Page 46 of A Lesson for Laurel

Being one of a kind was a good thing.

Most times.

Even being unique.

Laurel enjoyed that in her life.

What she didn’t enjoy was that she had to make this call the next day.

“Hey,” Easton said when he answered the phone. “You’re calling early.”

She looked at her watch. It was eight thirty. Not that early since she’d been at work for an hour.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t sleep much. Been up about an hour. Did you think about what you wanted to do today?”

They’d made plans for another date but nothing set in stone. He told her to call when she was ready to do something.

She’d had a bunch of things in her mind and hadn’t narrowed it down yet. She found it sweet that he told her to pick since their date was ruined by a nasty dishwasher last night.

She didn’t think it was ruined. She had a lot of fun with him.

Their banter was easy.

Their attraction was solid.

Finding time was the issue, it seemed.

“And I’m calling you from work.”

“Oh,” he said. “Everything okay?”

“I’ll be here until five unless I can find someone to come in,” she said. “Earlier in the week, one of the staff needed the day off. Her supervisor told her no, I said yes. It was a family emergency. Ariel’s mother had surgery yesterday. No way I was saying no. Give me a break.”

“I’d be the same way. It’s not like she called in. You had a few day's notice.”

“That’s right. I told Denise, who is Ariel’s supervisor, that there was time to get the shift covered. Ariel did cover it. But the person covering the shift got into an accident on the way to work. She’s fine, but she’s shaken up and her car is totaled. She called me from the ER. She’ll be there another few hours easily while they look her over.”

“That’s unfortunate,” he said. “But as long as she is okay.”

“Courtney sounded it. So of course, the staff did what she should, called the supervisor to get someone else to come in.”

“And no one can come in?” he asked.

“It’s not that. The supervisor isn’t answering. She’s on call this weekend too. There are three supervisors, one for each line of products, but they rotate who is on call and deal with any issues like this. And if they can’t find someone to work, they have to work. They are paid extra for that. Plus if they have to work even more.”

Which pissed her off that Denise wasn’t answering her phone.

Denise was on call and that was most likely why she threw the fit and didn’t want Ariel to have the time off. Because then she’d have to cover the shift being on call this weekend if she couldn’t find someone to at least come in for a few hours.

And because Denise was such a bitch to people at times, many weren’t willing to give her a hand.

“If you have to work then you do,” he said. “We can do something later. I can make dinner up to you for last night.”

“Last night was great,” she said.

She looked around at the machines running. She’d moved staff so that the open spot that Courtney needed to be at wasn’t doing much other than inspecting and checking the orders, and she could do that while she was on the phone talking with her earbuds in.

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