mess he’d made by breaking the rules himself.
“Worried I’d file a workman’s comp claim?”
“Maybe I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Maybe I could wear goggles and a rubber apron, too.”
“Damn it, Jolie.” Suddenly he was seventeen again, fighting the tide that was Jolie.
“Fine,” she said before he could come up with anything better. “I’ll wear shoes with toes from now on. But...if I find you lying in a heap somewhere, all I’m doing is calling 9-1-1. No first aid. No mouth-to-mouth.”
There was no reason in the world for the term “mouth-to-mouth” to catch his attention, so Dylan pretended it didn’t. But damn if it hadn’t gotten him thinking. And once again those garter belts flitted into his mind, which kind of pissed him off. “If I croak, you may not have a job.”
“As things are now, I may not have a job. Your store is slowly dying, Dylan.”
His mouth tightened as she took her seat behind the counter and shook her mouse, bringing up a screen as she pointedly ignored him.
Given he had no response to her assertion, since he knew she was right, he put his head down and started gathering the remaining nails and dumping them into the box.
* * *
WHO DID HE think he was, lecturing her on safety when he’d attempted to kill himself that morning?
The boss.
Jolie propped her elbows on her desk and pressed her fingertips against her temples.
There was no arguing that point, even though she had. He was the boss. She was the employee. If push came to shove, and if she wanted her paycheck, then she needed to abide by the rules of the game.
Boss. Employee.
So reminiscent of their chemistry class relationship where he’d been the self-appointed boss. She hadn’t been the employee, but she definitely hadn’t called the shots and had resented being ordered around. The curse of being the youngest in the family.
Dylan had finished cleaning up the nails and disappeared out the front door to get the big ladder from the warehouse, so Jolie went to the supply closet and found another lightbulb. She set it on the counter and went to hold the door as Dylan began awkwardly dragging the long stepladder through the entryway.
She waited until he set it up and had a foot on the first rung before she said, “I was out of line earlier.”
He paused, his hands gripping the sides of the ladder, waiting, as if for a punch line.
She didn’t have one.
“Thank you,” he said gruffly before starting to climb. He shot her a quick look after he took out the dead lightbulb, as if still waiting for her to say something else.
Jolie had nothing.
She stood silently with one hand on the ladder, steadying it until he’d climbed most of the way down, then she headed for her side of the counter. She had accounts to mail out today, which meant it would be one of their busier days—that was the way it’d happened the only other time she’d mailed accounts, four weeks ago. It was as if people wanted to get in and charge things quick before they knew how much they owed. But more than 90 percent of their accounts were years old and the people all paid, eventually, according to Finn. Jolie didn’t want to alienate the paying public, so she put a happy face next to the words past due, which she wrote in pink ink instead of using the official red-ink stamp.
A couple happy faces later she put down the pen and headed for Dylan’s lair, where she knocked on the half-closed door. He looked up from the file he’d been staring at with a frown.
Dragging in a breath, Jolie took his silence as permission to enter.
“Here to take back your apology?”
“No. Just to say one more thing.”
“I’m all ears.” No. He was all long, lean muscle, but she wasn’t going to allow her mind to drift in that direction.
“Chem class ended ten years ago. Obviously it had a big effect on both of us since we’re sniping at each other like we’re still seventeen.”
“So...?”
“So.” She came forward to lean her palms on his desk. “We say whatever else we want to say on the matter here and now. Get it out and over with, then we bury it. As we should have the instant we knew we had to work together.”
“All right.”
“You go first.”
“I, uh, think I’ve said everything I need to say.” He really couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t been said.
“As have I.”
“Then I guess we move forward.”
She smiled grimly as she pushed off from the desk. “Yes. In closed-toe shoes.”
* * *
THE WOMAN PUT him on edge and then, to confuse the issue, she’d been utterly reasonable just now, suggesting that they bury the past and even apologizing to him.
Had she ever apologized to him before?
What could she have said? “Sorry, Dylan, for my attempts to destroy your 4.0 grade point average and thus affect your scholarship eligibility”?
He hadn’t told anyone back then how important going to college had been to him, and he was kind of glad of that after he’d quit school following his father’s death.
Mike had insisted that he go back and finish his biochemistry degree, but long study sessions and grieving didn’t jibe so he’d quit school and by a fluke had gotten the opportunity to attend police officer training school.
Action had felt good, had helped him get his head together, and after a few weeks on the job he’d realized that he’d accidentally found a profession he could happily make a career of. He might not be a college graduate, but he was doing something that mattered.
Dylan’s lip curled as he massaged the shoulder he’d hit on the shelf on his way down to the floor that morning. He’d trusted Lindsey. And now he felt like a chump, but he wasn’t giving up a career he loved.
“Customer needs loading up.” Jolie’s voice came loud and clear through the intercom. Rather than answer, he headed for the door, limping the first few steps before the knee he’d banged loosened up. He gritted his teeth and kept his stride normal as he walked to the counter where Jolie handed him a ticket. “Red Dodge.”
No doubt, since it was the only vehicle in the lot. “Thanks,” he muttered.
The customer—a good-looking blonde in her early thirties—stood just outside the door. “Hi,” he said as he came out the door before glancing at the ticket. Eighteen bags of alfalfa pellets. “Would you mind backing your truck up to the warehouse
