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“If that’s all you came here for, don’t you think–” she began, but before she could finish her sentence, there was a collective gasp from the crowd. One of the skateboarders had flipped off his board and gone flying into the closest bystanders.
“Oh, shit,” I said, spotting Miller right on the ragged edge of the fray. Right next to where the camera man had been filming.
“Tom,” Willow cried, dismayed. “That kid went rightinto him.”
I muscled my way through the thickening crowd in time to hear Miller yelling, “Kid, if you broke the fucking camera, I will break your neck if you haven’t done it yourself.” He was standing over two sprawled bodies, but his concern was all for the machinery.
“Miller, that’s not–” I started. I didn’t get a chance to finish though, because Willow was beside him, murmuring something that made him shake his head in annoyance, then back up a few steps. I grasped the skateboarder’s outstretched hand, yanked him to his feet, then knelt down beside Tom.
His eyes were glassy, staring straight up at the sky, past the heads of the crowd. There was blood leaking out of his ear. For a heart stopping second, I thought he was dead. Then he muttered, “The camera is fucked, isn’t it?”
I found the Sony FS7 still in his hand, a wide crack lancing through the lens. The case cracked further as I extracted it from his fingers. “Yeah, it’s fucked,” I agreed. “Don’t worry about it. We need to get you to a hospital.”
Someone had already called an ambulance, and within minutes, Tom the cameraman was being loaded into the back on a stretcher. The skateboarding kid was fine, sitting over on the low wall, massaging his wrist, oblivious to Miller’s death stare.
“What’s important is that everyone is okay,” Willow kept repeating, like a chant. Sometimes Miller nodded his reluctant agreement, sometimes he said, “No, Willow, everyone is not okay. The camera is fucking broken, and my cameraman isincapacitated.”
“There’s another camera in the van,” Willow said. “And I can–”
“I can do it,” I interrupted.
Miller and Willow talked over each other in their eagerness to tell me that wouldn’t be necessary.
“No way,” Miller grunted. “You don’t even know how to operate it.”
“I’m sure you have more important things to do.”
“I don’t have more important things to do,” I addressed Willow first, then Miller. “And I do know how to operate it. Give me the keys to the van.”
“You don’t know where the van is,” Miller said, but his voice was grouchy instead of triumphant. He knew he wasn’t getting rid of me.
“Willow can show me. Come on.” I jerked my head toward the parking lot, and her mouth flattened. She fell into step beside me without a word, but I could practically hear the diatribe that was running through her head, the words just barely kept in by her tightly compressed lips.
“You know, Ms. Laurier, I get the feeling you don’t like me,” I goaded her.
She turned her head to look at me. “Do I have to like you, Mr. Lewis?” It was posed as a question, but her voice was flat and incurious.
“It would help.”
“Help who?”
“You, to keep this job.”
Willow was silent for a moment, then she said, “It would be a lot easier to like you if you didn’t threaten to fire me every time you saw me.”
We reached the van, and I turned to look down at her. I wasn’t offended by her frankness. It was worse than that. I was intrigued. Fascinated. Dana would give me shit about this until the day I died if I ever said it aloud, but I’d never encountered a woman who flat out didn’t like me. At least, I hadn’t met one that didn’t bother to hide it. Women had always come too easily, liking my family name and connections before they even got to know me.
“I don’t want to fire you, Willow,” I said quietly, watching her eyes through the dark lenses. This close, I could see that they were looking into mine, studying me. Waiting for the inevitablebut.
“Good,” she said finally when it didn’t come. “I don’t want to be fired,Julian.”
Her emphasis on my name made me realize that I’d used hers. An accident. I should stick to Ms. Laurierto keep the necessary distance between us. First names were too intimate. They blurred the lines. We weren’t Willow and Julian. We were boss and employee. But standard employees didn’t occupy so much space in my brain. I didn’t think about them or wonder about them. I definitely wasn’t intrigued by them.
No matter how beautiful they were.
Willow’s chin was raised, and there was a small, smug smile on her lips. My heart started beating unpleasantly fast, and I had to drag my eyes away from her mouth. What the hell was it about this woman? I’d have fired anyone else for half as much attitude as she’d dished out, but with her, I practically fucking encouraged it. Anything to light a fire under her cool indifference.
“Then act like it,” I said roughly and forced myself to turn away.
