Janet Lee Nye - Boss On Notice

CHAPTER THREE

MICKIE STARTLED AWAKE on her blanket bed on the floor. Sunlight streamed through the windows. How long had she slept? She scrambled up to her feet. More importantly, why had Ian slept so late? He usually woke her at the butt crack of dawn. She crossed the hall and found him sitting quietly on his own blanket bed with a book. Naked. She followed her nose to the dirty diaper tossed on the rug. Awesome. She added a trip to the Laundromat to her chore list for the day.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she cooed.

Ian looked up at her and smiled that goofy baby smile that always melted her heart. He held up the book. “Pat! Pat bunny!”

“We’ll pat the bunny. But first, let’s get you cleaned up, little man.”

The second order of business, after bath, book and breakfast, was to find a job. While Ian ate, Mickie sipped coffee and browsed through the local listings. Nursing school wouldn’t start for two and a half months. She’d have to rely on her savings while she was in school, but right now? Right now, she needed to work. The job that she’d had lined up—a nurses’ aide at the hospital affiliated with the nursing school—had been perfect. The pay was good, the hours were good and there had been access to the onsite day care center and valuable experience to put on a résumé. But at the last minute, the day-shift position had been changed to a night-shift position. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except the day care wasn’t offered overnight.

“Square one,” she said to Ian. “Not like we haven’t been back here before, huh, buddy?”

“One!” he shouted. He handed her a Cheerio.

“Thank you.”

“Whelk!”

Tears burned at her eyes as she watched Ian return to his breakfast. What was she doing? Dragging him willy-nilly along while she tried to get her shit together. Jumping and running at every bump in the night. She took a deep breath and swallowed the lump in her throat. This was it. Hopefully their last stop. She had two years to go and then she’d have her nursing degree. Once she had that, she’d have financial security. Right? Then they could stop. The two of them, her and Ian, they could begin to put down some roots and find some sense of normal. But first, she needed a job. And affordable day care.

She shook her head. Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help a thing. Get to the Laundromat. Maybe there’d be some places along the way she could stop and put in applications.

An hour later, she was pushing the stroller out of the door, with duffel bags of laundry dangling from the handles. She had her backpack strapped on and an entirely too grumpy Ian strapped in the stroller. He didn’t want to go wash clothes. He wanted to read Pat the Bunny for the ten jillionth time. She paused to secure the swaying bags. The door of the apartment next to hers opened and a flicker of annoyance darted through her. Please don’t be Hot Guy offering to drive me again. She hated people offering to help her. It was stupid, she knew, but it made her scared. As if they could sense her vulnerability and weakness.

“All right, thanks for stopping by. I’ll let you know once the test results are back.”

She glanced over. Hot Neighbor Josh was shaking hands with a hot stranger dude. Hot Stranger Dude nodded. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

Mickie frowned at this exchange, then shook her head. None of your business. She tested the balance of the duffels and shifted the backpack.

“Hey, neighbor,” Josh called.

She tried not to look, but how could she not? He was too good-looking. That black curly hair and the blue eyes. His shoulders, his chest, his arms... He was built but he didn’t try to show it off by wearing a shirt two sizes too small for his body. She bit her bottom lip, felt it slip back into her mouth as she watched him. Those jeans. Levi’s. Straightforward workingman’s jeans. Nothing fancy. She felt warm in all the wrong places.

“Hi,” she said.

Short, sweet, to the point. Get out of here before he offers you a ride. She pushed the stroller but he met her at the sidewalk. He squatted to look at Ian.

“Hey, little man. What big adventure are you off to today? Going to break into a few more houses?”

“Go! Go! Go!” Ian shouted back.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Shouting seems to be the only volume he has these days.”

He stood and smiled at her. “You guys always seem to be on the go.”

“Yep. That’s us. Busy, busy, busy.”

He looked at her. Then at the duffels. Then at the street. He rubbed his jaw, the stubble there making a faint scratching noise that went straight through her. She squared her shoulders.

“Yeah. I should get back to work.”

Work. Whoa. Wait. What was it that lady had told her on the phone? He was here setting up a cleaning business. She could clean.

“You’re hiring?”

He gave her a look. A half smile. “Yeah, but...”

“Can I apply? I don’t have any experience other than cleaning my own house. But I’m a fast learner. And I’m not afraid of hard work—”

“Mickie,” he said, cutting off her babble.

“What?”

“We are an all-male cleaning company. That’s our gimmick. Good-looking guys cleaning your house.”

“Oh.” She was too disappointed to say anything else.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Nothing ventured and all. Well, I should get going.”

She could feel him watching her as she navigated down the sidewalk to the street. All male. Weren’t there, like, discrimination laws about stuff like that? She tried to get angry about it but she couldn’t seem to think around the echoes of the scrape of his fingers against the stubble. Her own fingers twitched on the stroller handles. She’d like to run a finger over that stubble.

“Oh, for the love of Pete. Stop it,” she said to herself. She took a deep breath, held her eyes shut for a second and told herself to let it go. You’ve got way bigger things to think about. Shut it down.

“Momma?” Ian was staring up at her with that curious look in his eyes. Down the street, there was the traffic, always the sound of people coming and going, on their way to work, to school, off to keep the world running. She needed to get back to being a part of that. But why, exactly?

Oh, yeah. Money. Bills. Being the grown-up.

She laughed and leaned over to look down into Ian’s dark eyes. “Your momma is crazy, baby man, you know this?”

“Go! Go! Go!”

Yeah, we’re going. Going and going and going. I hope we get there eventually.

* * *

ANOTHER DAY PASSED, and there she was again. That was the thing about living right next door to someone. Sometimes, they blended into the background. Other times...hmm. Well, Josh was still figuring that out.

He watched as Mickie pushed the stroller down the sidewalk. Yesterday he’d been about to tell her that he had a washer-dryer combo in his apartment but her back-off vibe had been so strong he thought it best to wait. Besides, he had two more applicants coming in for Cleaning Crew interviews and then he had to do three actual cleanings this afternoon by himself. One of the Charleston guys, Aaron, was coming down two days a week to help with the heavy days, but he needed to get some local, full-time help—and fast. He couldn’t keep up with the cleanings and the processing of all the new clients for too much longer. Not all on his own, at least.

He pulled up the next interview’s application. Problem was, most of the guys were thinking the job was a shortcut to getting laid. Sadie had warned him that there would be ten crap applications for every one good possibility. And, as well, there were the applications that frankly startled him. One of the guys had finished law school. Another cited boatloads of business management experience. He wondered what their stories were there. As much as he understood the need to work, he also had to take the business into consideration. You wanted someone who’d stay with the company long enough to at least get good at it. Employee turnover was expensive. That was why Sadie invested so much in providing a quality work environment for her people. Hire the right people and then treat them right. That’s return on investment.