Forking Around

by Erin Nicholas

  “But you do drive one.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you kind of fork around at work.”

  “Yeah, I gotta go.” She pivoted and started in the opposite direction from Dax Marshall. A direction she needed to keep going even figuratively. But once her back was to them, she didn’t have to fight her smile.

  “Don’t worry, Dax, this is the best area to be in. Lots of sugar and cream,” she heard Max say.

  Dax actually cough-choked at that.

  Jane’s grin grew. Actually, this might be fine. It was possible Dax had just met his match.

  3

  “What the…”

  Dax looked up, the Ping-Pong ball sailing past his left shoulder.

  “Yes!” Bryan pumped his fist in the air. It was the first point he’d gotten off of Dax in three rounds.

  Dax was very good at Ping-Pong. Practice made perfect after all.

  But Jane had just walked into the break room, so he didn’t care a bit about Ping-Pong.

  She was standing just inside the break room doorway, staring.

  He grinned and set his paddle down. “Forfeit,” he told Bryan.

  “I actually won one?” Bryan asked.

  “Well…” Dax shrugged. “I mean, if winning ’cause the other guy quit makes you happy…”

  Bryan chuckled. “Twenty bucks is twenty bucks, man.” He swiped the twenty-dollar bill off the table where their cups of cappuccino sat and sauntered across the room to join his other coworkers for the rest of their break.

  Jane made a beeline for Dax. Just as he’d expected she would. Two days ago.

  All the work had been finished Tuesday night, but she’d been avoiding him, and the break room, so this was probably all a huge shock to her today.

  “You did this, right?”

  He looked around with a big smile. “This has me written all over it.”

  “There’s a coffee bar.”

  He’d thought about going for just a cappuccino machine but in the end decided to go all out and cover all bases. It was crazy to him, but not everyone liked cappuccino. So their machine did everything from plain hot water to hot chocolate—three flavors—to Americanos to white mochas. Of course, a machine alone did not a coffee bar make. There were syrups and toppings too. So as not to be wasteful with paper cups, everyone had been encouraged to bring their own cups in from home and keep them on the hooks he’d also had installed. It was very cool.

  “Want a cappuccino?” he asked, moving for a refill himself. He wasn’t sure he could date a woman who didn’t like cappuccino.

  “Um…”

  He glanced back at her to find her studying the rest of the room.

  “Jane?”

  She looked at him.

  “Cappuccino?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  He hit the button to fill his cup. “Because you just don’t want one or because you don’t like them?” he asked.

  “A Ping-Pong table and a Foosball table?” she asked instead of answering.

  “Not everyone likes Ping-Pong.” Also crazy. Ping-Pong was the best. It took great reflexes and hand-eye coordination, but you didn’t have to strategize or concentrate fully, so you could think about other things while you played. It was the best way through a creative block.

  “You… knocked a wall down.”

  He grabbed his cup from under the dispenser and headed for a table on the far side of the room from the others that were occupied. He’d spent the last few days talking to as many people as he could and encouraging everyone else, by example, to gather together. But right now he wanted Jane to himself.

  Not just right now. He’d really like to get this woman alone. But right now for a particular reason.

  “Needed more space,” he said of the missing wall.

  It had simply been a dividing piece of drywall between this room and a storeroom next door. He’d asked the maintenance guys about the storeroom and its contents, helped them relocate everything, and then helped them demolish the wall after hours. It had really been that simple.

  “We needed to have three couches and a seventy-inch TV in here?” she asked.

  She seemed a little dazed.

  “Seventy-five,” he said, nudging her into the chair he’d pulled out at the table.

  She sat. “Right. Sorry. We needed a seventy-five-inch TV?”

  “Well, it makes Family Feud at three a lot easier,” he said, taking the chair beside her and sliding in close.

  Jane blinked at him. “Family Feud at three?”

  “We gather in here to watch Family Feud at three. Everyone picks a team, and we have a pool about who will win. People also get bonuses for answering before contestants do.”

  She just stared at him.

  “And a few people have asked if they can use their breaks to watch some old soap opera. Some of the older girls who watched religiously are enjoying introducing the younger people—some of the guys too—to the show. And then Maria and Adelina have a Spanish soap they want to watch and Lexi and Morgan are watching with them.” Lexi and Morgan were two young moms in their twenties. “They took a bunch of Spanish in high school and say it’s fun to practice what they learned that way. And then a couple of the high school girls have introduced a whole group to The Bachelor. Which is awful, of course, but Linda and Kevin and Terrell think it’s hilarious.” He paused. “It’s amazing what you can find on the streaming services.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you about something I’ve been thinking about.”

  “I know nothing about The Bachelor.”

  He gave her a smile. “If anyone asks, just say Amber. She’s the one.”

  “So you’re buying Ping-Pong tables and TVs and cappuccino machines to get out of doing actual work?” she asked. “I thought you wanted to know how the factory worked?”

  “I’ve been working,” he told her, mildly offended. “You haven’t heard everyone gushing about me?”

  She lifted a brow. “I guess not.”

  “Because you haven’t been taking your breaks in here.”

  “I’ve been… busy over my breaks the last couple of days.”

  Dax started to say something about her avoiding him, but he looked more closely. She seemed to mean it. In fact, her lips were pulled tightly at the corners, and her eyes were filled with fatigue.

  “Is it your dad?”

  Startled, Jane’s gaze met his. “My dad?”

  “Max said he’s sick.”

  She frowned. “You and Max have been talking about me?”

  “Everyone talks about you,” Dax said. He gave her a little smile. “I fully intended to ask about you, but I didn’t have to. People love you. And they know a lot about you.”

  She was still frowning when she said, “These people know me too well.”

  “And love you,” he said again. He wanted to be sure she heard that part. They might not have been gushing to her about him, but they’d all had a million great things to say about her, and it seemed they were thrilled to have someone to say them to. Since everyone knew Jane so well, they probably didn’t have reason to talk about how wonderful they thought she was.

  “Yeah, well, they don’t get out much. Their bar for greatness is pretty low,” she said. She reached for his cup and took a drink of his cappuccino.

  He grinned watching her. “Well, they haven’t said great,” he told her.

  She looked up at him. “No?”

  “Nope. Not one person has used the word great.”

  “What word have they used?” she asked. Her eyes were lit with something else now—sass, spunk, something other than exhaustion and the touch of sadness he’d thought he’d glimpsed too. This was much preferable.

  She sat back in her chair, folded an arm over her stomach, propped her heel on the chair on the other side of her, and kept drinking his cappuccino.

  He leaned in, pretending to think. “Let’s see. I’m trying to remember if there were any specif
ic adjectives.”

  “Hard working?” she asked.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I mean, it’s clear you know everything there is to know about this place, but nothing they told me was about the factory.”

  She lifted a brow then lifted the cup. She was intrigued but trying to hide it. He was going to draw this out, not give her what she wanted right away. It would keep her with him longer. He’d felt like he’d missed her. It had only been two days, and he barely knew her, but he’d been disappointed to not see her over the past couple of days. Now it was bugging him that she’d clearly been dealing with something unpleasant.

  He’d also noted she hadn’t answered him about what that was and if it had to do with her father. No one had given him specifics, but knowing he was sick and in a local nursing home made Dax want to know everything.

  She swallowed her drink and said, “So what did they tell you about if not the factory? All I really do is work and go home. I’m not interesting at all.”

  Uh-huh. He’d be the judge of that. She was very interesting if for no other reason than she was completely the opposite of the last several women he’d dated. She was a blue-collar worker from small-town Iowa where she’d spent her whole life. Her wardrobe, at least her daily work clothes, consisted of denim and t-shirts. She had gorgeous eyes and lips and skin and hair and not one bit of it was adorned with makeup or jewelry. She drove a forklift, for fuck’s sake.

  “Let’s see, well, Alecia told me you came over and slept on her couch and took her two little girls to school for three days when her baby was sick with RSV and she was up all night with him.”

  Jane paused with the cup halfway to her lips. She looked at him with surprise. “She did?”

  “Yep. And you puppy-sat for Daren and his wife when they took their first vacation in five years last summer. He said if you hadn’t been willing to take their three dogs to your house for a week, they wouldn’t have been able to go because no one else would take them, and they couldn’t afford boarding, but you insisted they deserved to get away.”

  Jane set the cup back on the table and crossed her arms. “Well, they did.”

  He nodded. “And Marsha said you stayed an extra two hours every day for ten days, so you could give her a ride home after her shift when she was in a car accident, and it was taking the insurance company forever to get her the money to fix it.”

  “I got paid overtime,” she muttered. But she was studying the cup on the table instead of looking at him.

  “I guess that one was kind of about the factory,” he said.

  And it occurred to him that none of them had said they loved her; it had just been very clear.

  “Other people do that stuff too,” she said.

  That was true. They’d told him those stories too. The stories about Jane had come up within conversations about how the factory workers felt like a little family and how they all helped each other out. He just homed in on her and what kind of person that clearly made her. Because he was incredibly attracted to her, and he’d never dated a woman who would have done any of those things he’d just talked about. Though to be fair to the women he’d dated, none of them worked with people who couldn’t afford to board their dogs or get their cars fixed right away.

  “I buy cappuccino machines and subscribe to streaming packages that have classic game shows on them to make people happy and feel a little lighter about their work,” he finally said. “You actually help make things a little lighter for people.”

  Her gaze came back to his, and he felt the connection in his gut. He hadn’t intended to say that, but it was true. He admired her. He took seriously his desire to make people happier and add some frivolity to life. Life was hard. It was serious no matter how hard you tried to have fun. So having moments, here and there, where it was just about fun and laughter were important. But Jane made people’s lives a little easier by doing things, getting in there and sharing their loads, and he really fucking liked that about her.

  “I think this cappuccino is pretty delicious,” she finally said, her voice a little thick.

  He smiled. Coming from her, that was huge. He’d take it.

  “Can I ask you about an idea I had? I’d love your input,” he said.

  “I know nothing about air hockey.”

  He cocked his head. “What?”

  “If you want to know what other tables to put in here, I’m not the right girl.”

  He laughed. “Not that.” He paused. “And I think you are the right girl.”

  Their eyes locked again, and the moment seemed heavier somehow. The right girl for what? Yeah, that was a good question. One he kind of wanted the answer to. A lot.

  She pressed her lips together, and Dax realized he really was obsessed with that part of her body. He’d thought maybe that had been about the cake—then the strawberry bar—but no, it was the lips. The strawberry bar had been something. She’d gone right in on it and he’d loved that. This woman might not think she was into all his shenanigans, but when she had something that made her feel good, she dove right in. Now to show her that not all those things had to have sugar…

  Or maybe they did. He had some ideas about him and her and those bars and his silk sheets…

  “What’s your idea?” she asked.

  He shook himself. Right, he wanted to ask her about… work. Something about Hot Cakes. And the employees. Something that had occurred to him over the past couple of days. But he bet her lips tasted like the strawberries she liked so much. And he did intend to find out.

  “Right.” He leaned in as the thoughts came flooding back. “I have an idea about employee scheduling and stuff.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Oh.”

  Her surprise was fair. So far he’d been more the air-hockey-table type. Dax actually smiled at that. He was more the air-hockey-table type. But this was a great idea. He knew it.

  “I was reading about companies where employees set their own hours. They’re given a base salary based on their type of work. Expectations are set about what they’re going to produce in exchange for that salary. But how and when they do it is up to them. As long as the outcome is there, no one cares when they do the work.”

  Jane frowned and sat forward in her chair. But she didn’t say anything.

  “There’s a lot of research behind employee happiness and satisfaction being tied to autonomy,” Dax said, feeling the need to keep talking. “There’s also a lot of research showing that happy employees are more productive and are more loyal to their companies and their output is higher quality.”

  Jane held up a hand. “Just give me a second,” she said. “I need to switch gears. You’re actually being serious here.”

  Now his eyebrows went up. “I can do that sometimes.”

  “I’ve seen zero evidence of that,” she threw back.

  He opened his mouth then shut it. That was fair. He could be serious, but he preferred to leave that to Grant and Aiden. They were a lot better at it, for one thing. But he couldn’t deny it made him itch a little to know Jane had no clue that he could take things seriously when needed.

  “You’ve been reading about this?” she asked.

  “I can read,” he said. That was a little more defensive than it needed to be. Relax, man, he told himself.

  “Good to know Piper doesn’t have to read things to you like she does Ollie,” Jane commented dryly.

  Dax grinned. “He only does that because Piper has the prettiest eye roll on the planet and her sarcasm is magical.”

  Jane actually smiled at that. “I can’t imagine keeping you all in line.”

  “And she does it all without breaking a nail. Thank God. Because, holy shit, the one time she did break a nail… we heard about that for a month after. Do you have any idea how expensive manicures can be? She’s written those into her employee benefits package.”

  Jane wiggled her fingers at him. Her nails were unpainted and short. “I actually have no idea.”

  He smiled. He�
�d never talked about factory work shifts with his past girlfriends, but he’d had a few conversations about manicures.

  “I don’t see how what you’re talking about could work here,” she said, switching gears back to the idea of self-scheduling and salaries. “In offices where people are doing marketing projects and things, maybe. But how would that work here? You need a certain number of people to complete a process. And we need to turn out a certain amount of the product every day for the bottom line. It’s not an advertising campaign. There is actual inventory that needs to get loaded onto a truck and shipped out before people can buy it.”

  He nodded. “But the concept could work. I was thinking about it after Alecia and Marsha told me about you switching up your schedule to help them out.”

  Jane blinked at him again the way she had when they’d been talking about the game shows. “You were thinking about this because of me?”

  “I was thinking about you, and then this idea came to me,” he corrected.

  “You were thinking about me?”

  “I’ve been thinking about you since I saw you fit an entire cake ball in your mouth,” he told her.

  Her cheeks got pink but she snorted. “Not my finest moment.”

  “I disagree. That told me so much about you in one little action.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “All about my oral capacity and willingness to stick a lot in there?”

  Surprise hit him in the chest, and he tried to suck in a breath while also saying something and he ended up coughing.

  She grinned. He shook his head.

  “You’re… unexpected.”

  Her grin grew. “Good.”

  “What I meant,” he said, shifting on his chair as his body was still responding to ideas about her sticking a lot in her mouth, “was that you were going for it because you wanted it and didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

  “Well, if someone judges a grown-ass woman, who can clearly make her own decisions, for something as harmless as eating cake, that person is an asshole.”

  “Absolutely.”

  They just grinned at each other for a long moment.

  “Tell me more about this idea,” she finally said. “I don’t think I’m getting how it can work here, but I’m listening.”