He burst out laughing.
“I think the place might very well combust if an animated movie played over the big screen,” he snickered.
I grinned.
“Walk to that side and see if it’s playing,” he ordered.
Thinking that I needed to get away from his too-sexy shirtless self anyway, I did as he suggested and made my way to the very end of the lot.
I could vaguely hear the moaning, but I was fairly sure it was from about five rows up, and definitely not from the speaker I was walking next to.
“How about now?” I heard GQ yell over what sounded like a speaker.
“No!” Darby yelled.
“No!” I agreed, cupping my hands around my mouth to project my voice.
GQ cursed succulently over the loudspeaker.
“Goddamn piece of filthy shit,” he grumbled. “I’m going to have to hire a goddamn electrician to come out here and fuck with this goddamn bullshit.”
My lips twitched.
A few minutes later, we got another ‘how about now.’
But I hadn’t needed his prompt.
Why?
Because the speaker next to my side had come to life, and a loud, “Yes, fuck me in the ass with that goddamn horse dick” played over the loudspeaker.
“Umm,” I said. “It works!”
Darby was yelling, too.
“Horse dick over here!”
I snickered and moved forward, meeting Darby in the middle before we made it the rest of the way to the front.
There, we found GQ on the ground in the dirt beside a gray box that looked like it’d seen better days.
Wires were hanging out of the gray box, and GQ definitely didn’t look too GQ today.
Today he looked like he stepped right out of Country magazine.
He was wearing tight, worn Wranglers, a dirty white t-shirt, a cowboy hat and work boots.
Goddamn. What did they put in the water around here?
First Darby and now GQ?
What had I done to deserve this treatment in life?
“The speakers work,” Darby confirmed. “Way went all the way to their side and listened, too. You should be good… though, I hate to say this, but I doubt anybody is going to be listening to the sound.”
GQ snorted and looked up, sweat trickling down his temple.
“You’re here earlier than I expected you,” he said.
I shrugged. “I was bored.”
That was the truth.
I’d been up since four—insomnia was a goddamn bitch—and had been ready to pull my hair out.
I’d come to the Apache on the off chance that someone was here.
That, and I’d wanted to get a good look at it.
Admittedly, I was insanely curious about an ‘adult drive-in movie theater.’
“Well, I have the cure for boredom,” he said, pointing at a room beyond where he was standing. “That place needs cleaned out. Then I need to start going through applications.”
So that was what I did.
Periodically I’d peek outside to see what the two men were doing, and at one point late in the morning, they’d both lost their shirts.
I stared, flabbergasted by the strength in both men’s bodies, for a full five minutes before getting back to work.
Then told myself to get my shit together and stop thinking about the men—one more so than the other—and get back to work.
I’d sifted through at least forty separate applications, twelve of which got preferential treatment since they were already working for GQ and I thought it’d be nicer to hire from within, before the two men came waltzing through the door.
I had an old, dilapidated fan blowing on me, and both men came and parked themselves right in between the fan and me.
I frowned as their smell was wafted in my direction.
“First order of business,” I said to the two men. “Is get this place fixed up. And air conditioning. ‘Cause otherwise people are gonna walk straight off the job with this heat.”
GQ snorted.
“You’re not afraid of a little sweat, are you?” he taunted me.
I gave him a level look.
“I’m okay with sweat,” I told him. “But it’s also—” I looked at the thermometer that was on the wall for some reason. “Ninety degrees in here right now, and it’s only eleven in the morning. Not even the hottest part of the day. It’s not safe working conditions and you know it. If you hire anybody older than me, it’s going to be a breaking point for them.”
“Then we’ll hire young people,” he suggested.
I rolled my eyes. “Like that’s not illegal or anything.”
He grinned then gestured to the stack of applications in front of me. “You can start calling them and arranging interviews. Work them in when you can. And you’re right. Hold the interviews at the coffee shop in town.”
I looked at him quizzically. “I don’t have a way to get to the coffee shop in town unless you want to pay me to walk there. And it takes me about forty-five minutes.”
He squinted. “You can take my truck while you’re working.”
I didn’t argue.
That sounded like a good idea. Plus, getting into town with a vehicle would give me a chance to get some supplies.