I wave all casual-like as I walk over to the office. “Don’t mind me. Just going to the salt mines.” I make it almost to the door before she responds.
“You work here? What are you, the cleaning lady?”
Colin lifts his head out from under the engine to watch the show.
My foot freezes in mid-stride and then plants itself on the ground slowly but firmly. I face her and smile sweetly. “Yep. Exactly. I’m the cleaning lady. I do toilets, floors, and offices.” And I would have done the boss too if he hadn’t left me sweating on his couch last night. Oh, the humiliation.
“Teagan, can I talk to you for a second?” Rebel asks, separating himself from the blonde.
I keep the smile plastered on my face. “Nope! Love to chat, but I’m super busy right now.”
I leave him standing a few steps away from his bench and go into the office, shutting the door behind me. If it had a lock, I’d engage the damn thing, but it doesn’t.
The blonde’s voice rises in the other room, but I ignore it. If he can play the shit-doesn’t-matter game then so can I. Yeah, that’s right. I can get mostly naked with my boss and then just calmly walk away and have a glass of water. I can fall asleep like it’s no big deal that we were practically bumping uglies too. Watch me.
My cell phone rings just as Rebel is walking through the door. Relief washes over me as I quickly press the green button and put the phone up to my ear. Saved by the bell.
“Quin! What’s up, my sistah? Long time no talkie.” See how cool I am? How much I don’t care?
“Nothing that your gorgeous face can’t fix. Where are you right now? I need to see you.”
“I’m at work.” I refuse to look at Rebel who has walked into the office. Picking up my pen to act busy, I doodle a very angry stick man on my calendar. He’s holding a wrench. “When I’m done doing some filing, I’m going to chip the poo residue off the inside of the toilet bowl. That’ll keep me busy for hours.”
“Uhhh … that’s about fifty shades of disgusting,” Quin says. “Are you okay? You sound funny.”
“I’m completely cool. Just looking forward to the workday is all.” I plaster a big cheese-eating grin on my face and stare at the laptop in front of me. I refuse to look at Rebel.
“Okaaaay. I’ll tell you what, Tea-Tea, I’m going to run over to the bakery and get you one of those bran muffins you like, and then I’ll be there. Maybe you’re just constipated or something.”
“Or something,” I say cheerily, hoping she’ll get the hint.
“Gotcha. Okay, see you in twenty.”
“I’m working, Quin. I can’t hang out.”
“I’m sorry. Our connection seems to be fading out…” She hangs up without saying goodbye.
The phone stays at my ear and I keep talking. “Yeah, that sounds good. Perfect… Do you really think so? I don’t believe it! Say it isn’t so…”
The phone rings loudly in my ear, startling me into dropping the cell completely. I scramble to pick it up off the floor and catch a glimpse of Rebel frowning at me as I answer the call.
“What?!” I say a little too loudly.
“Wow, sorry for calling a second time, Jesus. I’m getting you two bran muffins. You must be really backed up.”
“Did you call me to discuss my intestines or is there something else you needed?”
“Holy bitch on fire, I wanted to know if I should get something for your boss or whatever? A nice blueberry muffin maybe? Chocolate chip?”
My chin juts out. “How about a Perry Spitler special? That outta suit him nicely.”
“Oh… ‘kay … Trouble on the job. I get it. I’m going to go ahead and get that blueberry muffin. I’ll see if they have any with arsenic frosting, though. Talk to you soon.”
She clicks off before I can demand that she not bring my boss a single grain of sugar. He doesn’t deserve a blueberry muffin after abandoning me like that last night. A muffin will just make him think I’m desperately stalking his dick or something, which I’m not. Even though it was a very nice dick. Argh! My own brain is a traitor to the cause. I really hate myself right now.
“Teagan, you can take the phone off your head. I know there’s no one there.”
I refuse to comply. “Oh yeah? Says you.” I roll my eyes and smile. “I know, Quin, right? Some people … the nerve.”
“Teagan, please?”
That one word is what does it. I’m pretty sure Rebel has only said it about twice in his life, so it has a pretty powerful effect on me. I put the phone down and sit squarely in my seat, finally meeting his eyes. I struggle to keep my emotions from being written all over my face. It is a battle, too, because he is so damn hot. Dolph, you are dog meat compared to Rebel.
It makes me hate Rebel that much more to know that he has supplanted the The Siberian Express in my head as the sexiest man alive. Dolph would never leave a girl in the lurch like Rebel left me last night.
“Fine.” I huff out a breath. “What do you want?”
“I wanted to apologize.”
I sputter, snort, and roll my eyes in a desperate attempt to act like nothing that matters happened between us. “Please, Rebel, save it, okay? I have a ton of work to do today and I’m totally over … whatever. It’s over, okay? It never started, it never was anything, and it’s over anyway, so who cares? Can I please just get to work?”
He presses his lips together and waits for a few seconds before nodding once. But he doesn’t leave. He just stands there.
I use every ounce of confidence I have left, which is all of about two ounces’ worth, to stand and get busy with the files. There are exactly three pieces of paper in the filing basket, but I study them very closely with eyebrows drawn together as if they’re alleged original copies of The U.S. Constitution that need to be authenticated, so I can distract myself from Rebel’s hulking presence just a few feet away.
He finally leaves as I pick up the last piece of paper. I throw it in the file without a second look and go back to my desk. Booting up the laptop, I force my brain away from thoughts of our dangerous liaison on the couch and back to the last thing I was looking at on this computer. Time to move on.
Financials. I search my own memory banks for the location of that USB drive. Sweatshirt pocket. It’s upstairs on Rebel’s couch where I left it folded up. But the spreadsheets are still sitting on the computer’s desktop for some reason. I check the downloads folder and realize I put a copy there. I smile when I consider my accidental awesomeness. If those spreadsheets are something so important my father mailed them to me as a last-ditch effort, it’s probably better that they be in two places.
I’m knee-deep in trying to figure out what I’m looking at when Quin walks through the door.
“Sugar delivery!” she says cheerfully as she walks in. She stops partway in. “Wow. A real office. I never thought I’d see the day.”
“Shush. Did you bring me my drugs?”
“Yeah. Here.” She sets a pastry box down on the desk and pulls out a brown muffin for me. “I told them extra bran because my friend is completely impacted.”
“Great,” I say, shoving the thing into my mouth. It’s the size of a giant softball, but that doesn’t stop me from going at it like a shark on chum. “Dewishus.”
Quin is opening her mouth to answer when Mick walks in the front door. He looks distracted, like he was planning to just tear through the office and go right into the garage, but as soon as he sees Quin standing there, he freezes.
“Uh. Wow. Hi.”
She grins and reaches into the box. “Muffin?” She holds up a blueberry one, a sure sign she likes him.
I shake my head. She’s so obvious.
He scratches the back of his neck, like he’s suddenly nervous. “Uh. Sure. Okay.” He takes it from her and then steps back, looking at it.
“It’s poisoned,” she says with a completely straight face.
He frowns, looking first at the muffin and then at her. “Seriously?”
&n
bsp; She holds her own muffin up to her face. “What do you think?” She wiggles her eyebrows at him as she takes a bite of her muffin.
A spark lights up in his eyes and he walks over to her. Without any warning at all, he yanks her muffin out of her hand and replaces it with his. “I think if it’s poisoned, you’re going to be very sorry.” He pushes the entire muffin into his mouth as he’s walking out of the office.
“Most people say thank you when receiving a non-poisoned breakfast food from a complete stranger!” she yells at his back as it goes around the corner.
A few seconds later we hear, “Thank you!” being yelled from the garage.
She spins around and looks at me, her face flushed. “He … is so hot. Holy shit.”
I roll my eyes. “And he’s probably totally wrong for you, so stay away from him.”
“What could possibly be wrong about him for me? He’s hot. I’m hot. He’s sexy. I’m sexy.”
“His nickname is Hellion, Q-baby. And I don’t think he got it because he’s really good at chess.”
She pouts. “I like to party.”
“Not that much. Not his kind of party.”
Hiking her butt up on the corner of my desk, she leans in. “What kind of partying are we talking about here?”
I grab some papers that are slowly getting folded by her butt cheek and yank them out. “People are trying to work here, you know.”
She points a painted fingernail at my face. “You are so busted, by the way.”
My best innocent expression appears like a forcefield for my face. “For what?” There are too many things she could be talking about to count. I don’t even want to begin to guess which one it is.
“For lying your fat face off about that apartment of yours. The damn door doesn’t even shut all the way! I went in there this morning and saw that you’ve moved out already. And someone frigging nailed the shit out of the entrance, by the way.”
I scowl, hating that I have to explain my sorry condition to Quin. I so wanted to avoid this conversation. “I didn’t move out. I’m just temporarily relocated during construction.”
“What construction?”
“My door being fixed and the wall too.”
“I thought you fixed the wall.” She gets more comfortable on my desk and bites into the fresh muffin in her hand.
“I did. And then some asshole broke into my apartment and punched it in again.”
The muffin freezes halfway out of her mouth and crumbs fly out onto my desk as she responds. “Vat makes no fenf whatfoevah.”
“In our world it doesn’t, but at the Golden Legacy it makes perfect sense. Some d-bag assumed I put drugs in the hole and sealed it up, so they were going after the drugs.”
She nods as understanding takes hold, swallowing the huge bite of muffin before talking again. “Ah-haaa. I get it. But why drugs? Someone like you would be more likely to put jewelry in a hole than drugs.”
I shrug. “No one says they knew me. How could they? I just moved in. And maybe they thought it was jewelry, how the hell do I know? They didn’t leave an explanation for me on their way out.”
“So where are you staying?” she says.
Rolling my eyes to the ceiling and point straight up. “Up there.”
She looks up slowly. “In the ceiling tiles?”
“No airhead, in the apartment above the garage.”
She pulls her chin back. “Oh. I didn’t know there were apartments up there.” She looks up and examines the ceiling more closely.
“It’s fine. It’s only temporary.”
She leaps off the desk. “I want to see it. How do I get to it?”
Panic seizes hold of me. The beans are about to be spilled and I’m not ready for the outpouring of emotion I know that will come from both of us. “Not right now!” I jump to my feet.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Something’s going on. Don’t try and lie. Where are you really staying?”
I sigh deeply. “I swear to all that is holy, I’m staying above the garage.”
“In an apartment?”
“Yes, in an apartment. With running water and a kitchen and everything.”
“Bathroom?”
“Yes! A bathroom! Can I work now?”
She crosses her arms. “No. I want to see it.”
I sit back down and put my elbows on the desk, dropping my face into my hands. “You can’t.”
“Uh-oh.” She walks over and crouches down next to my chair. “Tell Auntie Quin all about it. Come on. You know I’ll harass you until you cave. Make it easier on both of us and just do it now.”
I talk through my fingers. “I was staying in Rebel’s brother’s apartment, but he got back from jail, so I had to stay in Rebel’s apartment on his couch and then things got kind of … involved … or something between us last night and he left me just hanging there mostly naked and it was mortifying and embarrassing and awful and I really don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Uhhhh …,” comes a male voice from the doorway, “…got anymore of those muffins left?”
I drop my forehead with a bang to the desktop. There is no way in hell I’m looking up at Mick right now. His tone tells me he heard everything. I seriously need to get a lock for that fucking door.
“No. No muffins for you,” says Quin angrily.
“Harsh,” says Mick.
“Go. We’re having girl-talk. And next time you want to come in here, have some manners … knock first.”
“Knock?” he scoffs. “This is my office. You don’t work here.” Mick is offended, and I wish I cared enough to lift my head and deal with it, but I don’t. He’s guilty by association in my crazy brain. Little punk. Brother of the abandoner of naked girls.
“This space belongs to Teagan now, so you knock.”
“Whatever,” Mick says.
I wait a few seconds. “Is he gone?”
“Yes. Finally.”
I lift my head and rub my face briskly over and over, trying to wipe away the red heat that’s making me feel like I have a terrible sunburn.
“Soooo … I guess that was probably a little embarrassing,” says Quin.
“Ya think?” I stand and walk over to the bathroom. Rinsing my face only brings my temperature down a few degrees. It’s not enough to make me feel normal again. Staring at my bloodshot eyes in the mirror, I wonder where it was that I went wrong.
“What happened exactly, though? I mean, did you guys do it or just do the bump and grind?”
“God, please, do we have to talk about this right now?”
“You have anything better to do?”
“Yes. It’s called work. You should try it sometime.”
“Ew, no. Work is for people who can’t get scholarships.”
I leave the bathroom and fall back into my chair. “Tell me about it.” I scan the spreadsheet in front of me, watching the figures blur together.
“What’s that?” Quin asks, leaning over to look at my screen.
I sigh heavily, realizing she’s not going to leave if she thinks there are still problems to solve. At least she’s stopped quizzing me about the events of last night. I grab onto the distraction like a drowning girl. “It’s just some financials. Nothing to concern yourself with.”
“Wow. They look pretty complicated for a garage.”
I look at her sharply. “What do you know about financials?”
She rolls her eyes and points to her head. “Duh. Finance major? Ever heard of it? Do you even know me at all?”
“I’m sorry.” I rub my face again. “I knew that. I’m just tired.” And freaked out. And tired. And confused as shit.
“So what is all that?” she says, pointing to the screen. “Looks like the stuff you’d put in an annual report.”
“Which is …?” I wait for her to fill in the blank.
“It’s a report you put out at the end of your fiscal year for shareholders. Full disclosure kind of stuff, regulated by the SEC. Not anything Rebel Wheel
s would bother to put together unless they were maybe applying for some serious financing.”
“Oh.” I look at the spreadsheet a little closer. “Yeah, I guess it does look kinda … complicated.” I’m not sure she’s right about the whole annual report thing, but I do know it doesn’t look like the small business financials we studied in the couple of courses I took in my sophomore year.
“They’re not for this company,” she says.
“No, they’re not. How’d you know?”
She points to the screen. “That line-item right there. The one coded below the line.”
I lean in closer to read it. “Bendeck.” A shiver goes through me. “I’ve heard that name before.”
“Why would they code it below the line?” Quin asks.
“I don’t even know what that means, so how the fuck would I know?” I glare at her.
She holds up her hands in surrender. “Wow, bite my tits off why don’t you, it was just a question.”
I close my eyes and get a grip on my anger. “Sorry. I’m just on edge right now.”
“So what is this?” she asks, pointing at the screen. “Are you taking a summer course? Is this homework you’re doing on the job?”
“No.” I close the laptop. “This is a set of financials my father sent me on the sly.”
Her eyes bug out. “Say whaaaaat? When? He’s …” She grimaces. “He’s dead, though.”
“I know. He’s harassing me from the grave.”
“That’s so-so-so-so wrong, Teag. So wrong.”
“I know. And I really don’t want to talk about it, so can we just leave it for now?”
“How long have you known me?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Almost four years?” I say bleakly.
“And in all that time, have you ever seen me just let something go?”
“Ummm … no.”
“Yeah. So let’s just skip the part where you whine and complain how you don’t want to talk about it, and I cajole you and nag you and threaten you until you cave.”
“Cajole. That’s a good word.”
She grins. “I know, right? I have this app on my phone that gives me a word-of-the-day. I’m expanding my horizons.”