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Rowdy had apparently woken up with a thorn in his paw and had been looking for an excuse to punish me.
To teach me a lesson in punctuality, he’d ordered me down to the basement to get started on a preliminary assessment of inventory to prep for the official count that would take placemonthsfrom now.
After he’d walked away, I’d asked Tuesday what that even meant, but she’d only shook her head while avoiding my gaze, confirming what I’d already known.
It had been two weeks since the party, and just like when he made me sort his files, today’s task was total bullshit.
I huffed again and wiped the sweat off my brow after hauling a particularly heavy box from one of the shelves over to the metal table to count whatever was inside for no apparent reason.
God, I hated that man.
I grabbed the huge fifty-ounce bottle of water I’d had the forethought to swipe from Rowdy’s office and greedily guzzled down the last of the water.
Sure, I could have taken one from the snack bar in reception, but they were the cheap kind that was basically water from the tap with a bunch of chemicals thrown in to dilute the rotten smell and taste. Rowdy, on the other hand, had the good stuff. It was no wonder he drank it all day long. The water was cool, crisp, and, most importantly, no bad aftertaste.
I also may have wanted a little revenge from when I’d asked Rowdy for one yesterday after working through my lunch break to complete yet another useless task, and the asshole had told me no. I’d taken one then, too, when his back was turned, and now I was addicted to the taste.
I swallowed the last gulp with a gasp and set the bottle down to recycle later. As soon as I did, my bladder suddenly swelled, increasing the pressure in my lower pelvis until I was dancing on my feet. “Oooh, gotta pee. Gotta pee, gotta pee, gotta pee.”
I hurried upstairs to empty my bladder and check on Tuesday. She waved off my concern and continued scrolling Facebook on the computer while looking bored out of her mind. It was a slow day today.
When I returned to the stockroom minutes later, I found Rowdy leaning against the work table with a greasy bag from Pluto’s, a popular local burger spot whose line was always wrapped around the block, sitting next to him. He had the clipboard I’d been using to jot down my notes in his hand, and his gaze slowly lifted when I entered.
Rowdy was wearing a navy-blue Henley today instead of his usual work shirt and black cargos. I couldn’t help drooling over how his arms and chest looked in the material.
The smell of the food reached my nose across the stockroom, and my stomach gave an interested growl as I realized I’d worked through lunch again.
“How can I help you, Owen? And before you tell me what I did wrong or isn’t to your satisfaction,” I said while squaring my shoulders, “let me remind you that I still have until the end of the day tonotmeet your impossible expectations. I would also like to point out that you sent me down here with no real direction or goal, so it’s impossible for me to anticipate your needs if the objective isn’t made clear from the start.”
He stared at me for so long that I began to question if he’d even heard a word I’d said until he spoke. “Are you done?”
I blew air out through my nose and reminded myself that hitting my boss was a fireable offense. “Yes,” I chewed out.
“Good. I brought you lunch,” he announced as if it were a normal thing for him to do. “I thought we could eat together and get some shit understood—”
“Oh,” I said before he could finish. “That’s…nice of you. I guess that would be ok—”
“Until I found this,” he interrupted right back. I frowned my confusion until he picked up the empty water bottle I’d forgotten to take with me upstairs.
Shit.
The way I saw it, I had two choices—I could apologize and throw myself at his mercy, or I could play it cool and lie my ass off. “What about it?” I asked, choosing the latter.
“I don’t appreciate being stolen from.”
“I’d hardly call quenching a thirst theft. Besides, I bought that from the corner store down the street.”
“That’s cap, and you know it. One, they don’t sell this brand in Lee’s. Two…” He lifted the bottle, showing me the bottom and theRwritten on the clear plastic in black marker.
“You marked your water? Who the hell marks their food, you obsessive-compulsive jerk?”
Rowdy gave me another blank look. “I don’t, but when you got pissed off yesterday because I told your spoiled ass no, I put my initials on all of them to see what you would do.”
My mouth fell open. “You set a trap for me.”
“And you fell right into it.” He tossed the clipboard and empty bottle back onto the table and straightened. “So let’s get this over with. Take your pants and panties off and bend over the table.”
My stomach dipped, and I shifted on my feet. “Um…what?”
