Chapter Three
Caden
“Hey, I’m meeting Stevie at the restaurant for lunch. Wanna go?”
I turn around and nod, my stomach growling as I restock my truck following this morning’s job. “Sure. Give me fifteen to finish this up. I want to make sure I’m ready for this afternoon’s appointment at the grocery store.”
Jack nods. “Sounds good. Stevie and Adrienne are leaving the house now. I’ll let them know we’ll meet them there.”
My ears perk up at hearing her name. Adrienne. The woman I can’t stop thinking about. She’s as mysterious as she is beautiful. An enigma. She’s lived here for about four or five months, and in that time, I’ve only gotten to see that hard, exterior shell of hers. She’s fun and sassy and sexy as fuck. I’ll admit, I’ve always had a “type,” but I’m all sorts of attracted to this woman. Her curves, her dark, curly hair, her wit. It’s all one huge turn-on I can’t seem to pull away from.
Not to mention she gives just as good as she gets. Verbal sparring with her seems to be my new favorite hobby. Every time she’s near, I want to push her buttons and watch the fire dance in those light-brown eyes. I want to witness her skin flushing with desire and her body come alive beneath my touch. I don’t know what it is about her, but this cat and mouse game we seem to be engaged in has me on edge.
The crazy part is, I’m not sure exactly who’s the cat.
I think that’s part of her allure.
I push Adrienne out of my head long enough to make sure I’m set for work this afternoon. The last thing I want or need is to be distracted enough to forget to restock something. There’s nothing worse than getting to a jobsite and not having what you need. Sure, that happens plenty of times—parts have to be ordered and whatnot—but the basics are things we keep in our trucks. Tools, wire, fuses, electric panels, ballasts, boxes, conduits, and more. There’s a ton of small parts that piece together your electrical for your home or business, and we make sure to have the products we need to complete the job.
When I’m satisfied I have everything, I head off into the office to find my partner. He’s working on his computer and glances up when he sees me walk in. “Ready?”
“Yep,” I reply, dropping off my completed work order from this morning so the job can be invoiced.
“Good, me too. I didn’t have time to grab anything to eat this morning, so all I’ve had is coffee,” he informs me, standing up and stretching.
“If you’d stop staying up all night, having sex with your live-in girlfriend, you’d be able to get up at a decent time for work,” I quip.
He grins from ear to ear. “It’s not all night, but I do admit, having her in my bed every night is pretty fucking incredible.”
Jack and Stevie have been living together for just a short period of time and are currently in the honeymoon phase. Everything is sex and flowers right now. We moved her in a few weeks ago, almost immediately after Jack and his kids asked her at the end of May. Now, they’re one big happy family, and while that shit isn’t for me, I would never begrudge my oldest friend his happiness. His first marriage crashed and burned, and while they’ve settled into an easy routine of co-parenting, it wasn’t always sunshine and roses. It took time to figure out what worked for both Jack and Mya, not to mention their two very young kids.
I have to hand it to my friend to give the whole love thing another try, but he’s been smitten with Stevie from the first moment he saw her. She was a new server at Burgers and Brew, and as it turned out, was BJ and Jameson’s half-sister. She and Jack hit it off well, despite a pretty healthy age gap. He’s ten years older than she is, having just turned thirty-one last month, but they haven’t let that stop them. They’re nauseatingly cute, I admit, even if that level of commitment isn’t for me.
“Hey, before we go, I wanted to run something by you,” Jack says as he locks the front door to the office.
“What’s up?”
I give him my full attention. “Now that I have Stevie, we were talking about how I can make some adjustments to our on-call schedule.” When I don’t say anything, he quickly adds, “I have help on the weekends now, so I want to split them with you. It’s not fair you’re on call every weekend.”
I shrug and lean against the front end of my truck. “I don’t mind that, you know.”
“I do know, but I hate you always have to cover the weekends, and we both know that’s when the majority of electrical emergency calls come in. Stevie will be there with the kids, so I can do calls too.”
I nod. “All right, well, let’s talk about updating the schedule soon. I’m open to whatever.”
“Okay, good. Right now, Thursday afternoon is wide open on our schedule, so let’s block off an hour or so toward the end of the day. We can get it figured out,” he replies, visibly relieved we’ll work out a new schedule so he can take his share of the weekends on call.
“Sounds good. Ready to go eat?” I ask, feeling a little anxious.
I know part of it is simply because I’m hungry, but I’m not na?ve enough to know that’s not the only reason. He said Adrienne was going to be there too, and I’m eager to see her. After how we left it Friday night—or early Saturday morning, actually—I want to make sure we’re still cool. I don’t know what I said or did, but I could tell something bothered her. It was written all over her gorgeous face, and I didn’t like the way I felt as I drove away. I was left unsettled and didn’t sleep well that night. Now, I get to see her again and make sure all is okay.
“Meet you there?”
“It’ll be easier that way,” I reply, since I’m going to a job, and he’ll be heading back to the office to do some admin stuff.
Which he hates.
We’ve talked about hiring an administrative assistant off and on for almost a year, but never really went any further with it. Now might be a great time to bring it up again. Our business is financially stable enough to support the hiring of another part-time employee, and if we continue to grow, maybe that position can evolve into full time down the road.
I follow Jack to the restaurant and meet him on the sidewalk. The late-June air is hot, the humidity already high and causing a thin layer of sweat to gather on my skin. The cool air-conditioning is welcoming as we slip inside the building, the amazing scent of fries and hamburgers filling the air.
Jack spots Stevie right away and takes off in her direction at a rapid pace. It’s as if it’s been a week since they last saw each other, not just a handful of hours. “Hi,” she greets after he places a kiss on her lips.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he replies, pulling out the chair to her left.
I follow, taking the last seat, which is positioned between Jack and Adrienne. “Good morning, ladies.”
Stevie glances at her watch. “It’s technically afternoon,” she teases with a wink.
“My internal clock is messed up because your boyfriend kept me busy all morning with work,” I state.
Stevie gasps, “What? No, not work!” She feigns shock.
I flash her a wide grin. “He’s a taskmaster.” Turning to Adrienne, I add, “Hello.”
“Hi,” she replies after taking a sip of what appears to be water.
“How is the painting coming along?” Jack asks, grabbing my attention.
“Good,” Stevie states. “The first coat is done and drying, and when we get back to the house, we’ll apply the second.”
“What are you painting?” I ask as the server comes over to take our drink orders. “I’ll have a Coke, please.”
“Water for me,” Jack requests.
“Let me grab those, and then I’ll take your orders,” Meredith, one of the servers, states before turning and walking away.
Jack, returning to my question, answers, “They’re painting the kitchen.”
My eyebrows shoot toward my hairline. “What’s wrong with the kitchen?”
“It’s white,” Adrienne states, as if that’s somehow an answer to my question.
“And…white kitchens are bad?”
Stevie and Adrienne share a look. “Not bad, per se, but they’re harder to clean and show every little splatter,” Stevie says.
“And they’re boring,” Adrienne blurts out.
“Here ya go.” Meredith delivers our drinks and retrieves her order tablet from her apron. “Are we ready to order food?”
“I’ll have the Up All Night burger,” Stevie requests without even looking at her menu.
“Spicy Little Number for me,” Adrienne orders.
The corner of my mouth ticks. Her burger choice certainly is fitting of her personality.
When Jack places his selection, Meredith turns to me. “I’ll have the Morning BJ,” I state with a big grin and a wink.
Adrienne snorts as Meredith finishes writing our order, not seeming at all fazed by my innuendo. Probably because she’s heard them all. That’s what happens when you work for a place that named their entire menu with naughty-themed burger titles. “I’ll get this in for you guys,” she says with a smile before heading off to check on another table.
“Did you ask him about Saturday night?” Stevie asks Jack.
“Not yet,” my friend replies before turning his attention my way. “Mom is going to watch the kids Saturday night so Stevie and I can have a date night. We’re planning to come up here after dinner and listen to the…entertainment. Do you want to join us?”
I smile that cocky, self-assured grin that’s always gotten me out of trouble. “Like a threesome?”
Stevie was just taking a drink of her water and proceeds to choke on it. “What?” she sputters, trying to cover her mouth so she doesn’t spew liquid across the table. “No!”
Jack chuckles, clearly knowing I’m kidding. “Sorry, no threesome, friend.” The corners of his mouth curl up as he shakes his head.
“Third wheel, then, huh? Sounds like a great time.”
“You won’t be a third wheel,” Stevie insists. “The wives of the owners are all coming up.”
A slow, sexy grin spreads across my lips. “So, I’ll be one of the only dudes in a big group of women?”
She shakes her head. “Yes, Caden. You’ll be one of the only dudes in a big group of married women.”
I bark out a laugh and wink. “You just had to go and ruin it for me, didn’t ya?”
“Anyway, you’re welcome to join us,” she states.
“I know you’re on call Saturday, but we haven’t been getting too many emergency calls lately,” Jack chimes in.
“Did you talk to him about the…thing?” Stevie asks Jack.
“He did, and even though I don’t mind being on call on the weekends, I’m open to whatever,” I insist.
“We’re gonna talk about it Thursday,” Jack says.
I nod and add, “Why don’t we talk about hiring an admin too? I know we’ve discussed it in the past, but it never seems to go further than that. We could definitely use someone in the office to help do officey stuff.”
I notice Adrienne sitting up straighter in her seat. “You’re looking for office help?” she inquires.
My eyes go to her, devouring her thick curly hair and her round face. She’s so fucking beautiful it almost hurts to look at her. Clearing my throat, I reply, “We’ve talked about it in the past, and the business just keeps growing. Jack currently does all the billing and payroll and whatnot, but I know he hates it.”
“I volunteered to do it because it wasn’t fair to you to have to be on call every weekend,” he adds.
“But we’re going to discuss a different schedule, so why don’t we try to figure that out too. Think of how many customers we can add to the schedule on the days you won’t be required to be in the office.”
He stares at me, a bit of a twinkle in his eyes. I can tell he’s on board, and even though we’ve had this conversation before. Something always came up, tabling the decision. Well, now is the time to do it. I know it, and he does too.
“I don’t know what exactly you’re looking for, but if it’s just someone with some experience, I’d be open to talking to you.” Adrienne’s statement catches me off guard.
“You are?”
She gives me a hesitant grin. “Yeah. At the bar I used to work at, I did a lot of the office stuff for the owner. I paid his bills and did the payroll. I made him purchase an accounting software to make it easier. He was terrible with staying on top of that stuff, so he readily handed it over to me. I did it for him until I quit and moved here.”
Jack leans a little closer to the woman sitting across from him. “You know QuickBooks?”
“Yes, Jack, I know QuickBooks,” she replies with a toothy grin. “I used to work with his accountant to submit his taxes too.”
My friend and business partner glances my way, and I can tell he’s ready to make the decision. He knows Adrienne better than I do. He obviously trusts her, since she’s in his home and around his kids often. If he recommends we hire her to help out, I’d be on board with it too.
I fully expect him to offer her the job, but that’s not what he does. “Why don’t we talk later about some details, and then when Caden and I discuss the new on-call schedule, we can iron out the part-time position too.”
She shrugs, as if it’s no big deal to her either way, but I don’t miss the bubble of anticipation brightening her eyes. I don’t know why she volunteered to help us out, but I’m not going to complain. Plus, I really like the idea of seeing her a little more. She’s fun to be around and is very easy on the eyes.
Our food arrives, and we all dig in. Jack listens as Adrienne and Stevie return to the topic of the kitchen refresh. On top of painting the walls, the ladies plan to incorporate new curtains, rugs, tableware, and décor. Jack sends me a look, and even though I expect to see an eye roll or hear a dramatic sigh in boredom, I can tell he’s happy.
Happy to have Stevie in his life, redoing his shit and making it her own.
Their own .
Because despite the fact she’s making the changes, she’s constantly asking for his input. Jack is pretty laid-back though, and he keeps telling her to do whatever she wants. Not because he doesn’t care, but simply for the fact he wants her to be happy. And if painting the walls in the kitchen and making a few small cosmetic changes makes her that way, then he’s all for it.
My heart does this weird lurch in my chest.
I push it down, however. I never let that pesky organ get involved in anything. As long as he pumps blood and keeps me alive, that’s all I ask for. I no longer let my heart get involved where a woman is concerned. Not worth the pain.
Believe me, I know.
“Hey, there’s Jameson. I’m going to run over and say hello,” Stevie says as she’s pushing away her empty basket.
“I’ll go with you.” Jack drops his napkin on his empty basket and stands up. “Be right back,” he tells me.
I lean back in my chair and turn my attention to Adrienne. She’s watching me, her light-brown eyes twinkling with contemplation. “I just realized something, darlin’.”
Her eyebrows arch heavenward. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
“We just had dinner.” I waggle my eyebrows suggestively and give her a wolfish grin.
She barks out a laugh and shakes her head. “Actually, we had lunch.”
Invading her personal space, I whisper, “I see your point. So, what does lunch get me?”
A slow, lazy smile takes over her entire face as she shifts closer. Our faces are practically touching as she murmurs, “It’s a short list, but you have a few options.”
“Does any of them involve one or both of us losing our pants?”
She snickers, her tongue slipping out between her lips and swiping against her very plump, very kissable bottom lip. My dick notices, as blood starts to pump south of the border. “We’ll just have to wait and see, cowboy.” She adds a wink, but the conversation is shut down before I can reply, as Jack and Stevie return to the table.
“Ready?” Jack asks, grabbing the check before I have the chance to.
With my eyes locked on Adrienne’s, I agree, “Oh, yeah. Definitely ready.”
Except it wasn’t just him I was speaking to.
It was her too.