by Piper Rayne
“I want him to tattoo me.” She points at Rhys.
“Sure, he can tattoo you… tomorrow.”
Bridget turns to me, but her gaze detours quickly back to the guy giving her all the attention. “When do you get off?”
Rhys sends a desperate look to Liam.
Liam is definitely the boss then.
“He has a few more customers, but you’re welcome to hang around here.” Liam smiles then shoots his gaze to Denver and me. “If you two wanna talk?”
“No,” we say at the same time.
“Okay. Well, I have to get to another customer. Nice seeing you again. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” He walks from behind the counter and signals to some guy to come over.
“Wait for me? I’ll be a half hour tops,” Rhys says to Bridget.
“We’re going to the hotel,” I tell him, sliding my arm through Bridget’s.
“I’ll wait,” she says, ignoring me. “Can I watch you work?”
“Sure.” Rhys opens up the little half door of his station, and Bridget saunters in.
“Bridge.”
She turns around and smiles at me, holding up her finger. I’ve been in this situation more than once, and after everything over the past couple weeks, I don’t have any fight left inside me. When I turn my attention away from her, Denver’s staring at me.
“What?” I ask him.
“Still going to buy me out?”
“You said it wasn’t for sale.”
“Maybe it is for the right offer.”
I definitely don’t want him to know that buying him out isn’t a possibility. “Maybe we should find a buyer together.”
He sits on the stool behind the counter. “You go from buying me out to getting out altogether?”
“I’m just saying. I have access to his accounts.” I look around and lean forward. “He had no money.”
“I figured. I mean, I’ve been in charge these past few months and the company was barely making payroll.”
My shoulders slump. I’d hoped the company was thriving and Dad was taking too little for himself. The idea of him struggling makes me want to burst into tears, but I won’t do that here. “Are you telling me we inherited a broke company?”
“It’s not like it can’t bounce back.” He props his feet up on the edge of the counter, and I notice all the doodling and writing on the piece of wood.
“How’s that?”
“Without your involvement.” He lays his arms lazily around his knees and his long fingers tap on his shins to the beat of the music coming from the overhead speakers.
It’s Imagine Dragons, but I can’t remember the name of the song. Not that it matters.
“You forget that you need my involvement,” I say.
“Not really. You know you don’t want it.”
“Why do you say that?”
He laughs and his gaze falls to my peacoat. “How warm are you right now?”
“I’m warm.”
He nods toward outside, where flurries drift down. “Warm enough to spend the night out there?”
“I don’t have to do the excursions, so what does it matter?” My fists clench at my sides.
“You wouldn’t last five minutes without complaining about how cold you are. What on Earth makes you think you could run an excursion company that isn’t headed to some rich beach resort?”
Denver’s right, but I’ll never tell him that. I should’ve tried to learn more from my dad, but Denver underestimates my desperation. I have nothing except this. Failure isn’t an option.
“And you couldn’t stay on schedule for five minutes. Not to mention a daily routine probably wouldn’t work for you.”
His feet drop and he stands.
Oh, I hit a nerve. Good.
“Don’t get all your facts about me from Buzz Wheel,” he says.
“So what’s your goldfish’s name then?”
He studies me for so long my straight back almost falters, and when his hands land on the edge of the counter and he leans forward, my breath hitches for a moment. His earthy, clean scent reaches me.
“Just sell off his shit and leave town,” he says in a low voice.
“Not gonna happen. If anything, I’ll stay to piss you off.”
“You know I could drive you off.” His cocky stance says he believes what he’s spitting out.
“How do you figure?”
“Why would I tell you? That’s like giving away my secrets.”
I narrow my eyes, but he meets my challenge with a smirk. Bad energy surrounds us as if we’re in the middle of a tornado that’s picking up speed the longer neither of us speaks.
“This how you want it to go down?” He crosses his arms then winces and drops them.
“Oh, poor baby, graze that fresh tattoo?”
“Don’t worry about me, princess, worry about yourself.”
“Ugh!” I want to scream and yell and punch. Out of all the men I could be stuck in this situation with, it has to be him—an arrogant, cocky son of a bitch who wants to stay an adolescent child for the rest of his life.
“Okay, you two. Now you’re disturbing my clients.” Liam comes over, grabs my upper arm and Denver’s, and leads us to the back hallway. He stops us and opens the door at the end of the hall.
A cute blonde with a messy bun who looks familiar peeks up from her computer with a pen in her mouth.
“Sorry, babe, these two need privacy,” Liam says.
She smiles, shuts her computer and drops her pen, standing. “Cleo Dawson? Nice to see you again.”
I give her a tight smile.
“Savannah Bailey.” She nods at me.
“Of course. Another Bailey. You people are everywhere.” I yank my arm from Liam’s with unnecessary force because his grip was feather-light. If Bridget wasn’t flirting with Rhys, I would’ve walked out of this place.
“Let them talk,” Liam says.
Savannah slides between us. “Sure.”
Liam pushes Denver into the office, and he catches his footing before his forehead meets a filing cabinet. Too bad. That would’ve given me great pleasure.
Before I can step inside, Savannah rushes back in, grabs her laptop, and smiles at me. Then the door shuts with a bang and we stand there quiet for a moment. Denver sits on the desk and puts his feet on the chair.
“What a gentleman you are.”
His confused expression when he looks up says I have to explain myself.
“You don’t let the lady choose her seat first?”
He kicks the chair my way. “By all means, princess. Sit.”
“I’m not a princess.”
He doesn’t argue, instead blowing a frustrated breath from his mouth. “I don’t wanna fight with you, but this is never going to work between us.” His voice is calm and assured. “We can’t both run the company.”
I sit and cross my legs. His eyes follow my movement. I’d be lying if I said a thrill didn’t shoot through my veins.
“I can’t buy you out. That’s not an option.” I hate admitting that, but what choice do I have?
“Really?”
I meet his gaze so he knows I’m telling the truth, no matter how embarrassing it is. “Really. So unless you can buy me out, there aren’t many options at the moment. Except sell it outright.”
He studies me for a minute. “Why do you want the company?”
He asks the question I wish I had the answer to. I could give him lots of reasons—from my dad’s legacy to wondering why the company always felt more important to my father than I did, to me finding my place in the world and how maybe I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. But for some reason, I choose to tell him the truth. “I don’t know yet. You?”
He blows out a breath like he didn’t like my answer. “Have you read your letter?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What did it say?”
I uncross and cross my legs, shifting in my
seat. “None of your business.”
He nods, but his usual smirk shines bright. I’m assuming our letters are similar. If the reasons he gave Denver are as valid as the ones he gave me, we should be finding a way to save the company together instead of arguing about all the reasons the other person can’t run it.
His shoulders slump. “Listen, your dad was my mentor. He taught me so much, so I’m gonna stick around and get this company to where it belongs, where he deserved for it to be. I can’t commit to anything, but I can commit to that.”
I blow out a breath and tip my head back.
“I’m trying here,” he says.
He is, and I’m being the difficult one. “I can commit to that as well.”
“So we’re really going to do this together?”
“I guess so.”
“If all else fails, we can sell,” he says.
“Already getting your exit plan in place, I see?” I stand from the chair to head to the door.
I don’t reach the door before his hand cups my elbow. He stands behind me, his breath uneven. “I’m offering suggestions. Believe me, if I do this, I’m all in. I’m not a half-assed kinda guy.” He sounds sincere but quiet, as though he doesn’t want anyone to know that about him.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Denver.” My hand is on the doorknob.
“Just to show you how great of a partner I’ll be, I bet I can get your stepsister out of here.”
I turn around and he’s still so close, his lips front and center. I’d only have to rise on my tiptoes and mine could meet his. I bet he knows how to take care of a woman, knows his way around. God, it’s been way too long for me. “Winner gets coffee?”
“I like cold brew, black.” His hand twists the doorknob, and he steps out into the hall.
I’m not even out of the room when the fire alarm goes off and everyone scrambles. Bridget is frantically looking for me when I reach the front of the shop. I might not agree with his antics, but he was successful. Liam glares at Denver, and I think I’ll get out of Dodge before the fight starts.
Denver winks at me as Bridget slides her arm through mine and we walk towards the exit. He mouths “cold brew, black” once more to make sure I understand he won that round.
Seven
Denver
Nancy is sipping her coffee, reading the Lake Starlight Journal. I swear, she, Grandma Dori’s senior center, and Liam must be the only ones keeping that newspaper in business. She lifts her head up.
“Good morning,” she says, placing her reading glasses on the paper and heading to the coffeepot.
“I’m going to say this again. You’re not my personal assistant.” I drop my computer bag and run over to the coffeepot before she can pour me a cup. My move strips her bright smile off her face.
“I always got Chip’s coffee.”
We’ve been over this, but I also understand that she’s missing her twenty-year sidekick. I miss him too.
“Okay, but don’t feel like you have to get me my coffee every morning.”
She smiles and knocks me out of the way with her hip. “Black?”
I haven’t had the heart to tell her I like cold brew. I’m not really a hot drink kind of person unless I’m camping. Today isn’t the day to mention it though, considering her red-rimmed eyes. She’s grieving. We all are. Some of us just hide it better than others.
“Perfect,” I say with as much of a smile as I can muster.
She pours it and hands me one of Chip’s mugs. It’s white with bold black writing that says, ‘Best Boss Ever.’ I reluctantly accept it to make Nancy’s day slightly better.
“I’ll be in the office. We don’t have anything planned today, but I’m pretty sure Cleo will be in.”
“I’ll ring you as soon as she arrives.”
“She’s part owner, so she can just come in.” Although I imagine for a moment Cleo’s reaction if Nancy stopped her and said she had to buzz me first. A satisfactory gleam must hit my face because Nancy’s smiling from ear to ear when I look at her. “If you could get us last year’s financials, that’d be great.”
Her back straightens. “Yeah. Of course I can do that.” She practically runs behind her desk. “Just give me a moment to boot this up.”
We both look at the computer from the early two-thousands. It’s on its last leg, and when she hits the start button, a buzzing sounds from it.
“That’s typical. Ol’ Faithful is pesky but reliable.” She sits, putting her reading glasses on and closing up the newspaper.
I’ve never seen someone so enthusiastic to work. “Great. Thanks, Nancy.”
“My pleasure.” She hits a key over and over. The screen blinks on then turns black again. “Honestly, we’re good. You go get your day started.”
I nod and hesitate before I walk into the office, or what Chip referred to it as. I haven’t done anything in here other than shift the paperwork to the side of the desk. Old maps are rolled up in the corner, and paper, now tinted yellow, hangs on the walls, advertising adventures with people from the eighties. It’s an office. A small one with the stale scent of cigarette smoke, and I anticipate it’ll feel even smaller when Cleo arrives.
I drop my bag in one of the two chairs around the table used for client consults. I wonder when the last time Chip had anyone come in here to book a trip? In this day and age, people plan these trips online. Going through his papers, I try to make sense of it all, but the bills with red stamps don’t have to be explained to me. Chip didn’t ask me to handle any of this when he was sick—I just had to take out the tours he was already committed to. I knew Lifetime Adventures wasn’t doing so hot, but from the looks of these, we’re a second away from closing our doors.
The office door opens, and a dick-raising scent hits my nostrils before I can look up.
Cleo stands in the doorway with a tray of cold brew coffees, one a caramel color and the other one midnight black. She’s in jeans and a sweater, but her flats with no socks scream she’s not a local.
“They’re all I own, okay?” She comes in and I realize how much shorter she is without her usual heels on.
I shake my head at her. “We need to go shopping.”
“Hey, is Nancy okay?” she whispers, searching for an empty place on the desk to put the coffees. “I walked in, she looked at my tray of coffees and started to cry. I brought her one, and I told her I wouldn’t be offended if she didn’t like it.”
I lift my Best Boss mug. “She’s missing your dad.”
She purses her lips and nods, takes her drink and sits on the chair, legs crossed. The way her jeans are molded to her legs fills my mind with unwanted sexual thoughts of wrapping those legs around my waist. “So recruiting her to help me at his house isn’t an option.”
I lean back in my chair. “I’d say that’s a negative for the moment.”
“Do you think they…” She sips her drink, her eyebrows rising to her hairline.
“No. I don’t think so.” I rack my brain to remember their interactions. Nothing sexual comes to mind, but I tend not to notice everything around me. “I guess I could see it though. She’s been single. He was single.”
“Both of them being single doesn’t mean they were together,” she says using a tone that suggests I’m such a sleaze.
“Lonely people might, and I think they were both kind of lonely.”
Chip always said he only needed a hot cup of coffee, a warm fire, and a sunrise every morning. He never mentioned wanting a warm body next to him, but who could blame him?
“Even if I was lonely, that doesn’t mean I’d sleep with someone just to sleep with them.”
“Are you throwing daggers my way?”
She smiles sweetly. “I have no idea what you mean.”
I nod and let the topic go. We have a lot to go through. “I asked Nancy to bring in last year’s financials. And side note, she’ll need a new computer.”
She nods. “She was pressing some button on the keyboard over and over when I wal
ked in.”
“Yeah, well, your dad never adopted new technology.”
“You think? He still had a flip phone.”
“Every time I texted him, he’d—”
“Call you?” She laughs a little. “Me too.”
“I tried to text once from his phone, and it was a skill. Pressing a button three times before one letter came up?”
She shakes her head. “I never understood him.” Her face falls, and she distracts herself by taking in the pictures on the wall.
I let a few moments of silence pass because I’m not sure what to say. I didn’t understand my parents, but I was thirteen and selfish when they died.
I pick up the stack of bills. “Well, there’re a lot of past dues here. I’m starting to think we might not be able to save this company.”
She blows out her breath. “Nothing we can do but see how bad it is.”
She slides her chair up to the other side of the desk, pulls her hair back into a ponytail, and takes a stack of papers to get started.
Two hours later, we have two stacks of papers. The higher one being unpaid bills. The smaller one being invoices paid. A kindergartener could see where this company is going.
Nancy brought in the financials for not only last year but the last five years.
“Two years ago, he was going strong. It dwindled, but it got really bad once he got sick,” Cleo says.
“I feel guilty. I should’ve been recruiting business. All I did was take out people he’d already booked. I could’ve actively been trying to get new business.”
Cleo swivels her computer in my direction and leans back, propping one leg up on the edge of the chair. “There’s not a ton you could’ve done. He not only doesn’t have decent Wi-Fi in this office, his website is a disaster. He was working entirely on word of mouth.”
I click a few things, but other than the same eighties pictures that adorn the wall, there’s nothing that would make anyone choose this company.
“His name is huge on the professional survivalist network.” Chip Dawson is a name most extremists and survivalists recognize. But as time goes by, new people in the industry might not be as familiar.