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“Come on. Hire me. I need a job, apparently, so hire me and I’ll make all these problems go away. Then we can have hot but forbidden boss-employee sex and I won’t report you to HR.”
I stare at him. “Do you listen to yourself?”
He glances down at his lap and nods with a comically impressed look on his face. “Yeah, obviously I do when I’m talking about banging you on the desk in your office. Hey, let’s go desk shopping today.”
Why am I with this overgrown man-child? I’m smiling into my coffee, though, and that’s why. He makes me laugh. Drags me out of my head where I’m spiraling and makes everything feel possible.
“Between the two of us,” Timothy says, his voice serious again, “we must know enough out-of-work costume crew. People in between jobs or looking to make a little extra money on the side. Maybe some fashion school students. What if we offer a one-time contract, pay well, drop off supplies, pick up the finished product, and you do quality control, giving bonuses based on that? Then you do the embroidery and we have a few friends over to help pack everything and ship it out.”
I give him a hard look at that last suggestion, given this all started because he had a few friends over, but maybe it’s not a bad idea.
We talk over details while we eat, and make a plan. By the end of the day, we’ve found twelve people willing to take on about thirty hours of sewing over three weeks for well above the minimum wage. It’s going to eat into my profits, but I think it will work. Since it’s a part-time, one-off gig and everyone can work from home, I don’t need to worry about dental or trying to set up a workspace or anything like that.
Though I might take Timothy up on the desk sex.
It’s a little harder to get enough off-cast fabric that will be cohesive with the line and I have some decisions to make, so I spend the afternoon collecting scraps and hanging out in my storage unit with my swatch book and fabric hoard. It takes all day, but I come up with something I’m happy with.
Thanks to the money I’ve made hanging out with my best friend and keeping him out of trouble, I can afford this. I have time. Thanks to Timothy, we have a plan.
“Tell me I’m the fucking greatest,” he says when we’re in bed later that night, pulling my leg up his hip as he thrusts into me.
I can’t even laugh because I’m so close, but I kiss him and claw him as close to me as possible because I can’t get enough of him. And when we drift off to sleep, tangled in each other, I finally feel like I’m enough.
Chapter twenty-nine
Mina
Nowthatwehavea plan, I’m less panicked. I’m a little excited, even. Timothy and I bundle fabric, delivering it to the wardrobe people who were interested in the extra work, along with instructions for what I need from each of them.
I’m still terrified it won’t work. My brain enjoys conjuring up all the ways I’m going to fail, but Timothy does his best to help me when I’m sewing and distract me when I’m not. Watching him carefully pin elastic to the fabric, his tongue sticking out as he concentrates, makes my heart all full and happy. He rubs my shoulders when I take a break and massages the stiffness from my fingers at night. He makes sure I’m eating and drinking enough water and threatens to carry me away from my machines when I refuse to finish by 8 p.m.
I need to be done with my part before the product starts coming in from the people I’ve contracted work out to, but he has a point and I’m grateful he’s looking after me because right now, I can’t. Not when I still have hundreds of panties to sew. Thousands to embroider.
Timothy left with Jax a while ago for a light workout, making me promise to stop for a small break every hour. I’m drinking a hazelnut latte and looking over the piles of work I have to get done today when my phone rings.
I glance at the screen—I’m getting calls about Wild Things and I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone trying to buy me out or add their name to the list—but when I see it’s Celia, I answer.
“Mina.”
Something in the way she says my name makes the little hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“We’re paying you to stop Timothy from doing dangerous shit. What happened?”
Timothy.
Fear throws me to my feet, ready to run to the door, but where the hell are my keys? I freeze and scan the surfaces around me. When I speak, it’s around my heart, lodged and thumping in my throat. “Is he okay? He went to the gym with Jax, I don’t—”
Her voice softens. “He’s fine, he hung up on me a few minutes ago.”
“Thank god,” I whisper as I sink into my chair.
I think I’m going to be sick. As awful as that first phone call after his accident was, this is worse. The way my heart is slamming adrenaline through my body has me shaking. And for what? Timothy’s fine, he fought with his mother, probably over something ridiculous. Maybe over the investments I’m still not comfortable with Timothy making in my life. “Is this about the panties?”
“Thewhat?” Celia’s stunned voice makes me cringe.
“His investment in them? Well, in a property that—”
“Honey, I have no clue what you’re talking about and I don’t give two shits what that boy does with his money so long as it’s legal. I’m talking about the stunt he pulled at the wrap party and how I’m paying you to keep him from doing that shit. Talking him down, physically restraining him, I don’t care what it takes—”
