Tiger Betrayal (Ambush #3)

Chapter One

Laramie Tucker couldn’t stop shaking.

New jobs were hard, but performing new jobs with absolutely no training? This was a nightmare for an anxiety riddled little overthinker like her.

Five minutes ago, she’d hit her help button to have the manager on the floor come help her, but she could see Rita from here, and she was not in a rush to come dig Laramie out of this hole.

Rita was leaning against the customer service counter chatting with the girl working at the cash register there.

Meanwhile, Laramie had a growing line of eight people at her register, and she had no idea how to scan the rest of this guy’s groceries.

She’d saved all of the fruit for last, but she was there. He was complaining about the way she’d bagged his lettuce and bread together and was explaining bread should only ever go in its own bag.

“Right. I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “It’s my first day.” Laramie hit the help button again, but Rita, her manager, just looked at her pager on her belt and then went back to talking. She didn’t even look her way.

“Hey, Rita?” she asked.

Rita ignored her.

Shoot. Laramie took a steady breath and looked around to see if there were any other cashiers who could help, but they’d all taken a break, and hers was the only register open.

There were now at least ten people in line.

She could see the line building down the entire frozen vegetable aisle straight back.

“I just want to pay and leave,” the older gentleman said softly.

“I would love that too,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Um, they didn’t show me how to weigh fruit. I’m so sorry. I was supposed to be learning how to stock the shelves. This is not what I was hired for. Hey, Rita?” she asked louder.

Rita slid her an annoyed look and disappeared into the break room door by customer service.

All she’d told Laramie was that she could never leave her cash register, or it could get robbed because it was unlocked.

A wave of panic consumed her. “Um, has anyone here ever done this before? Does anyone know how to scan and weigh fruit?” She locked eyes on a man with bright, strange colored eyes who was waiting with a cart two people back.

She couldn’t read the expression on his face, but she froze under his stare.

She couldn’t tell if he was handsome or not, because she was stuck in those strange eyes, but she could tell he was striking as a man.

“Are you serious right now?” a woman asked in front of the man. Her groceries were up next on the conveyor belt.

“Let’s go. We have places to be!” Someone yelled from the back of the line.

“I just want to pay,” the gentleman said, trying to hand her his credit card.

She hit the help button three times fast as the panic flared bigger inside of her.

“I would like to get out of here sometime today. How fucking hard can this be?” the woman up next demanded.

“Can’t you read?” the bright-eyed man barked. Something in his stern tone quieted everyone.

Laramie looked at him in horror, thinking he was talking to her, but he was looking at the woman in front of him with the most terrifying expression she’d ever witnessed on a man’s face.

“It’s her first day,” he said, jamming a finger at Laramie’s boob.

No, not her boob. Her nametag, where it did, in fact, say it was her first day under where her name had been printed.

He turned around and addressed the line. “Everyone with twenty items or less, go to self-check-out. Now!”

And to Laramie’s absolute shock, the line obeyed. Five shoppers motored their carts and baskets directly to the empty self-check-out lane, and the beeps of them scanning their groceries disrupted the heavy silence.

Laramie started fidgeting with the screen, trying to figure out where the fruit buttons were, and the scary giant man told the woman who had cussed at Laramie, “Move!” And then sidled past her while the grouchy lady half-heartedly told him how rude she thought he was.

“Give me fifteen seconds,” he ground out to Laramie as he passed.

And that man walked right into the break room and returned gripping the back of Rita’s neck.

He dragged her directly to the register, explaining that he had watched her ignore the help calls, and to, and-I-quote, “Train your fucking employees so you can keep a fucking customer.” Whoo, he had a potty mouth.

The man released her and then sidled back to his cart again, taking the opportunity to once again tell the woman who had cussed at Laramie to, “Get the fuck out of my way.”

Laramie felt secondhand in trouble, so she averted her gaze and mumbled to Rita, “No one ever showed me how to do the fruit. Or anything really. I’ve just been making it up as I go.”

“The job isn’t that hard,” Rita griped. “It’s self-explanatory.”

“I’ve never even worked a register. I don’t even know if I’m signed onto this one. You barely showed me anything.”

Rita went to weighing the fruit too fast for Laramie to keep up with what buttons she was pushing.

“Can you slow down so I can see?” Laramie asked.

“You have a whole fucking line built up.”

“Don’t cuss at me. I’ve been asking for help,” she whispered.

“Well, it’ll be the last time you’re asking for help. This will be your last day.”

“Wait, what? No, I need this job. Please. I’m really trying—”

“You are slow, have no common sense, and are pissing off all of our customers.”

“You know what?” the bright-eyed man said. “Good.”

Laramie froze with her mouth hanging open.

Rita puffed up. “Sir, the police are already going to be called for you grabbing me by the neck—”

“She doesn’t need this job, or this absolute lack of management. You suck,” he said. “I’ve literally never seen anyone be a worse manager. Move,” he gritted out to the older gentleman, who had just paid with the tap function on his credit card.

“Gladly,” he said. “I’m never coming back here again.” The man pushed his cart off and the bright-eyed man had herded the woman in front of him directly out of the lane so he could face off with Rita.

Oh lord, Laramie had never seen someone with eyes like his. They looked even brighter now, but perhaps that was just because of all the fury. Were they gold?

“You should be the one on your last day at this job,” he snarled in a voice that was absolutely terrifying.

“I watched you give every cashier a break and left her as the only open lane and she doesn’t know how to do anything.

And then you were eating fucking macaroni and cheese in the break room, just watching her crash and burn. ”

“It wasn’t my choice to hire her in the first place! She’s only here as a favor to my boss, because she fucking slept with him!”

“What?” Laramie asked, mortified. No she hadn’t!

“Oh, that’s it? You got a crush?” he accused Rita. “Someone else had your boss’s attention. Look at her!” he yelled suddenly, jamming a finger at Laramie. “It’ll always be her over you.” He turned for Laramie. “Let’s go.”

“W-what?”

“Take that stupid apron off, flip this bitch off, walk out of here with dignity.”

“O-okay. Right. Take the apron off,” Laramie narrated as she untied it and slid it over her head.

“Throw it down,” the man said.

Laramie threw it on the ground and looked at him. What next?

“Flip the bitch off,” he said, tilting his head toward Rita.

Eeek, she’d never done this before! She flipped her off.

“Good Lord. Have you never flipped someone off before?” he demanded.

“No,” Laramie said, full of energy and anger and something she couldn’t describe.

The man pulled his hand up and flipped her off. “Like that. Don’t grip all your fingers down but the middle one. Stay relaxed. Make it look cool.”

“Right.” She pursed her lips in concentration and relaxed her other fingers slightly, careful to keep the middle one rigid and shoved it at Rita’s face, who was currently on the phone with someone. From the sounds of it, the police.

“Now walk out with dignity,” Laramie uttered under her breath to herself, reciting what he’d told her.

She lifted her chin higher into the air and brushed past Rita, then began to walk out, remembered she left her purse in the break room, and turned to run into the absolute wall of muscle that was the bright-eyed man.

“What are you doing?” he gritted out.

“Um, I forgot my purse,” she whispered.

The man pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded once. “You’re killing me slowly right now.”

“I don’t even know you. I have to get my purse.

My wallet is in there.” She strode past him, chin still as high in the air as she could manage, and by the time she walked past all of the other cashiers in the break room, none of whom had even said hi to her today, she realized she had forgotten the combination to her lock.

It was right there at the tip of her tongue. She’d been in a rush this morning when she’d been choosing the numbers though. Was it 1-0-1-0? She tried it. Nope. 1-1-1-1? Nope.

“Back up,” the familiar growly voice said, and she moved to the side just in time for him to punch the locker in, and yank open the door. The lock still dangled pitifully there, but her purse was exposed.

“You just…you just broke a metal locker,” she murmured in shock.

“I work out. Hurry up.”

Okay. She grabbed her purse and made her way out of the break room with the behemoth following her out. She couldn’t meet Rita’s eyes or any of the customers as Rita was rushing to ring them up. Oh, now she cared.

“The police are on their way,” Rita called.

“No they’re not,” the man said, walking backward. “You just pretended to call them.”

Laramie did glance behind her to witness Rita’s dumbfounded face. To her surprise, Rita didn’t correct him. What the heck?

“How did you know?” she asked.

“I have good hearing. No one was on the other line.” The man slid sunglasses over his eyes and strode in front of her, leading her directly through the sliding glass doors.

“You needed that job?” he asked.

“Bad. I just moved here and I’m going to get behind on my bills. I got that job out of desperation,” she admitted softly, hugging her purse close to her chest.

“How much were you getting paid there?”

“Thirteen-fifty an hour.”

The man stopped walking. “I don’t know where your car is.”

Laramie froze. She didn’t know him, and now he was following her to her car. “Look, I think I’m just going to leave now.”

“I’m not a danger to you. I’ve already had my Rabbit,” he murmured, poking buttons on his cell phone.

“Hey Murph, do you still have that front-desk position open?” The guy looked out over the parking lot and rested his free hand on his hip while he listened to Murph’s apparent answer.

“Cool, you have an interview at one. Oh, don’t give me that shit.

It’s your slow time. You’ll be on your lunch.

She’ll be there at one.” The guy hung up and told her, “Whiny’s Tire Shop over on Franklin, one o’clock today.

Be five minutes early. Murph is a fair boss, but he’s a hard ass about people being late. ”

Whiny’s Tire Shop? “I don’t know anything about tires,” she said, panicking as he walked away.

“They’ll train you, unlike this fuckin’ place. The job was listed two weeks ago. Pay starts at sixteen an hour. Don’t fuck it up.”

Wait, he was getting her a job interview for real? That paid higher than this one?

“My name is Laramie,” she introduced herself.

“I know. It was on your nametag,” he said over his shoulder without slowing.

He didn’t offer his name back. Just climbed up into a big pickup truck that was shiny white, like he’d just washed it.

She stood there dumbly as he pulled out of his parking space and drove away, and she waved at the back of his loud truck.

That scary-eyed man had made her quit her job before they could fire her. And taught her how to correctly flip someone off. And then he’d gotten her a job interview.

And he was a complete stranger. A foul-mouthed semi-rude stranger who could break through metal lockers.

Laramie looked down at her hand and practiced the flip-off, then looked around quickly to make sure no one was watching her. Stunned, she meandered toward her car.

He was the most terrifying and most interesting man she’d ever met.