4. Wade
4
WADE
I stared at the endless abyss of paperwork that was sitting on my desk, willing me to finish it, and realized I would rather do anything else. My mind drifted to last night—it had been my first time working with Ellie .
I had been intentionally trying to avoid shifts with her because every time she was near all I seemed to do was picture her naked and other inappropriate things. So , in an effort to avoid temptation, I arranged the schedule so she and I wouldn’t work the same shift. Instead , I spent most of my time holed up in the back office or upstairs with Archer and Vince when Ellie was on shift.
Yesterday, however, when Sam called in sick, I had no choice but to step in and work with her.
If I was being honest, yes, when I asked her to leave last night, we were still pretty busy, but I needed Ellie to go. She was a great employee, but I was getting twitchy being in such a close space with her. My body craved being next to her, and every time a strand of her hair fell loose from behind her ear, I had to keep myself from reaching over and pushing it back in place.
I recalled the moment about an hour into my shift when I had been leaning over the bar talking to Diego Martin , one of our regulars, when he grinned and told me the new girl was checking out my ass. There was only one person he could mean – Ellie . I decided at that moment to have her clock out and head home. Any longer of her standing next to me, especially knowing she was checking me out, could lead to me doing something stupid.
Then she smiled and waved goodbye to me as she walked out the door, and I was a goner. I grinned like a high school boy. My dick twitched, and I realized maybe I needed to get laid. Otherwise , that woman was going to be the death of me.
“You don’t strike me as the type to shit where you eat,” Diego had said to me as I’d watched Ellie leave. He must have taken my pause to mean I didn’t understand, so he’d explained further. “ I mean, you don’t seem like the kind to sleep with someone you work with.”
“I knew what you meant,” I’d told him. “ And no, I don’t. Plus , she’s Jack’s little sister.”
“Ahh. The other guy in the security company?” he’d asked. “ The one who’s still overseas?”
I’d nodded.
“Well, uh, I was asking ‘cause if you weren’t gonna ask her out, I was going to, but maybe not just in case I do decide to work with you,” he’s said, a huge grin on his face.
I’d known it was just a casual remark, but the thought of him asking her out had made me irrationally pissed off.
I had no claim to her, and Diego seemed like a nice guy, so it wasn’t even like I could claim I was protecting her from some asshole. I tried not to think too hard about why that had bothered me all night.
My thoughts of last night were interrupted by someone opening my office door. As the handle turned and the door opened, I stood up from my chair, ready to give Tammy or Beth hell since neither of them ever knocked before coming in, when I saw Ellie walk in and slide to the small couch to the right of the door in front of my desk. She must have seen my movement, though, because she let out a small shriek and instantly fell to the ground, purse thrown down with her hands covering her head like she was expecting me to attack her.
“Ellie, it’s just me,” I said, finding her reaction a bit odd.
Her eyes opened and she looked up at me as red color began to fill in the paleness of her face.
“Oh God , Wade , I’m so sorry,” she said, slowly rising from her spot on the ground.
I walked around and held out my hand to help her up. She grabbed onto it, and I felt a warm current move through my hand and arm. It felt nice, and I didn’t want to let her hand go, but I needed to or this would become awkward.
“I didn’t know you were in here or I would have knocked.” She took the hand that I had just touched and put it to her chest.
She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths like she was attempting to calm herself down.
Feeling guilty for scaring her, even though it wasn’t my fault she didn’t knock. I softened my voice a bit to ask her why she was here.
“Did you need something?” I asked and noticed her hands were shaking slightly.
“Sorry, I was just going to leave a small note on your desk,” she said and held up a small piece of paper. “ Though I might as well just tell you in person now.”
She handed me the paper and spoke again. “ My brother called this morning and told me to tell you thanks for helping me get moved and settled in here. I know he feels guilty he’s overseas and couldn’t help, so he wanted me to tell you how much it means to him that you helped me. He cherishes your friendship.”
“Did he really say cherished?” I asked, because I doubted her brother would have used that sappy word.
“Well, I’m paraphrasing,” she said and shook her hands in front of her face as though that explained everything.
She seemed oddly nervous and tucked that loose piece of hair behind her ear again. My fingers twitched to do it for her. It would be easy to do since I was only a foot in front of her. I hadn’t moved back after helping her up off the floor. Being this close, I could smell whatever her perfume was and she smelled like a cupcake. Or maybe that was just her natural scent. Vanilla and lemons. I needed to back up and get back to paperwork, though I didn’t want to do either. What I really wanted to do was touch that loose piece of hair that had popped out again, then slide my hand to the back of her neck and kiss that glossy stuff off her lips.
Shut that thought down.
“How was your hike with Ruthie yesterday?” I asked, hoping to change the topic and clear my brain of inappropriate thoughts of her.
She looked at me, and a smile took over her face once my question registered to her.
“It was great,” she noted. “ That trail by the river is beautiful. So many trees and plants, and the walkways were nice and wide, so you didn’t get run over by people on bikes. There were also dozens of people on kayaks and floats on the river.”
“Yeah, I’ve done that a few times. It’s fun,” thinking back to summers in high school.
My friends and I would go down to the river with our small floats and innertubes, get some beer we stole from one of our parents’ stashes, and just meander downstream for a few hours.
“It looked like it,” she said wistfully. “ You should come next time.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she pinched her lips closed and suddenly looked nervous?—
like she hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“I mean, Ruthie said Archer comes sometimes, so um…maybe you could come too,” she stuttered. “ Like , um, since you’re friends, you could maybe hang out there. With us. For a hike or whatever.”
She sighed, tilting her head down. “ Sorry , I blabber when I’m nervous.”
“Why are you nervous?” I asked, thinking to myself how cute she was all flustered like this.
Her head popped up, and she looked at me, but didn’t say anything. That curl popped out from behind her ear again, and I couldn’t resist. I leaned forward and tucked it behind her ear for her. I heard her take a deep breath, and her eyes darkened a little. Her eyes dropped to my mouth and I could practically hear her brain thinking. Her eyes moved back to mine and she licked her lips.
God, this woman was going to be the death of me. My office here at the pub was already tiny to begin with, but with Ellie in here, it felt even smaller. The windowless walls felt like they were shrinking around us, forcing her into my space. Feeling her pull, I took a half step forward into her space.
“Wade,” she whispered. I wasn’t sure if it was a warning, or an invitation, the way she said it.
She licked her lips again, and I knew I had to kiss her. I leaned in as I reached back out to slide a hand behind her neck.
“Boss man, you got a delivery!” Tammy’s voice yelled from outside my office.
Ellie gasped and stepped back.
“Umm… I’m going to go back out and umm, help Tammy , for our uh shift. Yeah .” Ellie stammered and grabbed her bag off the floor before leaving my office.
When she opened the door, Tammy was standing there with a big grin on her face. She just stood there staring at me for a few moments.
“I didn’t interrupt anything important, did I ?” she asked, but that sly grin on her face told me she knew Ellie was in here and her yelling was her version of a heads up.
“What do you need?” I questioned her, my voice a little gruff.
“Just wanted to let you know the alcohol delivery came and I signed for it. It’s all in the stock room, but I know you said you wanted to know as soon as it got here. Going back to the bar now. Let me know if you need anything else,” She turned and walked back to the front of the restaurant, smirking the whole way.
My office was now quiet with only myself inside. What the hell just happened? I’m mad at myself for getting caught almost kissing an employee. What bothered me more was how disappointed I felt at not having the opportunity to kiss her.
Needing to change focus, I moved my line of sight back to the payroll paperwork in front of me. The idea of assembling IKEA furniture without instructions seemed more appealing than this. I needed to hire someone to deal with this paperwork. Bills and invoices were not my thing. Plus , it was getting harder and harder to do administrative paperwork for the pub and also work for the security business.
Ranger Shield Security was taking off, with clients starting to pour in. Most of them were cases of a husband or wife looking to dig up dirt on their spouse ahead of an impending divorce, or picking up some high dollar skips, which we passed off to Vince since his dad was a bounty hunter and had taught his son everything he needed to know.
The uptick in clients was good, but with Jack still deployed, we needed to think about hiring an extra hand or two. The guy at the bar the day before, Diego , was someone I’d had had my eye on. He’d finished active duty and was currently on reserve. He was a tech whiz, and from what I’d learned, his role in the military had been gathering intel, so he would be a great addition to the company since tech ops weren’t really Vince’s strong suit or mine. Jack had some skills in that, but with him being away, that didn’t help us much in the short term.
I also needed to reach out to my sister, Willa . She worked as a forensic accountant, but that meant she worked with a lot of skilled tech people, and she’d mentioned interviewing someone for an open tech position at their office. If she didn’t hire the person, maybe we could.
Willa and her husband Paul lived here in Georgia , too, though I didn’t see them as much as I should. She was older than me by two years and had married Paul right out of college. They had two kids— Charlie and Haley .
I wanted what she had, a family, but I knew that would never happen for me. Not because of my job but because of the monster I could be, sometimes without warning. Which made me think back to Candace .
During my first tour, I met Candace while I was home on break. We hit it off and decided to keep in touch each time I came home between deployments. It wasn’t anything serious, but we enjoyed each other’s company. Especially naked company.
When I would come home on leave between deployments, we would grab a bite to eat and head back to either one of our apartments, but we never stayed the night. She said she liked sleeping in her own bed, and I didn’t like the seriousness it conveyed to women when I stayed the night.
I didn’t want a relationship while I was overseas in case something happened to me. I saw it happen to many other guys. But one night, it was storming really bad, so I let her crash at my place.
That night, I had a nightmare and apparently elbowed her hard in the side while sleeping. I felt terrible, and even slept on the couch the rest of the night. The nightmares had been coming increasingly frequently since my last mission overseas. I lost men during a special ops assignment went bad in Jalalabad , Afghanistan . The explosion killed two of my men, and injured two more.
I knew this was likely PTSD but hadn’t wanted to see a therapist because then people talked, and I didn’t want to leave my men stranded because the brass had pulled me off a mission for being weak.
I didn’t want to risk hurting her again, so I stuck with my rule of not sleeping together.
A few months later, she happened to be at the same bar I was at with friends. She only lived three blocks away, so we walked back to her place. I blame the alcohol, because after a few rounds of sex, we both must have fallen asleep, and I woke up to her scream after I had another nightmare and punched her in the shoulder and neck. I left her place feeling horrible and was walking back to the bar to get my car when a text from her came through, saying to please lose her number.
I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t control what I did during my dreams. Even though it had been unintentional, I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting a woman.
So, while I wasn’t swearing off women entirely, I just didn’t have sleepovers, and that ultimately meant no relationships since, after a while, women tended to want that. And I was too messed up for that.
The nightmares have become less frequent now that I started seeing a therapist, but they weren’t zero. Until then, I wasn’t going to take a chance with staying the night with a woman. And while the therapy as helping, I wasn’t sure I would ever get to the point of zero nightmares. That was why Ellie and I would never happen. I had to shut that thought down.
It also didn’t help that if Jack knew that I was thinking of his sister naked, he would likely cut off my balls. Or worse. Ellie was also the type of woman who deserved a relationship, and I couldn’t give that to her.
So, I put all inappropriate thoughts of her away, no matter how hard that was. With that said, it didn’t mean I had to help other guys have a chance. So , for now, I wasn’t going to give Diego or any other guy at the pub any help with Ellie either.
Selfish? Definitely .
Did I care? Not one bit.