Page 21 of Sass

“I heard that,” Drew called from the changing rooms, and I looked up to find him grinning at me.

Fuck.I flipped him off and poured the remainder of the coffee down the kitchen sink before I embarrassed myself further.

This couldn’t go on. Even I could see that. Leon was a thorn in my shapely butt that I was going to have to do something about.

Tomorrow.

Maybe.

* * *

But tomorrow didn’t happen. Wednesday was a store sale nightmare, and regardless of the troubling appearance of yet another late-night coffee slipped onto the service desk along with a casual wave from an equally late Leon, he disappeared upstairs before I could accost him and tell him to stop being so fucking nice. It was giving me a rash.

The last thing I needed was to feel grateful to him in any way, which was exactly what I’d told the empty stairwell as I’d drunk his damn coffee and stared up at the sound of his footsteps crossing the ceiling. Leon being considerate was proving an unexpected and particularly devious low-blow tactic that I hadn’t quite worked out how to counter.

Clear the air. Rhys’s words echoed in my head, and okay, there was a miniscule chance the whole coffee thing wasn’t just a sneaky battle manoeuvre on Leon’s part. Maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt, much though the idea rankled me. But with our sale in full swing, there was little time to consider how to handle that unnerving prospect. Drew and I were run off our feet just keeping our heads above water, as people flocked to Flare to grab a bargain.

And Thursday went much the same way. By the time we’d shut the doors at six, we’d smashed our daily sales record by a few thousand and my feet were pulsing bright red. The only plus? Beck’s nephew Jack worked after school on Thursdays, Fridays, and sometimes Saturday mornings, which meant an extra pair of hands to clean up and restock.

At six twenty, I ditched my shoes and collapsed into my chair. “Go home.” I waved a hand at Drew and Jack, both of whom were slumped on the floor of my office with their backs against the wall, looking about as shattered as I felt. “We’re gonna have to do it all again tomorrow.”

“Jesus, and I thought final exam prep was bad,” Jack grumbled, hauling his school bag close to grab his phone from the pocket. “I’m supposed to be studying history tonight. I’ll be lucky to keep my eyes open.”

My gaze lingered on Jack’s face and the sharpening angles of his cheeks and jaw that promised the man to come. In his last year of school, it seemed like yesterday that he’d first walked into the store and brought his Uncle Beck into Rhys’s life.

Jack frowned at me. “What are you looking at?”

“You. You’re all grown up. Those university girls aren’t gonna know what’s hit them next year.”

He flushed a deep red. “Shut up.”

“Hello? Anyone home?”

We turned as one toward the front door, and I waved Gary inside. The dapper thirty-year-old man was Hunter’s assistant photographer and an important pillar of Hunter and Alec’s new modelling agency venture, Melt, New Zealand. He organised most of our shoots and was ruthlessly efficient, something that had initially caused us to clash, since control was usually my forte. But once we retracted our claws and I learned I could trust him to get shit done, we got on like a house on fire.

“Hey, team.” Gary strolled into the office wearing his customary bow tie, startling green clearly the colour of the day. Fine-boned and barely pushing five seven, Gary was a pretty man with shrewd blue eyes and a no-nonsense approach to life. He wore painted-on charcoal trousers over his pencil-thin legs, an immaculate white linen shirt with black buttons, and a nervous smile, the latter definitely not something I’d seen often, if at all.

My curiosity was definitely piqued.

“Hi, Jack... Drew.” Gary’s gaze lingered on Drew who stared up at him with pink cheeks and a shy grin.

Oh. My. God.

“Hi,” Drew answered, and Jack and I exchanged a what-the-fuck look as the office fell quiet. Drew shuffled on his butt, his gaze sliding off Gary and onto a stain on the tarp covering the floor.

“So...” I broke the silence and Gary’s gaze shot to mine. “What can we do for you this fine night?”

He snorted. “Have you seen the rain pissing down out there?”

He wasn’t telling me anything new. I’d spent half the day mopping up the tiles and offering to stow people’s umbrellas in the holder by the door before they put water marks on the silk shirts.

Gary cleared his throat. “I was on my way home and thought I’d drop off the roughs from the photo shoot we did for theFashion Downundermag.” He slid a packet onto my desk. “Let me know what you think by the weekend.” He stole a sideways glance to Drew.

“Will do.” I barely contained my grin. “But I thought you lived south of the city? This is hardly on your way.”

He gave me the hairy eyeball. “I do. I um, I had a couple things to do in the city first.”

“Aha.” I didn’t believe him for a second. “Well, I’d offer you a coffee, but after the day we’ve had, I’m not moving from this chair. So, unless you can bribe the world’s best assistant here—” I nodded to Drew. “—you’re on your own. You got anything you think you could tempt him with?” I held his gaze and saw my about-to-be-very-short life reflected back at me. “No? Nothing spring to mind?”

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