I met his laughter with anger, because of course I did. “I bet you told him to fire me, right?”
That shut him up. His smile vanished. “Why the hell would I be showing you how to use the machine if I told Bobby to fire you?” He stepped away from me, shaking his head. “Clean the machine before you leave.”
I glared at him.
He glared back. “I’ll see you at seven in the morning. Don’t be late.”
Asshole.
CHAPTER 6
LEE
To say that Chase Hooper was the pebble in my shoe was a disservice to pebbles everywhere. He was way more fucking irritating than that. Chase was the sagging elastic in my underwear—he crawled up my ass at every given opportunity. I somehow managed to get through the next week without murdering him, but it was a near thing. The guy was incapable of showing the tiniest bit of gratitude. Not that I wanted gratitude, not as such, but he gave the exact opposite. When he’d arrived at work the morning after I’d shown him how to operate the coffee machine and seen the cheat sheets I’d taped behind the counter for him, he acted like I’d personally insulted him instead of just trying to help him out. And even though I saw him looking at the sheets every time he got an order, the glares he gave me whenever he came in the back were hotter than the ovens.
“Whoa,” Tyler said under his breath after Chase had stomped out front again. He waggled his eyebrows. “Get a room, you two!”
I almost dropped my tray. “That is not what this is! He’s not even my type!”
He was totally my type, but I wasn’t telling Tyler that.
“Sure, boss,” he agreed with a wink, “that’s why you made him exchange numbers with you yesterday.”
“That was in case he ever calls out sick,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” Tyler said and went back to shaping his sourdough.
It wasn’t even that Chase was unattractive. If anything, he was annoyingly cute. It was just that he was such a prickly asshole that the idea of him letting anyone get close enough to him to suggest getting a room was laughable.
Grindr, my ass. He wasn’t even on there.
Chase aside, I was loving the job. We were still pretty busy every day, even though we were no longer giving out free samples, and it wasn’t just residents of Goose Run who were coming to check the place out. Word was spreading. Even some of my old regulars from South Hill had turned up to get their favorites, and I was happy to hear that Henry was struggling without Tyler and me. I sure hoped the anniversary trip with his wife had been worth losing his two best bakers.
Henry had been a terrible boss in almost every way. Shockingly, Bobby wasn’t. He left Henry in the dust in lots of ways but especially when it came to looking out for his workers.
Bobby had turned up a few days after opening with a stack of khaki cargo pants and polo shirts with Gobble de Goose embroidered over the pocket and declared that he’d been reading about branding on the internet and he wanted us to look the same. When I’d tried to tell him that we didn’t need uniforms, reminding him that Tyler and I already had our baker’s whites, he’d pulled me aside and said quietly, “You seen the state of Chase’s clothes, son? Those jeans have more holes than Swiss cheese, but I’m not gonna ask him to spend money he don’t have. Just run with it, is what I’m saying.”
Oh.
I’d shut up, and I hadn’t missed the way Chase’s eyes had widened when Bobby handed him three sets of pants before his face had settled back into its customary scowl.
So we all had matching uniforms now—and I had to admit that Chase’s ass looked pretty great in those khakis. I’d checked more than once.
Things were going great, all in all, just as long as I could ignore the fact that Chase looked at me like he wanted to murder me. And honestly, it was pretty hard to ignore.
“Behind!” he snapped at me as I pulled a tray of cupcakes out of the rack.
I waited until he’d passed and then swung around and set the tray on the prep table. “What are you doing back here? Don’t you have customers?”
He raised his eyebrows at my cupcakes as though they’d personally offended him and then ignored me and said to Tyler, “I need to go on my lunch break. Can you take over the counter?”
Tyler shrugged. “Sure. Give me five, and I’ll come take over.”
Chase stalked out front again.
“What is hisproblem?” I muttered.
“Boss, you could cut the sexual tension with a knife!”
