Chapter 4 #2
“I don’t have the kind of income that property requires for upkeep. Caring for the rates and grounds alone would be astronomical,” I replied. Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to walk beyond the kitchen downstairs.
She bobbed her head, sighing out a breath.
“I know a bit about money problems myself. My parents left me the café, but I’ve been in the red for a while now. I don’t seem to have the business sense they had.”
We shared a quiet moment of mutual understanding. Her eyebrows pinched together, making her look older than she was. She looked like someone under serious stress.
“I’m Riley,” I said, offering my hand and breaking her out of her mental torture.
“Breeze,” she replied, shaking it.
As Breeze served the line of Balls Club members that snaked all the way to the door, I grabbed a pen out of my leather satchel and began to scribble ideas on a serviette. Call me old school, but I liked my notes somewhere out in the real world where I could see them, not stuffed into a phone.
The bell on the door jingled again, and someone joined the end of the curving line.
“Thanks for that introduction, Megan, and welcome everyone to this week’s training. Let’s dive right in,” came a booming voice from the back.
“After reading this week’s notes, which I’ll assume you’ve all done, can anyone tell me why the first meeting with a new client is so important?”
The man’s voice was audible above anything else in the room, including the grinder.
“You’ve made an excellent point there, Troy,” he said after a pause. “Getting an understanding of the dispute is certainly one of the key things you’d be taking away from that first meeting. But can anyone think of something even more important that should come before that?”
I turned to see a man in a gold dress shirt, sleeves rolled high enough to reveal a tattoo of a compass.
He had one arm raised, phone to his face, wireless earbuds in.
All while he stood in the line. Was he seriously facilitating a virtual training session in the middle of the café?
I felt lava bubbling in my chest at his arrogance.
Two Balls Club members who were already seated at their long table shared a glance with each other, but no one else seemed to care. Not one eye roll in sight!
I wondered if he got special dispensation on account of the way the muscles of his arms filled out the shirt he was wearing.
Or that the gravel in his tone would make a killing on a phone sex worker line, if those were still a thing.
Or maybe it was that his full lips were enough to make anyone forget their full name.
Or how to do the words putting into sentence doing…
Not that any of that was having an effect on me.
“Yes! Great one, Megan,” he said, getting closer to the counter.
“Your usual?” Breeze whispered as he reached her. He placed a perfect pile of coins into her palm before heading to a corner table.
He’s kidding, right? He wasn’t planning on sitting there running his loud-ass meeting while he drank his coffee?
That’s exactly what he did.
Forty-five minutes later I had exactly zero house ideas on my serviette, but I had thought of twenty-three ways to murder this man.
“Can I grab a cheese scone to go?” he called out to Breeze, who was pottering away somewhere in the kitchen now that the rush had passed.
“Give me a minute, Dax,” she replied in her polite tone. He leaned his elbows on the counter, his palms on his five o’clock shadow. His brown hair was cut short, and his matching dark eyes looked serious.
“You don’t want to have that here and take another call we can all enjoy?” I asked, swirling the last of my coffee.
“Excuse me?” Dax turned, the flush at the base of his ears stark against his gold shirt.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love a free show as much as the next idiot, just not with my morning coffee.”
“You give your opinion freely for someone who’s not even from here,” he said, his broad shoulders angling towards me. He stood at his full height.
Damn, he was tall. And he was right. I gave my opinion everywhere, and I wasn’t about to stop for this egomaniac.
He crossed one ankle of his coal-coloured slacks over the other and leaned his hip on the counter.
His cheekbones were sharp under the stubble that framed his full lips.
His angular jaw clenched as his eyes bore deep into mine, and if I hadn’t already decided he was an inconsiderate douchebag, he would have been beautiful.
Okay, maybe he was still beautiful. A beautiful, arrogant douchebag.
His mouth curved in the silence between us.
“Maybe. Or maybe no one who lives here has the guts to tell you how conceited and infuriating they find you to your face.”
I refused to break eye contact even as he towered above me. He crossed his arms, and the red around his ears flared up again. The dimple on my left cheek gave away my satisfaction. I was getting just as much out of pissing him off as he was me.
“How do you know I’m from out of town?” I added, taking a sip of my now-cold dregs.
“Populations less than three-thousand,” he grunted. “New faces always stand out. Where did you say you were from again?”
“Didn’t.”
“Huh, never heard of it. And does this little attitude work for you there?” he said, gesturing at me with his oversized hand as he sat on the stool beside me.
I glared at him, and if it were possible for steam to come out of my ears, it would have.
I preferred the men I turned my wrath on to run away with their tails between their legs, not to fight back.
Although the tingling in my pelvis was rather confusing.
“You know, mouthing off to strangers is something not everyone can do. If you’re planning on sticking around, I might have some work available,” he added.
“What?” I asked, my guard slipping at the mention of work.
“Sometimes I’ve got clients who need... encouragement to pay their bill. I was going to get a dog, bring it along to help scare up some cash. But you could do it. I’d let you loose, and you could nip at their ankles instead.”
He did not just compare me to a dog.
Heat rose in my chest as I stood, squaring my shoulders.
Now that he was seated, we were eye to eye, inches apart.
I could hear his breath, even though he looked infuriatingly calm.
His mouth still held an easy smile. His gaze moved from my grey eyes to the dimple on my left cheek—visible even when I scowled—before settling on my bottom lip.
“You—”
“Whoa!” Breeze interrupted, reappearing with both hands in the air. “What did I just walk in on?”
“New girl was introducing herself,” Dax said, eyes locked on mine.
Breeze placed a heated scone into a brown paper bag, handing it to him and looking back and forth between us.
“O-kay well, see you tomorrow.”
Dax didn’t move. Instead, in a motion I wasn’t expecting, he leaned around me, his shoulder brushing my arm as he reached around to grab my serviette. I stilled at his closeness, and warmth filled somewhere low in my pelvis.
I really needed to get laid. I couldn’t have this response to every guy I met here, especially this jackass. Even if they were all drinking the hot-man Kool-Aid.
He skimmed the list as he stretched his legs out in front of him, the grin on his stupid, sexy lips building.
“Woodchipper. Definitely,” he said, tapping a thick finger on the words before giving it back to me.
Fucker.
“That was interesting,” Breeze said once he’d gone, scrubbing at the counter in front of me. The layers of grime weren’t giving up easily.
“You say interesting, I say annoying. Shame he wasn’t serious about the job. Not that I’d work for a prick like that,” I sighed into my empty mug.
“He’s actually not so bad…”
I waved her off with my hand. She couldn’t shift my opinion; once it was made, it set like concrete. Breeze leaned against the wall again.
“I’ve got a proposition. Although you might not be interested,” she said, biting her bottom lip as she thought.
“I’m pretty open at this point.”
All my fight evaporated when Dax did. Truth was, I was desperate. Stuck. On the verge of panic. Not that I was about to admit it. Breeze busied herself at the coffee machine again and then slid a flat white in front of me.
My jaw dropped. I hadn’t ordered it, not at the extra quid it cost.
“How’d you know flat whites are my favourite?” I asked, reaching for my purse.
“Call it a fellow skimper’s intuition,” she shrugged, waving my money away again.
“Have you ever thought that your refusing to accept people’s money might be contributing to your financial woes?” I asked, taking a sip of the foamy coffee and letting a purr of satisfaction roll through my body. She paused for a minute, looking towards the corner of the ceiling.
“Huh,” she said. “I’ll come back to that thought. This one’s a bribe,” she gestured to the coffee I was enjoying. I couldn’t help grinning along with her.
“You might be totally uninterested. I don’t know your circumstances.
..” She was doing that fumbling thing Rick really enjoyed.
Breeze exhaled through her teeth. "I really, really need a cleaner. I know the place is gross at the moment, and I’m precariously close to getting shut down.
It’s only because I’m having to do everything by myself.
I’ve had a few travellers do it in the past… ”
“I have no cleaning experience. Unless cleaning up after myself counts,” I said, shoulders sagging.
I didn’t have any pride left about work. If she wanted to pay me to scrub toilets while my bank balance hovered near the negatives, who was I to say no?
“I can teach you. I’m more interested in personality compatibility,” she said with a shrug. “I tend to go with my gut, and while I’ve only just met you, you seem like one of the good ones.”
I smiled at the compliment, but I worried she’d want to spend less and less time with me the more she got to know me—like most people did.
“I can’t pay you.”
“Oh.” That was one way to end a job interview.
“But seeing as you’re new in town, I’m cruelly hoping you’re stuck for somewhere to stay. We’re a tourist-trade town, so accommodation can be scarce. Especially on short notice.”
Would’ve been helpful to know that before I arrived.
“I can offer you food and board. Nothing fancy.” She pointed to the ceiling, and I assumed she meant the flat above. “And unlimited flat whites.”
She beamed a triangle-shaped smile, but the way her hands twisted at her apron told another story.
My forehead knitted as I considered her offer, while Breeze retied her ponytail and served a few other people before returning.
“Tell me about the room.”
“Single bed, single room. It was mine growing up. The flat’s close quarters, but if you’re not fussy…”
So far, it sounded better than the back seat of my car.
“Food?”
Scarcity mindset, I always needed to know—even if I wasn’t hungry.
“Whatever’s in the cabinet, or the soup of the day. Cereal upstairs. Sometimes I make a frittata if I’m feeling energetic. Sometimes I stress back and it’s glutton valley here. Totally no frills.”
I studied her again, trying to decide if she was the sweetest-looking serial killer I’d ever met or someone who genuinely had a good gut instinct.
Judging by the state of the café, she didn’t seem like an anal control freak like Roma.
If only I knew my own instincts as well as she claimed to know hers.
I had a sneaking suspicion my gut had outsourced everything to my brain, and that idiot was running on caffeine and panic.
I had nothing to lose.
“I’ll take it.” I’d never been one to hesitate before jumping on a rollercoaster.
“Really?” she stuttered, freezing mid-coffee grind. “Thank you, thank you!” She jogged around the counter and hugged me.
My body turned into a statue; touch was a language I’d never learned to speak back. I patted her back, trying to reciprocate.
“The health department’s inspection is in a month. It’d be nice to pass for once and not lose twenty years of my parents’ hard work getting shut down. No pressure.”
No pressure.
Famous last words.