3. CHAPTER THREE #2
She took the giggle in stride and made herself available for eye contact as the young man entered and meandered through the aisles.
He paused briefly at the display of leather-bound journals on a turnstile beside the luxurious fountain pens.
Effie made an effort to look between him and the rest of the store.
Many people preferred not to be approached unless they looked like they needed something, so she did her best to stay behind the counter unless absolutely necessary.
It was hard not to admire him though. He was strikingly handsome, and her heart fluttered like it stirred to meet Hope’s challenge—to put herself out there.
Instead she let her eyes trace the broad lines of his shoulders and the dimple that played at his cheek while he looked over the journals. Effie couldn’t tear her gaze away.
She hoped it wasn’t obvious as he approached the counter. “Is there a manager I can speak with?” he asked, his voice dry and disinterested.
Effie shot Basil a look. “We’re not really staffed like that. But I guess if it was anyone, it would be Henrietta.” Basil nodded his agreement.
“Okay, well, can I speak to her then?” the man asked, and Effie noted the exasperation in his tone.
“She doesn’t work Mondays,” Effie explained. “You’re stuck with me.”
“Fucking perfect,” the man muttered, not quite under his breath.
Effie glanced at the clipboard in his hand. “What is it that you need?” Effie asked, her tone taking on a similar edge.
“I’m here for your safety inspection. I was told that a manager would be present today to go over everything.”
“Well, I wasn’t informed, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to handle it.”
He gave her a tight smile that barely looked friendly below the brush of stubble that stretched across his upper lip and over his angular jaw.
He held Effie’s stare, and she decided that she hadn’t made such intense eye contact since icebreaker games at summer camp when she was fourteen.
“Let’s start with the storage room, shall we? ”
He pointed toward the back, the tilt of his head an inquiry. Effie nodded in agreement. The young man strode toward the storage room, and Effie followed. She quickly looked back to Basil.
His giddy eyes were wide. Biting his lower lip and fanning himself dramatically, he looked ready to swoon. Effie shot him a warning glare then hurried to catch up.
She followed the man around the stacks of boxes to the large overhead door in the back. As they walked in silence, he took notes on his clipboard. He tested an emergency light, but it didn’t stay on long. The rest of the lights were dim. They sputtered and buzzed.
“Great, more dark rooms,” he bemoaned.
“What?” Effie asked, not understanding why this person was being so surly. He couldn’t be more than twenty-seven. He was too young and entirely too handsome to be this jaded.
“Nothing,” he replied and went back to his inspection, pausing only to tame a rebellious piece of hair that dared flop into his eyes.
The thick blond waves waxed in place atop his head softened his strong brow and sharp hazel eyes.
The curve of his knuckles and the ink deposited beneath his nails gave Effie the impression that he dabbled in the arts.
His broad, strong neck required him to leave the top button of his navy-blue uniform undone, revealing the prominent collarbone beneath the thin white of his undershirt.
He was a man made up of contrasts. There was a softness in his gaze where his features were all hard lines and ridges.
He styled his hair and wore round black glasses that were at odds with his literal blue-collar attire.
The ring on his pointer finger paired with the leather-banded watch made Effie want to know what he did when he wasn’t performing safety checks.
And his hair. In spite of herself, she kept getting distracted by his hair and her inane desire to run her fingers through it.
She hadn’t been this instantly attracted to anyone since the first time she watched Aladdin and decided she would one day be Mrs. Street Rat.
But her cartoon crush was much less prickly.
Perhaps the young man didn’t always wear this edge. She let herself imagine that, in fact, he was having an off day and otherwise would have come in smiling and leaving with a new inkwell and calligraphy pen.
“You’re staring,” he said, strained amusement trickling off his tongue.
Her need to quell her embarrassment won out over her tendency to be shy and the words rushed out, tasting sharp.
“Just waiting for you to explain all the notes you’re making,” she said without missing a beat as she ushered him back into the storefront.
She watched him take a few measured breaths as though trying to remember to be personable.
“Well, for one thing, you’re down about two fire extinguishers.
You need one at each of the three exits.
You want people fighting the fire on their way out, not running into an inferno to try to find an extinguisher.
Also, there are a ton of boxes blocking the egress that need to be cleaned up, moved, or unpacked elsewhere.
Your emergency lights only lasted about two minutes, and they need a burn time of ninety minutes to meet code, so those need to be upgraded immediately. ”
“Okay, so we have essentially failed your inspection?”
“Yes. And you were staring,” he challenged. Effie couldn’t tell if he was angry or flattered. Was he flirting or did she imagine the amusement?
The risk of humiliation was too great, so she said, “Just trying to remember your face so when I tell the sweet old woman that owns the store that we failed, she knows who to look out for. ”
“You gonna send her to egg my house or something?” Flattered and flirting felt a little more likely, which left Effie feeling untethered.
“No?” He chuckled, and Effie found herself considering breaking all of her old habits and programming to ask him out on a date. Surliness be damned.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Why?” Effie said with a huff.
“You just like being obstinate, don’t you?” His agitation resurfaced a bit. “I need to note who went through the inspection with me.”
“Oh . . . Effie Thatcher.”
“Alright, Effie. You have a lot of work to do before I come back,” he mused.
“A lot, a lot?”
“Unless you’d like to pawn it off on the sweet old lady that owns the place,” he replied, that bite and something like disapproval slathering his words.
“I wouldn’t pawn it off,” she argued. He gave Effie a once-over, looking for what, she couldn’t be sure. Whatever he saw didn’t convince him.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” he said, raising his brows with such condescension that Effie thought hard about punching him in the face. If Effie did such things. But she was tamer than that.
They rejoined Basil at the counter as he finished filling out the form. Effie leaned over, looking at the clipboard. At the top of the page was a space for the safety inspector’s name. Beside it was written Theodore Tillerman. “Theodore?” Effie mused, and her face immediately scrunched.
“Wow, is my name so bad?” Theodore asked. Effie blanched, unaware that she’d made a face.
“No, sorry.”
Theodore puzzled but brushed past it. He tore off a slip from the bottom of his clipboard and handed it to Effie.
“I’ll have to come make sure you cleared that egress and have at least scheduled the work for the emergency lights by next Thursday.
I’ll go grab you a couple of fire extinguishers from my van. ”
Effie nodded, taking the paper. Theodore sauntered outside, and Basil pounced on her. “My God, he’s gorgeous.”
“I guess,” Effie said before taking a sip from her water bottle that she kept tucked on the shelf beneath the register. She swished the water around before swallowing, like that would help.
“You guess? Girl, I have never seen you blush.” Effie blushed plenty, prone to embarrassment and shrinking-violet syndrome as she was, but she knew what he meant. She didn’t blush like this .
“I’m not blushing,” Effie spat, and Basil took a full step back.
“My mistake.” Basil lifted his hands in surrender. “But you know he’s fine. And your babies would be knockouts.”
Effie rolled her eyes and went back to the list of tasks they needed to accomplish to make code, her ire building over the not-at-all-creative work ahead and Theodore’s implication that she wouldn’t be up to the job.
Theodore approached on near-silent feet, setting the extinguishers on the counter. He handed Effie an envelope. “Invoice for your boss.” Effie nodded. “See you in a week and a half, Effie Thatcher.”
He was irritating and dour, but she could be polite. “See you then, Theodore,” Effie said with as much gusto as she could summon, but her nose scrunched all the way up as she scraped her tongue on her teeth in near disgust.
“Okay, that was a really rude face,” Theodore said.
“I’m sorry, I just . . .” Effie stammered. She didn’t know how to explain that she never quite managed to control how her face reacted to the names she tasted.
“You just what?” Theodore demanded, confusion, and what Effie could only guess was embarrassment, furrowing his brow. Effie stayed silent. “I’m so done with people today.” He grabbed his clipboard and turned to leave.
Effie must have looked ashamed because Basil called after him, “She can taste words!” Like that somehow made her reaction any better. But it stopped Theodore from leaving in a huff.
“You’re kidding,” Theodore said, and the disdain and disbelief had Effie stiffening her spine.
“It has more to do with the fact that I don’t know that I can accomplish your little list in the time you’ve given us.
Especially when it likely means having to reorganize the entire stock room.
You may think you’re helping, but in reality, you just like lording your rules over people and being sour because you can.
While I have to be the one to meet your demands.
” Sour, salty, sweet, spicy. Flavors crashed over each other, but Effie had the good sense to clamp down on her reaction to it all.
Theodore’s face, however, flashed—a neon sign of irritation. “If you think it’s so impossible, you might want to get started. I’ll be back to lord over you all next week.”
He turned on a dime and strutted out of the store. Effie leaned back on the counter, rubbing her face.
“What the hell was that about?” Basil asked .
“It’s a lot,” Effie whined, and the gears were already turning about how best to accomplish the tasks ahead, how to approach her boss, how to make sure everyone was happy by the end of it.
Her face must have displayed the toils of her mind because Basil said, “It’s not all on you. We’ll get it done. Honestly, I feel like your brain must be an exhausting place to live sometimes.”
“You have no idea.” Effie sighed. She noted the glint in Basil’s eye. He definitely wanted to ask about the other thing. “Go ahead.”
“His name can’t taste that bad, can it? Not when it belongs to that face?”
Effie sighed. Theodore may have been handsome, but he was now solely responsible for her having to work late, worrying about getting in touch with her boss to make the necessary upgrades, and hating her synesthesia for the first time in forever.
“It’s truly that bad,” Effie said. Her disappointment and irritation with Theodore were palpable. She wouldn’t even be able to curse his name while she hauled dusty boxes back and forth across the storeroom. Not without tasting the thick, filmy yuck of soggy cardboard on her tongue.