Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Lu
Despite the candy bars not having been touched in my car more than a week after I got them, I still snag Sharpie Jeff’s pudding from the brown bag in the fridge. There’s another note, but also a second pudding. I narrow my eyes, considering taking both just because he’d underlined his name twice on the bag. As if an extra stroke of his sharpie would protect it.
Shoving one, a butterscotch, because I had a chocolate cup yesterday, into my pocket along with the new note, I shut the fridge and get back to cleaning. I make it all the way to trash duty alone in the room, but then as I yank the black bag out of the can, the door opens.
“Sorry. I’ll be out of your way in a minute,” I mumble, not looking at whoever just walked in. Tying the black garbage bag, I head for the door.
“You going to replace that?” SSD’s voice, both deep and smooth, makes me freeze. I look down to see if the pudding has fallen out of my pocket.
“Excuse me?” I ask, my voice cracking with some sort of guilt chasm. A quick glance up and my gut flips as his stern brown eyes pin mine. He points.
“The bag.”
I follow the direction of his finger with my eyes. The trash can is bagless.
“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Uh, yeah. Gimme a minute. This thing reeks.”
He only narrows his eyes on me and I feel heat burn up the back of my neck as I get to my cart by the door.
“I don’t want you to forget again.”
I grunt, suddenly irritated. Dropping the full trash bag dramatically with a sigh, I yank an empty one off my cart.
I like SSD much better from a distance. Ever since he nursed my wound, he’s been talking to me, mostly just in passing, but talking is talking. Greetings, idle weather remarks, and ‘hey, how’s it goings’ are more than enough though, especially when paired with his sexy but intense stare. The one good thing in my life had been fantasizing about Sexy Security Dude and now that’s gone too because I can’t afford to get soft where he’s concerned. I pause for a moment of silence in my grief.
Dear higher power, why me?
What was that line from the movie, Bruce Almighty ? Something like, ‘God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I’m the ant’.
“Lu?”
“Huh?” I blink over at him, now standing in front of the open fridge. I’m a little surprised he knows my name.
As a janitor I’m pretty invisible. No one likes talking to the person that cleans up the bathrooms where people suddenly become filthier than barn animals. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. He probably had to write a report about the dumbass that got a head injury while standing in line at the punch clock.
I groan aloud at the thought and SSD frowns at me, or actually at my chest. I look down at the patch on my coveralls that says ‘Trish’.
“I know it says Trish, but your name’s really Lu, right?” he asks. “That’s what I’ve heard people call you.”
Even my work coveralls are hand-me-downs, so yes, they do say ‘Trish’ underneath the BBW’s Friendly Cleaning Service emblem, which was the last company contracted to do the cleaning here.
Trish must have left her coveralls behind when BBW’s contract was terminated. The factory hired me on their payroll instead but didn’t have a uniform for me. I used Trish’s because it meant my clothes wouldn’t smell like day-old tuna fish. Trish was bigger than me… everywhere, so the coveralls are baggy.
“Have you seen anyone else here in the last half hour?” he asks, making me look up from my baggy clothing to him.
“I’m not one of your security lemmings,” I snap. “I actually have my own job to do.” I’ve long since figured out he’s the boss of security, but he’s not my boss.
He frowns his masterfully molded lips and grunts, tossing his brown-bag lunch on the table and points at my chest. “That’s false advertising.”
My eyes widen, flicker down to the BBW patch and back up. Clenching my jaw in mock outrage, I cover my pathetically small breasts. “Are you skinny-shaming me?”
His eyes widen this time. “I—” He holds both hands in front of him.
I don’t notice how big his hands are because I’m not a perv like him, who ogles other people’s body parts.
Ha, yeah right. I totally do. I’m just surprised I hadn’t noticed those gorgeous hands when he was playing doctor with me in the infirmary. And I’m definitely not offended. I’ve lost all sense of pride and modesty now. Live day to day, meal to meal, sleep in your car for a few months, and you’ll see what I mean.
Boobs Shmoobs.
Anyhow, I definitely do picture those hands wrapped around my upper arms as he shoves me roughly against the wall to take my mouth. His kiss, hot and demanding — What the hell happened to not fantasizing? Damn.
“Not the BBW…” he blurts, snapping me back from my quickly developing fantasy.
My brow arcs and I shift my jaw before grinding out slowly, “It stands for Big Bill Williams.”
“I, uh, know. I was—” He gathers a breath, hanging his head a moment in defeat before looking back up.
I make a show of crossing my arms over my chest, smugly cocking my head to the side, daring him to continue.
He clears his throat. “I was referring to the friendly part.” He shuts his mouth then, letting the silence grow heavy between us and scrubs a hand through his thick hair. I want to take over stroking those silky waves. I want to clasp handfuls of it as he buries his face in my neck and between my pathetically sized but still needy breasts.
Good god, Lu’s as horny as a nineteen-year-old college frat boy. Stop!
I press my lips and shake my head. “Sure,” I say, sounding affronted.
He looks skyward and whispers an oath. I turn my head down to hide my smirk. This guy is amusing to toy with. And since I’m basically a death-row inmate I have to take fun wherever I can get it.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
I eye the logo on his V-neck sweater. He’s wearing a security lanyard, only it’s hidden beneath the V of the sweater, but the security emblem is still plainly there. It’s a bear in a red oval with the words ‘Grizzly Security’ beneath.
Under that somewhere would be his name. You’d think I’d have seen it that fateful night when he patched my noggin, but I always find somewhere else more interesting to stare.
“Yours is bang-on, I see.” I point to his security tag. “You’re about as personable as a grizzly.”
“I guess I deserve that.”
“Only for pointing out the bag.” I twirl the new garbage bag still in my hand. “The other stuff…” I shrug. “You’re easy to poke and you were pretty nice the other night.”
He smiles and I note a mischievous sparkle in those brown eyes, as if he’s just won a prize.
“Haven’t you heard the saying ‘don’t poke the bear’?”
I scratch my chin. “Haven’t you heard the saying ‘don’t poke the janitor’?”
His left brow goes up. “No, actually. That’s not really a thing, is it?”
“Well, no, but it should be because no one who has to deal with day-old tuna fish and urinal cakes should ever be poked.” I eye him. “What’s your excuse?”
Walking around to check him out, I ask, “Or are you actually a bear?”
“I can be a little growly and bear-like,” he admits with a small shrug. “But I also have a reason.”
When he says this, he stares at me pointedly and I feel a spike in my blood pressure. Both because I feel like he knows I’ve been naughty and because his words definitely come out a little growly.
I bet he’s growly in bed.
Rawr!
“Truce?” He extends his hand.
I eye it, then him, and finally take it with reluctance. His much larger hand envelops mine and an electric zing rushes through me. But before I can even get my bearings and shake on our truce, I’m yanked forward and slammed against his deliciously hard chest.
I gasp at the wind being knocked out of me and feel his hand by my hip. I can’t decide if I’m scared or excited that my sexy fantasy from earlier might be coming true. But then I realize what he’s doing.
Busted.
“Get your damn hands—stop!” I yell. He steps back and his smile is confidently cocky. He’s holding the pudding cup up like a trophy.