“If it’s a summer job,” Danny began only to sigh heavily when his uncle used the opportunity to steal one of his cookies, “then let Jason handle it. He needs the extra money.”
“He can’t take this job,” Uncle Jared said distractedly as he tried to steal another cookie.
Knowing his uncle as well as he did, Danny shifted the tray further out of his reach as he demanded, “Why not?”
“You cheap bastard!” Uncle Jared gasped with a pout that had him rolling his eyes and tossing the greedy bastard another cookie. It was either that or put up with his pouting for the rest of the day.
“Well?” Danny demanded as his Uncle took his time to savor the cookie.
“He has to work most of the summer at school,” Uncle Jared quickly explained before he washed down the cookie with a bottle of chocolate milk. “He’s going to take hours working with us when he can, but he has a lot to do before school starts back up in September.”
“Isn’t he the head of the history department now?” Danny asked, pretty sure that Haley had told him about Jason’s promotion last night while they’d been waiting to have their stomachs pumped in the emergency room.
Jared looked proud as he nodded. “Youngest department head in the school’s history.”
“That’s great,” Danny said absently, wondering if his father smiled like that when he spoke about him, but after a minute, common sense kicked in. He doubted that his father even remembered his name, never mind talked about him. Not that there was much to brag about, Danny thought as he unwrapped one of the sandwiches he’d bought.
“Why don’t you get one of the other guys to run the project?” Danny suggested, hoping that he could continue with the status quo by punching in every day, completing the projects assigned to him and going home. He didn’t want to run a project, supervise a team, or any of the bullshit that came with this new job. He’d led enough men in the Marines and was done with all that bullshit.
“My other foremen all have projects to handle this summer. Carl is out for the summer to take care of his wife while she’s on bed rest and Jimmy retired last week,” Jared explained.
“So, promote someone new. You have plenty of good men to choose from,” Danny pointed out as he was once again forced to shift his tray away from his uncle’s greedy hands.
Uncle Jared shook his head as he considered his next food selection. “None of them are as good as you. You know how to handle a team, how to delegate work, you work your ass off, and you’re fair. You’d make a great foreman.”
“What about Trevor?” Danny asked, touched that his uncle thought so highly of him, but he just wasn’t sure that he wanted to do anything more than follow orders.
“He can’t,” Jared said with a sigh as he settled on a sandwich, “not with his dyslexia.”
Danny could only frown in confusion as he asked, “Why the hell not?
“Because the job is renovating the old library,” his uncle said and with that, Danny knew that he was good and fucked.
Chapter 4
“Fuck off!”
“Aw, is little Danny going to cry?” Jodi heard Trevor ask from the safety of the laundry room, where the door was tightly shut. She prayed that she’d have one night, just one night, where she didn’t have to put up with-
“I said fuck off!” Danny snapped as the laundry room door crashed open and the only man in the world that could possibly make her day any worse came storming in, carrying a basket of dirty clothes and looking furious.
Chuckling, Trevor continued to walk past the laundry room door, seemingly oblivious to the panicked looks that she was sending his way. “See you bright and early tomorrow morning, Mr. Foreman!”
“I fucking hate that bastard,” Danny muttered, focusing all of his attention on violently shoving the basketful of clothes into the only other washing machine in the room.
Deciding to take advantage of the fact that he hadn’t seemed to notice her yet, Jodi placed her empty laundry basket on the dryer that she was planning on using once the washing machine was finished and quickly walked out of the room, hoping that she didn’t draw his attention. When he didn’t say anything to make her want to bash her laundry basket upside his head, Jodi walked down the hallway and let herself into her apartment.
She set the timer on her phone for thirty minutes and was just about to enjoy some of the ice cream that she’d picked up on the way home when the rolled-up city trash bags that she grabbed at the gas station caught her eye. It was trash night, which meant that her date with rocky road ice cream was going to have to wait. Then again, she could always take the trash out later…
No, no, she couldn’t, Jodi thought, knowing that the longer she put off taking the trash out front, the more likely that she was going to forget to do it. Since the trash cans that were assigned to her were full this week, she didn’t have much of a choice. If she didn’t get the trash out tonight, then she’d have to wait until next week to get rid of it, which would be a problem since she’d be forced to put this week’s trash on the ground and risk a warning.
Since she doubted that she’d be able to find an apartment this cheap, three hundred dollars cheaper now, Jodi decided to just suck it up and get off her ass and do it. Grabbing the roll of city trash bags, she left her apartment and headed to the back entrance. Five minutes later, she was standing in front of her assigned trashcans, frowning down at all the trash bags filling her cans.
She didn’t remember going through that much trash. For a second, she wondered if someone else shoved a bag in her can, but just as quickly, she dismissed it. For one thing, even though most of the guys that lived here were arrogant bastards, they weren’t pricks. They wouldn’t do that to her. Well, Danny probably would, but since he used black trash bags, she knew that he wasn’t responsible for this mess.
Realizing that she must have gone through more trash than she thought, Jodi pulled a city trash bag off the roll and opened it, shaking it loose so that she could put her trash bags in it. As she grabbed the first bag and almost fell over from the weight of it, she couldn’t help but wonder why the city charged two bucks a bag for trash removal when they paid taxes that were specifically allocated for the sanitation department. It just seemed a bit ridiculous to her that the city was able to charge double for-
“Oh, my God!” Jodi shrieked as the bag that she’d been in the process of pulling out of the trashcan suddenly ripped open. The sudden difference in weight threw her off balance. It caused her to stumble back several feet as the gooey contents of the bag spilled out and covered her just as the most repulsive odor that she’d ever encountered hit her, making her gag just before she stumbled back another step, slipped on some of the slimy goo and went flying, landing on her ass.
