She dropped into one of the empty stools on the opposite side of the island from Archer, and he slid a plate in front of her—bacon, pancakes, and scrambled eggs instead of over-easy. That made her smile. Runny eggs were gross, and nobody ever remembered she didn’t like them. Except Archer. Her stomach wouldn’t have been able to handle the sight this morning.
“Dig in,” he said.
She poked at her eggs, trying to find the right words.
“Is something wrong? You’re suddenly vegetarian or something?”
“About what happened last night.” She forced the words out before she could have second thoughts.
Archer paused with a bite of pancake halfway between the plate and his face. He put his fork down, the corner of his mouth tugging up. “That was a lot of fun. I mean, not all of it, but the bit I suspect you’re talking about.”
“But was it… I mean… Are we…?” What was she trying to say?
“Eat something, before it gets cold.” He nudged her plate closer. “It was a kiss, and it was amazing, but it wasn’t like we fucked. I’m fine with it, if you are.”
Was she relieved or the tiniest bit disappointed that he brushed it off so easily? She needed to focus on the relief. If there was one thing life had taught her, it was that getting involved with a guy recovering from a breakup was worse than seppuku—ritual suicide.
She chalked up half of her reaction to misplaced ego and nibbled on a piece of bacon. Her disappointment that he dismissed the kiss had nothing to do with how good he tasted last night. His hands sliding over her. The way he wore his T-shirt and sweat shorts this morning—she took a bite of pancake—or that he made a world-class breakfast. “I’m good with it,” she said.
There. That sounded sincere, right?
The corners of his eyes dropped for the slightest moment, before his smile returned full force. “Awesome. You sticking around or coming back for anime club?”
He let the community-college anime club hold screenings in his comic shop on Sunday afternoons. He claimed it was because they bought things, so it was good for business. She suspected it was because he’d been a member once, and he knew how much they struggled to find club venues. A loud, familiar buzzing hummed through the room, and Tori’s gut sank. She knew that sound all too well—sometimes she imagined she heard it in the middle of the night, and she woke up in a cold sweat, waiting for it to happen again.
Archer grabbed the phone from the counter behind him and handed it to her. “It’s been going off all morning.”
Shit. She shouldn’t have let herself get distracted. “I can’t do club stuff today,” she told him as she clicked on the phone. “This is Tori,” she said into the receiver.
“There’s still a problem with the art. Have you checked the email I sent yet?” Candace’s voice was frantic.
Tori bit back a sarcastic, Good morning to you, too. That would only make things worse. “I haven’t had a chance yet. I just woke up.”
Across from her, Archer leaned against the far counter, arms crossed and lips pursed.
She turned away from the disappointment in his hazel eyes. “I’m bringing it up now.” Her lie emerged without hesitation. It would be true soon enough, anyway.
“Shoot me a note as soon as you know. I need to drop it with FedEx”—a harsh edge ran through Candace’s pleading—“and let manufacturing know to expect it.”
More unspoken retorts died in the back of Tori’s throat. Things like, If you’d done your job on Friday, they’d already have it, and, If you’d done your job last night, we wouldn’t be scrambling now. She took another swallow of juice and counted to three before replying, “Stand by. I'll have an answer for you soon.”
Tori was the Senior Vice President of Design for her brother’s cosplay-themed lingerie company. She hadn’t wanted a management position—tried to tell Brad they’d both be happier if she stayed in her artistic corner and came up with new outfits all day. He insisted they were business partners, and her job should reflect how important she was to the company.
Except Tori sucked at disciplining her people. She knew she had a problem, but not how to fix it. Most of the time Candace was amazing at her job, so Tori kept her on, but the one thing Candace excelled at was leaving her work until the last minute, which meant Tori rushed along with her to meet their deadlines.
Tori stood and started to thank Archer for pancakes and to apologize for not being able to finish.
“Sit down.” He cut her off before she could say a word.
“I can’t. I have to take care of this. I’m really sorry. I know you worked hard on breakfast.”
“I don’t care about the food. It’s eight on a Sunday morning. It’s not fair they expect this of you. It’s not right that you put up with it.”
Same argument as always. And she’d never be able to make him see she’d rather do the extra work and get it done, than tear into a talented person over habits they’d never change. “I don’t put up with it; it’s my company.” She couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice.
“Brad doesn’t keep the same kind of hours you do. Tell me he puts up with shit like this, and I’ll drop it.”
Sometimes she got so sick of Archer acting like he knew what was best for her, when all it did was add to her anxiety. “Brad has his own problems, and puts up with his own crap. That’s why we’ve got two different jobs.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.”
With her hangover, she wasn’t prepared to ignore an assault on both fronts, and something inside snapped. “I do, and you’re not getting it. We can’t all work for ourselves and own our perfect business, in a house we inherited from a loved one. Some of us have to put up with the real world and a large-scale mess, and sometimes that means putting up with other people’s bullshit.”
He clenched his jaw. “Don’t get mad at me, because they don’t treat you with respect and you refuse to deal with it.”
The calm tone tugged her frustration loose, and tears pricked her eyelids. She choked back a snarl of frustration and stormed toward the front door, not trusting herself to speak. He was supposed to be her friend. He was supposed to understand why she had to do this. He wasn’t supposed to throw it back in her face.
* * * *
Tori paced between her couch and coffee table, careful not to trip over her laptop’s power cable. She should be working in her office, but she was already pissed off about having to work over the weekend, and there was no way she was sequestering herself while she blew her Sunday, making sure every last line on a pair of Inu Yasha panties fell in the right place.
When Tori and Brad started the business, it was supposed to be for kicks. She never expected it to turn into an on-call twenty-four-seven kind of thing. Over time, she helped a random employee here and there, never able to walk away when her people struggled. And one day she woke up and realized work consumed most her life.
When they started this whole thing, she loved the work, but covering for everyone else burned her out. The only advantage to the job these days was Tori got to do it from home. She often considered quitting, but the idea still meant so much to her, and she couldn’t let Brad down like that.
Her newest line of lingerie was designed on an exclusive contract with a national chain, which meant the retailer had enough cash to sue for every missed deadline, and the non-stop emails from Legal never let Tori forget it. Meeting their timelines shouldn’t have been a big deal. Candace simply had to check the newest design art on Friday, drop it in the FedEx box by close of business, and it would be at its destination Monday morning.
Then Candace missed the Friday drop, and when she checked the patterns Saturday night—a task she should have done a week ago—there were mistakes. Tori tried to talk her through corrections at Archer’s, and Candace said she got it. Apparently that wasn’t the case.
But it would be fine. As long as the client had the new art before Monday morning. Tori started the download, to grab the
illustrator files off the office network, then leaned back on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. Her headache had faded, and that was something, but the memories of the kiss with Archer taunted her. She hadn’t felt anything like the spark they shared, even with—
She pushed the thought aside. Now was the wrong time to relive the past. Not that she’d ever come across a good time for it.
She turned her attention back to her work laptop. What had gone wrong? Why didn’t the layout look right?
And then she saw it. Candace’s last job before the weekend had been to convert the file to the client’s preferred format, but the image Tori saw was skewed and would only make panties to fit a paper doll. Because Candace had chosen the wrong file type on save.
Fury and frustration pumped through Tori. She closed her eyes and took a few calming breaths. At least it was a quick fix. She typed out a quick e-mail to Candace, explaining the situation and the error. She scanned it three times before clicking Send. It read politely.
She turned her attention back to checking the re-saved image. So far, it looked good. A whisper of relief flitted through her. Maybe her entire Sunday wouldn’t be lost after all.
About thirty minutes later, her e-mail pinged. A response from Candace. Tori’s gut sank to her feet when she saw the message. It couldn’t be a good sign Legal had been copied, and Brad was on there too. He didn’t need to deal with this.
Tori’s irritation mingled with resurging rage and helplessness as she read the note.
I saved the file exactly the way you trained me to. If it wasn’t right, it’s because you missed a step in your instructions.
Tori’s hands shook, as she typed out a reply. She couldn’t think clearly enough to make it sweet and passive, so she settled for, We’ll revisit your training on Monday. I need to meet this deadline.
She tried to make her frustration evaporate as the day wore on. Each new success lightened her mood, but every time, it was squashed by another message from Legal, demanding a reassurance that the Monday morning deadline would be met.
And the text from Brad—You need help?—did the opposite of what he probably intended.
Tori sent back a terse, I’m on it, thanks, then immediately felt bad about her reaction.
By the time Tori shut off her computer at eleven thirty in the evening, her eyes watered, either from staring at a screen all day or with the looming tears of frustration. Really, the only thing she knew was she spent most of her day correcting a mistake that wasn’t hers and putting together a plan of action no one else was going to follow, which barely left her time to fix the original issue. The artwork had to be sent digitally in the end, and there would be a fine for not providing a hard-copy, per the contract, but it was better than dealing with another lawsuit threat.
She flopped back on her bed. The last thing she thought before she drifted off was, Maybe I can get Archer to teach me how to talk back.
Right. Like I could ever do that.
Chapter Three
Archer leaned forward on the glass counter next to the register and rested his forearms on the aluminum frame. He was careful not to smudge the glass. A stack of receipts lay in front of him for the various ingredients he used to make onigiri—rice balls—and bean-paste filled buns. He needed to tone back the treats for the anime club meetings. Sure, it was a tax write-off, since they were a community-college club. And if he was honest with himself, he enjoyed hosting them for weekly screenings.
The problem came down to money; it wasn’t flowing in the comic shop as it had in the past. The club members weren’t buying like they used to, and he didn’t know if he could afford the added expense much longer.
He sank onto a stool behind him. He was bummed Tori hadn’t been able to make it. Again. He might have been worried the kiss scared her off, but he knew she spent the entire day working. He desperately wished he could get her to take a stand with the people who worked for her. Point out that screw-ups wouldn’t be tolerated, instead of fixing the problems for them. But she insisted it was better not to rock the boat.
Wishing wouldn’t solve anything with Tori. He needed to concentrate on business. If he got his latest project off the ground, he wouldn’t need to tell the anime club to find a different place to hang out on the weekends. Charging them for the snacks didn’t feel right. He turned his attention back to his laptop, eyes glazing over when he looked at the search-engine optimization information again. The website was his attempt to bring in business on a national scale. He had to get his name on the radar, and he didn’t have a lot of money left, so he was pecking through the process himself.
Tori offered to have her future sister-in-law look at it for him. She insisted Gwen was a genius at this stuff. Archer couldn’t ask something like that, though. Not for free, and not from a friend of a friend.
Fortunately, he’d picked up enough from Zane over the years that he knew his way around most of the back-end technology. Zane. Archer’s mood dropped another notch.
A bell chimed, drawing him out of his plummeting mood, and he looked at the door. He pushed a smile onto his face for the distributor from his favorite independent comic company. “Hey, man.”
Archer liked Elliot. The guy didn’t give him crap about his order numbers being down, he had a sense of humor, and he never seemed to know if he dressed the salesman or the fanboy part. He tended to wear all black—the universal uniform of the geek who didn’t want to put time into their wardrobe—but instead of T-shirts and tattered jeans, he donned more professional corduroy slacks and button-down shirts.
Elliot lounged against a nearby wooden back-stock rack. “I’ll put you down for five hundred copies of our next month’s releases?”
Even when things had been good, he couldn’t have moved that many issues. “Sure. And toss in a thousand action figures, too.”
“So what have you been up to?” Elliot asked.
They bullshitted for a couple of hours, and as the sun vanished behind the mountains, Archer realized he needed to close up soon. He tried not to acknowledge that no one else had come in the shop during Elliot’s visit.
A familiar car pulled up out front. Tori had broken free of her self-imposed shackles for the night. That was a bright spot. He turned back to the conversation. Why did seeing her make him so happy? Tori stopped by all the time, and it had never before put this kind of smile on his face.
Then again, he’d never before had memories like those of the kiss, to draw from and expand on. The way her body molded to his. The soft, hungry swell of her lips. Her moans.
And that was a couple of kisses. Since Saturday, his imagination treated him to what it would be like to strip off her clothes, taste her smooth skin…
He pushed the thought away before it could make his cock any harder, and forced his attention back to business. The bell on the door chimed again, and Elliot looked up, pupils dilating when he saw Tori.
Archer bit back an unwelcome rush of jealousy.
Heavy circles hung under Tori’s eyes, but her smile was genuine when she looked at him. She held up a dry-cleaning bag, wrapped around what looked like red velvet. “Someone is supposed to come looking for this tomorrow.”
When Tori wasn’t babysitting the assholes who didn’t respect her, she designed and made custom costumes. She occasionally took commissions from Archer’s clients. If he remembered right, this was supposed to be a recreation of an outfit seen on one of those pseudo-historical dramas on cable. The Tudors, maybe?
He nodded behind him at a closet rod he’d suspended from the ceiling for her. “You know where it goes.”
She stepped around him, and her shoulder brushed his back. A jolt ran through him. That felt nice. Damn. What was wrong with him? Too long since he got laid, or something.
Seconds later, she took her spot on the stool across from him. He almost gave her crap about working too hard, but he wasn’t in the mood to be snapped at. Instead he settled for, “We missed you yesterday afternoon.”
“T
rust me, I would’ve rather been here. I mean, that’s normally the case, but especially yesterday.”
An ache echoed through his knuckles, and he realized he’d clenched his hands into fists. He flexed his fingers until the blood flow returned to normal.
“This is beautiful work.” Elliot leaned over the counter to examine the dress, and rubbed a bottom corner of the hem between his fingers. “Really gorgeous. Have you ever thought about doing this full time?”
“Technically, I do.”
Except with the custom work, she got to pick and choose which outfits to make, instead of bowing to the whim of some underwear store. Working a little harder, to make ends meet, had to be better than the shit she put up with. It wouldn’t do Archer any good to say anything, though. She’d resent him for it and then close off, instead of actually dealing with the problem.
The conversation slid from one topic to the next, until Elliot checked his phone. “Whoa. I love chatting with you guys, but I have to be in Denver tomorrow, and I’ve got an early flight out. I’ll catch you later.” He looked at Tori. “Seriously, you need to do more of the costume thing.”
A new surge of jealousy tore through Archer, and he pushed it back. “She absolutely should. Catch you later, man.”
He almost—but not quite—felt bad for rushing Elliot out the door and locking it behind him, but it had been a long day.
He turned back to Tori, who’d moved from her spot on the stool and leaned against the glass, watching him with an unreadable expression. The stretch showed off how well her jeans hugged her hips, and drew his eye to the Nintendo logo across her chest.
“You sure you’re allowed to be away from work for so long?” he asked.
“I think they’ll survive tonight.” Even as she answered, she checked her phone again, the way she had every five minutes since she’d arrived.
He wished her reassurance matched her actions. “You’re sure?” He kept his tone light. “You’re not convincing me.”
She gave a half-laugh, half-sigh and pocketed her phone. “I can’t help it.”
Graphically Novel (Love Hashtagged #3) Page 2