I have. I’ve spent hours thinking about it. “A little.”
His fingers shift, a thumb slipping free to rub circles on my inner wrist. It should feel normal—I spent half of uni with people checking my pulse—but here, in the low light, with his cologne curling between us, it’s a sensory opera. My body responds in kind, my nipples tightening to peaks.
“Cece…” Davis murmurs, lowering his head.
Every nerve in my body sparks like a firework show, and Davis is the match. Our mouths are so close together, they’re almost touching?—
A loud cough cuts through the air. “Uh, Cece, do you mind if I take off early? I’ve got uni tomorrow.”
My stomach plummets. I pull away from Davis and spin around.
Lisa is behind me, her apron already off, car keys dangling from her fingers.
“Am I interrupting something?” she asks, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
I force a smile, hyper-aware of how busted I am. “Not at all. Butwould you please mind finishing your shift? It’s only nine, and we’re still?—”
“We’re notthatbusy. Pretty sure the fucking scared everyone off.”
I cringe. What can I say to that?Sure, I let my best mate get audibly drilled by an All Black above my bar, but the customers loved it and so should you!Honestly, Jake will be lucky if this doesn’t end up on the news.
I open my mouth to reluctantly agree Lisa can leave, but Davis gets in first. “Actually, can you wait in the office for a sec, Lisa? Cece and I need a quick word about next week’s roster.”
“Cece and you?” Lisa looks like she’s just been asked to clean the toilets. “Why you?”
“Because I want him to,” I say automatically.
Lisa huffs, flips her blonde braid over her shoulder and saunters toward the back.
I frown at Davis. The roster is a masterpiece of my administrative skills. A Taj Mahal of Timeline Tetris. “Why exactly do we need to talk to Lisa about her shifts?”
“We don’t. But you do need to talk to her about skimming from the till.”
Bile floods my throat. “What?”
“I meant to tell you earlier, but…” A flush creeps up Davis’s neck, and I know he means Ada’s relationship shenanigans. But that’s the furthest thing from my mind right now. “Wait, so what did you see? I can’t just accuse Lisa if I don’t have evidence?”
“You’re right. Don’t get mad,” Davis pulls out his phone. “But she was acting kinda sketchy last week, so this afternoon I set up a little camera behind the register. The feed goes to my phone.” He scrolls and holds it out for me. I watch the recording of Lisa glancing around then slipping two twenties into her skirt pocket.
“She’s done it twice tonight,” Davis says.
Red floods the edges of my vision. I’m paying Lisa out of my own meagre savings, barely scrapingby, and she’s robbing me? “That little…”
I turn heel and storm toward my office, Davis right behind me, his boots heavy on the worn floorboards.
“Are youkiddingme?” I shout as I yank the office door open. “You’re stealing from me?”
Lisa doesn’t even flinch. She’s sprawled in the chair across from my desk, on her phone. “Um, what are you talking about?”
“Empty your pockets.”
“No.” Her eyes slide from mine to the door. “Davis, what’s going on?”
“We recorded you, you, idiot,” I yell. “Hand over the money you took tonight.”
“There’s no cameras in this place,” Lisa sneers at me, but as the seconds tick by and Davis says nothing, her smile starts to falter. “I wanna leave.”
Davis presses the warm weight of his arm against mine as he takes out his phone. “You can, but I’ll call the cops. I do have a video of you lifting from the till. You’ll get charged.”
