Costars (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (62 page)

What
the fuck? This way, that way, just finish up what you’ve got going and then I’m
going to let you go. This woman changes her mind way too much. But she’s hot as
hell.

“Well,
I called my carpet guy, but he won’t be here until tomorrow—” I start.

“Would
you mind giving him a call?” she asks.

“Why?”

“I
just want to see if there’s any way we could turn that tomorrow into a today,”
she says. “I really want to get this place looking like a clothing store, not a
construction site.”

I
sigh, pull out my phone and dial Manny’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hey,
Manny,” I start. “Hey, my client just wanted to know—”

Jessica
pulls the phone from my hand and puts it to her ear.

“Hey,
Manny,” she says. “I’ve got to get this project done today, so unfortunately,
if you’re not able to accommodate that, I’m going to have to find someone that
will.”

Oh,
this is bullshit.

“You
will? Great,” she says, hangs up and hands me the phone. “He’ll be here in an
hour,” she tells me. “It’s interesting what people will do for you if you apply
just the slightest pressure.”

She
is always so direct. I kind of fucking liked it.

“That’s
one of my business associates,” I tell her though. “You can’t talk to him that
way. It puts me in a bad position.”

Her
eyebrow rises.

Even
though she’s not saying anything, her message is clear enough: If I hadn’t
interfered with her relationship with one of
her
business associates, we’d be finishing up this job under very
different circumstances.

“Why’d
you change your mind?” I ask. “I know you said it was the customers, but that
really hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”

“I
care a lot about my customers and their impressions of my store,” she retorts.

“That’s
not what I mean,” I tell her. “Up until this morning, you’ve gone about this
whole thing as a necessary evil that, in order to improve the store, you’re
going to have to accept that things are going to be a bit messy for a while.
Besides, if you were really concerned with the customers’ impression about all
the construction going on, you would have had me and the guys do our thing
after you closed. In fact, that’s a question that nobody here has really gotten
a straight answer to: Why
have
you
insisted that we only work during your business hours?”

“Well,
based on some recent experiences, I’d say it’s a good thing that I
did
insist on that,” she says. “Yes, it
would have been nice not to have to deal with you quite so much, Eric, but at
least this way, I’ve been able to keep an eye on you. That being said, I’m not
an unfair woman, and I’m not going to make you do extra work for free, so why
don’t we get this finished up and get it finished up today, I’ll pay you the
rest of what you have coming to you and that’ll be that.”

“Guys?”
I turn around and my crew disperses, giving Jessica and
I
a wider berth to talk. “What’s really going on? Yesterday, you were ready to
kill me with my own power tools and today you’re Norma Rae. Something changed.”

“I
just decided that revenge isn’t going to change anything, and that I’d rather
have a finished store than the satisfaction of making you suffer,” she says.
“There are more important things than watching you squirm.”

“Well,”
I tell her, “whatever the reasons, I hope you do know that I really do
apologize for the ways I’ve let you down since we started working together.
You’ve been a complete nightmare, but that’s no excuse to—”

“Oh,
I’ve
been the nightmare?” she asks.
“You said that you were going to have this whole thing done in a matter of a
couple weeks, maybe three and here we are, what, two months out? I just want to
get this done. I wouldn’t look any further into it than that.”

She
just betrayed herself. If it weren’t for the last sentence, she might have
convinced me, but specifically telling me not to look any further into it tells
me that there’d be something to find if I did.

“All
right,” I tell her. “Only one thing left then, you know, apart from finishing
up today.”

“Yeah?”
she asks. “What’s that?”

“I
owe you lunch,” I tell her. “I know that we haven’t really gotten along so well
over the last stretch, but I really would like to follow through on that.”

“I
don’t want to have lunch with you,” she says.

Getting
turned down by the hot chick always stings. However, that doesn’t stop me from
trying.

“If
it makes you feel any better, I don’t really want to have lunch with you,
either, but it’s the civilized thing to do.”

If
that
doesn’t get her to let me buy
her lunch, nothing will.

My
motivations? Well, those aren’t worth going over unless she says yes.

“So
you think we should both go to lunch with each other, even though neither of us
wants to, just because it would be the civilized thing to do?” she asks.

“Yeah,”
I answer.

One
of the things she’s tried not to let show too much is just how much more
civilized she finds herself than me. I’ve just called her out on it in a pretty
direct way.

Let’s
see what happens.

“All
right,” she says. “What time?”

“Well,
why don’t you open up so your people can get going and my men can get the
project finished up and we can slip out in a few minutes?” I ask.

“It’s
not even nine in the morning,” she says. “How does that equate to being lunch?”

“Call
it breakfast,” I tell her. “It really doesn’t matter. All I know is that I’d
rather not go to some restaurant covered in sweat and sawdust, and I would
imagine you’d rather not have that kind of lunch companion either.”

“You
do make a good point,” she says. “All right, then, let me get everything going
and we’ll pick up a quick bite.”

“Sounds
great,” I tell her. I want to tease her, saying, “It’s a date,” but I resist
the temptation. I’m on thin enough ice with her as it is.

Jessica
goes and unlocks the door and I lock eyes with Linda. She and her coworkers
must have arrived somewhere during the discussion between Jessica and me.

The
door’s open and Jessica heads to the register.

It’s
the strangest ritual. Despite having cashiers that clearly know what they’re
doing, big boss lady doesn’t even seem to trust them with something as
fundamental as opening their own registers in the morning.

“Hey,”
Linda says. “I hope this doesn’t disappoint you, but I just got back with my
old boyfriend, so you and I are going to have to stop seeing each other.”

“That’s
fine,” I tell her. “We agreed early on that this was just going to be a casual
thing anyway.”

Truth
be told, I
am
a bit disappointed.
It’s not that I thought she and I had something serious, but it
was
nice to have someone to feel close
to, if only as a casual thing, even knowing that it was only ever going to be
for a little while.

Oh
well. There’s always Jessica. With her attitude and body she must be amazing in
bed.

Maybe
that’s who I should go after.

“Okay,”
she says. “I think it’d be great if we could stay friends, though. I don’t want
you to think that I’m just tossing you out of my life entirely. Just, you know,
the bedroom.”

I
laugh. “You’re fine,” I tell her. “This is pretty much what we’d already agreed
to, so don’t even worry about it.”

“Great!”
she says. “Listen, Jessica’s done opening my register, so I’m going to get to
work, but I’m glad we could talk.”

“Why
does she do that?” I ask.

“Control
issues,” Linda says. “I’m just surprised she hasn’t tried to tie my shoes yet.
If anyone needed a long, hard, sweaty—Jessica, how are you this morning?”

Yup.
Jessica is definitely Linda’s soon to be replacement. She just doesn’t know it
yet.

“I’m
fine,” Jessica answers. “Are you ready for today? It’s going to be a big one.”

“What’s
going on today?” Linda asks.

Jessica
looks at me and says, “Today, we get the store back.”

*
                   
*
                   
*

“Don’t
you think we should be getting back?” Jessica asks.

“We
haven’t even gotten our appetizers yet,” I tell her. “What’s the rush? It’s not
like we’ve got a five-course dinner coming.”

“I
just need to get back,” she says.

“Just
relax,” I tell her.

“I
don’t even know what we’re doing here.”

“I
just thought it would be a good idea for you and
I
to
sit down and see if we can work out some of our differences,” I tell her.
“Things have gotten a little out of hand on both our parts.”

“Maybe
so,” she says, “but what’s the point? After today, chances are you and I will
never see each other again.”

“Yeah,
maybe,” I tell her, “but don’t you think it’s nicer to part with lunch than
just the memories of how we’ve screwed each other over in the last couple
months?”

“I
don’t really care,” she says, and starts to get up.

“Where
are you going?”

“I’ve
got to get back there,” she says. “What if we have a big client come in and I’m
not there to answer their questions or help them find what they’re looking
for?”

“That’s
what your staff is for,” I tell her. “You can’t be there all day every day.
Besides, it’s not like I’m asking you to take a whole day off, I’m just talking
about the next twenty minutes to have some breakfast or lunch or brunch or
whatever we’re calling this.”

“Twenty
minutes?” she asks, now standing next to me. “That’s about nineteen minutes
longer than I can be gone from the store.”

There’s
something familiar in the way she’s talking, but I’m sure it’s a coincidence.

“You
work hard,” I tell her. “You need to eat. Otherwise, where are you going to get
the energy to micromanage everyone and stress yourself out to the point of
near-psychosis?”

“Yeah,”
she says, “calling me crazy is going to really work for you here.”

“Just
sit down for a minute,” I tell her. “The waiter’s coming with our appetizers.
If you find yourself having a conniption before the entrees arrive, you can
go.”

“You
don’t get it,” she says. “If I’m not there, the store falls apart.”

She
really is a control freak.

More
than my ex was but somehow this trait always attracts me.

“I
doubt you have any evidence to support that theory,” I tell her, “seeing as how
you’re never
not
there.”

“Fine,”
she says in a huff, resuming her seat. “But this isn’t leisure time. This is a
business lunch.”

“All
right,” I chuckle. “What business would you like to discuss?”

I’d
expected the silence. What I hadn’t expected was that she’d actually pull out
her cellphone, dial her own store and ask whoever’s on the other line if things
are going all right, all the while assuring her employee that she’d “be right
back.”

She
hangs up, and I can’t stop smiling.

“What?”
she asks. “I get that you don’t take your job seriously, but that doesn’t mean
everyone else works the same way.”

“That’s
hilarious,” I tell her. “I take my job very seriously. I just don’t fetishize
it like you do. Do you have any idea how condescending and insulting that phone
call was?”

“It
wasn’t condescending at all,” she says. “They all know that I like to take a
hand-son approach when it comes to Lady Bits.”

“You
know, out of context, that would be hilarious,” I smile.

“Oh,
ha-ha,” she says as a smile forms.

“And
you’re right,” I start. “You just told your employee that you don’t trust her
or any of your other workers enough to let them handle the store for ten
minutes, all the while assuring her that ‘mommy will be back soon.’ There’s
nothing condescending about that at all.”

“You
just don’t get it,” she says, shaking her head. “This is the way I work—it’s
the way I’ve always worked.”

“I
can tell,” he says.

“What
is
that
supposed to mean?” she asks.

“Well,
that’s a gray hair, isn’t it?” I ask. “You’re what? Twenty-seven,
twenty-eight?”

“I’m
thirty,” she says. “And how exactly did you manage to insult me for being too
young and too old in the same breath?”

I
grin. She looks like she’s in her early twenties. Not a single wrinkle and I
can tell because her face isn’t plastered with makeup. Thank God. This way I
know what I’ll be waking up to in the morning once I fuck her.