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He’s coming, whether I ask or not, and that makes me smile. “If I decide to go, I’ll ask you to come with me. But it’s a lot, asking you to uproot your whole life to move with me.”
“I’m retired and my family is out there. I wouldn’t call it uprooting my whole life.”
“Your friends are here.”
He points the spatula at me. “Believe it or not, I have friends back home too.”
“Nic’s here,” I point out. I don’t need to say more.
“Yeah…” He goes back to the bacon. “I have a plan for that.”
I take a sip of my coffee. “You have a plan.”
“I do.” His voice is full of glee. “And I can’t tell you,” he adds, “because we aren’t married and if it all goes wrong, I’m going to need you to claim spousal privilege.”
I arch a brow at him. “What, are you committing a crime?”
He grins. “Worse.”
I set my coffee on the table. “Okay, now I need to know.”
He points the spatula at me again. “Not until you husband me.”
“Timothy. Tell me. Right now.”
He mimes zipping his lips and starts taking bacon out of the pan.
“Fine,” I say, picking up my coffee and preparing for a little psychological warfare.
“Fine, you’ll marry me?” he asks casually, reaching for a bowl.
I watch the way his muscles move from the simple task of picking up a bowl. The way the Kraken tattoo moves. “Fine, you can keep your secret plans secret. Besides, I already know what they are.”
He dumps the beaten eggs into the pan and turns to me with an alarmed look on his face. “You do?”
“Of course I do.” I grin and sip my coffee. “It’s obvious.”
“It’s not obvious,” he grumbles at the pan as he scrambles the eggs. “There isn’t a plan yet.”
A-ha! Knew it.
“I could help you with the plan.”
He flashes me a quick wink as he whips the apron off. “You could help me with something else.”
I take a pointed sip of my coffee and bring us back to the problems at hand. “So I can’t make three thousand panties by the end of August. My options are to piss off clients by canceling a bunch of orders, hire some help and hope the quality doesn’t take a dive, or sell my brand to the highest bidder and let them tank everything I’ve worked for while I start from scratch with a pile of money.” The pile of money is the only appealing part of that option. I don’t want to start over.
“Hiring help is your best option,” Timothy says, and we agree. But that starts the next chain of problems.
“Then I have people who depend on me for their job and livelihood. What happens if I can’t pay them? I’m not even sure I could pay them, plus the cost of all the materials I need. What about dental insurance? I’m sure there are papers I’d need to file.” Panic has already wrapped a fist around my chest and started to squeeze, and when Timothy sets a plate heaped with fruit, eggs, bacon, and toast in front of me, I nearly dry heave. My plan was always to go to business school before trying to expand. So I’d know this shit.
“I can take care of it.” Timothy sits next to me, smiling and shoveling a forkful of eggs into his mouth.
“What part of it?”
He swallows and elbows me. “All of it.”
“No.”
