“Hey, did you hear about the new office girl?” Rockfield asked. “Some of the guys were crowing like horny roosters this morning. Poor thing doesn’t know what she’s walking into. I give her a week.”

“Yeah, especially with that chaotic shithole Stevens calls an office. Got to head over there now for the orders. Later.” I headed to the small building that housed the office, the locker room and the lunchroom. There were boxes of files sitting outside under the overhang in front of the office. Apparently, Hal had decided not to scare the girl off before she’d even had her first coffee break.

I stepped inside. Hal wasn’t at his desk. Dozens of paper piles sat in a checked pattern on the cement floor. The file cabinets had been moved out of the corner and were sitting in the center of the room for easy access.

A soft voice drifted out from behind the file cabinet. “W, W is next.” She stepped out into the checkerboard of files and looked up. They were the bluest damn eyes I’d ever seen and her perfect cherry lips parted in surprise when she saw me. She was wearing a bulky sweater that was so big, she had to roll up the sleeves.

“Tashlyn, right?”

“Uh, yes, hello. Jem?”

“Yeah.” I glanced around at the papers on the floor. “You’re the new office helper?”

She held back a smile as she surveyed the wall to wall file folders. “Yes. I guess I have my work cut out for me.”

“Looks that way.”

She blinked her incredibly long lashes at me reminding me of a nervous fawn standing in the center of a forest of office clutter. “Oh, you’re here for the orders.” The clunky sleeve of the sweater rolled over her hand, and she blew an irritated puff of breath up from a perfectly plump bottom lip as she stopped to roll up it again. “Mr. Stevens said someone would be coming in to pick them up.” Keeping up with the fawn image, she hopped gracefully, on long legs, over the mosaic of folders and slipped behind the desk. She pushed the papers around.

“It’s the pink one,” I said.

The sweater sleeve rolled down again, and she quickly pushed it back, exposing the smooth white wrist and forearm beneath. She tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear as she flipped through the stack of papers. Every move had my undivided attention.

“Ah ha.” She pulled out the orders. “Pink.”

“Guess it’s good they’re a different color.”

She held up the paper and stared at me over the desk.

I looked pointedly at my shoes. “If I walk across your handiwork here on the floor, I’m going to be turning all these files into Swiss cheese.”

She hopped up on tiptoes and looked down at my feet. “Oh, right. Those do look sort of menacing. Definitely don’t want to wear sandals around you,” she said with a smile.

Now it was my turn to stare back at her over the desk. It was the first time I’d seen her smile, and it went right along with the rest of her.

“Holy shit,” I said on the breath I finally released.

“Excuse me?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, just still trying to figure out why the heck a girl like you is standing here in this mill.”

“A girl like me? Are you some kind of a psychic that you can actually tell what kind of girl I am?”

I squinted at her. “Let’s see. You like to play guitar.”

“My, that’s amazing.”

“You lost someone important out on that curve.”

She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, I’ve got work to do.” As she swept her hands around the room, the sweater sleeve swallowed her hand again.

“You like grape slushes.”

Her eyes rounded with surprise.

“Your lips were purple yesterday.”

A dimple creased her smooth cheek. “Charlatan. You would have been a perfect snake oil salesman.”

She skirted around the desk and walked carefully through the piles. There was only a slim space of open floor directly in front of me, and her small feet landed on it. She was just one step away, close enough to touch and, damn, did I want to touch her.

She peered up at me with sapphire eyes and crinkled the order paper as she pushed at the massive sleeves again.

I stared down at her. My nearness, or more likely the way I was looking at her, something I couldn’t seem to help, flustered her. “You’re looking for someone or something that was lost,” I continued. “If you had to pick between walking along a beach picking up broken pieces of shells or walking through a jewelry store picking out a diamond, you’d choose the beach. And you like to be kissed. No mushy shit. Just a long, hard kiss that doesn’t waste time and gets right to business.”

Her long black lashes fluttered down and contrasted with the pink in her cheeks. “Everyone likes to be kissed.” She lifted her gaze to me again, and something about the way she looked at me caused an unexplained tug in my chest.

It took me a second to recover. “And the broken shells? Am I right?”

“All right, maybe you’re slightly psychic.” She pinched her fingers together.

“And—” I continued, “you wish to hell that you weren’t wearing that annoying sweater that smells like Hal Stevens’ stale aftershave. Old Spice smells way better on you, by the way.”

“Glad you’re entertained by the sweater, but it’s cold in this office.”

“It’s not the sweater, it’s the whole worthless attempt at covering up what I already know is there.”

Her cheeks darkened and her chin jutted forward. “Well, the other men haven’t seen me before, and Mr. Stevens thought this would be a good idea. You know, because it’s cold in here and everything.”

“Right. The lack of heat. Darlin’, if you think that sweater is hiding the fact that you are a fucking heartbreaker, I’ve got news for you, it’s even more of a distraction.”

She shoved the pink paper toward me. “I need to get to work. Here are the orders.” My fingers covered hers as I took it. I had a hard time pulling them away. In fact, I wasn’t really trying because I was having a damn good time watching her squirm. I finally let loose, and she whipped her hand back. The sleeve rolled down a few inches below her fingers.

The door to the office opened. I turned around expecting to see Hal. It was Walt Pickman and two of the other scalers. Walt yanked his beanie from his head. All three guys stared at the girl with bug eyes and open mouths.

“You guys looking for Hal?” I asked.

“Hal? Uh, yeah, is he here?” Walt stuttered without taking his eyes off of Tashlyn.

“He’s off site for a few hours,” Tashlyn said.

They stood frozen to the spot as if a giant magnet was holding them.

I turned back to Tashlyn, unable to hold back my grin. “Guess I called it on the sweater camouflage, eh, Woodstock?” I held up the order paper. “Thanks for your help.” I slid past the three gawkers and out the door.

Chapter 7

Tashlyn

Hal, as he insisted I call him, stood hands on hips, smiling down at the remainder of the files spread on the floor. “Impressive. I’ve only been gone for a few hours, but you’ve made great progress. Considering it took me a few years to make this mess.” His laugh was the kind that could shake windows. He looked at the big silver watch on his thick wrist. “Halfway done and it’s only two. Did you even take a lunch?”

I straightened from the file drawers. An hour into trying to work in the oversized sweater, I’d made the wise decision to take it off. Jem had teased me about it enough that I’d given the whole thing some thought. I was planning to work here every day and the male workers were going to have to get used to having a woman around. It was their problem to overcome not mine. “No, I didn’t want to leave the folders out on the floor. With the constant flow of foot traffic through here to the break room and the locker room, I was worried they would get trampled.”

He looked around at the cement floor of his office. The rectangles of papers had been mostly replaced by dirt and sawdust carried in on the bottom of steel-toed boots. Hal reached up and rubbed his round chin in confusion. “Do you mean to tell me the men have been tromping through here to get to the break room?”