She and Ava exchanged a quick glance. I wasn’t sure what was behind that glance, but I decided not to comment on it. She sat down on the couch and cooed and giggled with the baby. Ava sat with a handful of cookies and watched them happily.
It was nice, and I should have been enjoying myself. But it was still weird for me to be alone with them right now. Something was brewing between Tom and I. Sitting with his mother and sister-in-law felt odd and a little awkward. I didn’t know who to tell, or even if I should.
The two women were carrying on a conversation and doing their best to include me. But even though I could hear what they were saying, I struggled to really follow along. I definitely couldn’t respond in any truly effective way. I did my best, but by the looks on their faces, there were moments when I missed something or gave an answer that didn’t make any sense.
After Robert fell asleep, Susan put him back in Ava’s arms, said goodbye to both of us, and left. Ava carried her sleeping son into the back of the house where she settled him down for a nap in his nursery. She came back into the living room carrying a baby monitor. She propped it on the table beside the couch and watched the tiny screen for a few seconds.
Robert was just lying there, peaceful as anything, but there was still a flicker of concern on Ava’s face. It was like she hated even being out of the room with him.
“Hey, Amanda?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you doing okay today?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know, you just seem a little… spacy today.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “You know what? Come to think of it, Tom was acting like that, too. And he seemed a lot less tense and stressed.”
She was on to me. It wasn’t going to be long before she figured it out for herself. That didn’t mean I wanted to say anything. As a matter of fact, I distinctly did not want to say anything. I tried to keep my mouth shut and just let her keep thinking about whatever she wanted to.
“We slept together,” I said.
It just kind of fell out of my mouth. I slapped my hand over it, but I couldn’t shove the words back inside. Ava’s eyes widened and her mouth opened slowly. I cringed just as she gasped.
“I knew it!” She leaned toward me off the edge of the couch, a huge smile stretched across her face. “Tell me everything.”
“Well, I mean, it’s not like it came out of nowhere, I guess,” I said.
“Umm… no. It was so obvious the two of you like each other. Susan and I told you that the other day.”
“I guess I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen,” I said.
“So,” she said with impatience in her voice. “What does this mean? Are you two together?”
“I don’t know what it means. I have no idea what he’s thinking or feeling about it. We haven’t even really talked about it that way. Now probably isn’t the time to try to figure it out considering how much stress he’s under,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, “I get that. He’s dealing with a lot right now. But that doesn’t mean he can just use you and leave you to wonder what’s going on. You deserve to know the truth.”
I nodded and reached for one of the cookies, shoving the entire thing into my mouth at once. “I know. And I want to know what’s going on in his head. But at the same time, I’m worried that no matter how either of us are feeling, it’s not going to work out.”
“Why would you think that?” she asked.
“The company has really strict policies about dating any coworkers. Even people who work in the same department aren’t supposed to see each other. I’m positive there would be a major issue with the boss dating his secretary,” I said.
Ava stared at me for a few seconds, blinking like she wasn’t exactly sure I was finished talking. “Amanda, he owns the company. He’s probably the one who came up with the policies. I’m sure he can make an exception.”
“See, that’s the thing. He’s not the one who came up with the policies. It’s the board. From the beginning, they’ve been involved in most aspects of building up the company. Including making the policies. Tom can’t just make an exception without upsetting them.”
Ava let out a long sigh. “Then the two of you better figure out what you really want and go from there.”
19
Tom
Dallas stood in front of us with a bag in his hand and a smile on his face. I was eagerly anticipating whatever it was he had to reveal.
“Thanks for meeting me here, gentlemen,” Dallas said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jordan piped in. “Get on with it. What did you find?”
Dallas smiled again and pulled the bag up to eye level.
“I want to preface this with a bit of caution. I can’t tell you for sure this proves the identity of the arsonist, but it certainly seems to lend credence to your argument,” he said.
The room was a vacuum of silence as we waited for him to reveal what he had found. As the bag opened, he reached inside, and I noticed for the first time that the hand he was using had a flesh-toned rubber glove on. Gently, he pulled out a piece of cloth, and I immediately recognized what it was.
“That’s a piece of a flannel shirt,” I said.
“Son of a bitch!” Tyler yelled. “Danny wears those all the time. Same color and everything. It’s damn near his uniform.”
“Exactly,” Dallas said. “I don’t know how the police missed this, honestly. It was caught on part of the fencing around the back of the bar. Most of that fence was torn down by the fire department when they went to put out the fire, and there were track marks over part of it. But when I looked really closely, this was stuck under one of the poles.”
“We have to take that to Danny’s and confront him,” Jordan said. “We need to do it and do it now. Make him explain how one of his shirts ended up at the bar.”
“Hang on,” I interrupted. “We can’t go marching into his bar all pissed off.”
“Are you serious?” Jordan nearly screamed. He was only a foot away from me, and after a tense moment, he spun on his heel and slammed his hand on a table. “This is stupid. We should go and confront him, and you all know it.”
“What we need to do,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “is to call the police.”
“The police?” Jordan exploded. “The police who can’t be bothered to investigate? The police who missed a piece of Danny’s flannel on the fence? The police who have acted like we were bothering them when we were just waiting on them to do their job and investigate a crime?”
“Yes,” I said. “We need to go about this the right way.”
“The right way,” Jordan said, crossing his arms and sitting on one of the open chairs. “The right way is punching Danny in his dumb fucking face until he admits what he’s done.”
“The right way,” Mason said, speaking from across the table at Jordan and making direct eye contact with him, “is to do this by the book, until the book is over. Then, if it turns out he did it and we still don’t get justice, then we will make our own. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
I stared at Mason and then back to Jordan for a moment, then nodded and stood up.
“Thank you again, Dallas. I think we will bring that to the police station,” I said.
“If you don’t mind, I won’t be accompanying you. Police investigators tend not to have a terribly high opinion of PIs. I have a feeling my presence would do you boys a disservice,” Dallas said. “But please take this as well. It’s a photograph of the evidence with a timestamp before I removed it. That way there is no question that it’s legit.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll call you if we hear anything from them,” I said and held out my hand.
“And I’ll call if I find anything else out,” he said as he took my hand and shook it.
* * *
By the time we got to the police station, it was midafternoon, and the place was mostly dea
d. Officers were coming in and out, switching shifts, and we were directed to wait for the detective handling our case now. A good half hour later, we were called back into a small office just off the main bullpen. It seemed like a generic office, rather than a personal one, and by the look of the detective, our case was being handled by someone who was barely out of diapers.
“Detective Samburg,” the skinny young man said as he held out his hand for me to shake. I did and he motioned to a seat. I took the one across from the desk he sat at, and my brothers filed in behind me, standing or sitting wherever there was space.
“Detective, nice to meet you,” I said.
“Likewise. Now tell me why you’re here? I believe you were told I would be in touch tomorrow?” he said with a touch of impatience.
“We were,” I said, “but something has come up.”
“Oh, do you need to reschedule? That could have easily been done with the operator downstairs. You didn’t need to come all the way in,” he began. Mason cut him off by tossing the paper bag onto the desk. Detective Samburg blinked as he looked at it and then moved his gaze back to me. “What the hell is this?”
“Open it,” I said. “It’s evidence. Your officers missed it.”
Detective Samburg opened the bag and peered inside.
“It looks like a piece of a flannel shirt,” he said.
“Correct,” I said. “We handled it with gloves the entire time, so if you needed to try to get DNA or prints off it, it hasn’t been contaminated by us.”
Detective Samburg’s eyes narrowed, and then one eyebrow went up. He reached inside his desk and pulled out a box of latex gloves, slipping one on his left hand and then using it to pull the shirt piece out.
“So you boys thinking of getting into detective work, or…”
“I hired a PI,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the detective’s face dropped.
“You did what?”
“We,” Jordan interrupted, “hired a PI. Because you guys aren’t doing shit. You haven’t taken our case seriously from day one, treated us like we were annoying you because we dared to want to know how our place burned down, and then actively ignored us when we said we thought we knew who it was. And now you have proof.”
“A flannel shirt?” he asked.
“Danny wears them all the time,” Tyler said.
“Who’s Danny?” the detective asked.
“Christ,” Tyler said, shaking his head.
“The other bar owner, down the street,” Mason said. “The one who had a competitor’s bar burn once before already. The one who hated us for being more successful. The one who is suddenly booming with business now that we aren’t around. That one.”
Detective Samburg opened up his drawer again, pulling out a plastic zip bag, and put the shirt piece inside. Then he took off the glove and tossed it away, folding his hands together in the center of the desk.
“Look, I know you guys are very frustrated, but you have to understand, there could be a million reasons why a piece of a flannel shirt was near your bar. And better yet, you have no idea whose flannel shirt piece that is. It could be anyone’s,” he said.
“It could be,” I said. “But we believe it’s Danny’s. You should check into him. We’ll call back tomorrow.”
* * *
I opened the door of the hotel room, trying to juggle two large paper bags filled to the brim without dropping them. Once it was open, I stuck my foot out to hold it and saw Amanda’s surprised face over the top.
“What in the world?” she asked, hurrying over to help me. “This smells amazing. Did you get Chinese?”
“I did,” I said, setting one bag down on the table by the couch. Amanda set the other next to it, and we started emptying them both. “So, I didn’t know what you liked, and I figured we have this fridge here, why not get a little bit of everything?”
“Did you order the entire menu?” Amanda asked as the seemingly endless bags were emptied. A stack of dishes on one side was starting to lean.
“Almost,” I laughed. “I claim the chicken curry, though.”
We each grabbed a paper plate I had thought to stuff into the sides of the bag and made plates of our favorites, moving to the couch to sit down. Amanda turned on the television, putting on a sitcom but keeping the volume low so we could talk while we ate.
“This is delicious,” she said after a few minutes of muffled silence as we dug into our food. “So, how is the investigation going?”
“Dallas, the PI, found a piece of a flannel shirt the cops missed. Danny wears almost nothing but flannels, so we took it to the detective working the case. Not sure yet how seriously he’s taking it, but he at least admitted it as evidence,” I said.
“That’s exciting,” she said, picking at her lo mein. “Have you guys talked about rebuilding at all?”
“Not yet,” I said, finishing an egg roll in embarrassingly few bites. “We just aren’t at that point yet.”
“Well, the reason I was asking,” Amanda said, looking up at me and then back down to her plate, “is that I think I found a spot that might be better than where you were.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, poking at the noodles as she spoke, seeming to judge my reaction. “It’s just on the outskirts of town, but it’s much larger, and the neighborhood is busier than where you were. All the new building going on down there means that people are flocking there all the time.”
“Show me,” I said, and she smiled brightly. Jumping up off the couch, she grabbed her tablet and brought it back to sit close to me. I set my plate off to the side and let her cozy up to me. She smelled like a flowery shampoo and fresh soap, and I wondered how she would react if I had just pulled her into my lap.
“See,” she said, pulling a listing up and scrolling through the pictures, “the lot is bigger with more parking, and it’s got enough room that you could expand. And you wouldn’t have to build from the ground up.”
“This is fantastic,” I said, ideas swirling in my mind as I saw the potential of the lot. “It’s big enough that we could add a restaurant, or even sublet to someone else. And the price is really not bad at all.”
I looked up and saw the sparkle in her eyes. I leaned in and pressed my lips into hers, and she wrapped her arms around my neck. I stayed there for a moment, enjoying the taste of her and the spice of the food mixed together. When she leaned back, I stood up. “I’m going to do a bit more research on this,” I said. “Thank you.”
She grinned and picked up the plates and dumping the empty ones into the trash.
“I think I’m going to get some sleep. It’s been a long day,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll be in here so I don’t keep you up.”
Amanda smiled and headed into the bedroom, and I couldn’t help but peer around the corner at her as she undressed, slipping under the covers and getting comfortable. As tempting as it was to go climb in after her, the excitement of the new lot and the responsibility of helping my brothers made me want to explore it as soon as possible.
Pouring a glass from the small bottle of scotch I’d bought earlier in the day, I settled into the couch to do a little more research on the area around the possible new lot.
20
Amanda
I waited until Tom was in the shower to call Emily. I felt like I hadn’t talked to her in forever, and there was so much to catch her up on. But I couldn’t exactly spill everything with Tom right there in the room with me. Finally, I heard the shower-head running, and I grabbed my phone.
“Hey,” I said when she answered. “Can you talk?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because Tom is in the shower, and I don’t want him to hear me,” I said.
She gasped, but the sound cut off quickly, and I could only imagine she had covered her mouth.
“Does that mean you have something to tell me about him?” she asked. “Something that might p
rove what I’ve been saying about the two of you? Did he say something? Did he ask you out? Did he kiss you?” she asked.
“Well, he didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask me out, but he did kiss me. Right before we had mind-blowing sex,” I said.
Emily screamed so loud on the other end of the line, I was pretty sure Tom would be able to hear her even through the sound of the water in the shower.
“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “Are you serious? You better be serious. You better not be punking me or anything,” she said.
“I don’t think people punk each other anymore, Emily. We’re not fifteen.”
“Is right now really the moment you’re choosing to criticize my pop culture references?”
“Okay, I’m sorry. No, I’m not punking you. We really did sleep together. A few days ago,” I said.
“A few days ago?” she asked, her voice rising up a little bit again. “You’ve been hanging on to this for a few days and you didn’t decide it was time to tell me until now? Did he just not step out of the room or take a shower since then?” she gasps again. “Oh, my God. Did he really not? Are you just now getting out of bed?”
“We would have died of dehydration by now,” I quipped. “No, we’re not just getting out of bed. A lot’s been happening over the last couple of days. I wanted a chance to be able to talk to you.”
“A lot’s been happening?” she asked.
“Yeah, things with the bar burning down and the private investigator coming to look into it.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding somewhat disappointed. “Well, tell me about him. How was it? Was it incredible? He looks like it would be incredible.”
“It definitely was incredible,” I admitted.
She squealed. “Have you done it again? Are you official?”
“We haven’t done it again,” I said. “It was just that one night. And the next morning. And we haven’t even really talked about it. We haven’t talked about what it means or what we are to each other now.”
Taboo Boss: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance Page 11