Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,2

and Croy left, you were actually fun to be around.”

Nash Miller was probably the calmest, kindest, most easygoing guy I’d ever met in my life. It would have been nice if my scowl incinerated him.

“You tricked us into liking you back when you were charming, and we all want that guy back. We keep hoping he’ll show up.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” I said snidely.

“Oh sack up, Barnes,” he grumbled at me, the deep, gravelly sound of him soothing on my frayed nerves. “You need to snap out of this soon, because you already drove Croy off, and the rest of us will start dropping like flies any second now.”

I bristled, and my voice got low and threatening. “You can kiss my ass, Nash. I had nothing to do with Croy going—”

“Loc.”

I turned to look toward the front door, and lo and behold, there was my boss, Jared Colter, standing with a man and two women, all of them staring at me.

“Fuck,” I swore under my breath.

I had completely forgotten that a client was interviewing for a job that morning. Jared had informed us about it yesterday, that they would be set up in our conference room. Of course, when they were ready to start, I was the one caught sounding like an asshole. Which I was, but still. The only person in the world whose good opinion I wanted—needed—was Jared Colter’s, but from the way he was looking at me, I felt as though I’d stepped in a steaming pile of dogshit.

“You’re up,” Jared said in that voice of his that carried to wherever you were and then settled in your chest like inhaling frigid air. The idea of disappointing him was physically painful, and from the squint I was getting, I was guessing I already had.

I hated it. I was thirty-five years old, for fuck’s sake. I wasn’t supposed to worry about what the hell my boss thought about me as a person. As an employee? Sure. But not a person.

Getting up, I pointed left to the double doors that led down a short hall toward the conference room. “In there?”

He nodded.

Leading the way, I waited when I reached the doors, holding one side open so everyone could go through before me. When Jared reached me, I had to tip my head up, because though I was big, my boss was massive. The dark charcoal gray eyes were even darker than usual as he glowered at me.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I groused, defensive and peevish, hearing how irritable I sounded. “Shaw is driving me nuts.”

He grunted.

“I—”

“I have Croy’s friend who used to be with the DEA in Guadalajara, Ella Guzman, coming in to talk to me about taking his spot sometime this morning, so depending on how long this goes, I might need to step out.”

“I thought she lived in San Francisco,” I said, because I’d met her at Croy’s wedding, where I’d had to stand up for him, me and his buddy Sergio, and she told me that after being away from her family for two years, she was planning on being home for a while.

“She did, but apparently she needed a big change, and being a DEA agent is not something, it turns out, she can do anymore. No kind of law enforcement, actually.”

I understood that. I’d been a cop for thirteen years after I finished college at twenty-one, and when it finally became too much, it hit me all at once.

“Loc?”

“Yeah?” I mumbled, miserable and tired. I’d been on a stakeout the night before with Cooper Davis, and it lasted until a little after three when the guy we were tailing finally called it a night and went home with two strippers instead of burning down a restaurant, as he had threatened. He and his brother were shaking down our client for protection, and while Nash and Rais were with the nice couple, making sure the man and his wife and their new baby remained healthy, Coop and I were sweating our balls off across town—it was June in Chicago after all—following Mario The Torch Riotta and his crew from one sleaze palace to the next.

The following morning, this morning, Cooper had to report for jury duty, which was why he was absent. Poor bastard.

“You have something to say about Guzman?”

“No. She seemed nice when I met her at Croy’s wedding,” I offered.

He looked surprised, like me being anything but a surly bastard was a surprise. That wasn’t great. It said unflattering things about me.