Chapter 1
Robin
“What’s that?”
I jumped at the deep voice behind me. My knuckle snagged on the sharp corner of a cabinet hinge, and a drop of blood dripped onto the scuffed wood. Well, I’d be refinishing the cabinet anyway. I swiped up the drop, sucked my knuckle, and waited to turn until I had my unruffled-boss face on. Then I stood and pivoted. “It’s an antique four-door armoire from that estate leftovers package we got. In bad shape but salvageable. Did you finish sorting the light fixtures I assigned you?” I raised an eyebrow as if Alaric wasn’t a foot taller than me, ten years older, and far more imposing.
“I’m almost done.”
I kept my eyebrow high, because it was one of the useful weapons in my boss arsenal, and because finishing the lights would be the unending work of months, not hours.
“I’m taking a break,” Alaric admitted. “I didn’t know this room was in use.”
“This is my private workshop.”
When I’d agreed to manage the dying Three Rs business for my uncle, I’d quickly decided I needed something for myself. I’d always loved fixing old furniture, and there was no better place than the “reuse, restore, reimagine” outlet to get my hands on lots of beat-up candidates. I did the work in my free time plus some slow winter work hours, gaining skills as I went along. The business got half the sale price of the finished product. Win, win.
My long-term employees knew all about that of course. Alaric had only been working for me for a week. I was still in my business-suit-and-call-me-Mr.-Forrest stage of easing a new employee into the workplace. Sadly, I wasn’t yet confident I’d impressed Alaric with our relative status, so I hadn’t relaxed down to jeans and Call-me-Robin yet. With most employees, that took a couple of days. This guy was a challenge.
He peered down his nose at me, although his gaze kept darting to the tall cabinet behind me. “I didn’t know you— we— got furniture from the sorcerer’s house.”
“Are you superstitious?” I rapped a knuckle on the front panel, hiding a wince at having used the skinned one.Ouch.I pressed my thumb casually over the new drop of blood. I’d get a Band-Aid when I was out of Alaric’s sight. “Sorcerers are mostly smoke and mirrors. A few minor tricks, but it’s not like their household goods will attack you. I promise, it’s just a cabinet.”
“If you say so.” His eyes seemed unfocused as he turned his attention to the other items in the room. “Are any of the rest from that shipment?”
“A couple.” I shrugged and gestured him toward the door. “I’m not dressed to work in here today.” Eager as I was to get to refinishing that fascinating dented and jammed armoire, I didhave a job to do. Which included supervising Alaric. “Show me what you’ve accomplished.”
Alaric backed toward the door, giving way as I advanced.
When we were clear of the room, I— for no reason I could articulate, and out of my norm for the middle of the day— locked the door and pocketed the key. “Go on. I’m going to swing by the office for a Band-Aid and then I’ll be right with you.”
“Okay.” Alaric threw a last glance at the locked room, then turned and strolled off across the warehouse floor.
Hewaswearing jeans, and his ass looked fantastic in them. Sadly, even if he was gay, he was also my employee. Not to mention seeming like he’d fit better in his own three-piece suit in a corner office. His air of authority didn’t go with being a low-wage worker amid the jumble of the Three Rs, and his unimpressed attitude made me want to push back. Despite a week of lunches in the breakroom and idle chatter on the warehouse floor, I knew almost nothing about him.
Except that he was hot, he was a challenge, and clearly, blurring any lines with Alaric would be a huge mistake.
I took a moment in the office to wipe the blood off my skin, disinfect the cut, and wrap my torn knuckle with a Band-Aid from the well-stocked first aid kit. Then I settled my glasses straighter on my nose, ran a hand over my hair, and headed to the north corner of the giant warehouse where we kept the lights. Alaric was bent over a big cardboard carton, digging through the contents. I didn’t let myself appreciate his ass. In fact, I deliberately scraped my shoes on the concrete floor so he straightened and turned.
Alaric said, “Mr. Forrest, have you seen the crap that’s in this load?”
I shrugged. “Not specifically, but I assure you, that’s par for the course. What did we get?”
He hauled out a cheap chandelier-style fixture, two of the arms bent. “Five of these and not one usable. And a bunch of sconces with the cheap brass finishes chipped up.”
Our store was a non-profit, taking in used and leftover building materials and fixtures that would otherwise fill the dump, and turning them into an inexpensive source for reuse. Sadly, sometimesreusablewas in the eye of the beholder. “Mark them for disposal, then.” I gave him a nod. “I trust your judgement.”
His expression did something complicated, as if he wasn’t sure he liked my tone and words.
“There’s a reason we have daily dumpster pickup,” I reminded him.
He sneered at the boxes on the floor. “You ought to charge a disposal fee to the remodelers who drop off this level of crap.”
“Nah, we just keep a do-not-fly list. If someone seems like they’re using us to get rid of garbage, they get two warnings and then they go on the list. There are only a few names there. Most of the local crews understand the value of reusing what we can, and they send us workable stuff. It’s the homeowners who try to get donation value from crap, and they’re low volume.”
Alaric nudged the box with his foot, drawing a thinclankfrom the contents, and then focused on me. “What about estate sales? The leftovers. Does that happen often?”
“Sometimes. Depends on what the heirs want to do with what’s left once the good stuff has sold.”
