Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 108846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
“Dorian Dorian?” Connor chuckles. “I just left a meeting with him. Me and the other supes.”
“And how’d that go?”
“Fine. The guy loves me.”
“Why am I not surprised.” Because Connor is where he belongs. I, on the other hand, am drowning. But it’s not fair that I take it out on him. I inhale a deep, calming breath to try to expel some of this tension. “Did you get your assignment yet?” Dorian was still deciding how to divide the outdoor crew as of Friday.
“Beach,” he boasts, puffing out his chest.
I chuckle. “Okay, Ken.”
“I got my list of minions already.”
I hold out a hand. “Give it here.”
He digs his phone from his pocket and pulls up the email.
I scan it. “You’ve got AJ Brooks.” He starts Wednesday. Did he even have the guts to call Sloane to officially quit?
“Yeah. Why, you know him?”
“Not really.” But I already don’t like him. “Do me a favor and break him in. He needs to earn it.” Back in Miami, when a new guy started and he looked like he might not hack it, the supervisor gave him all the shit jobs—scrubbing toilets and dumpsters in the stifling heat.
Connor grins. “With pleasure.”
My office door swings open without warning and Belinda strolls in. She stops short when she sees Connor. “Oh. You.”
His cheery mood grows exponentially. “’Morning, boss. Love the glasses. Very strong head mistress vibes today.”
To anyone else, that might seem innocuous enough, but I know Connor well and he’s playing all kinds of dirty scenarios in his mind. At least he’s smart enough to keep his big mouth shut this time.
“Ready, Ronan?” Frosty blue eyes dissect me from behind a set of pink frames, ignoring Connor.
“For what?” Rare panic erupts within as I scan my opened calendar. “I don’t have anything for another hour.” First, my meeting with Dorian to address this drainage issue, and then a meeting with Lena and the head office operations team about the budget. I’m especially dreading that one because there’s no way to hide how clueless I am in a Zoom full of people who do this shit for a living.
Her smug smile is downright vicious. “To see how good your negotiating skills really are.”
The collar of my salmon-pink golf shirt clings to my neck in the heat as I steer us down the path toward the eleventh hole. Last week the course was empty, but today there are signs of life. Truckloads of carts are being unloaded and tested by full-timers while the first group of seasonal workers hired over the weekend get a guided tour of the grounds by a young, athletic guy Dorian tapped for supervisor of the caddies. Hank something, the email that came across my desk said.
“Worried?” Belinda muses, her glasses swapped out for opaque black shades.
That Sloane is so pissed with the way I bolted out of there that she fucks me again, only not in a good way? Absolutely. “No.” Belinda is too smug this morning. This feels like a setup. “Why?”
“Because you’re not your usual self,” she muses. She’s perched cross-legged in the passenger seat of our cart, the split in her green pencil skirt climbing indecently high up her toned thigh.
“And what is my usual self, Belinda?” I’ve shared no more than a handful of superficial conversations with this woman over the years. That afternoon at the Wolf family cabin involved very little talking.
“Like you don’t give a fuck about anything but having a good time.” Her eyes trail over my arms, my shoulders. “You’re tense.”
She’s not wrong there. “I guess stress doesn’t become me.” I accidently veer off the path around a bend, leaving indents in the freshly watered and manicured grass. Can’t wait to hear Dorian bitch about that later.
But my focus is locked on the trees ahead.
The signs are gone.
All of them.
There’s no hint of fluorescent poster board, not a single unwelcome sign, save for the standard Private Property, No Trespassing ones. Nothing but twisted old trees, their branches forming a tangled screen to hide the quaint paradise beyond, with its charming, colorful trailers and garden patch bursting with greens.
My body sinks into my seat. At least one thing has worked out for me.
“Well, would you look at that,” Belinda says.
“Hopefully, that’s satisfactory for you and Wolf.” Enough that Henry will let go of whatever resentment he might still hold for Sloane.
Belinda pivots in her seat to face me, her expression unreadable.
“What?” My voice is wary. Did she figure out that I fucked the one woman she demanded I not?
“Fine.”
I frown in confusion.
“I will teach you everything you need to know.”
“Because you weren’t already going to?”
She studies her manicure. “No, I was going to explain things to you with as much reluctance as possible, while making you feel like a tiny, insignificant, stupid man for wasting my time, until you quit.” She assesses me like a lioness deciding whether to mate with or kill the male in front of her. “But I think I’m beginning to see what Henry sees. So, I will help. If you fail anyway, that’s on you.”