by Cole, Cassie
I flinched as I heard a noise downstairs. Pots and pans clanking together. I took the stairs slowly until Kai’s big shape came into view. He was wearing overalls, but the shoulder straps were unbuttoned, showing off his bare back. The muscles in his back and shoulders were huge and rippling while he cracked eggs into a bowl. He hummed a tune to himself.
“Do you sleep in those overalls?” I asked when I entered the kitchen.
“Good morning!” he said cheerfully. “I sleep nude, the way God intended. Scrambled, or fried?”
“Huh?” I said. I’d been imagining him sleeping nude. He probably took up the entire bed.
He turned to face me, a frying pan in his hand. “Your eggs. Do you prefer them scrambled, or fried? If you prefer them poached, I must apologize, for I do not have the skill.”
I was ready to tell him he didn’t need to make me anything, but my stomach rumbled loud enough that he probably heard. “Fried,” I said. “Fry the heck out of them so they’re not runny.”
“Excellent!” He turned back to the stove and tossed two slivers of butter into the pan, which sizzled and gave off a wonderful aroma.
He’d already made coffee, so I poured myself a mug and held it in both hands, savoring the warmth. “What do you have to do today?” I asked.
“Oh, the usual,” he said. “Reviewing potential drill sites for visiting.”
I frowned. “But last night you said you had to get up early… Wait. Did you get up at the butt-crack of dawn just to make me breakfast?”
He answered without looking back, too focused on the eggs he was cracking into the pan. “Of course.”
“Kai! You didn’t have to do that. I make my own breakfast in the mornings.”
He cracked another egg into the pan—he handled the eggs delicately despite his size—and then looked sideways at me. “A woman needs more than just oatmeal. She is not a horse.”
He said it so simply that I couldn’t think of a good argument. I watched the huge German man put on pink flowery oven mitts, then remove a baking tray from the oven. The salty smell of bacon immediately filled the air.
“It is good to have a reason to rise early,” he said while moving the bacon to a folded paper towel. “Once everyone is properly fed, I will get an early start on the day!”
“I have to admit, that’s the most positive attitude I’ve ever seen from someone at 5:00am.”
“We Hamburgers tend to be positive people.” He quickly turned and pointed the spatula at me. “And yes, I have heard all the jokes.”
“I’m sure Hamburg is very nice,” I said diplomatically.
“We have almost as many canals as Venice or Bruges!” Then, before I realized what he was doing, he took a piece of bacon and held it up to my face. I opened my mouth automatically—it was bacon, after all!—and he fed me the bacon like a servant feeding a grape to Caesar. It was crunchy and delicious.
“Oh, that’s good,” I said. “I usually get my jog in before eating in the morning, but the treadmill is still in the room downstairs. If I’d have known they sleep later than me…”
Kai got a determined look on his face. “Stay right here. I will bring the treadmill upstairs now.”
“No, wait!” I put a hand on his arm to stop him, which was like trying to grab a stone statue. “Let them sleep. We can move it later.”
He looked like he wanted to march down there and carry the entire thing upstairs by himself—which I bet he could—but then he relented. “Later,” he said, pressing the spatula down on my fried eggs until they hissed and popped.
“I appreciate the offer though,” I said.
“It is the least we can do. You have opened your home to us.”
“Well, you are paying for your rooms,” I said.
Kai shook his head. He had incredibly sharp blue eyes, which he focused on me intently. “Our company is paying you for the rooms. We must thank you in other ways.” He plated my food and then handed it to me with a flourish.
Other ways. I thought about what Cas and I did last night, how it was a fringe benefit of having a bunch of gorgeous men staying in my condo. I would need to make a joke about that to him tonight.
“Thank you for breakfast,” I said, taking a seat at the counter. “But you don’t need to wake up early again tomorrow.”
He barked a laugh. “Tomorrow is waffles. When I was a boy, my mother would take us to Belgium for the day…”
I ate my food and listened to his story about chasing a dropped plate of waffles into the Bruges canal.
19
Lexa
I completed my secretarial routine as quickly as possible so I could get started on the documents I had to edit. The stack of envelopes on the desk was larger than the day before, thick with potential.
I lost myself in the work, fingers flying over my keyboard as I transcribed, then revised. I felt like an athlete showing up for spring training, fresh from the off-season and ready to perform. I didn’t even bother looking up as the Blackrock employees trickled into the building.
In fact, I was so engrossed with the work that I almost didn’t recognize Bryson as he strode through the door. Only when he paused in front of my desk with a smile on his face did I look up, then flinch in horror.
“Your coffee! Shoot! I forgot…”
He waved a hand. “Lexa, I was serious when I said don’t worry about making my coffee. Especially when your skills are clearly better used elsewhere. How goes it?”
I gestured at the finished stack of envelopes ready to be sent to the couriers. “I’m cruising through them. It feels good to be doing something more… I don’t know. Helpful.” My smile disappeared. “Not that being an administrative assistant isn’t, or that I wasn’t appreciative! What I meant was--”
“I know what you meant,” he said. “Honestly, someone like you is wasted as an admin.”
“Thanks for realizing that. And thanks for the opportunity.”
“No, thank you for being an asset to Blackrock,” he said before disappearing into the building.
I finished the last few cover letters, then scheduled the couriers to pick them up. One by one the packages disappeared, sent out into the world like paper airplanes thrown from a very high building.
Today I picked up lunch for Tex and Jason. Their conference room was such a mess of paper that there almost wasn’t enough room to sit and eat.
“It feels as chaotic as it looks,” Jason grumbled. He picked at his Chinese food with a fork. “I’m not sure if we’re making any progress.”
“My roommate is just grumpy,” Tex said. “Tossed and turned so much last night he kept both of us from sleeping.”
“Bro, if I could have slept, I would have. It’s not like I was trying to keep you up…”
“I know. I know. Just sayin’.”
I smiled at them both. “I’m glad I didn’t hop on the treadmill this morning.”
Jason’s round face rolled toward me. He was handsome, despite the bags under his eyes today. “Lexa, no offense, but if you had done that I would have probably burned your condo to the ground.”
“Yikes. Remind me never to make you angry.” I swallowed a mouthful of fried rice. “That reminds me. I swung by Andrea’s office up on the second floor. She was the previous secretary, who I was hoping would help me get those missing records for you. But she’s out today.”
Jason shrugged. “We found the missing files. They were labeled wrong. I’m sure that’s a coincidence.”
Something weird happened next. Tex froze with a bite of food halfway to his mouth, staring Jason down. Jason ignored him for a moment while stirring his food, then said, “Mistakes happen. It’s not a big deal. Thanks for offering to help, Lexa.”
Tex casually resumed eating like nothing was wrong. The moment had passed quickly, but I still noticed.
“No problem,” I said, focusing on my own food.
With all my exciting work completed, the afternoon dragged by again. That was becoming a recurring annoyanc
e. I pulled one of Andrea’s old crossword puzzles out of the desk and spent an hour on those, but grew bored. I wanted real work!
Bryson swung by my desk in the afternoon. He had a coffee mug in his hands. “Adjusting to making your own coffee?” I teased.
He smiled and extended the mug. “Actually, this is tea for you.”
“I… Thank you,” I said. “Is this green tea with cream?”
“I saw you make it for yourself a few days ago,” he admitted. “Hope I got it right.”
I took a sip and grinned. “It’s pretty darn close to perfect.”
“Just like your cover letters,” he said, shifting subjects. “I had some free time this afternoon, so I called a few of our job site managers. Asked if they got their work orders by courier. Two of them proactively mentioned how nice the cover letters were.”
“You’re making that up to make me feel good!”
He put one palm up. “I swear to God. Said they’d gotten so used to typos that they almost couldn’t read a well-prepared letter. You’re clearly doing a bang-up job, Lexa. Keep it up.”
I could feel my cheeks turning red. “Thank you.”
He began to leave, then turned back around like he’d just thought of something. “Oh by the way. That note you passed one of the safety auditors on the first day? It was rude of me to ask what it said. I didn’t mean to put you in a moral quandary, and you did the right thing by not telling me. I wouldn’t want you telling other people about my private messages, after all.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I smiled awkwardly.
“However,” Bryson smiled smugly, “I found a loophole which leaves your hands clean. May I?”
He came around the desk. He was polite enough to wait until I’d moved my chair back before he hunched over the computer, rather than use it as an excuse to lean in close to me—something I’d seen plenty of times at the Herald. Then he navigated to one of the company share drives deep into a folder directory I hadn’t seen. He clicked too fast for me to see, finally ending in a folder that had a single file.
It opened up full-screen.
The security footage was in black-and-white, showing me sitting at the front desk. A camera in the ceiling behind me and to the right, I mentally figured out. In the video I picked up the phone, spoke for a few seconds, then hung up. Two trays of food were on the counter of the counter in front of me.
Crap. I remembered this: I’d called Andrea to ask her to deliver the food because I’d been too embarrassed to do so. Then I had come up with my napkin message idea. Sure enough, in the video I pulled out a napkin and wrote on it in pen.
Bryson paused the video, then zoomed in. “The enhance trick is usually just bullshit when you see it on shows like CSI, but we actually do have high definition cameras in here.” He moved a slider on the edge of the screen and the view shot forward. The still video was grainy now, but when he panned over you could still see the note in big black ink.
DON’T TELL MR. BRYSON ANYTHING.
Crap. Crap crap crap!
I was caught. Completely and totally screwed. What could I tell him? The truth was probably best. My hookup with Cas was before I worked there.
But that wasn’t entirely true anymore. I’d slept with him last night. That was certainly a conflict of interest. Now I was really screwed.
I sat very still, as if he was a T-Rex I could avoid if only I didn’t move. Finally he looked over at me, waiting for my reaction. “Mr. Bryson…” I began.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he quickly said. “You did the right thing.”
“I, uhh… I did?”
“Like I said, that note put you in an uncomfortable moral position. You didn’t have any good options.” He sat back on the counter and clasped his hands in front of his jeans. “I’m going to tell you what I think is really going on here.”
“Okay.”
“Those guys…” He lowered his voice. “The four guys staying at your condo. I don’t think they’re normal auditors here to double-check our work and help us improve our existing processes. I have reason to suspect they are trying to gather as much damaging information as possible. They’re coming after me, Lexa. They want to bring down Blackrock Energy.”
I felt a strange mixture of relief and confusion. I was happy that he’d watched the video and drawn the wrong conclusions, and that he had no idea what the note was really about. But did he honestly think the four auditors were out to get him? That it was all some big conspiracy against his company?
I made my face into a mask of shock. “Really?”
“It’s true. There have been rumors of safety violations at our drill sites. All of them false, of course, but rumors still have a way of spreading halfway around the world before the truth gets a chance to pull its pants up. Those four have ulterior motives for being here. I can smell it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You hired them to come in and review everything because you want to improve your company’s safety. Didn’t they sign an NDA or something? Wouldn’t it be illegal for them to take what they find and release it without your consent?”
He rolled his eyes. “It sure as hell should be illegal, but my lawyers say Federal whistle-blower laws protect them in certain circumstances. But anyway, that note confirms my suspicions. Whoever they’re working for, whether it’s the Feds or a competitor of Blackrock who wants us taken down a few pegs, sent them that message.”
I struggled not to laugh. If what he was saying was true, then the message, “DON’T TELL MR. BRYSON ANYTHING,” would be awfully redundant. Hey, you know that guy you’re investigating? Don’t tell him our super secret plan!
But Bryson’s face was deathly serious. “Why are you telling me this?”
It was his turn to look uncomfortable. “I hate to ask anything of you…”
“Anything,” I quickly said. “I don’t mind.”
“It’s what I told you the other day. Keep an eye on them. If you see them meeting with anyone suspicious, or having weird phone calls, write down what they say. Let me know. Can you do that?”
I wanted to tell him that was just as much of a moral dilemma as the note, if not more so. He was asking me to spy on them in my own condo. Men who trusted me.
One of whom I’d slept with. Was still sleeping with.
“I’ll see what I can do.” It was the only thing I could say to such a ridiculous request. Anything else would just upset him, or force him to be more demanding. He didn’t seem like the type of guy to be a jerk about it—especially after his discomfort at asking me what the note said—but I didn’t want to push the issue.
He smiled. “Thanks, Lexa. I appreciate it.”
*
I left work without waiting for Jason and Tex. There was something unsettling about what Bryson had said, and I couldn’t figure out why. At first I assumed it was just general discomfort at the situation. The fear of upsetting my new boss who was dangling a real job in front of me. I had to walk a fine line of keeping him happy without doing anything intrusive to the guys staying at my condo.
But as I walked home, I realized I felt weird because part of what Bryson had said made sense. Jason had a strange attitude about Blackrock Energy. He wasn’t a neutral auditor: it was like this job was personal for him. He was weirdly upset when they didn’t have the right documents, and bitter about problems that came up, like the mis-labeled reports.
He wasn’t the only one. Now that I thought about it, some of Cas’s comments made it seem like Blackrock was their enemy rather than the company that had hired them.
Something was off about all of this.
I hurried home, hoping to talk to Cas about it before our date. I wanted to get it out of the way before then because I didn’t want to talk about work while we were out. I wanted to get to know Casimiro Floyd himself. Where he’d grown up, the hobbies he had outside of his job. If he preferred Star Trek over Star Wars, and if so, did he think Kirk or Picard was the better captain?
/> I felt like I’d known him for months, but we had so much catching up to do.
“Hello!” I called as I went inside. I took the steps two at a time, eager to talk to him before Jason and Tex got home. But everything was eerily silent, and very clean. I went to the window: his white jeep wasn’t parked outside. I hadn’t even noticed when I walked by.
A few minutes later the door downstairs opened. Tex stomped upstairs with an exhausted look on his face.
“You know where Cas is?” I asked. A second later I added: “And Kai?”
“Sure do,” Tex said, going straight to the fridge to get a beer. “They’re gone.”
“Gone?”
“Left this afternoon to start the drill site visits,” Jason said. “They’ll be back in a week or two. Bro, toss me one. You want a beer, Lexa?”
“I’m fine,” I said softly. I strode toward the stairs. “I’ll be right back. I need to make a call.”
20
Cas
I drove the jeep down the endlessly straight interstate, a silly smile on my face.
I couldn’t stop thinking about last night. Holy shit Lexa was awesome. Fun and silly and hot as hell. The kind of girl you wanted to hang out with, drink a few beers. Tease each other. All the other stuff, too, of course. The insane body. The look she got in her eyes when I entered her.
And she was back in my life. A woman I’d hooked up with, who had disappeared, and then who magically crossed my path. If that wasn’t fate, then what was?
I couldn’t wait until we got home from this trip. Heck, I might have a future with Lexa. All four of us might.
“Cas…”
I realized I was drifting toward the median, and quickly readjusted. “Sorry.”
I felt Kai’s eyes on me for a few seconds. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Why?”
He shrugged and looked out the window. “There is no reason to be nervous about the site visits. We have done our homework. We know who to talk to.”
“Nervous, right,” I said, seizing on the excuse. “I just hope it all works out.”
