He pops another chip in his mouth before rolling the top of the bag down and grabbing a fork from the drawer to use as a chip clip. “Give me that,” I huff, snatching the bag from him and a chip clip off the side of the fridge. There’s no telling where he put the one that had originally been on the bag of chips. His pocket, if I had to guess. “Caveman.”
“You’re the one who’s obsessed with my hairy chest,” he quips.
“I wouldn’t say obsessed. I just don’t understand why you put on a shirt after your shower when you haven’t any other night I’ve been here,” I tell him, tossing the chips in the pantry. For someone who claimed he was starving, he barely even ate any of them.
Maddox sighs and scrapes his hand down his face. “Figured if we were going to talk about the bar again, it was best not to have my nipples in twisting range.”
My stomach sinks, but I paste on a bratty grin. “I have a simple solution for this: we don’t talk about the bar.”
“We have to talk about the bar, Tex,” he says tiredly.
“We really don’t,” I argue. “I’m pretty sure we discussed everything there was to discuss earlier today. Dale wants to give me the bar. I don’t want it and have told him that countless times. He tried to rope you into the mess, but it’s pointless. I still?—”
“I own the bar now.”
“You what?”
He sighs again. “Dale signed it over to me the other day.”
I blink, understanding the words he’s saying but unable to thread them together so that his sentence makes sense in my mind. Why on Earth would Dale give Maddox the bar? Why on Earth would Maddox take it? He runs a cattle ranch. What the hell was he gonna do with a bar?
“Well, I suppose congratulations are in order. I wasn’t aware you wanted a bar, but I love supporting small business owners, so I’ll have to advertise on my social media for you or something.”
“Austin—”
“Should I expect to keep my job for as long as I’m in Cedar Creek or are you going to lay off the existing employees to hire new ones? Angie is pregnant, so just as a heads up, that’s probably gonna cause a bit of negative PR for you if you choose to go the firing route.”
“Actually, I was planning on keeping the current employees on the payroll, yeah,” he says, lips turned up in a wry grin like he can’t help himself. He pulls away from the counter and comes up to me, wrapping his arms around my waist in the middle of his kitchen. “I thought maybe promotions may be in order though. A little morale boost to show everyone the new boss means no harm.”
‘Everyone’ being Dale, Angie, and I, because those are the only employees he has, unless they’ve hired someone to replaceme so that Dale could fuck off to Traitor Land or wherever he went after signing over my bar to my situationship. I know he wasn’t stupid enough to stick around in Cedar Creek.
“Congratulations, Austin Taylor, you’re the new General Manager of Quitter’s.”
“Am I?”
“Yup.”
“And you don’t think the other employees will find it suspect that I received this promotion—even though I haven’t been to work—from the owner, whom I’ve fucked?” I ask, for argument’s sake.
“The great thing about being the owner is that I don’t have to care about what the employees think if I don’t want to.”
I snort. I know for a fact he doesn’t run his ranch that way. “You’re already thinking like an owner.”
“It also helps that I only have two employees—one of which I’m fucking.”
“Angie?” I ask and his brows furrow like he’s not sure where I lost the plot of our game. “I assume you must mean her because you haven’t fucked me in like…” I pretend to look at the watch I’m not wearing. “Weeks.”
He rolls his eyes, smacking my ass. “A week and a day.”
“Semantics.” I hug him tighter, resting my head against his—unfortunately still clothed—chest. His body wash smells so good. When I leave here, I might need to buy myself a bottle to sniff any time I miss him.
As though the world can read my mind, the mood shifts. He sighs, pressing a long kiss to my hair and squeezing me a little tighter. It hurts my ribs a tad, but I don’t mention it.
“I’m going to give you the bar, Austin.” I bring my hands up between us to push away from him, but he doesn’t let me. “Hush for a minute and listen to me.”
I huff, but obey, letting my hands fall. I don’t wrap my arms back around him and I know he doesn’t appreciate that because he’s moving away a moment later, framing my facewith his hands and forcing me to look up at him. His eyes are watery.
I don’t like this. Whatever he has to say, I don’t want to hear it. I push at his chest again and his thumb strokes over my cheekbone gently. “I love you so goddamn much, Austin Taylor.”
