“Well, this is a little awkward.” Lily had come in for the advance on her pay, but with the latest development, the need had become paramount.
“Trust me, sitting here all day, I’ve heard it all,” Rika said gently.
“You probably have,” Lily agreed. “I know I haven’t been here long, and I’m super grateful for the opportunity to work, but is there any chance that I can get an advance, or earlier payment?”
“Hmm.” Rika looked contemplative, and tapped her pen against the notepad she was carrying. “Because of the way we have you set up, with housing, that might be a little tricky. Not impossible, but I may need to pull some strings.”
“I get it,” Lily said.
“Give me a few hours, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I appreciate whatever you can do,” Lily looked at one of the desk phones in the office. Rika’s eyes followed hers.
“You can go ahead and use the phone.” The HR Director guessed what she needed. “Use line 3. I can’t wait until I get that larger space, so I can have separate rooms for private conversations.”
“Thanks again,” Lily said, but Rika was already looking at the next person waiting to speak with her. She separated herself so she wouldn’t accidentally hear whatever that tearful employee needed to say, and pulled the card for the auto repair shop out of her bag before picking up the phone.
Unfortunately, she was going to have to tell them there was a delay in making that deposit, what with the unexpected motel cost.
A gruff male voice answered, and Lily identified herself, making sure that she wasn’t overheard.
“I’m calling to say that I won’t be able to make that deposit in a few days as planned.” She closed her eyes, bracing herself for whatever the auto mechanic would say next, steeling herself for the worst. Maybe she’d have to pick up her car or else it would get towed to a pound? Maybe she’d have to pay additional fees for leaving it there?
But she wasn’t prepared for what he said next.
“You might be able to sell it.”
Her eyes flew open.
“What?” she stammered.
“There was someone who came in yesterday who was pretty interested in it. He asked what kind of problems it had, what it would cost for us to fix it. So yeah, maybe you can sell it for what it’s worth right now.”
“Did he—did he leave a name?”
Not that he would give his real name.
“My associate dealt with him, so I’m pretty sure he’s got the contact details. Should I tell him you’re interested?”
“No!” she blurted out, and several heads turned towards her in Rika’s office. She lowered her voice and forced herself to speak calmly. “I mean, I’d like to think about it before you talk to him. But thank you for letting me know.”
“Sure, sure.” The mechanic said. “Don’t sit too long on it, though.”
“I won’t,” Lily responded. She set the phone down on the receiver, and waved at Rika on her way out of the office, making a big show that everything was cool, everything was fine. Nothing to look at here, folks.
Except utter disaster.
Her thoughts churned as she walked back towards Staff Childcare.
Did Rey track her down?
But how did he find her at Rosa’s, if that was even Rey who had broken in and trashed the trailer?
That was so unlike Rey, if it was in fact him, to just sit back and stalk her. He had a quick temper, even quicker fists, and was always thirsty for confrontation. Lily’s bruises might have faded, but the memories of them were still evidence of Rey’s tendencies.
Could she risk taking the chance that it wasn’t him?
But even if it was him, she couldn’t take off now, assuming she were to get an advance from Rika. Not with the twins. She certainly wasn’t going to doom the two kids to being taken away from their mom, just because someone was asking about her car. Someone who might not even be Rey, not be connected with breaking into the trailer.
She didn’t know what to do, her thoughts were in turmoil as each step took her closer to the Staff Childcare Center.
But as she approached, she could see Brady and Clover through the glass, tormenting TraceyAnn in Lily’s absence. The two were running around the older woman, and TraceyAnn did not look happy about it. It was a sure bet that TraceyAnn was going to complain about how long Lily’s errand too, especially as she was the only one who was able to manage the two preschoolers.
Lily sighed. She didn’t have a choice. She had to stay for the twins.
She was trapped.
Simon pushed the glasses up past the bridge of his nose. “She just left?”
Rika nodded. “You missed her by a few minutes, no more than ten or fifteen.”
“Did she say why she needed the advance so urgently?” He had already given the HR Director the ok to expedite Katie’s request, although he was still reeling inside. He had thought they had built enough of a rapport that she could ask him directly if she needed help. He would have been more than happy to, and that was even without the little crush that he was still nursing in secret.
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.” Rika said.
Simon nodded. That’s what Rika would say regardless. But if in fact Rika did know what was going on with Katie, she’d alert him immediately if it was something he needed to be concerned about.
Then again, maybe it was some mysterious chick thing. Something that hot chicks did that might be too embarrassing to talk about. Or it might be embarrassing for him that he didn’t know about it, because of his zilch experience with hot chicks.
But either way, he’d make a point of dropping by the Staff Childcare Center after this meeting, and letting Katie know that she should feel free to ask him for help at any time. She had made himself an important part of his group, with all the progress that she had made. Speaking of, he wanted to hear from her directly how her dinner date with Col went, especially since Col had hijacked it from Aylwyn. If there were any problems with that, he would want to smooth it over. And maybe work himself into having a practice date too.
Lord knows, he needed it. He was getting awkward just thinking about it.
“Here comes Puma now,” Rika said, and moved to lock the door behind the Head of Ops once he entered.
Right, Puma. Simon had asked him to come by with all the footage from the other Faire entrances. Get your head in the game, Simon thought to himself, and he turned to greet the tall, handsome man as he came in.
To Simon’s surprise, Puma was trailed by a short, strawberry-blond girl with a round, freckled face. It must be the person Puma promoted to take Trish’s place. She was very young, and the sullen look on her face was not promising. She was not at all what he expected, but Simon trusted that Puma knew what he was doing.
Behind her, the lock clicked as Rika turned it. She then flipped the sign around on the door so they wouldn’t be disturbed.
Oh Shit. Jordy realized who they were looking for. Simon had described Cadmus. And worse, Simon was looking for Cadmus in the footage of people coming in through the staff entrances. Like the one she used to let him in that day. Which was longer than 24 hours ago.
Hope flared up.
“Security footage is overwritten in 24 hour loops,” she said. The Faire owner looked at her, and pushed his glasses up. But before he could speak, Puma answered quietly.
“We’ve recently changed it to 72 hours, and Simon had phoned in a request to set it aside last night, which I handled personally.”
Jordy stifled the wave of annoyance that welled up. She said stiffly, “I was not informed.”
She caught the HR Director’s slight smile before it disappeared. Bitch. She was probably enjoying Jordy’s humiliation. Rika was mentally added to the growing list of people who had crossed Jordy. But taking care of her would have to wait. She needed to make sure they didn’t find out about her letting Cadmus into the Faire. Jordy had no idea why they were looking for him, but it wasn’t
going to be a good look for her that she knew him. She had to get rid of that part of the footage, like, yesterday.
Plus, as unassuming as he looked, especially standing next to Puma, this was the frikkin’ owner. If there was anyone who was above Puma in the pecking order, it was this dude right here: Simon. It was a golden opportunity for Jordy to start planting the seeds to move on up, as she would eventually. She’d be a fool not to take advantage.
And Jordy wasn’t a fool.
“That’s a lot of footage, so I’m happy to help go through it.” As expected, a look of relief swept through Simon’s face. Puma looked as pleased as Puma was ever capable of, as he did whenever a member of the Ops team did him proud. She knew he would eat up her display of a can-do attitude in front of Simon.
“This is high priority, Jordy,” Puma said. “So take whatever resources you need. I’ll get Gabe to cover stuff for you.”
“And if you spot anything else that looks off-kilter, point that out, too.” Simon’s voice was eager, grateful.
“I’ll go over what Simon means by that with you.” Puma said to Jordy, and she nodded.
“I can’t thank you enough for this.” The Faire owner was sure to remember her now.
“Naw, I want to do this.” Jordy said. “For you.” She even gave what she hoped was a disarming smile. It seemed to work. Simon was flustered, a flush filling his cheeks.
Through sheer willpower, she kept the smile from turning into a smirk. She was anxious to get started. Plus, she couldn’t wait to let everyone know she was on a high priority project for the owner himself.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Is there anything I can get for you, Simon? Some juice? Water?” TraceyAnn was practically batting her eyelashes at him, as she hovered around the Faire owner in her low-cut dress, her ample chest pushed upwards by a red corset.
“No, thank you.” Simon wasn’t sure if she meant the offer of the drink, or the cleavage which seemed to have a life of its own.
“Well, let me know if you change your mind,” TraceyAnn warbled, clearly disappointed that he wasn’t accepting anything that she was putting in front of him. She wafted away, with a sharp look at Katie.
Simon was already uncomfortable. The Center was swarming with shrieking preschoolers. And at this time of the year, with school out, the Center was crowded earlier in the day with older kids too. Simon tended to avoid children in general, with their unpredictability and erratic behavior. He had never really spent time with other kids, Miller homeschooling him and then hiring tutors and private teachers, when Simon started exhibiting signs of being a prodigy. When Simon was already building his own computers at the age of twelve, it was clear that his peers weren’t going to be found at the local playground or middle school.
But, this was where Katie was, and he was determined to let her know that he would help her if she needed it.
So far, all she did was thank him for ok’ing the request she had made with Rika. He was too tongue-tied to push further with it. She had to deal with something across the room, and had left him sitting in one of the stools near the pen of infants who were still crawling or just starting their first steps.
“Are you friends with Col?” A little girl-child was standing in front of him. He had to be hallucinating. She could not have said Col.
“Umm, what?”
Oh, good one. Apparently he was awkward around girls who hadn’t yet learned to read, too.
She was joined by a boy-child, about the same height, who stared at him accusingly. Simon was regretting having taken a seat. They were at eye-level. He broke out in a sweat. He started to mentally catalogue all the Chucky films in his head….Child’s Play, Seed of Chucky, Bride of Chucky….and oh yeah, going through horror films just made him think of the twins from The Shining.
He tried to look over the kids’ heads for Katie, but that seemed to encourage them to take a step further in towards him.
“Col.” The girl repeated, although in her high pitched voice it sounded like “call”. The boy picked up on it.
“Col, col, col!”
The two of them turned it into a song, but the upside was that it seemed to call Katie over. She had an apologetic look on her face as she came to his rescue.
“Sorry about that. Clover and Brady met Col last night when we all had dinner together.”
Well, that explained it. Simon tried not to look too relieved when Katie gently pulled them away from him. She seemed to intuit that they were making Simon uncomfortable. Or maybe his verge-on-a-panic-attack look was way more obvious than he thought it was.
“Brady and Clover, this is Simon.” She smiled at Simon, and he grinned back awkwardly. OK, now it wasn’t so bad. He could deal with them.
“Is he friends with Col?” Geez, it seemed really important to the little girl for some reason. Katie smiled.
“Yes, in fact he is.”
Brady shoved something into Simon’s lap. “This is a present for him.”
Katie’s brow furrowed. “What is that?”
Simon picked it up, and pushed his glasses so he could peer at it. It was a small bar of soap, still in its paper wrapping. The one that read Day n’ Knight Motel. Katie’s face paled.
“I’ll make sure it gets to him.” Simon said, looking at Katie. Their mission accomplished, the kids ran off.
“Sorry about that.” Katie said, her voice quiet.
“Is that where the kids are staying?” Simon was genuinely concerned. He knew the place, he was familiar with most of the motels and inns in the immediate area. He also knew that the Day n’ Knight Motel wasn’t a place that families stayed in.
If they had a choice.
“Um.” Katie’s face had made up for its previous sudden pallor. It was now flushed. Simon was also familiar with that feeling, all too well.
“Have a seat, Katie.” He patted the stool next to his. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Lily took the stool beside Simon. Well, she had pledged to herself that she was going to talk to him about Rosa’s housing sitch. She just had to leave out a lot of the details that he didn’t need to know. Like how maybe it was her genuinely scary, drug dealing, hair-trigger confrontational ex-boyfriend. Oh yeah, and how she’d been on the run and hiding out under her mom’s name. So she did. Sort of. And luckily, TraceyAnn’s propensity for passing by gave her the opportunity to pause a great deal, and collect her thoughts.
“I’ve been taking care of Brady and Clover since yesterday, while their mom Rosa’s in the hospital indefinitely.”
“Rosa is—”
“She works in the Staff Caff.” Simon nodded. Even though he looked visibly uncomfortable around kids, Lily knew he was proud of providing a Childcare Center for his staff members who had them.
“The plan was to stay in their mom’s apartment.” Lily named the community that Rosa’s single-wide was in, and she saw the familiarity in Simon’s face. “But last night when we got back from dinner with Col — which was great, by the way, as you can tell by how the kids were so charmed — I found out that the trailer had been ransacked.”
“Shit,” Simon said, and immediately reddened, with a quick jerk of his head towards the infants. “Sorry.”
Lily’s dimples creased. “That’s ok.”
“Did you call the police?” Simon brushed back the lock of hair that flopped over his forehead, and Lily noticed that his hand was straying towards his sternum. She had seen him tapping at it a few times when he was obviously stressed, and it touched her that he was concerned now.
She dropped her voice, seeing TraceyAnn about to do another drive-by eavesdropping attempt. “I didn’t. It’s a delicate situation, since Rosa’s concerned that, ah, well, it’s kind of like a custody issue.”
She saw Simon put two and two together in his head, but by now she had already figured that he would. Single mom, living in that community, with two twins that were high energy, to say the least. Had to rely on someone she had only recently met to take care o
f her kids. And now the mom was hospitalized indefinitely.
You didn’t even need to throw in the dad-in-jail factor to see why she might be freaked out about having the Five-Oh called in.
Lily quickly answered before Simon could ask the next logical question. “The room I have here is fine for me, but not suitable for two five year olds.”
Simon dipped his head.
“I’m concerned about your safety, Katie. There’s more than enough room at the house—you could practically have a wing to yourself. And it goes without saying, you’re already familiar with our state of the art security, not to mention Miller and the guys there.”
And Col. But she couldn’t think about that. It would be a good solution in terms of Rey, though, if in fact Rey was the one behind the trailer break-in or the inquiry about her car at the auto repair shop. But…as she heard Clover shrieking in the background, she realized it was no solution at all if she couldn’t take the kids with her.
“I’d say yes if it were just me, Simon, and thank you for offering. But, I have to think of Clover and Brady too. Would you have room for them as well?”
She could see Simon shrinking into himself. But she had to stand firm in this.
“I don’t mean to put you in a bad spot. Since you’ve already ok’d the advance with Rika, I can keep staying at the motel with the kids.”
That seemed to pull Simon out. “I can’t let you do that. That’s no place for you—and the kids of course. There’s plenty of room at the house, and the bonus will be that we’ll have more time with you. Especially if you bake more cookies while you’re there.”
“Deal!” Lily said happily, and she impulsively reached over and hugged Simon. He stiffened, as if he didn’t know what to make of it, and then he slowly relaxed into it. Lily squeezed him and let go.
“I’ve already packed some things for myself and the kids in the trunk of the car.” Lily said. She had quickly grabbed as many things as she could at the trailer, unable to stay a minute longer than necessary. “We can be there after the dinner date with Barric tonight.”
Col: His Destined Mate Page 25