4
By the time he parked his car at the office, Avery had only replayed the conversation at the fire station a hundred times in his head. The whole scene had started like something out of porn, with the sexy firefighter “accidentally” dumping the bucket of water on himself, molding his T-shirt to his ripped torso until Avery could count every ridge of his six-pack.
Of course, then Avery went and made it weird by staring like a creepy stalker, then even worse when the firefighter somehow knew about the exploding bowl, making Avery look like anincompetentcreepy stalker. By the time he managed to snag his watch on his pocket trying to wave goodbye, he’d given up any hope of class or credibility.
Just another in a long line of good-looking guys who would only ever see Avery as a loser who couldn’t make his body parts work in sequence or operate a microwave without risking life and limb.
He let himself in through the back door, hoping to sneak in without his uncle seeing him—which of course meant Uncle Theo was literally at Avery’s desk.
“Where’s the MacPherson file?” Uncle Theo asked. He was wearing his favorite green tie, featuring the rainbow tie clip Aunt Brenda bought him for their first Pride march.
“MacPherson?” Avery didn’t have any clients with that name.
His uncle blinked up at him, frowning. “Who’s MacPherson?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you say that name?”
Avery tried to keep up. “You said it first.”
“No, I didn’t.”
They did this a lot. Avery wracked his brain to come up with the most likely candidate. “Do you mean McLellan?”
Uncle Theo pulled open a file drawer and riffled through it. “Isn’t that what I said?”
Avery had long ago learned not to bristle when his uncle did this. The company was Uncle Theo’s, so all the information in the building was his. “You said MacPherson.”
“Well, I meant McLellan. He called this morning. They got an audit notice in the mail. You finished their submittals, right?”
“Of course.” The question wasn’t an accusation. Just his uncle being thorough.
“Great, then where’s the file?”
“It’s on the computer.”
Uncle Theo pushed the drawer shut. “What?”
“It’s all online. Don’t you remember? We switched to digital records for McLellan at the end of the last fiscal year.”
His uncle harrumphed. “Well, I don’t recall that.”
“I know. I’ll show you where it is on the cloud.”
“The cloud? Clouds are made of water vapor.”
“And water evaporates. I promise you, it’s totally backed up and safe.” Sometimes, he thought Uncle Theo would still be running his business with a slide rule and punch cards if Avery wasn’t there to drag him into the twenty-first century.
They were almost to Theo’s office when Meredith, the firm’s administrator, rushed through the door. “Sorry I’m late. Kevin lost a tooth this morning, and then Carrie threw up, so the house was all blood and vomit, and then I had to wait until my mom could come take over.”
Uncle Theo waved her off. “It’s fine. Avery’s just arriving too. Late start for every—” He turned, narrowing his eyes. “Wait, what are you doing here? You were supposed to be at Aulderson’s at nine.”
Busted.
“I was.”
“You should have been there all morning.”
