“Come on, Shaye. Think about it.”