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She stopped at his restroom, indicating with gestures he could go back to the garage while she used it. Watching the tense set of his shoulders as he strode up the hall, her heart tightened.
Everyone went through hard things. Reaching out, asking for help, being willing to share what he was going through, was the best route toward independence, even if it had a different look than before. For a man who’d handled things for himself most of his adult life, it was difficult to recognize asking for help as a form of self-sufficiency.
When he disappeared into the garage, she returned to his office and picked up the memorial notice and obit. She wrote on the back of the sticky note, reattached it to the obit with a piece of tape from the dispenser on his desk. After she dropped the paper in his chair, she also dumped his ashtray contents in the covered metal kitchen can. Using the scratch pad on his desk, she wrote him another note and left that in the tray.
In the garage, he was putting away the mop and rummaging in one of his toolboxes. Skye considered lingering, in case Maryshka got hung up at work and Tiger needed help with the adjuster. However, figuring out how to communicate with a stranger on his home turf was an easier testing ground than most. Compared to standing at a store checkout, a line of impatient people behind him.
Learning to anticipate and plan how to communicate effectively, regardless of the situation, was a lifelong challenge with a hearing or speech problem. She’d do him no favors by giving in to the softness of her heart and doing what it wanted her to do, seeing him alone in his garage, struggling with so much.
He was a grown man, not a goddamn puppy.
He’d reopened the garage bay, so when she started up her Mustang, the vibration and puff of heated air from the car alerted him. He turned, surprise crossing his face. Concern creased it, but she pressed two fingers to her lips, turned the kiss toward him. Just like at the end of one of their sessions. Then she pulled out of the lot.
Tiger stared after her. Shit. She didn’t look pissed, not exactly, but her departure without a more personal good-bye twisted the knife of regret. He’d been bullshitting her about needing to get stuff done before the adjuster arrived. He’d done all that last night when he couldn’t sleep. The mopping had been busy work. He’d felt too restless to sit in the office and deal with paperwork.
He hadn’t meant to snap at her, but his business had always beenhisbusiness. Yeah, he was grateful for her advice on the hearing stuff. Much as he hated feeling like a kid on his first day at the Y learning to swim, he’d faced the truth, that he’d have to swallow that feeling and learn what he needed to learn. But the memorial service…that was entirely different.
He returned to his office. When he saw the obit and attached note in his chair, he frowned, then picked it up. Skye wrote in broad, clear print, nothing feminine and swirly about it. For a woman who knew the value of clear communication, the style made sense.
I’ll be your plus-one for this. Pick me up at TRA at noon on Friday.She’d signed it,Your friend.
He bit back a curse. He didn’t need to be fucking handled. He wasn’t going to let himself use her that way. He wasn’t that kind of man or submissive. He served Mistresses at the club; they didn’t serve him, and that went for outside the club, too. He handled his own life.
But his gaze fell on the obituary, the close-up of Nicole’s smiling face. The photo had been taken at her wedding reception. She looked like a woman who believed in happily-ever-afters. At least she had then.
He flicked the note with meditative fingers. Skye had underlined that wordfriend, turning his mind to their earlier conversation about that. And what he’d told her. Thanking her for not being scared of his bark.
He turned the note over, looked at the old fashioned, feminine script. Written by Nicole’s mother, Rose.
Please come. For Aubrey.
Yeah. And maybe for himself, as bad an idea as it probably was. Having someone with him who understood things the way Skye seemed to couldn’t hurt. It might keep him from doing something he would regret.
Like kill his fucking brother.
When he sat down and reached for his cigarettes, his attention was caught by the note in his ashtray. His lips twitched.
Stop stress smoking yourself into premature lung cancer. Or I’ll ignore your hard limits and shove a lit one up your ass.
Sometimes, she really did channel Cyn.
CHAPTER NINE
“Ms. Sumner.” Cyn leaned in Skye’s doorway and crossed her arms. “A fine-looking man with a tight ass is at the front desk for you. Can I have him if you don’t want him?”
Vera appeared at her shoulder. “Inappropriate workplace conversation,” she noted. “Exactly what I expect from you, ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“What happens on the top floor, stays on the top floor,” Cyn responded. “But since I aspire for a hundred and ten percent inappropriate behavior, I’ll work on that.”
“My joy runneth over. I’ll double my Xanax prescription.”
Skye finished the last check on the analytics for Monday’s staff meeting and shot it to Abby for review. Then she closed down her screens and rose, shouldering her purse.
Yesterday, in the morning executive team meeting, she’d told Ros and the others she was attending the event with Tiger. Though there’d been significant exchanged looks, she hadn’t been teased. Probably because of the nature of what she was attending and why she was going.
To support a friend.
The first one to speak had been Abby. She’d met Skye’s gaze and said, “Is there anything the rest of us can do?”
