I’m really going to hell.
The shop isempty of customers by ten past seven. Clarissa left at five-thirty, and I have been thinking about the sound of her voice ever since. I feel like a stupid teenage boy. I know how to deal with women, but I don’t know how to deal with a sweet girl like Clarissa.
Liam clears his throat. “So.”
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.” Liam laughs. He finishes cleaning his counter and tosses the rag into the laundry bin. “She’s good at the job.”
“Yeah, she is.”
He drags a clean rag across the rim of his ink tray slowly and lifts each cap to wipe under it. “Really good.”
“Yes.”
“And you watch her like—”
“I don’t think you want to finish that sentence, Liam.”
He doesn’t stop. “She didn’t need your help to do inventory, boss. You inventing excuses to spend time with her now?”
“She was doing inventory. I was doing the supplier order. That’s called running a shop.”
Clancy, without turning from his station: “You were in that closet for forty minutes.”
“She’s sexy as hell,” I say, because denying it would be insulting to everyone in this room, including me. “And it’s a terrible idea. There is a long list of reasons I can’t touch her.”
Liam grins at his counter. “You going to ask her out?”
“And she looks at you like she wants you to,” Ford adds, laughing.
I don’t have anything for that, so I write grey wash, two each of three, four, five on the order and keep my mouth shut.
The bell over the door rings. Daisy comes in, a sandwich bag in one hand.
“Hey, boys. Just bringing dinner for my man.”
Knight is a man I have worked next to for two and a half years, but it never ceases to amaze me how different he is with his wife. He crosses the shop and kisses her, brief and easy, his hand going to her hip. I am watching this man touch the woman he loves like it’s the simplest thing in the world and my hands are aching because I know exactly where I’d put mine—Clarissa’s waist, the small of her back, the spot where her hip curves into her thigh. I’d pull her against me and I would not be brief about it.
“Hey,” he says, in the voice he uses for one person on this earth.
She lifts the bag a quarter inch. “Brought you dinner.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She presses the bag into his chest, both hands. “I wanted to. I know you’re going straight to the studio and you’ll forget otherwise.”
He takes the bag and says something low I don’t catch. She laughs, pats his chest, and walks to the door. He watches her cross the sidewalk.
Liam chuckles as he watches Knight. “And there he goes.”
Knight turns from the door. “I heard that, asshole.” He comes back to his station, sits down, and pulls the sketchpad out of the bag he came in for.
Ford starts breaking down his station. “Did I hear her say that she’s the pastor’s daughter?” He says it loud enough that everyone in the shop goes quiet.
I glare at Ford. “Yeah. It’s true.”
Liam lets out a low whistle. “Pastor’s daughter. So you’re not just screwed, you’re—”
