Page 30 of Sass

“Oh. My. God.” JJ clapped her hands, then leaned over the service desk with her chin resting on her palm. “I’ve never ever seen Kip looking like a rabbit in the headlights. That was epic. What happened? What did he want? I thought he hated you for whatever reason you’ve always refused to talk about. And did he just say he’d fuck you? Oh my god, tell useverything.”

“No.” I gave both a thundering glare. “Besides, you were obviously listening at the damn door.”

“I was just restocking my ink.” Ty grinned brazenly from his station. “It’s not all about you, you know.”

“Like hell.” I refocused on JJ. “And what’s your excuse?”

She waggled her brows. “None. I was shamelessly eavesdropping. Although to be fair, I only caught a few words and I’d appreciate more context.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, nah, never gonna happen.” My gaze swept the studio. “Where is everyone?”

“Ty’s client cancelled and I’m free until five.” JJ glanced at the door. “But here comes your sweet little daddy now.” She nodded to the beaming man about to open the front door. “I guess the interrogation will have to wait.”

Thank Christ for that.

CHAPTERSEVEN

Kip

“What doyou mean you can’t redo the order before November?” I seethed at the factory owner’s dissembling at the other end of the phone. “It’syourmistake. How do you get a whole run of shirts ready for shipping and only then realise you’ve used the wrong bloody fabric? Not only is this a lower grade cotton, but it’s not even the right dye. I can’t send these to our London and New York boutiques. They’ll laugh us all the way out of their stores. You have to fix this, Phoebe.”

And as Phoebe whined in my ear about all the reasons she couldn’t do what I needed her to, I watched Drew working the busy service desk. He was drowning in customers, and every now and then he’d shoot me an irritated get-your-butt-out-here look. The storm blowing horizontal against our windows had done nothing to dissuade the late Friday afternoon bargain hunters and we’d been run off our feet.

I mouthed the words “five minutes” to Drew and went back to being pissed at our supplier.

“My hands are tied.” Phoebe’s voice grew more frustrated by the second, but not nearly as much as mine. “The flood took half our work floor out, and we’re way behind schedule. I can maybe get it done before Christmas, but I can’t even guarantee that.”

“Christmas!” I was pretty sure steam shot out of my ears. “We can’t wait until Christmas. I need those shirts in stores and boutiques by the beginning of December, Phoebe,so people can buyforChristmas. And that means I need them inmyhands by November, like our contract stipulates, remember? If we miss Christmas, we won’t sell enough to cover our costs and we’ll have lost the shoulder season market.”

Phoebe sighed. “But the contract also has a clause to cover delay issues that are out of our control, like floods, Kip. You have the trousers—”

“The two are a complete look,” I growled. “And the advertising is already done.”

Phoebe sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you. We fucked up. I get that. But it doesn’t change the fact there’s no way we can get another run completed within the next three weeks. Our lines are full. And we can’t get the right fabric in that time, either. Believe me, I’ve tried, but we’re too small to put any pressure on the supplier. If you can change the fabric to something we have in stock or can source locally, then maybe we can squeeze it.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.“Okay, okay. I’ll get back to you when I’ve worked out how to solve this shitshow. But I’m not happy, Phoebe. This is the second major mistake in six months. We can’t afford this.”

“I know, Kip, and I’m sorry. We’ll discount the next run if that helps?”

It didn’t. I ended the call and sent my phone skidding across the desk. “Goddammit.” I debated calling Rhys but figured it could wait a day or so until I could get my head around our options. No need to ruin his big weekend in New York. He’d checked in a few times, sounding excited and the most relaxed I’d heard him in a long time. And it wasn’t like there was going to be an easy solution he could somehow magic up to get us out of the hole. I knew as much as he did about this shit.

In the meantime, I got out of my chair and went to help Drew, ignoring the umpteenth text on my phone from my posse of friends, wondering where we were meeting up for our standard Friday night out. Not gonna happen. But explaining the why of that was only going to earn me a ton of questions. Ghosting them wasn’t any better. I’d be hit by the same interrogation the next day, but at least by then I’d have had some sleep.

There was no way I was up for a raucous night of dancing and drinking, not the way I felt. And the thought of cruising for a warm body to while away a few hours wasn’t doing it for me either, a novel state of affairs I wasn’t about to dissect. Along with the fact that I hadn’t been out or had a man in my bed,at all, in the five days since Rhys had left. The fact that coincided with Leon moving in upstairs had nothing to do with it. Still, it had to be a record.

I shoved those troubling thoughts aside and busied myself with customers and fretting about the manufacturing fuckup. It was exactly the sort of issue that had me nervous about this new role Rhys wanted for me. I could serve customers all day long with my hands tied behind my back, but shouldering the responsibility of supply issues that could tank an entire season of his business? Not so much.

With customers still packing the store at six and sale items flying out the door, Drew and Jack offered to stay late, bless their cotton socks, and we kept the doors open an extra hour. By seven, the flood of shoppers had slowed to a trickle, and I finally managed to get a closed sign in place and shoo an exhausted Drew and Jack out the door.

I grabbed a pen and paper and retreated into my office to mull over the supplier debacle in peaceful misery. I had precisely one idea on my list, and not a very good one, when I heard the key in the lock and the front door opened.

Leon.

My heart kicked up, and a disconcerting flutter in my belly caused me to frown. “Enough of that,” I hissed softly to myself. The exchange in Leon’s kitchen had done nothing to tamp my interest in the man. The exact opposite. So, he wasn’t the jerk I thought he was. I should be happy about that, right? Yeah, not so much. Instead, I felt like the rug had been pulled from under me, all my excuses to keep him at a distance gone in a puff of smiling bearded smoke.

Would I consider dating rather than just a hook-up?Leon’s question still rattled through my brain like a gunshot. Because for all of the light-hearted humour he’d injected into the moment, those grey eyes had been deadly serious. Leon was asking to dateme? I’d wanted to laugh in his face, but instead some hitherto unexplored corner of my brain sucked the fun right out of that and put the brakes on, keen to at least consider the possibility.And where the hell had that come from?I’d blustered my way out of trouble by the skin of my teeth.

A few seconds later, I caught sight of a familiar tall, rangy body and handsome face gracing my open doorway. Leon looked just as loose-limbed and lickable as he had earlier, in soft as butter faded jeans, black Chucks, a white fitted Henley, and a black leather jacket currently dripping with rain. His damp blond waves were pulled into another messy tail—something that shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was—and water droplets hung tantalisingly off his neatly trimmed beard.

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