Chapter 4 #2
“Yeah, it’s just easier. It keeps me under the radar,” she said, lifting and lowering one shoulder in a shrug. “I want to stay no contact with them.”
“Easier for you maybe, but that cash thing isn’t going to work.” Gage shot a glare at Cole but couldn’t read his brother’s expression. “You know we can’t pay her in cash.”
“I figured a few days wouldn’t hurt to see how she did and help her out,” Cole said to Gage. “She’s earned every penny, too, and God knows we need the help in here. Sloane, when did you leave? How long have you been…traveling?”
The woman in question inhaled and bit her lower lip before saying, “I went to college but dropped out right before I was to graduate. I’ve been moving around ever since.”
“Why? Why drop out if you were that close?” Cole asked.
She squirmed atop the stool, and Gage knew his brother had hit upon a particular sore spot.
“I have my reasons. Like I said, it’s complicated. Look, do I have a job or not?” Sloane asked.
Cole didn’t hesitate. “You do.”
“Shouldn’t we talk about this?” Gage asked Cole in a low voice.
“She’s working here, not in any of the other businesses. I think we can decide this.”
“And if we have differing opinions on the topic? No offense,” he felt compelled to say to Sloane.
She snorted softly. “Of course.”
“Gage, you signed off on me hiring someone before we strangled you,” Cole said. “I think that gives me the deciding vote.”
“We can’t pay her in cash long-term.”
“It’s a temp job,” Sloane said again. “I’ll…get things straightened out with the schedule and computer system and…stay while Cole finds and hires someone else.”
“And what about her sleeping in her car,” Gage said.
“I’m fine in my car. Pretend it’s a van, and I’m camping. Besides, you said yourself I could park in back so I’m on the security cameras,” she said with a defiant tilt of her chin.
Gage was aware of Cole’s surprise at that news and shrugged. “I didn’t know she was the new hire at the time. I told her she could stay a night or two but not long because the city would be after us.”
“They will be, too, so that’s not a solution,” Cole said with a shake of his head. “She’ll have to stay with you.”
Gage and Sloane both whipped their heads toward Cole.
“What?” they asked simultaneously.
“It’s that, or we put her up in a hotel and foot the bill.
And why bother doing that when you’ve got three spare bedrooms sitting empty?
Let her use the one downstairs. It was meant to be used as an efficiency rental anyway.
That way, we know she has a safe place to stay until she earns enough to get her own place or move on. ”
Gage felt like he’d been sucker punched. How had they gone from her situation to him suddenly having a house guest? “Do I get any say in this?”
He was all for her being safe, but that didn’t mean he wanted to take her home with him. She was a stranger. She was a cute stranger but still. She could be anybody. And there was a lot of crazy in this world. For all the questions Sloane had answered, she’d created ten more.
Why was she no contact with her family? Why did they try to keep tabs on her? What was she avoiding? Running from? Who was she?
Cole picked up a sheet of paper and handed it to Gage. “Take a look at that and tell me if you want to screw this up.”
Gage glanced down at tomorrow’s schedule and noticed that this time she’d coordinated the appointments so that he wasn’t running all over town but handling jobs in a single area before moving on to the next.
It would save him considerable time from not zigzagging back and forth, battling traffic, and he wondered why he hadn’t considered doing things this way sooner.
He usually slotted people in first come, first served.
But this made more sense, and he felt like an idiot for not doing it before now.
“That’s what I thought,” Cole said. “Let her use the downstairs bedroom until she can make other arrangements.”
“That’s my storage room. And I’m her boss. Having an employee live with me looks bad,” Gage argued.
Cole ran a hand over his head and neck in frustration. “Fine. I’ll call Hudson and see if he’d mind letting her crash on his couch. He’ll be less uptight about it either way.”
Gage felt like a jerk. He had two unused bedrooms upstairs and a wholly separate space downstairs that would allow them both privacy and security.
They wouldn’t even cross paths but on rare occasions since the downstairs suite had a minifridge and microwave.
But how wise was it to bring a stranger into his home?
A beautiful stranger with a penchant for lying at that?
“Do I get a say in this?” Sloane asked, splitting her attention between them. “Because maybe I don’t want to stay with him? My car is fine. If you’re too embarrassed about me parking behind the building, I’ll find somewhere else. Easy fix.”
“No,” Cole and Gage said simultaneously, drawing a blink from her.
“Sloane, that’s not safe. If you haven’t had an issue yet, you’ve been lucky, but that luck is going to run out eventually,” Cole told her.
“So unless I agree to your plan, I don’t get to keep the job?”
Yeah, there were all kinds of laws tangled up in that one, Gage mused.
“No, that’s not— Sloane,” Cole said, softening his tone. “The job is yours temporarily, but your living situation is an issue.”
“Why? Why does it matter to you where I stay as long as I show up in the morning?” she argued.
“Because we have a kid sister, and we wouldn’t want her or any of our employees out there and in danger,” Cole said.
In that instant, Gage knew what he had to do. Because Cole’s words reminded him of his own thoughts that first night when he’d seen her. “Two weeks,” he said abruptly, surprising himself with the words but knowing he’d already lost the battle.
One of the reasons he’d been out for a run so early that morning was because he couldn’t sleep due to worrying where Sloane had wound up. Where she’d gone to sleep. If she was safe.
Despite this being a problem, at least he’d know she was safe. “She can stay downstairs for two weeks while you find, hire, and train someone else.”
“And if I don’t want to live with you?” she asked Gage.
“You’d rather ride out a hurricane in your car?”
Sloane gaped at him, seemingly taken aback by his question.
“What hurricane? There’s going to be a hurricane?”
“Unless it shifts course, yeah,” Gage said. “We’ll either get the brunt of it or a side swipe, but we’ll get something early next week. Maybe sooner if it picks up speed.”
He could practically see her mind churning over that news.
“I-I hadn’t heard.”
“So what’s the decision?” Cole asked.
“I guess staying with him would be better than floating out to sea.”
Gage was glad to note she had some sense of self-preservation.
“What about rent?” she asked.
While he was all for making money, he knew she didn’t have any or she wouldn’t be sleeping in her car. “If you’re so good at organizing things, maybe you could do the stuff in that bedroom. It’s kind of taken on a life of its own.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Cole told her in a stage whisper. “Take him up on that at your own risk.”
Sloane huffed out a small laugh and shifted her attention back to Gage. He felt the full force of those big green eyes like they blazed fire.
“That bad, huh?”
He shrugged. “You’ve seen my schedule. I don’t get to spend a lot of time at home, so things get tossed in and left for later.”
“A later that never comes,” Cole added.
Gage watched as she nibbled on her lower lip and thought over her options, not that she had many. She could leave and go inland before it hit, but where? At what risk? If a hurricane stalled once it reached land, sometimes the flooding and damage were worse inland than on the coast.
“Okay. I’ll stay there, but I’ll earn my room and board by organizing the mess. Professional organizers get paid really good money, so I think it’s a fair trade.”
“Deal,” Gage said with a nod.
“Not so fast. Just so we’re clear, this isn’t a housing-with-benefits situation,” she stated bluntly. “I don’t want a repeat of my last job just because I have a complicated personal life.”
Gage crossed his arms across his broad chest and glared at her, anger spiking that he’d been lumped into that class of moron. The kind of man-child who thought just because he was bigger and stronger meant he could do—take—whatever he wanted.
Sloane didn’t back down and held eye contact, though Gage noted the uptick in the pulse point at her throat. “This is strictly a business arrangement until you find a place of your own.”
“I can vouch for him, Sloane,” Cole said. “Gage will keep his hands to himself. He knows better. If he didn’t, he’d answer to all of us.”
Cole might be a stranger to her, but Sloane had spent more time with him, and apparently, she took Cole at his word.
“Well, I suppose since I don’t have a lot of options… We have a deal. For the time being. Though if what you’ve said about organizing the room is true, I might not be able to finish it in two weeks.”
Gage released a grunt at her words. The spare room was floor-to-almost-ceiling chaos and would require a lot of labor to organize.
Which could only happen in evenings and occasional days off when she wasn’t working at the rentals building.
She’d be lucky to get through a corner of it in the time frame, given the weather bearing down on them.
The next two weeks would prove interesting. Because his gut told him there was a lot more to Sloane’s story, and he wondered what else she was hiding…