Lovesick (Coffee Shop Series Book 2)

by Katie Cross

  “For all the paperwork you saw while you were at our place, there’s more. A few boxes in the spare bedroom. Then, of course, we need help moving to a digital presence as much as possible. Website redesign for Adventura. A new website for the spa, if it happens. Some online processes, that kind of thing. While you’re waiting to hear back from your other job, this could be something you put on your résumé. Right?”

  JJ shifted uneasily. He must have told Mark about Pinnable and felt awkward about it now, but I didn’t mind. Mark’s offer wasn’t half-bad.

  “How much?” Maverick asked.

  I fought not to roll my eyes.

  Guess what? I wanted to say. I got this. I even went to college on my own. Maverick stepping into a fatherly role had probably saved Ellie and me from becoming our mama. But at moments like this, I just wanted him to back off. The prospect of living here again seemed suddenly suffocating.

  “Forty dollars an hour,” Mark said.

  Mav said nothing, but his poker face nearly broke. His lack of rebuttal was silent approval. My own astonishment gave me pause. Did Mark have that kind of money? Mark, who aspired to be a mountain man?

  They must have more going on than I thought.

  “This is easy work, Mark,” I said. “Website design is more specialized, of course, but the cataloguing and uploading of your records is assistant-level stuff. Why would you pay me that much when you could get people to do it for fifteen dollars an hour?”

  “For your flexibility and . . . you’d probably need to stay at Adventura. Rent-free, of course. There are so many papers, files, folders, and more that you’d need to ask me about in order to categorize them correctly. I don’t want to send that away, because things could get lost. I need more control over this project than that. Plus, I want to be part of the website development. Trying to do this remotely would only be frustrating. I can’t get anyone who would be willing to move to Adventura in the winter and work for fifteen dollars an hour, even with housing thrown in.”

  Ah, the clincher. I silently agreed that being in person was ideal if he truly had that much paperwork, but the idea of living in the wilderness, cut off from civilization, my sisters, and my brand-new nephew, was far from appealing. The Baileys used pillowcases for drapes.

  Plus, the chances of befriending mice was too high for comfort.

  “How many hours a week?” Mav asked.

  I glared at him. He held up two hands as if to say he’d back off. I turned to Mark.

  “What sort of schedule?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Until it’s done. Work fourteen hours a day if you want. My only deadline for it is the end of the year. Oh, I also promised investors an online dashboard. I’d like to create one, then link it to the website.”

  Could be complicated, depending on how many layers he wanted, but intriguing all the same. That kind of complexity might work in my favor.

  Assuming full-time work, self-employment taxes, and a few other considerations . . . I quickly calculated the math. It would help offset the cost of today. Laptop, phone, clothes. Those would have to be replaced, not to mention the debt that had followed me home from college.

  “And you think I’m going to be okay with her staying with two thirty-year-old men?” Maverick asked, his voice deepening an octave.

  I ground my teeth.

  Did he remember that I spent four years at college without him?

  “Three,” JJ said. “Justin lives there too. He’s our full-time maintenance man and pops in and out.”

  Maverick glowered. I could have sworn Mark shoved his heel into JJ’s toes, but neither of their expressions changed.

  “You deserve to know,” JJ said to me.

  “Snow White would live in her own cabin in the woods.” Mark’s charming grin covered the sudden tension in the room. “I will vouch for Justin, and I think the whole town would vouch for both of us. Plus, Justin’s dating our sister, so he’s not a problem. Lizbeth’s cabin wouldn’t be far from the office—just behind it, in fact. We have walkie-talkies, and if she needed anything, we’d be about fifteen steps away. It has a lock,” Mark added before Maverick could ask, “that we wouldn’t have access to. She’d have all the keys.”

  Maverick’s tense shoulders relaxed slightly.

  For several moments, no one said a word. The fire popped and hissed in the background. I didn’t dare look at JJ. If Mark didn’t put a weekly cap on my hours, I could potentially speed through this while the Frolicking Moose got sorted out. Not to mention earn some money to get my life back together. It would give me something besides Pinnable—and all my lost books—to focus on for a while.

  Right now, my grieving mind desperately needed a focus.

  “I want weekly pay,” I said.

  “You got it.”

  “Since my car is currently swimming with fishes, can I bum rides to come into town?”

  “Of course.”

  “At least twice a week? I want to come see Shane and help Bethany.”

  “I’ll bring you,” JJ said immediately.

  Some intensity hadn’t burned off of him yet, and I wished it wasn’t from the fire. But of course it was from the fire, because JJ had sworn himself to bachelorhood—he wasn’t feeling anything toward me.

  Filled with even more surreal disbelief, I kept my gaze on Mark. Was this happening? Was I about to agree to this?

  Yes. Yes, I was.

  Not only would I be working for Mark Bailey, I’d basically live with JJ. The man of my most sacred, secret dreams. The person who tangled my heart into knots but still convinced it to beat. Who had no idea about my wild crush.

  The man who didn’t believe in romance.

  Now that I was still determined to change. And if this wasn’t a worthy opportunity to convince him of the error of his ways, I didn’t know what was.

  All the breath rushed out of me at once. I nodded.

  “Then I’ll take it. Thank you, Mark.”

  Mark grinned and stuck a hand out. “Welcome to Adventura, Lizbeth. We’re happy to have you.”

  12

  JJ

  “You were right.”

  Mark said it as the Zombie Mobile ambled around a tight corner away from Lizbeth’s house. The headlights illuminated a snow-packed dirt road with dark trees on either side. A knot had taken up residence in my stomach. Surely, the unease I felt had more to do with inviting a new person into our world, not with that new person being Lizbeth.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “Lizbeth. She’ll be good for this.”

  “You didn’t seem convinced at first that hiring her would be a good idea,” I said.

  “I wasn’t. But then I thought about the way she presented herself after almost dying. Her general disposition. The fact that she has a really intense degree and a few weeks to spare. It fit. Also, I think you have the hots for her.”

  He looked at me as he said it, but I kept my expression unchanged and pretended to ignore him. Of course Mark had noticed.

  Whether he’d keep it to himself or not was the real question.

  “I don’t have the hots for her. I’m . . . intrigued by her opinions on romance.”

  “Right,” he drawled.

  I punched him.

  He laughed. “She’ll be good,” he said in the tone that meant he’d already convinced himself. “This is smart. I feel good about this direction. I thought you were insane about offering forty dollars an hour, but now I see your point. Website design is specialized. Mav would never have let her come for less, I bet. The fact that he didn’t counter meant something. I mean, did you see the looks he gave us? That guy would destroy us if we ever laid a finger on her.”

  “But that would never be a problem,” I said in a controlled tone.

  Mark grinned. “You do have the hots for her, bro. Niiiice.”

  My suggestion of forty dollars an hour had been legitimate—Mark needed to get all of that paperwork out of the office. He needed an online presence to satisfy a
ntsy investors. Finding someone else to come all the way to Adventura wasn’t likely. Nor was I at all interested, nor the person for the job.

  But planting the idea of Mark hiring Lizbeth had been somewhat selfish on my part. Adventura had been bleak in the days following her visit. Now she’d lost everything and needed a job.

  There had to be arithmetic here that led to this being a good idea, but I couldn’t find it.

  Silently, I cursed that deep part of me that wanted to protect Lizbeth. Because why? Of all the people on this planet, we would likely be the worst suited. Her unusual, bright innocence. My jaded logic. A relationship with such a polar opposite could slowly shave away all that made her who she was.

  “You’re still good getting her cabin squared away?” Mark asked, drawing me from my thoughts. “I bet Mav drops her off right on time in the afternoon after she goes shopping for clothes in Jackson City. She seems like the punctual type.”

  “Of course.”

  “Better get some mousetraps.” He flashed a grin as he pulled onto the highway that led to the canyon. “She doesn’t seem like the rodent-tolerant kind.”

  “Can do.”

  Maybe this was just utter selfishness on my part because I wanted to be around her more. See if I could gently let her down and help her realize that romance wasn’t worth the heartbreak that followed. Because my path had been dark, and maybe hers didn’t have to be.

  Regardless, a part of me couldn’t help but look forward to tomorrow.

  13

  Lizbeth

  My first day at Adventura started like a fireworks show.

  In a cabin.

  In the middle of the forest.

  With leaky gas tanks.

  And three feet of snow piled outside.

  I arrived loaded down with bags of clothes charged to Maverick’s credit card as a gracious I’m-sorry-your-life-burned-down gift. He’d thrown in a couple of new books for good measure, even though I’d stopped at the library and borrowed ten. Ellie loaned me a backpack, and Bethany a laptop. With what I had left in savings, I managed to get a new phone.

  But when I walked into Adventura, all my certainty faded.

  An explosion seemed to have detonated since my visit, because Mark’s desk was absolutely piled with papers. His computer screen—an ancient PC that wheezed every few minutes—had practically disappeared amid the stacks.

  “Glad you’re here!” Mark cried as he shook the snow off his coat. He’d helped Mav take all my stuff to my new cabin. “Have a seat.”

  He waved across the desk to a folding chair that spewed stuffing from a rip across the top. Thankfully, JJ was nowhere in sight, but the vague scent of outdoors lingered in the air. He must be somewhere close.

  Mark wore a pair of workout pants, an old T-shirt, and ratty tennis shoes. But his eyes were bright, and he seemed eager. I let out a long breath.

  I could do this.

  First, I just had to get out my spreadsheet. I’d created a matrix where I could note all his expectations, the final list of desired projects, and a timeline for each. Then I’d easily be able to map out some sort of schedule and figure out what kind of time it would take.

  “Ready to get started?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. Do you mind if I ask a few questions first?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.” He tipped his head to the buried computer. “Need access to it?”

  “Ah, no.”

  I lifted my backpack, where I’d stuffed Bethany’s laptop and headphones. “Where do you want me to work? Then I’ll start asking.”

  His neck straightened. “Ah. Workspace. Right. Comes at a premium here.” He hummed to himself for a second as he scanned the area. “Good question.”

  Although I’d been here before, it seemed so different without JJ in the room. The haphazard elements—clothes hanging off a nail on the wall, a spare roll of toilet paper—were out in bulk this morning. A single, dangling lightbulb had burned out over his desk, casting this side of the room in shadows. The whole place smelled like dust.

  It needed a good offensive attack.

  Pinnable board, here I come.

  Mark tsked under his breath. “I’ll need access to my desk, so I can’t put you here for now. How about the table?”

  The table was a foldout that stood on three rickety legs, with books jammed under two of them. It was half behind his desk, half in the hallway that led to the bathroom. But it was that or the floor.

  I shuddered thinking of what had crawled across those wooden planks.

  By some miracle, I could potentially move this work to my own cabin where I could control the environment a bit more. I hadn’t seen said cabin yet, for obvious reasons. Because I was secretly terrified of what I’d find.

  “This table is good for now,” I said. While I set up my laptop, plugged it in, and booted it, Mark stood behind his desk and stared at the mess with a furrowed brow. He nudged a towering pile of papers with his toe and a hearty dose of what appeared to be fear.

  “Ah, my questions shouldn’t take long,” I said. “I’d love to nail down your expectations for my work.”

  “Right. Sure.” He gestured to the mess. “This is a good chunk of the paperwork that we need organized and put in the cloud, or whatever.”

  I eyed it warily. “A good chunk?”

  “The rest of it is boxed in the spare bedroom. Probably under the cot you slept on.”

  “And how many boxes are there to go through?”

  “Dunno.”

  “How will I know which ones?”

  “Just look through them. If there’s paperwork, go through it.”

  “Okay.”

  My brain almost malfunctioned. Knowing the Bailey boys as I did now, anything could be in those boxes. I’d have to deal with that later. What if it was personal in nature? What if it was alive—or had been once? I shook my head to clear my thoughts.

  “Is this your first priority?” I asked.

  “I mean . . . you could start the website whenever you want.” He shrugged. “We’ll probably need that completed before we can build the investor dashboard. However, we could really use some space around here.”

  “Website. Right. I almost forgot. What’s the URL again?”

  “For which one?”

  Which one? He hadn’t mentioned multiple existing ones.

  “Adventura?”

  “Oh, that’s just a page on a social media site. We’ll need to amp that up. Actually, we may have a Wordpass domain.”

  “Self-hosted?”

  He blinked. “Uh . . .”

  I waved a hand. “Never mind that. What’s the URL?”

  “I can’t remember off the top of my head. Should be in the paperwork.”

  He couldn’t remember his own website?

  “What paperwork?” I asked.

  He gestured at the desk with two hands. “That paperwork.”

  My fingers stiffened on the keyboard. He wanted websites created, I had no idea if he even had a domain, and I was facing years’ worth of paperwork shoved into haphazard piles. Somewhere in said paperwork lurked the most basic answers. Answers that he didn’t keep in his supposedly brilliant mind.

  “Oh.”

  His phone rang, startling me. “Oh, gotta take this.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Good luck, Lizbeth. Wi-Fi is pretty solid unless there’s a storm. Not sure where the password is, but it’s on the desk.”

  “Wait!” I called after him. “What’s your priority? Where do you want me to start?”

  “Don’t care!” he called. Then he answered the phone with a quick, “This is Mark,” and disappeared up the attic ladder with the light pounce of a cat. I swallowed hard and stared at the explosion of papers on the table.

  Sweet baby pineapple, but what had I gotten myself into?

  An hour later, I stood knee-deep in a mess of paperwork that didn’t make any sense, attempting for the tenth time to connect to the internet with a different password because Mark couldn’t re
member which one was current, all while trying to note on a new spreadsheet just how many categories of paperwork I’d unearthed from one stack.

  One of which included a midterm exam from eighth grade.

  The list stopped at ninety-seven categories so far, only five of which were business.

  When JJ breezed into the cabin, smelling like sunshine and snow, with flushed cheeks and a radiant smile, I wanted to throw said paperwork at his head and tell him to leave me alone or give me coffee. The last thing I needed was the equivalent of a Greek god watching me fail.

  “Hey.” His smile widened. “You made it.”

  He closed the door behind him, darkening the room again. Then he tilted his head back and frowned. “Did the bulb burn out over there?”

  I set down a folder full of receipts. “Please tell me you can change it. I need the light and can’t find the light bulbs.”

  “Of course.”

  He slipped past me and into the back, rummaging in a closet near the bathroom. Less than a minute later, light flooded my disastrous workspace.

  “Thank you!”

  JJ rolled his eyes. “That’s Mark. Bet you a hundred bucks he didn’t even notice it’d burned out.”

  “I think you are a hundred percent correct.”

  He propped his hands on his hips. Breath failed me when he pulled his hair down and ran his fingers through it. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. Way harder than I’d thought.

  And that had nothing to do with Mark’s disorganization.

  “So,” JJ said. “He got the paperwork out for you, eh?”

  “This is only some of it.” I ran a hand over my face, already weary. “I haven’t even attempted the boxes in the guest bedroom. I’m a little afraid a mouse will jump out at me when I open them.”

  “Oh, I can help with that.”

  “Really?” There was entirely too much hope in my voice.

  Five minutes later, as I swept an unholy amount of unused lined paper into another pile, he’d stacked four more boxes in front of me.

  “That should be the last of it.”