I scoffed. “He already thinks you don’t have a brain. You acting like a bearded version of Sienna is only going to solidify his claim.”
Taron narrowed his eyes at me. “Did I, or did I not, just buy you time to have a quickie with your girl?”
I put my tongue to my cheek as I looked at him. “What we did in there isourbusiness, and our businessonly.”
Taron rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to give me a play-by-play. I’d rather get my balls waxed than hear you tell me about your sexcapade.”
“I wasn’t even offering…” When he sneered at me, I chuckled and said, “Look, I’m really grateful for your help, man. Mr. Ribeiro isn’t an easy man to fool, so what you did just now means a lot.”
Taron shrugged. “I mean, I’d argue and say that you could’ve easily waited until he left to go to the shop to do whatever it is that you wanted to do instead of throwing me to the wolf, especially when I’ve only had a single cup of coffee since waking up, but I guess it’s rather too late to complain about any of that now.”
I lifted a brow. “Is this your way of asking me to buy you coffee as a favor for what you did?” I asked him.
He shoved his hands into his jeans pocket and lifted a shoulder. “So what if it is?”
Technically, Ididowe him for the assist, so I couldn’t exactly deny him.
“Fine, I’ll go get you a macchiato.” I pointed a finger at him. “And I’ll also get you a chocolate chip muffin and an extra greasy croissant, because I’m feeling quite generous today.”
Taron wiped a non-existent tear from his cheek and touched the center of his chest. “Always the thoughtful one.”
I shook my head around a smile, then flipped him off when he laughed, before pulling my van’s keys out of my hoodie’s pocket and jogging down the stairs.
36. Over-budget
“Well, that’s absoluteshit, isn’t it?” I heard Myles say. He sounded angry, and the tone of his voice made goosebumps rise throughout my body.
“Look, I dunno how this happened, man, but at least it’s a good thing we caught the issue before it became fatal,” came Paul’s response.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Myles all but hissed. “You messed up, Paul. Admit it instead of trying to get out of it by fucking with me.”
Yikes.
“I’m not the only one who was working on piecing together this damn bookshelf, okay, Myles?” Now evenPaulsounded angry. “This is just as much your fault as it is mine.”
“Guys, come on; calm down,” Greg said. “It’s not like it’s an unfixable problem. We can easily work on it today and leave the pending stuff for tomorrow.”
“Exactly,” added Taron. “Me and Greg can pitch in with ideas, even if we aren’t that great with wood-work.”
I’d only just stepped out of my room to go say good morning to Myles and the crew, when I’d stopped in my tracks after hearing them argue.
It was almost 10a.m., and I knewAvôwould be heading out to open shop soon.
“But it still doesn’t change the fact that we screwed shit up, Taron!” Myles yelled. My God, he wasenraged.
“I’ve never let anything like this happen before, and you know that,” he continued, now sounding defeated. “It’s almost February, and we’re still working on putting together the same fucking bookshelf that we started the year with. We’re already getting close to crossing the budget Mr. Ribeiro set for us, and the last thing I need is to discuss financials with him. In case you guys aren’t aware, him and I don’t exactly have a camaraderie going on here.”
“But the budget only went up because we made the mistake of ordering a bookshelf from a company whose installation was garbage,” Taron provided. “It’s not our fault they refused to give us a refund when their policy clearly suggested otherwise.”
“This isn’t right, Taron,” Myles said, and my chest tightened because his voice seemed so small and tired. “I should have been able to fix this; it shouldn’t have taken me this long to work on a single thing.”
I finally decided to stop eavesdropping and walked into the storeroom.
The guys immediately turned to look at me, and Myles’s entire demeanor shifted when I reached him.
“Morning, gorgeous,” he said with a grin, then gave me a quick kiss.
I scanned his face.You don’t have to pretend with me, I signed.
