Chapter 27
Conner
Summer days are long and hot. I’m sweating through my t-shirt already and it’s only ten in the morning.
“Get the backhoe and bring it down to the far end,” I order Matt.
He’s new. Well, sort of. He only worked a month for the company before Russ fired him.
He came back for some extra cash, because I put a call out to all our former employees offering them cash under the table if they were willing to come back temporarily.
Four of them took me up on my offer and I’m paying them out of my savings because Russel would definitely have an aneurism if he knew they were getting a second chance at Larson Landscaping.
Like I said, he’s a difficult man to work for. Perfection matters. Precision, timelines, it all matters more than anything else. One strike and you’re out.
At home, he’s not like that at all, which is wild to me.
Our regular employees have been offered Russel-approved overtime and are eager for the extra cash.
It’s been all hands on deck for the past two weeks.
With the schedule I worked out by staying up until three am the night we brought Russel home, not only have we kept business running as usual, but I’ve been able to add back all our cancelations plus two new clients.
“Get those pear trees in the ground first, then the arborvitae. Shit, did Evan load the filtered soil?”
“Yeah. He’s headed to the McNair’s first then here.”
Right on schedule.
“Good. Take a break for lunch and hydrate.” I pull my hat off and wipe my forehead. “This is gonna be a long day, boys.”
Matt loads a bag of fertilizer on his shoulder and hauls it away.
Bouncing from job to job, I make sure everything’s going smooth and note that we’ll need more pavers for the Baker job. “I’ll have them loaded on the next free truck we’ve got, sir.”
“Thanks, Conner.” Mr. Baker shakes my hand. “You boys do some incredible work. I wish I could talk you into putting in a water feature. My wife wants one of those, whatcha call its, a stress-relieving sanctuary.”
My heart sinks. I wish I could do that, but Russ refuses to take on those bigger designs. Says we make enough money and have enough projects already. No need to get complicated.
But seeing how much easier things are running with the extra help only dangles the carrot of possibilities in front of my face. If I squint, I can almost see what my future would look like if I left and started my own business.
That’s never happening now, by the way. Not in a million years. I haven’t had the time or the balls to tell Taylor that though.
“Yeah, sorry, Mr. Baker, but if we ever get into aquatic features in the future, you’ll be the first to know.”
My truck is hot and stuffy. I smell like dirt and pine. I need coffee.
On my way to the next job, with my trailer loaded with bushes, I swing by the office. Taylor looks up from a pile of papers, her face going from scrunched and mad to happy and relaxed when she sees it’s me. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I kiss her first then beeline for the coffee because it’s free here and I’m so desperate I would mainline this mud into my veins if I could.
“I swear my dad could get an award for being the worst organized person in history. I don’t know how my mother ever decoded his notes or made his appointments with all this madness.”
“Are you using the system I put on the shared drive?”
“Yeah.” She clicks keys on the laptop. “I’ve been trying to add all his invoices and notes so that we have them in your new spreadsheet for future reference too.”
“There’s no point, baby. He’s going to delete that program the instant he’s back. You know he hates technology.”
She scatters other papers around, getting more and more frustrated. “Well, he can suck it up. It’s stupid to live in the dark ages. Everything is run by technology now.”
“Except plants.” I stroll over. “And crystals.” I set my coffee cup on the windowsill and pull her chair back so she can’t reach the laptop again. “Sit on the desk for me.”
“What? Conner, stop.” Scooting herself closer to the desk isn’t going to happen thanks to the death grip I have on her chair.
“Do what you’re told, Taylor.”
“Why am I sitting on the desk?”
“I’m on my lunch break. I want lunch.”
“And what the—” she pauses. Relaxes. “Oh.”
“Oh.” I tip her chair back and kiss her. Then I dump her out of the damn thing when she doesn’t listen. “Get on the desk.”
Today she’s in a long, forest green skirt and a tank top that has little mushrooms all over it.
Sinking to my knees, I raise her legs so her feet can rest them on my shoulders.
“Conner… we can’t.”
“Why not?” I move her panties to the side.
“What if someone sees?”
“They won’t. I locked the door and everyone’s hard at work. No one is coming here, baby.” I drag my tongue across her pussy. “Someone’s wet already.” I lick her again. “Did getting mad at paperwork turn you on?”
“Ugh, shut up.” She bops my head with a stack of invoices. “It’s you.”
“Me?” I suckle her clit, making her squirm. “Go on. What about me?”
She sighs and holds my head between her legs. “You look so good all sweaty and dirty. And that thirst trap you posted this morning has been driving… mmmmph…. Driving me…. Fuuuuck…. Insane.”
I make her come from just my tongue and then sit back in the chair with a juicy wet smile. “Oh yeah?”
“What?” she’s all out of sorts.
Adorable.
“My sweat and dirty hands and thirst traps turn you on.”
“You know they do.” She sits up and sighs. “Wow. I feel better.”
“Mid-day orgasms are way more effective than double espresso mochas. I’ve been trying to tell you this for days.”
With a devilish grin, she hops down and pulls her skirt off. Then she wiggles out of her soaked panties.
“God… damn…” I run my hand over her bare ass and smack it, loving how it jiggles. When she bends over the desk, I don’t need any more encouragement.
But I do wish I could take a shower first. I’m gross.
“Put your hands on me,” she says over her shoulder.
“I’m dirty.”
“I like that about you.”
Fuuuuck me. One swipe of my hand on her bare ass leaves a little smudge mark.
“I’m sweaty.”
“I know.” She wiggles her ass at me.
Unzipping my jeans, and pulling them down is a relief. Cool air hits my cock and balls and I jab her between the cheeks with my blunt head. “You want it so bad, put it in yourself.”
Taylor spreads her legs a little wider, rises onto her tiptoes, and grabs my length from between her legs. Then she guides me to her soaked pussy and freezes. “Shit!”
“What?”
“Someone’s here!”
We scramble like two teenagers to fix ourselves and I rush over to unlock the door just as I hear bootsteps crunch on the gravel outside. Taylor sits in the chair and gathers all the papers that fell on the floor while I pour another cup of coffee.
The door swings wide open.
“Hi, Honey,” Russel says. “Oh, hey Conner.”
All I can think is “wipe the pussy off your face,” which I do and then dump way too much creamer in my cup because I am no good at this sneaky shit. I’ve never had to be before.
“What are you doing here, Dad?”
“I’m glad I caught you both, it’ll be easier this way, I think.”
He doesn’t look good, and that makes me worried. “Are you feeling okay, Russ?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Taylor gets up so he can have his chair behind the desk, but he waves her off and tells her to stay there, then drops into a folding chair saved for employees getting reprimanded. “I uhhhh… need to talk to Conner about something, but I think you should hear it too.”
Taylor and I both glance at each other.
Abandoning my coffee at the station in the corner, I lean against the desk and cross my arms, worried as hell. I have no clue what he’s about to say but I don’t like how it’s making me feel.
“A smart man knows…” Russel pauses and shakes his head. “Wait. No.” He clears his throat. “A good man… shit.”
“Russ.”
“Let me say this, damnit.”
I shut the fuck up, so I don’t get fired.
“A smart man knows when to stay and when to walk away.” Russel’s staring at me as he says this. “Are you a smart man, Conner?”
Not really. No. Probably not.
“I think you are,” Russ says when I don’t answer fast enough.
I’m about to pass out. Is he forcing me out? “Sir.”
“I am too.”
This is confusing. “Sir?”
“That’s why I’m officially retiring.” Those words leave his mouth and take all the air out of the office with them. “I’m done.”
Panic hits me. “What about the staff? Everyone here will be out of a job.” Including me, but that’s the least of my worries.
“They can hopefully negotiate working for whoever buys this business from me.”
“Buys the business?” Taylor nearly yells. “You’re selling?”
“I’ve put too much of my life into it to just fold. To steal words from Conner, it isn’t in me.” He shrugs like that’s all there is to say about it. “This is the compromise I made with your mother.”
I rake my hand down my face because this feels all wrong even if it’s the right thing to do.
Russel has busted his ass, and nearly lost his marriage, because he built this business from the ground up and put it first too many times.
They never went on vacations or splurged.
He’s invested, that much I know, but in what I have no clue outside of property.
Russel has set his life up to live happily ever after. And now he’s ready to enjoy it.
No one can be mad about that.
“What about Gems-n-Stems?” Taylor asks, since that’s a subsidiary of Larson Landscaping.
“That will have to be worked out.” Russel scratches his jaw. “I already have a potential buyer. Just need to work out the details.”
My heart falls out of my ass. Guess I’ll be the new guy’s competition because I can’t continue working for someone else anymore. Except I also don’t want to jump ship and run the risk of Russel’s legacy tanking under new management. It would kill him.
I’m stuck now more than ever between my dreams and my duty. This sucks.
“Who’s the potential buyer?” I ask.
Russ deadpans me. “You.”