Page 107 of Feel It in the Air

28

MARGEAUX

All isright with the world.

Okay, that’s a lie.

But my soul is at least a little more at ease now knowing that Gus and I are okay. That we’ve survived our first bump in the road. And this is a hell of a bump.

“So, Margeaux, how was your day?” Anton asks, shit-eating grin in place.

Gus glowers at his younger brother over my head, the hand that is settled on my lower back as I sit on a bar stool tightening. I lean into it, trying to settle him, but it’s no use. Milo slides a drink across the bar, shaking his head, muttering something I don’t quite catch, but know it’s directed at Anton.

“My brothers are jackasses,” Gus says, shifting his stance next to my stool.

“Just wait ’til you meet mine,” I tell him, leaning in. “You’re kidding yourself if you think David and Louis are going to make it easy on you. And Papa Duck? Pssssh…”

“After this lot?” He nods in the direction of his brothers. “I think I can take them.”

I shrug, confident he can, but not willing to let him have it. Just like I can handle Anton.

“Oh, you know, pretty normal. Meetings, contract reviews, administrative leave. You?”

“Err…we’ve had really good early results on a new peach crossbreed,” he offers, clearly caught off guard by my answer. “December is kinda our downtime.”

I nod, accepting his answer. I know very little about the agriculture side of the business. It’s not exactly an area that has a whole lot in the way of trademark and intellectual property, unless you can somehow trademark a fruit. I’ll have to look into that. Oh wait, nope. I probably won’t be working for Hayes long enough to see if that’s another loophole we can try. Well, damn.

Gus presses a kiss to the top of my head, as if he senses my thoughts, my heart squeezing, warmth spreading through me. There is no way around it, this still sucks. But being here with him, knowing that he is by my side and that we are in this together, makes it bearable. We’re a team.

“I’m sorry this is happening,” he says, quiet enough that only I can hear him. “I should have handled things better.”

“How?” I spin on the stool, facing him. Placing my hands on his hips, I wrap my legs around his, pulling him into me. “We knew the risk. We were in this together. Are in this together.”

“I just should have.” He shrugs. I can see the weight of everything bearing down on him, like Atlas shouldering the globe. Grumpy Gus. Such a misnomer. Solemn, earnest, sometimes humorless, sure, but not grumpy. He’s too busy worrying about everyone and everything else to be grumpy. “I know how hard you’ve worked. Everything you’ve put into your career and what it means to you. It was part of what drew me to you that day at JFK.”

“Because you took one look at me from across that crowded bar and went, ‘ah yes, now there’s the MBA wielding, law-degree toting, Cajun food cooking, Southern belle I’ve been waitin’ for’?”

“I said part,” he defends, and I laugh. “That empty chair next to you was the real clincher.”

Rolling my eyes, I pull him in for a kiss. I let my lips linger on his, enjoying the taste of him, the butterflies in my chest going wild.

“Well, the next time we decide to knowingly break Hayes policy, make sure your crystal ball isn’t in the shop?” I quip, trying to make light of it.

I unwrap myself from him, turning back to the bar and taking a sip of my drink. For a second, I wish that I’d brought the tacos with me that Gus had with him when he stopped by earlier, my tummy grumbling despite all the ice cream I consumed. Maybe I can convince Gus we need to stop for more on the way home. So what if it’s all kinds of out of the way.

“Ha. Well, maybe it’s time to invest in a new one. Could have used a heads-up on both this and the Sapphire Sands hemorrhage.”

“Sapphire Sands?”

That name sounds familiar. Really familiar. Where the hell have I heard that name?

“Yeah, that’s the vendor contract we connected the weird payments to. That’s why I was talking to Teresa, since she wrote up the vendor establishment contract. When we asked her about it, she lost her shit and made the accusation. Were you not told this?”

I shake my head. The details of the when and where of the complaint weren’t something I was concerned with as I was being told I was under review. However, now I’m starting to think that maybe I should have asked for particulars about how it all went down, because this is making even less sense.

Teresa’s specialty is taxes. Although, maybe because of tax identification numbers, vendor establishment contracts are part of what she does sometimes?

“What kind of weird payments?” I ask, my mind working overtime. He’s mentioned it a couple of times. At Drafts and Dig In and then again the other night. Both times I blew it off because I knew he was sharing more than he really should. Just like now. Except now, it’s potentially the key to all this.