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He hit the call button for the flight attendant to get another drink and finished the one in front of him. “Say you’re right that I should go after her. The problem is that I’m not comfortable with—”
“With being selfish for a change?” Heidi interjected. “Is that what you were going to say? Don’t lie to me, Tim. I know you better than anyone.”
He grunted. It was true that she did. “Yeah, that was what I was going to say.”
“Put things in the proper context. Kevin’s not going anywhere, but that lady is, huh? Two weeks probably isn’t going to change how much he hates us, so you might as well try to make something good happen.” She put the sleep mask back into place and pulled her blanket up to her neck. “We’re going to figure Kevin out. I promise. But don’t let the fact that we haven’t yet get in the way of forging other relationships. That’d be like deciding not to feed one pet because the other one doesn’t want to eat.”
The analogy was a little far-fetched for Tim, but maybe Heidi had a bit of a point in there somewhere.
___
Valerie was at her desk in the office at Shora trying to work out an unexpected land-grading problem when the parcel delivery guy stepped in.
He set a box on her desk and thrust his package scanner and stylus at her. “Sign that, will ya?”
“Who is that from? I wasn’t expecting anything.” She scribbled her signature in the electronic field and handed the device back to him.
Packages containing fixtures, tools, and forms turned up all the time but those usually came in the morning on the big truck. This delivery guy was the one she rarely saw because he generally made residential deliveries.
“No idea, but we’reprettycertain it doesn’t contain any explosives…so, there’s some good news for ya.”
“Well, that’s something.”
He grinned and shifted his weight a bit.
She pushed up an eyebrow at him. Usually, the guys were in a big hurry to get moving. They had time quotas for their deliveries or something, so he had to be standing around for a reason. She hoped he wouldn’t be the fifth person in two days to ask her what he needed to do to get a special “early buyer” discount on a house in Shora. That was Carine’s bailiwick, not hers. “Need something else?” Valerie asked, wary.
“Nah, I just…I wasn’t going to say anything, but since there’s no one around…”
“What?”
“That was you at Clay’s last week, right?”
Fuck.
Valerie closed her eyes and let her head fall back. “God.”
I knew it. Sneaky shit always bites me in the ass.
“I mean, I’m not gonna say anything,” he said in a voice tinged with adamancy. “Ican’tsay anything. I’m trying to keep this job, and the grapevine shakes way too fast around here.”
No kidding.
“I didn’t even go inside,” she said. “How did you see me?”
“Oh, I know you didn’t go in. I saw you in the morning when Carine couldn’t get her car started. I was looking out the window.”
“Ah. Serves me right for trying to help people, I guess.” Valerie straightened up and took the guy in. Tall, tan, and smooth as a baby’s ass. She would have bet her laptop that clean shave he’d managed on his arms and legs was just as careful on the places his clothes covered. Valerie happened to prefer men who had hair in all the places God intended.
“So, whose pet areyou?” she asked.
He cringed, obviously at her candor, but quickly smoothed his expression. “No one’s, at the moment.”
“I doubt I’d know them anyway, so your secret’s safe with me.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “You interested?”
“In putting a collar on you? Nah. I’m too lazy to be anyone’s master. Besides, I’m out of the scene now.”
