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“Send him in, then you can leave for the day. You shouldn’t have stayed this long.” It was after seven and the sun had set a while ago. I told her she could go home earlier but she insisted she’d stay to get some work done.
“Thank you. I’ll head home.”
I looked at Peyton. “You staying for the meeting?”
“You want me to?”
“I don’t care either way.”
He shrugged, which meant he was staying put.
JJ came inside, declining the offer of a drink. Carissa shut the door. JJ took the seat beside Peyton. Two big men on the other side of my desk. I was still getting used to seeing JJ in a suit.
My cousin gave an update of where he was in his hiring process. Val was coming on board in another week, along with two other people he hired. He said he would have loved to bring more from his shop but that would have left it too short-handed, and he didn’t want to do that. JJ could have given his business up when he came to work here. It was a source of pride for him, and I couldn’t fault him for it. He also made sure it didn’t interfere with his work at PJS, which I appreciated.
“I’ve scheduled a meeting with Greer to go over my idea.” He turned to Peyton. “He seems friendlier than you.”
“Everyone’s friendlier than me.”
JJ grinned. “Not Junior. I’ve heard how he throws things around his office like he’s trying out for the majors.”
“I don’t do it while people are in here,” I countered.
“Does it matter?”
“If they were in here, they could get hit with a pencil then they could get lead poisoning and it would be a whole thing.”
“Are you usually this unfocused?”
“No. I miss Dom. People keep resigning. It’s unsettling me.” I wouldn’t usually be so candid with anyone outside of Peyton, Greer, or Dominic, but JJ was my cousin. I had to treat him as such. If he was going to help drive more revenue, I had to extend more than a family courtesy to him. I should spend time getting to know him, trusting him with more than the business.
“Sometimes things get worse before they get better. We’ll get it turned around.”
“You’re an optimist?”
He snorted. “Fuck no, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you how horrible everything is. What would be the point?”
“You really think the consumer side is worth the headache?”
“I do. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have brought it up. Stefen is like a kid in a candy store. He’s so excited about my ideas and he showed me some of his.”
“You’re going to have to rein him in. Don’t let him abandon the racing side. I still need him working on that.”
He nodded. “Don’t worry. I’m making sure to shift his focus when I see him drifting too far.” Shit, JJ was what I needed all along to get Stefen to pay attention. Keep his damn feet on the ground so he wasn’t constantly dreaming up new ideas and not working to improve the ones we already had.
JJ and I kept talking but I noticed Peyton take his phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. He suddenly sat up straighter, causing me to focus solely on him.
“I’ll call you back.” He hung up. “Dex said Dom didn’t show up for his shift.”
“Have you heard from Dom?” Dominic was punctual as hell.
“No.” Peyton started tapping away on his phone. He put the phone back to his ear, waited, then brought it down again. “No answer. I’ll see if I can locate him. He’s never missed a shift with Dexen and if he didn’t come in here, he always called.” Peyton was right. Dominic rarely called out and liked to arrive early. He should have been there by now.
“You track your boyfriend?” JJ asked with a laugh. “That’s a bit much.”
“I’ve been able to track him since he started working for Perry,” he growled. “Dom knows and doesn’t give a shit.”
He started using his fingers, zooming in. “I found him.” He rattled off an address. I wasn’t overly familiar with East Dremest, but I knew where the address was.
