The Boss Man: A Steamy Contemporary Romantic Suspense Novel (The Manly Series Book 4)

by Teddy Hester

  I take the ring she holds out to me. “That’s it?”

  “That’s all. Give it a try.”

  It doesn’t seem too hard. The first few times are awkward, but once I get the hang of it, a process develops, and I gain some speed.

  The grove is beautiful. A manageable size. Nice, straight rows of leafy green trees interspersed with drainage ditches to handle floodwaters so the tree roots don’t rot. Big orbs of green or blush hang from the branches.

  We drove about 10 minutes to get here, but from the grove, I can see Jilly’s house. If we get back home while it’s still light, I bet I’ll be able to see the grove from my guest room window.

  Between the repetitive motions and appealing scenery, with Jilly on a ladder above me, I’m content.

  “How many pickers are there?” I ask her.

  “Thirty.”

  “And how many trees?”

  “About eighty an acre, and we have twenty acres. So, sixteen hundred trees.”

  “That makes everybody doing about fifty trees?”

  She drops another fruit in her sack. “Sounds about right.”

  “How long does that normally take?”

  She measures, picks, and sacks another grapefruit. “With the level of ripeness we have right now, an experienced picker will do one tree an hour.”

  “Working ten hours a day, that’s five days for your grove.”

  “With this number of experienced helpers, yes.”

  “Today’s the fifth day since you began picking, right?”

  “Yep. We plan to be done this afternoon.”

  We work in silence for a while, especially as Jilly leaves “our” tree and starts on another. Measure, twist, drop, measure, twist, drop. When we get hungry, we take a break. Otherwise, we keep working steadily.

  The first drops of rain wet my face mid-afternoon. We’ve been working furiously, one eye on the dark clouds gathering.

  “Jack?” Jilly calls to me. “Could you start gathering picking sacks and carrying them to the bins, please?”

  “Sure thing.” The full sacks, though not overly large, are surprisingly heavy. Especially with the wind slamming into me.

  But, considering how heavy a bag of six or eight at the grocery store feels, I guess I should expect a hundred grapefruits in a bag has some heft. It’s not crippling, but I know my muscles are going to scream at me tomorrow. I can’t imagine doing this five days in a row, then hopping on a bus to another grove in another town to do it another five days or more.

  Give me a tool belt and some lumber or steel any day.

  She has me and another guy dump the sacks into bins next. A forklift stacks the thousand-pound bins as I fill ‘em, then lifts them into a semi. If we can get everything loaded into the semi, the fruit will be protected. But it’s tedious, back-breaking work. Combined with my worry over keeping Jilly safe, I’m losing steam.

  Within an hour, rain is coming down in sheets. Jilly gets everybody off the ladders, and only what a picker can reach ends up in a pick sack.

  Water’s rising in the ditches. Jilly motions for me to follow her to a shed set up at the end of a couple of ditches.

  “This is our pumphouse,” she says. “It pumps the water out of the ditches and this big hose runs to the lake, where the flood water gets dumped. Will you do something for me?”

  I can’t wait to get away from the grove. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. “Anything. What do you need?”

  She lays her hand on my forearm. “I need to you monitor the water in the ditches. I’m going to turn on the pumps now, and the water level should go down. If it doesn’t, or worse, if it starts to rise, come get me, because we’ll have a problem.”

  “Got it. But Jilly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Be careful. Don’t take risks. Even if it means a smaller harvest.”

  Her lips purse, but she nods before whirling away to pick some more. Her hands fly through the sequence, dropping fruit after fruit into her pick sack. Because I’m manning the pumps, she has to tote her full sack to the bins. I’d make her switch jobs with me, but I’m nowhere near as proficient a picker as she is.

  A gust of wind blasts her as she struggles to carry her full sack. I start toward her to help, but a sharp crack sounds, and a tree slowly leans to the left, falling over until it’s on the ground with the roots exposed. I look around for Jilly. Waving my arms, I finally get her attention and point at the tree. She gazes over at it and nods, but returns to her sack.

  In spite of her request, I run and take the sack from her. “It’s too heavy for you,” I say over the wind. “I’ll take this, and you wrap up the harvest.”

  “No. Not yet,” she cries. “Too much ripe fruit is still on the trees. The storm will ruin them.” She picks up an empty sack and works another tree, while I tote her full sack to the bin.

  What if a tree falls on a picker? Or on her? I can’t stand the thought. The food I snacked on earlier churns in my stomach. In spite of the wet cold, I blaze with heat, thinking of all the catastrophes that could happen in this grove. I need to make Jilly understand that it’s not worth risking injury or worse.

  On my way to plead with her, I check the ditches. The pump is whirring like a swarm of cicadas, and vomiting into the lake, but it can’t keep up with the amount of water falling out of the sky.

  I have to stop her. Now.

  “Wrap it up!” Jilly calls to pickers.

  She’s finally coming to her senses. I just hope it’s not too late.

  But her voice hasn’t carried. I run to the nearest picker and tell him to pass the word. Some of my tension eases when I see the message ripple to pickers at neighboring trees, like a giant game of Telephone. All the fruit that’s going to be harvested has been picked. Now it’s a matter of getting it into the bins and into the truck for transport.

  I search for Jilly, wanting to get her to the safety of the semi or the school bus that brought us out here. When I locate her, she’s set a couple of itinerants to assist her making a last trip through the grove, to help pickers get their sacks to the bins.

  She runs along the side of a drainage ditch. Her boots have no traction. The wet grass is as slick as an ice-skating rink. She skids with every step. The distance between a tree and the slope down to a ditch doesn’t leave much room for error.

  Wind surges, and my vision suddenly goes into slow motion. I can feel the danger in my gut before my eyes see it.

  Jilly’s next step doesn’t connect with land. She’s going to slide into one of the drainage ditches.

  She told me they were five feet deep. With the water swirling like it is, if she falls in, there’s a strong likelihood that she’ll drown. I start running toward her.

  She’s scrabbling to gain a foothold. Before she’s solid, a tree comes loose from the ground. It leans. Every cell of my body screams.

  “Hold on! I’m coming!” The wind slaps the words back in my mouth. Jilly’s on her stomach, sliding down the slope, grabbing at handfuls of wet grass.

  Roots groan and snap just as I reach her.

  “Grab my hand!” But she won’t let go of the grass for fear that she’ll be lost to the churning water rising to swallow her.

  A broken wrist will mend better than a crushed body. I dive for her and pull hard. The tree collapses, roots exposed like dirty spaghetti, a horror film come to life.

  “Jack,” she cries, clutching me.

  “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, baby,” I croon. My arms are wrapped around her like she’s in a vise. “We’re alive. We made it.” I rock as I chant the words, not sure who I’m trying to comfort more, her or myself.

  “Come on. We’re done here,” I say, climbing to my feet and pulling her up beside me. We join the others and I stick close by as we finish loading the truck. Coming back into herself some, she signals the driver, who toots his horn as he pulls away from the grove on his way to the packing house. We practically crawl onto the bus that brought us and
head for home.

  “This is a bad storm,” she mutters, staring out the bus window. “We’re going to lose some trees.”

  She almost died, and she’s still worried about those fucking trees? After I down a few Scotches, we’re going to have a serious conversation.

  My body feels like it’s been pummeled by wild horses. I stood in the shower and let hot water flow over me for twenty minutes, and it didn’t help as much as sitting in sweats, under a quilt, my arm around Jilly, like I am now. A fire is blazing in the fireplace, and we’re slurping down hot toddies as fast as they can be made.

  Nate sits in a chair beside the couch we’re snuggled on. “The packing house just called. It’s a good haul, Jillian. A good harvest.”

  “We’re going to lose trees,” she says, voice dull and lifeless.

  He shrugs. “It happens, honey. I’ve called Manion’s. They’ll go out as soon as the rain stops and assess the damage.”

  “And take his portable pump?” she asks.

  “Yes, that, too. You’ve done all you can do, baby girl,” he says. “Take some time to pat yourself on the back.”

  Her shoulders shake, and I realize she’s sobbing. I look over at Nate for guidance.

  His voice gentles. “Jillian. What you’re feeling right now is left over from the stress. Tomorrow, after you’ve had some sleep, you’ll realize you did good with your first harvest. Remember, nothing went wrong but Mother Nature.”

  She sniffles, but raises her head up to skewer her dad with a look. “I almost died.”

  His face fills with dismay. “What?”

  Her bawling starts again, so he applies to me for an explanation.

  I nod, my teeth clenched so hard my head aches. How much should I tell him?

  “You saved my life,” she wails.

  “I wasn’t sure you noticed,” I say through the clenched teeth.

  She cries harder.

  “You scared me to death, Jillian. Worse, you put others at risk.”

  “But the harvest—”

  “Nothing is worth somebody’s life.” I inhale deeply, trying to get my anger and fear under control. Ranting at her won’t help anything.

  Her dad strokes her hair. “He’s right, honey. I would have burned the grove to the ground if anything had happened to you.”

  “I failed the harvest. I was so set on proving myself, I lost sight of what was really important. What if it had been one of the itinerants whose family is back home waiting for them? What if it had been any of our workers? I wasn’t careful enough.”

  I squeeze her shoulders. “No, you didn’t fail. Nobody was hurt, and your father says you picked a lot of grapefruit. Those are good things. As long as you realize the mistake you made today, it won’t happen again.”

  Over her bowed head, Nate rolls his eyes. “Well, maybe she’s right. There’s a reason I don’t hire women for management positions.”

  Her body stiffens under my hands. Her head raises so high, her neck’s like an elevator. “What did you say? Women can’t handle management positions? Daddy, you know how mad I get when you say bone-headed things like that. I planned every aspect of this harvest. I coordinated the workers, the accommodations, the food, the equipment maintenance, the transport, everything—the list is as long as an armadillo’s dick—and because the damn hurricane tried to drop a tree on me, you’re condemning all women to subservience?”

  I relax, glad she’s bouncing back after her scare and my anger.

  Nate sits back in his chair, sporting a self-satisfied grin. “Aaaand, she’s back.”

  I snort, causing her to flash me an evil eye like she’s all sorts of tough.

  “There’s my wildcat.”

  Her adorable nose is begging to be kissed.

  She sniffs and tosses her hair back. “Since we’ve established that even though I’m a woman, maybe I’m not a complete washout, do you need me to plan our getaway?”

  I rub my knuckles over the stubble covering my jaw. “I designed cutting edge construction for a multi-billion dollar project. I think I can handle planning our trip.”

  “Okay, so have you planned it yet?”

  “Uh-oh, clash of the titans,” Nate mutters into his toddy mug.

  “Yep.”

  “Oh.” Jilly blinks up at me, fetchingly.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Her shoulders slump. “What do I pack?”

  “Normal stuff. Nothing fancy.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Stop your whining and just deal with it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Getaway

  A scratch on the door sounds as I’m zipping my jeans. Expecting Jilly, I throw open the door, ready to grab her into my arms.

  Instead, the small, black-haired woman who let me into the house the first day of my visit stands trembling, wringing her hands.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” I say.

  “It is all right. I am sent to escort you to breakfast with Ms. Vickers’ aunt.”

  “Now?”

  “If you’re ready.”

  “Lead on—what is your name?”

  “Carolina.”

  I follow Carolina down hallways I haven’t explored, to the opposite wing from where my guest room is. She taps on another door, and a woman calls for us to enter.

  A tall woman in a pantsuit the color of the roof tiles stands beside two chairs, a table set for a meal between them. She motions me in and indicates a chair.

  “I’m Jillian’s Aunt Bink, and I’ve been very excited to meet you.”

  This is one of Jilly’s favorite people. With her rosy cheeks and ready smile, she’s easy to like. Even given the formality of the room, she manages to set me at ease. “Jack DePaul. I’m happy to meet you, too.”

  She sits in the chair opposite mine and leans forward, conspiratorially. “I’ve seen marked changes in my sister’s girl this past month. I think it’s your fault.”

  If Aunt Bink only knew the effect her niece has had on me. “She’s a remarkable woman.”

  “Yes, she is. I wanted to apologize for stealing her away from your construction site.”

  “No need.”

  She looks down at her hands. “I wasn’t very supportive of Jilly taking your job, I’m afraid. I worried that it would interfere with what she was trying to accomplish with the harvest.”

  “Nuclear war wouldn’t have interfered. She had things to prove.”

  “Exactly. You understand.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “You’re from North Carolina?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that where you’re taking her on your getaway?” She picks up the silver coffee pot in one hand and a cup and saucer in another.

  I lean toward her, my eyes narrowed. “I’ve told her the destination’s a secret. Are you Jilly’s spy?”

  “Hee, hee, hee, my goodness, no. I’m just a nosy old lady who loves her niece.” She pours coffee into the cup.

  She’s lovely. And, I’m betting, lonely. When I take Jilly, her world will shrink that much more. “How about if Jilly and I send you a postcard?”

  She sets down the pot and the saucer. “Young man, I think you’re a scalawag.”

  I laugh outright at that. I doubt anyone else this century has been called a scalawag. If I hadn’t loved pirate lore when I was a kid, I might not even know what a scalawag was. “Better a scalawag than a rapscallion.”

  She clasps her hands together against her chest. “Oh! Marvelous. Welcome to the family, Jack DePaul. If I were twenty years younger, I’d be taking you on a getaway.”

  I take the cup of coffee she passes to me and take a sip, eyeing her over the rim. For some reason, the thought of Aunt Bink whisking me away doesn’t make me as nauseous as maybe it should. I’m beginning to see where Jilly gets her spunk.

  “And I’d make sure we had a good time,” she adds with a wink.

 
“You’d be too much for me to handle,” I say, winking back at her.

  “Take good care of Jillian. You will bring her back, won’t you?”

  The question catches me off guard, because I’ve been pondering it myself. Sure, I’ll be bringing her back. The better question would be…when? Aunt Bink doesn’t need to know that yet. “I promise to bring her back.”

  After breakfast with Aunt Bink, I search out Nate’s study for a little fortification.

  Jillian’s at her father’s desk. “What’s up?” I ask, coming to her for a kiss.

  “Just finishing my article. I want to upload it today. Wanna read it?”

  “Read it to me.” I pour a little amber fluid into a glass.

  “It’s only 9 AM, and you’re pouring Scotch? Ah. Aunt Bink?”

  I toss back the slug of liquor and grin. “She’s a pistol.”

  “That’s for sure. I bet in her day, she was a force. Okay, ready to listen? Here goes.”

  Four days and twelve hundred miles later, I pull Ol’ Blue into its bay in my garage, beside the BMW and my Ducati. It feels good to be home. I’m itching to sleep in my own bed, surrounded by familiar things and the ocean that pulls me back every time I have to leave on a job.

  “We’re here,” I whisper in Jilly’s ear, careful not to startle her awake.

  She sits up in the seat beside me, blinking slow like a sleepy cat. She stretches her arms out in front of her and yawns. I open my driver’s door and climb out, flexing the kinks out of my back.

  “We’re at the ocean?” she asks.

  “Yep. It’s too dark to see it tonight. But it’ll be there in the morning.”

  She hops out and reaches for her bag behind the seat. When she joins me, I take it from her and lead the way to my elevator. We take it to the top floor.

  “Bedroom’s this way.”

  Once in my room, I drop the bags and open the curtains so in the morning, the view will be clear. The colors of sunrise over the Atlantic are my favorite on Earth.

  “Hungry? Thirsty?”