“Have you set your own traps in the meantime?”
“Yes, but I haven’t caught anything. That’s good, right?”
She ignored his question. “What kind of traps are you using?”
He told her, and she gave him an approving nod as she flipped on a flashlight and knelt in front of the shelving. She bent over, her perfect round rump in the air. While she studied the space where the mice had been, he studied the mouthwatering contours of her body and pictured his hands on every single one.
Damn it!
Apparently, he harbored more thanoneloose screw.
Jamming his hands in his front pockets, he blithered, “Once I have a clean bill of health from the exterminators, they’ll submit the paperwork to the health department. I’ll apply for a re-inspection after and hope like hell they can fit me in soon. And—no offense—send me a different inspector.”
She struck out for the kitchen. “Let’s go through your practices. Then we’ll review some strategies to get your re-inspection sped up.” She was all crisp, commanding efficiency he found irritatingly hot. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to come up with some marketing around your reopening, something that’ll lure people back in.”
“Like a twofer on beer or something?”
She began poking through shelves that held stainless bowls. “Something along that vein, though maybe add something else, like half-price appetizers between four and six. Unfortunately, it means a loss leader, but the idea would be to make it up—and then some—with volume.”
He leaned his hip against a counter and folded his arms across his chest, huffing, “I may not have an MBA, but I do know how this works.”
She whirled. “Oh, excuse me for trying to help.”
He shrugged off her snark. “I have a better way you can help, and there’s something in it for you too. You’re out of a job, Amy only has part-time for you, and I’m looking for a good waitress. I know it’s not your dream job, but between the two places, it’ll keep money coming in.”
She blinked, and he took advantage of the pause by sliding an envelope from the pocket of his hoodie and holding it out to her. “I didn’t get around to donating this yet. I figure you could use it.”
“I don’t want your handout,” she snapped.
He exhaled an exasperated breath. “It’s not a handout. It’s money youearned, Hailey. I’ve got a bad enough reputation to overcome. I don’t want people thinking I don’t pay my staff on top of it.”
She pursed her lips, seeming to consider. “I don’t want to take work away from Dixie or Luanne.”
“Are you kidding me? They’ve been double-shifting forever and would love to unload some of their work.”
She eyed the envelope suspended between them. “What kind of strings are attached?”
“Only one. If you want to skate, you’re learning from me.” Where the hellthathad come from, he had no idea. Normally, he was in full control of his mouth, but not around this particular woman.
Her eyes and mouth formed perfect O’s, and her cheeks pinkened adorably. “Um, thank you.” She stretched tentative fingers toward it but didn’t quite touch. “Will you keep it for me while I think about it?”
“Of course.” He tossed the envelope on the counter next to him and threw caution into the deep fryer. “If we’re going to work together, we need to clear out the elephant in the room. I’ll start by getting this off my chest: I don’t like what you did. I not only had the rug pulled out from under me by the inspection, but I was blindsided at the very same time when I learned what you actually did for a living. You’re no biologist studying microbes floating around in drinking water.”
“Actually, I am.” If flames could burn blue inside ice, they did so in Hailey’s glacial stare.
“You know what I mean.” His chin rose a defiant inch. His resolve listed, but pride was like a barnacle clinging to a sinking ship.
“Not really. And while we’re dispensing with pachyderms, let me add thatIdon’t like that you immediately jumped to the conclusion I was complicit in Cliff’s … in this mess.”
“I never said that.”
He beckoned her toward his office. Falling in beside him, she slid him the side-eye. “Maybe not, but you implied it with your comment. You didn’t even bother to ask if I had any prior knowledge! I didn’t get a shot before you tried and convicted me. That’s wrong, Noah.”
And now his resolve listed crazily because damn! He both loved and hated the fire that blazed inside her. His entire life, people had told him what he wanted to hear because they wanted something from him. Not this girl. She wanted nothing from him.Needednothing from him. And she was sure enough of herself to call him on his bullshit and whack it right back in his face like a ninety-nine-mile-an-hour slapshot. Her confidence was maddening and hot as fuck.
He unlocked the door and gestured for her to enter. “Why did you hold out on me? You’ve been dodging that question ever since I first asked it.” Yeah, he was pushing, but this sexually charged, prickly, seesawing dance they were doing around each other’s jagged edges had him by the throat. It made him come alive, as if his blood crackled with electrical current.
Barely inside his office, she twirled and faced him as he stood in the open doorway. “I wanted to lay it all out there, believe me, but the longer it went, the harder it became. I’d decided to tell you tomorrow night, but thenCliffhappened, and here we are. Oh, and of course, you canceled on me.” She inched her nose in the air.
