“Since they’re offering, I’ll work on their schedule. You tell me.”
“Five?”
“Works for me. I don’t have to have the truck turned in until late tomorrow.”
“And Josh and Ted want to talk to you about a job.”
“Even better.” She sipped her coffee. “Did I remember to tell you thank you?”
“Several times. And you’re welcome. I’ll come over before then so we can handle the lease paperwork, and rearrange the bay so you have room for your stuff there.”
“I need to unload my truck and hit the grocery store.” First, she needed to get Stanley’s crate out of her truck. She’d stashed it under the topper so she could find it more easily. It’d mortify her if less than twenty-four hours after their arrival Stanley nominated himself for the bad doggo guest club.
“Mom wanted to know if you’d come over for dinner tomorrow night. You can bring Stanley.”
Jess hadn’t seen her in over six years. “How’s she doing?”
“Glad to hear you’re back in town. Looking forward to meeting Stanley. I think you now have a doggy grandma.”
“Excellent.”
“Have you told your parents you’re back in town?”
That chilled her…chill. “No. Not going to, either. Not right now.” The last thing she needed—or wanted—was their “help” or their “advice.”
If she told them a fraction of her tale, she’d soon be lectured, scolded, probably ridiculed, and basically made to feel like an utter failure by two people who never should have been allowed to combine genetics to create another human being in the first place.
“Sorry. I’d hoped they’d mellowed a little.”
“I told them via Facebook Messenger that I was alive and unharmed after the storm, and that once I had a new address, I’d text it to them. They have my phone number.” In fact, it was still a Florida cell phone number.
“Well, Mom’s info’s still the same, if you need it. I told her I’d ask you to call her when you felt human.” He chuckled. “She really is looking forward to seeing you again.”
“At least someone’s mom is.”
“I’ll share her with you. You know I will.”
“I’ll call her here in a little while.”
“Excellent. I’ll see you around two.”
“Thanks, Kel.”
“No worries.”
She called Brenda first to update her, then Kel’s mom. Michelle Weaver was still the same sweet, funny woman she remembered, and Jess mentally kicked herself in the ass that she hadn’t kept better contact with her except on Facebook.
Kel literally had been like a brother to her, because his parents had basically adopted her. It’d devastated Jess as much as it had Kel and Michelle when his father was killed.
With that done, she fed Stanley and went to grab his crate from her truck. Able to explore the bay in the daylight, with a skylight to illuminate it, she could see his photo setup, with a swing frame to use as a bondage frame.
That’d be perfect.
Before leaving the Sarasota area, she’d had a small but steady business taking fetish photos and then selling them online, either to stock photo sites—if they were tame enough—or compiling them into coffee table books to sell. It wouldn’t have kept her bills paid by itself, but it had usually earned her a few hundred dollars a month. A byproduct of that was taking private boudoir photos for people, which she charged a little more for because they weren’t photos she could sell later.
She’d missed doing it, too. Brad had never bothered to help her out, either, once they’d moved to Houston. If she tried to schedule her day job hours around shoots, he’d usually manage to foul things up for her, either pissing off the models or clients, or ordering her to spend the time with him, since he usually didn’t have to work weekends.
Fucker.
Only in retrospect could she see the pattern, the way he isolated her, started tearing her down emotionally, one brick at a time.
I’m an idiot.
No more. New start, new Jess. This was her time to grow and shine and finally get her life back in order. Next guy who wanted to be with her would have to jump through a million fricking hoops to earn her trust.
She damn sure wouldn’t ignore red flags, explain them away, or let herself be buffaloed by a guy.
* * * *
By the time Kel arrived right on time, Jess had already gone to the grocery store and unpacked most of her clothes into the dresser and closet in the bedroom she was using. They sat on the couch and went through the lease paperwork together, Kel pointing out the escape clauses for them both.
“Why is it sixty days warning for you if you want me out, but no warning for me if I want to leave?” she asked. “That doesn’t seem fair to you.”
“Normally it wouldn’t be, but you’re a friend, and I trust you. It’s not like I have a waiting list for this place, seriously. I write the expense off as office space on my taxes, and I store my own stuff here. I’m glad I can give back in some small way. You’re not the first person to use this place as a landing pad for the next step of their life’s journey.”
She signed the copies, he signed them, and she neatly folded hers in half to stash it in the two-gallon zipper-top plastic bag where she stored all her other important papers. “Thanks for this. Again.”
“Hey, it’s what friends do. I’ve been damned lucky my friends have stepped up to have my back, and Mal’s. It’s only right I pay it forward. Especially considering how long we’ve known each other.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
His smile looked forced, much like it had in the months right after his father’s death. “I’m vertical. Mal has a great team working with her. We’ll get through this.”
Stanley chose that moment to sit up and lay his head on Kel’s leg.
He chuckled and petted the dog. “Don’t forget to update his microchip information.”
“I used Brenda’s address, but my cell number.” At least her other bills were all electronic, meaning when she filed a change of address form there wasn’t much she had to worry about. She did need to get Stanley a name tag for his collar, though. And he could use a new collar and leash.
Fresh start for both of them.
“Look, don’t kill yourself, okay?” Kel said. “Find a job, work out your budget, and go from there. I actually like having someone living here, because it’s eyes on the place at night in case someone tries bullshit. Especially you, because I trust you, and you’re in the lifestyle.”
“Sounds like I missed a lot of craziness while I was away.”
“You sure did.”
* * * *
Other than Cali, Jess had met everyone before, or knew who they were. With all of them working on unloading the truck, it took less than an hour to pack everything into the space Kel had made for her things in the bay area. When Jess offered to buy pizza for everyone, they politely declined.
Josh and Ted hung around to talk to her after the triad and Kel had left.
“Kel said you’re looking for work,” Josh said.
“Yeah. I’ll do anything. Legal,” she added, even though she knew she didn’t have to.
“Essie’s pregnant again, so she can’t work on job sites any longer,” Josh said. “Well, she can be, but we won’t let her. And we just lost one of our full-time site coordinators to a move for her husband’s job. What I’d like to do is start you out on a crew, both our normal cleaning operations as well as a hoarding job, and see if you want to continue. We’ll rotate you through the various positions, work you up the food chain, and go from there.”
“Why not promote someone you already have working for you?”
“We’ve already shifted people around,” Josh said. “Some of our cleaning team can’t work full-time because of second jobs or family schedules, or we don’t feel they’re capable of taking on the responsibility of being a supervisor, or they won’t work the out-of-town jobs because of
their families, or they don’t want to be on TV. We’ve already shuffled around Essie’s office duties. When she’s ready to work again, we’re going to bring her back to the office to work from there so she can bring the kids to work. She can handle ops from there.”
“So we’d still need someone on-site, who doesn’t mind traveling, or who doesn’t mind being on TV,” Ted added. “It can get pretty intense. You have to be willing to work with difficult clients who will frequently run a gamut of emotions from anger to grief, and who might act irrationally at times. We need someone calm under pressure. Kel tells us you fit the bill perfectly.”
In other words, someone like her, who’d been raised by dysfunctional people, and who could still appear reasonably sane. “I’m willing to try. What am I looking at in terms of salary?”
The starting pay wasn’t drop-dead fantastic, but it was more than she’d been making waiting tables. And it would go up as her duties increased, plus it was guaranteed money, not tips.
They also didn’t have a problem with her getting back into fetish photography, as long as she didn’t let it interfere with her duties for them.
There was no downside, for her. “When do I start?”
“Can you come to our office tomorrow and fill out paperwork and go over some details with Mark?” Ted asked. “We have a hoarding job down in Pt. Charlotte starting Friday morning.”
“You tell me when and where.” She glanced down at Stanley, and apparently Josh read her mind.
“I know Essie wouldn’t mind dog-sitting for you. She’s a trained vet tech and loves animals.”
That would have been her only objection, having to leave him alone all day. She reached down and petted Stanley’s head. “Okay, then. I guess you have yourself a new employee.” She shook with them and Ted gave her a business card with their numbers and office address. She’d stop by before lunch tomorrow, after she dropped off the moving truck and car hauler.
Alone again, she sank onto the couch and Stanley jumped up next to her. She’d covered the couch with an old sheet of hers to keep his hair off the furniture.
With his head in her lap, she took a deep breath and tried to settle her soul.
This was the next step of her life.
I’m thirty-six and starting over…again.
Kids had once been on her radar, but after leaving Brad and now this, she knew she needed to focus on herself.
Honestly? She didn’t even want a relationship right now.
Besides, I have Stanley.
His tail thumped, as if he sensed she was thinking about him.
Yeah, he was complication enough in her life. A sweet, fuzzy one, but definitely her upper level for relationship commitment right now.
Chapter Eleven
Loading her truck on the car hauler and securing it Thursday morning didn’t take long. By the time she got the rig turned in and headed for Josh and Ted’s office, it was almost eleven in the morning.
Mark Collins, the third and youngest brother and the one legally married to their wife, Essie, was in the office, along with Tracy Porter, their office manager.
“Josh and Ted are scoping the job site for this weekend and finalizing arrangements,” Mark explained as Tracy gathered the necessary paperwork for Jess to fill out. “Making sure everything’s ready. It’ll be filmed for the TV show.”
“How many of those get filmed?”
“Quite a few. Sometimes they bring us in for out of town shoots if there’s no one local to do it. The people who agree to be filmed are compensated through the network with reduced or free services, depending on the job and what we need to do. And if you wanted to come over for dinner tonight and bring Stanley, we’d love to have you.”
Now she had an overbooked social calendar instead of a nonexistent one. “I can’t, sorry. I already told Kel’s mom I’d be there for dinner tonight.”
“Kel’s mom?”
She quickly sussed out the source of the sudden frown engulfing Mark’s expression, and she explained their long-term friendship.
Mark laughed. “Ah, okay. No worries. Feel free to drop by today and meet Essie. Then you’ll know where we live.” He’d already given her all their cell numbers.
“It’ll be early in the morning when I come by on Friday to bring Stanley. You sure that’s okay?”
“Absolutely. She’s usually up when we get up. And if you want to ride with us and leave your truck parked at our place, that’ll work, too.”
It would save her gas money. “Deal.”
They talked for nearly two hours, and he ordered a pizza for them for lunch. What they wanted her to do was learn the job from the ground up, so she understood all aspects of it. Based on what she could be making in less than six months, if she stayed with them, she was more than willing to focus on this as her new career.
It’d be challenging, satisfying, and most of all, secure.
“At least I know what it feels like to do disaster cleanup,” she said.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Hope you didn’t lose too much in the flooding.”
“Actually, it seems I gained more than I lost, when I really take a hard look at it.”
* * * *
Stanley not only liked Essie, he apparently adored children and made fast friends with Eddie, their toddler son.
“This’ll work out well,” Essie said. “Honestly, I’m not ready to have a pet right now. I can get my cat time in with Baxter over at Cali’s, and now I can get my dog fix, too.”
“Glad I can help out.”
“No, seriously, you are.” Essie winced as she stretched, her hands on her back. “This little pumpkin was an oopsie.” She patted her tummy. “And now we’re discussing buying some property and building a larger house to, eh, give us a private adult space, too. One we can lock to keep out prying little peepers.” She tipped her head toward where Eddie was playing with Stanley.
Jess was tracking. “Ah.”
“Or maybe buy something we can renovate. But either way, there’s a move in my immediate future. I was not wanting to do that, because Cali’s my bestie and she lives just up at the end of the cul-de-sac.” She sighed. “Anyway, the point is, the guys are right. I’ve got an uber-busy year or two ahead of me. Honestly? I don’t mind pulling back and just working part-time, or not at all. I don’t want to miss the kids’ early years, you know?”
“I get it.”
Essie sat on the couch and patted her thigh. Stanley immediately stood and walked over to her. “You’re going to let Aunt Essie spoil you totally rotten, aren’t you?”
“He will. He’s a snuggler. Fair warning, he likes to get on the furniture, and I let him.”
“That’s fine.” She ran her hands down his back and along his sides. “You said he was underweight when you got him? He seems to be gaining weight, huh?”
“Yeah. Before, you could feel nearly every bone on him.”
“Jerks. Who would leave a sweet guy like this to drown?”
“You said it—jerks.”
“No clue who his owners were to turn them in to law enforcement?”
“No. I don’t even know where they rescued him from. The guy who handed him off to me out of the boat said a couple of guys had him on a paddleboard and asked them to take him out of there. He’s a refugee. Kind of like me. I didn’t even feel guilty about not trying to find his owners, considering the shape he was in.”
“I don’t blame you. At least he’s got you now.” She scratched him behind the ears. “Lucky boy, aren’t you?”
Stanley slowly wagged his tail in contentment.
After leaving there, Jess headed to Michelle Weaver’s house. Kel’s truck wasn’t parked in the driveway, but she hadn’t even made it out of her own truck before Michelle was walking out to greet her. Inside, Jess heard a couple of small dogs barking.
Michelle smiled as she opened her arms to Jess for a hug. “Long time no see, stranger,” the woman said as they embraced.
“Sorry, Mom. I know I should
have kept in touch better.”
“I was starting to think you didn’t like me anymore.”
“Nope. I was with an asshole. But I’m back for good and will not repeat that mistake.” Jess stepped back. “And this is your granddog, Stanley.”
Michelle stooped to pet him. “Hello, Stanley. Welcome to Grandma’s house.”
He happily wagged, obviously sensing he had yet another new friend.
After he got to meet her, Michelle stood. “Well, come on in and let’s let the babies meet.”
Michelle scooped up her two miniature Dachshunds at the front door and held them while the three dogs got acquainted. Stanley seemed eager to play, and when they were all put down together, he play-bowed the two smaller dogs before following them into the living room.
“And like that, they’re friends,” Michelle said. “Kel called, he hit traffic on his way back from Tampa. He’ll be here soon.”
The house smelled fantastic. “What’s for dinner, and can I help do anything?”
“Your favorite meatloaf, and no. It’s all ready.”
“Why did he have to go to Tampa?”
Michelle hesitated, then turned. “Did he tell you about Mal?”
Ah. She nodded.
“He had his weekly consultation with her care team today. Routine.”
“How’s she doing? I can’t wait to meet her.”
“It’s one day at a time. Unfortunately, she had some old emotional traumas that were never properly dealt with over her parents’ deaths. Combined with the bullshit her uncle put her through, and then losing the baby…”
The cloud filling Michelle’s expression made Jess wish she hadn’t brought it up in the first place. “The important thing is getting Mal to a healthy place regarding her relationship with food and her weight,” Michelle continued. “There’s a lot of tangled threads for them to unravel. It takes time.”
It all hit too close to home, in some ways.
Many ways.
Like resurrecting her father’s voice from her memories, lecturing her on how and what she should be eating.