Protect Me Not ((Un)Professionally Yours 2)

“Mornin’, Ms. Linda.”

Vicki barely refrained from rolling her eyes. He really laid the drawl on with a trowel whenever he spoke with Linda. He had to know how it affected the woman. Vicki’s happily married manager flushed down to her roots, and tripped over her words whenever Tyler went all extra Texan on her.

It was embarrassing to witness.

“M-morning, Tyler,” she said with a giggle, fiddling with her shoulder-length blonde hair. “How was your weekend?”

“Slower than my mama’s homemade blackstrap molasses, ma’am.”

Oh, come on. This time Vicki did roll her eyes.

“Morning, Linda,” she greeted the other woman.

“Hi, Vic.”

“How was Jake’s birthday?” Vicki asked, referring to the woman’s three-year-old son.

“Sweet. Danny and I took him to the zoo. He loved the noise and colors. He especially loved the chimps. Although…” She grinned. “I’m glad he’s only three and not old enough to ask any awkward questions about the two chimps full on humping front and center of the compound.”

Vicki’s eyes widened. “No.”

“Yes! It was hilarious. They just went right at it. Danny, of course, thought it was brilliant and filmed the whole thing,” She facepalmed and spoke into her hand. “That man can be so juvenile sometimes.”

“To be fair, I would probably have done the same thing,” Tyler said, taking his seat again. And Linda dropped her hand to stare at him.

“Seriously?”

“Yes’m, and send it to all my buddies,” he said with a lazy grin that did stupid flip floppy things to Vicki’s stomach.

He rarely smiled. And never directly at Vicki. That was probably why she’d never previously noted the shallow vertical indents in his lean cheeks. She couldn’t recall ever finding masculine dimples sexy before this very moment. But evidently, she was a sucker for rugged dimples. Because his were making her feel a little weak-kneed.

Of course, the rare personal comment about his buddies immediately had her wondering what his friends were like and what he spoke to them about? Were they work friends? Did they spend time comparing notes about their problematic charges? Because she was almost certain Tyler would have had a mouthful to say about her in the past.

If not the present…Saturday night hadn’t exactly been a shining moment for her. She imagined him having a beer with his buddies sometime soon and telling them all about how he’d had to carry her to the car and put her to bed.

How humiliating.

She shook herself. This was not productive. It was Monday morning—she had a lot of admin today. Stock to order for the next two weeks, two wedding consultations before noon, and a funeral wreath to make for collection tomorrow morning.

Linda ran the front of the shop, dealt with the walk ins, while their shop assistant, Cassie Collins—who was late as usual—kept the place clean and occasionally helped to make the smaller floral arrangements when they were busy.

Vicki also employed a driver, Josh Nishikawa, who had the morning off to attend a meeting at his daughter’s school.

The bell tinkled above the door.

“Morning, sorry I’m late.” Cassie breezed in, and for the first time, Vicki realized that Tyler never held the door for the younger woman. And he never greeted her. The expression on his face was neutral when he looked at the woman, but Vicki suddenly knew that he did not like Cassie. And wondered about the certainty of her belief.

Cassie was twenty-one, habitually late, did the work required of her, but rarely with a smile, and never with particular gusto.

Vicki often took her aside to discuss the tardiness, and the younger woman always promised to never do it again, but rarely delivered on that promise.

Vicki and Linda had been discussing letting her go. But the decision was Vicki’s alone, and she couldn’t quite bring herself to go to such lengths yet.

And Vicki reasoned that they were better off with Cassie’s—albeit questionable—help than without it. And with the last week of August being one of their busiest times of year—they had weddings, engagement parties, and baby showers booked for the next six weeks—Vicki didn’t have the time, or inclination, to train someone.

“Cassie, we’ve spoken about your tardiness before,” Vicki chastised.

“I know, only my mum had a bad fall yesterday, and I had to help her get dressed and all this morning.”

“Oh, no, is she okay?” Vicki asked. Her eyes widened in concern.

“She’s all right. Just a bit stiff is all. But if I could go home at lunchtime to fix her something to eat that would be amazing.”

“Of course,” Vicki said. Tyler made a soft sound, and Vicki’s eyes automatically shifted to him, but he kept his gaze fixed on his paper. “You can have a half an hour added to your break today.”

“Thanks, Vicki.” Cassie beamed at her, before bouncing toward the back office. “I’ll just put the kettle on and get started on the cleaning.”

“Thank you, that would be wonderful.”