With Love, from Cold World(16)

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He showed up early for his shift the next day, heading into the Chalet to see if he could find Dolores. She had an office there, technically, but could be found just as often wandering around the place. There were some days when she didn’t come in at all, taking off-site meetings with possible vendors or representatives from the city who were always changing some minor code or regulation that sent Dolores into a tailspin. No matter what, she always stayed hands-on with the business, and Asa respected that about her. It would’ve been easy for her to be an absentee owner, signing their paychecks but otherwise invisible to most of the staff.

Asa had no doubt that if Daniel ended up inheriting this place, that was the kind of owner he’d be. Not that Asa would be around long enough to know—a change in ownership from mother to son would be the one thing guaranteed to make him quit.

Luckily, Dolores was in her office, and he gave a perfunctory knock on her open door to get her attention. Today’s outfit included a blouse printed with polka dots of all different colors, and she had her silver-streaked hair piled high on the top of her head. He had to marvel at how rare it was to see her in the same look twice.

“Asa!” she said with a huge smile. “Let me guess. You have a question about the presentations.”

“More an idea than a question,” he said. “You mentioned that we could work together, but it occurred to me that we all have such different roles here . . . I thought maybe we could learn from each other.”

Dolores leaned back in her chair, her fingertips pressed together. “Interesting,” she said. “Like job shadowing, is that what you’re suggesting?”

“Nothing as intense as that. Just like, for example . . .” He looked around the office, as though he were searching for inspiration. As if he hadn’t spent half his night dreaming up how delicious this would be. “Lauren could work the Snow Globe for an hour. Just to see what it’s like. I bet it would give her some really good ideas.”

She tapped her finger on her chin, considering. “We’d have to think of what you could do that’s part of her job description.”

He hadn’t exactly thought that far, but he wasn’t opposed to it. It would probably mean doing a bunch of filing. Reading numbers off an old-fashioned ticker tape ledger. He had no idea.

“Sure,” he said. “Happy to.”

“And I’ll need to call Daniel, let him know about this new twist,” Dolores continued. “He should have an opportunity to learn the ropes of different roles here. That would be good for him, actually.”

Fuck, he really hadn’t thought that far. Working with Lauren in the Snow Globe would be sweet torture—she might be irritating, but he knew he’d irritate her far more, and it would cause a minor malfunction in her programming to be thrown into a new situation like that.

Working with Daniel would just be torture.

“I’ll make all the arrangements,” Dolores said. She beamed up at him. “Thanks, Asa. Already you’re coming up with some great suggestions. It makes me excited to see what you think up for your presentation.”

He turned on his heel and almost ran smack into Lauren, who was lurking in the hallway.

“Listening at the door?” he said. “You know, eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves.”

“What are you up to?” she asked.

“Just talking to my boss,” he said. “Busy day ahead?”

Her eyes narrowed. From a distance, they looked almost black, but up close he could see that they were brown with flecks of gold around the irises. He didn’t even realize he was making intense eye contact until her eyes widened again, then dropped to a spot over his shoulder.

“Every day is busy,” she said.

“Really? Every day? There’s never a lull on a Thursday afternoon? You never have time to deep-dive on an Atlantic article or do some online shopping at your desk?”

He’d been idly throwing that out there, but from the flush that crept over her cheeks, he could see he’d landed a hit. Her skin was so fair, her face so expressive, that he felt like he could read every emotion that crossed over it. He had a feeling she’d hate knowing that.

“What are cat pants, anyway?” he asked. “I’ve seen sweaters for dogs, but this is taking it to a whole new level.”

She tugged his arm, pulling him away from Dolores’ office. He guessed they were in a bad location to discuss all the ways they fucked off at work. Personally, he had no issue with her taking some time for herself during the day while she managed her workload. Everyone needed that, and god knows if he had a job where he was sitting at a computer all day he’d use at least some of his time looking up funny memes or reading interpretations of song lyrics. But somehow he knew that Lauren held herself to a stricter standard, and even if she carved out those times, she’d feel guilty and secretive about it.

“Instead of a houndstooth pattern,” she said now, “they were tiny cats. They were cute, and they were on sale yesterday, so I wanted to remind myself to buy them. There. Are you happy?”

“Oh,” Asa said. Those did sound cute. “Did you buy them?”

“No.”

Why was he not surprised. “What do the numbers on your list mean? They’re out of order.”