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He grunted noncommittally, knowing damned good and well he’d end up doing it.
“Stay out of trouble,” he warned her before pressing a hard kiss to her lips and heading for the door. “And don’t leave the store with anyone but me. You’re not safe until Cranston has Johnny picked up. Promise me, Crista. ”
“Yes sir,” she snapped teasingly. “Any other orders, sir?”
He turned at the door and lifted his brows. “Be naked when I return?”
“Only in your dreams. ” She rolled her eyes and waved one hand back at him. “Bye-bye, Dawg.
Catch you at lunch. ”
He chuckled as he left the office, amazed now at the feelings running through him. He was still so damned hard his jeans were uncomfortable, but that knot of discontent, which had followed him all his life, was easing. Because of her.
Shaking his head, he moved quickly down the stairs, threw Layla a wave, and made a mental note to talk to her about her husband before heading to the back of the store. Bedsford was obviously going to have to go; Dawg just wanted to find out first why he was sabotaging the supplies Mackay’s Lumber was in charge of.
TWENTY-TWO
Summer displays were as important as winter and Christmas displays, but a hell of a lot harder without the time it took for preparation.
Crista spent the first several hours staring out the tinted windows that overlooked the floor of the store, her gaze narrowed as Layla worked at the desk behind her to get a count on the proper items they were going to need to create the design Crista wanted.
The front of the store was important. At the moment, it was all parking lot. There were no fenced areas for the summer displays and landscaping. Nothing for shoppers to get curious about as they drove in front of Mackay’s to reach the large grocery store and outdoor strip mall housed farther up the road.
“Do we have the gazebo plans at least?” Crista asked Layla.
Dawg had ordered only a small amount of the gazebos, which were steady sellers through the past few years.
“We have several plans. ” Layla moved to the lateral files on the other side of the office. “I put them in here after the last gazebos shipped in. The supplier sends the plans or they’ll build them for you.
It would be incredibly cheaper if Dawg would pay a few of the younger workers to put in some extra hours to put them together. ”
She pulled a file free and laid the first plan out on the coffee table. “These are the ones that are selling best at the moment. ”
The smaller gazebos had a two-seat swing with a bench on the other side. Crista stared down at the design, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “We have the swings?”
/> “Plenty of those. ” Layla nodded. “And we could get the flowers you were talking about within three days. There’s a local greenhouse owner I know who would make certain Mackay’s has only the freshest blooms. They’ll train the employees to care for them and check them every few days. What we don’t sell, we don’t pay for. Especially the perennials, flowering bushes, and trees, because they can be planted in the fall and sold to landscapers the next spring. ”
Crista made a few quick notes on the clipboard she carried, around the sketch she was making of the outdoor display she wanted.
“Are your boys working this summer?” she asked Layla.
Layla shook her head quickly. “They haven’t applied for anything yet. They have summer classes at the college, so it would be hard for them to work most places right now. ”
“Could Mackay’s hire them for evening work and weekends?” she asked. “We’ll need someone to build the gazebos and to put the displays together. There’re a few of the girls working the floor right now that I have in mind for the gardening section, but I’d like to get this taken care of first. ”
“That would work perfectly for them, Crista. ” Layla nodded.
“Let me find Dawg. ” Crista turned and looked out over the floor once again. “He was supposed to be talking to Bedsford about the Connelly order. ”
“I saw him in the lumberyard before you called me up here. They were loading the items missing on the inventory sheet. He called Connelly and got an agreement to hold off on buying the items elsewhere if Dawg would take care of the orders personally. I heard him arguing with Connelly on his cell phone,” Layla admitted with a shy grin. “Dawg can be persuasive. I’d guess he’ll go after Jim around closing instead. The lumberyard is pretty busy right now. ”
How many orders was Bedsford messing up in the meantime, Crista wondered, a frown working at her brow at the thought of the other man.
She knew Jim Bedsford, not well, but she knew him.
Her heart jumped in her chest then, an odd memory flashing in her head. She had seen Johnny and Jim one night. It had been late, after she got off at the diner. Jim had been getting into Johnny’s car, but she hadn’t seen Johnny. Oh Lord, she had seen a woman. A woman with long hair and shadowed features. It had been too dark to see much, but it had felt odd, out of place, because she knew Johnny was gay. She thought he had loaned his car to a friend; he did that sometimes. She had borrowed it herself once.
It had been Johnny, dressed as her, and Bedsford had known it.
