“Nope. We just have a busy afternoon.”

“And I didn’t wear socks.”

“And you didn’t wear socks,” he echoed me, setting the box and the hard hat on the register counter.

“Are you going to fire me?”

The employee on the other side of the counter eyed us cautiously.

“Not until we get to the truck.” He tapped his credit card to the machine and slipped it back in his wallet.

The employee’s eyes widened, focusing mainly on me.

“Do I have to reimburse you for the boots and hat if you fire me?”

“Yes.” He grabbed the box before she could put it in a bag, then shoved the hat on my head, a little crooked. “Let’s go.”

“That … all of that back there … it was part of the fifty percent that I should ignore. Right?”

“You’re on the clock. Never ignore me when you’re on the clock.”

“So I can ignore you when I clock out?”

“You can do whatever you want to me when you clock out.”

Gah!

There it was again. His words were so suggestive, leaving me with no choice but to let my mind think the most inappropriate things.

“What if I want to …” I stopped. I had no clue where I was going with that. At least, not consciously.

He opened my door despite his rules about not opening it for me. “What if you want to what?”

“Nothing.” I climbed into the seat and grabbed the box from him.

“I worry about you. What lies beneath the surface …” He shook his head slowly.

Before I could act offended or actually be offended, he slammed my door shut.

* * *

My first night alone, truly alone, was weird. I locked the door at the top of the stairs to keep the naked fisherman out of the basement. Yet, every time I heard a strange noise, all I wanted to do was run up the stairs and ask him to figure out where the noise came from. It didn’t take long to understand what Fisher meant when he said I was only an adult in age. Hiding beneath my blankets, I felt like a ten-year-old hiding from the boogie man.

I didn’t see Fisher at all on Saturday—then again, I never left the basement. On Sunday, I made my first big solo outing to a nearby church. They dressed a little more casual than what I was used to at my grandparents’ church in Texas, but everyone was nice. I left with at least a dozen new contacts in my phone from members offering to help me get acclimated to the area in any way possible.

“What’s the occasion?”

Getting out of my mom’s Outback, I turned toward Fisher’s voice. Seriously, did he ever wear a shirt at home? He was, in my mom’s words, spit-shining his motorcycle in the driveway next to his truck.

Shorts that hung too low in front.