agree to do something for her if she dropped the charges?" All I could think of was that Chelsea had blackmailed Tim into promising some sort of sexual favors in exchange for dropping the charges against me. I would rather sit in that cell than have that agreement struck.
"No. I agreed not to press sexual harassment charges against her if she dropped the assault charges against you. She forgot that I have pictures to prove my claims against her and more than enough money to run her dry in the courts. She very quickly agreed to the mutual resolution."
"Oh, wow," I said with a huge smile. "That was actually pretty brilliant."
"Thanks," he grinned.
"But the bail money isn't mine; if she's going to pay for it, then she should be giving it to you."
"Nope, I don't need it. I'll just give it to Kate for you then."
"Thank you," I said gratefully. I really owed him a lot.
"As far as the job situation, I fixed that, too."
"How?"
"I let your manager know that you were acting in self-defense and that Chelsea had dropped all of the charges against you. I also told him that if he didn't give you your job back that I would see him in court for failing to uphold a safe work environment for his employees. Did you know that he hasn't installed the required security cameras in that shop for years, even after being cited for it several times?"
I laughed. "Yeah, actually, I did know that. Wow, you really took care of everything, didn't you? Thank you."
"No problem. Although you know that your job at Cubed is still there if you want it, too. And Max and I would really like you to come back for good this time. Maybe even for a marketing director position instead of an assistant?"
That was an amazing job offer.
"Can I think about it?" I asked.
"Yes, of course."
He walked over to me with his cotton joggers on and his bare chest and kissed me. It felt like heaven, the kind of heaven that I wanted to live in every day of my life.
"Can I ask you something?" I said after our kiss.
"Yes, always."
"What is it that you want to have happened between us?" I asked.
"That's a big question," he said. He was right; it was.
"You don't have to answer it if you don't want to," I said, feeling like I was trying to force something that he wasn't ready to discuss.
"No, I want to answer it. It's just that—"
His phone rang, and I was expecting him to silence it since we were in the middle of a deep conversation. But when he looked at it, his face lit up, and he said he had to step out and take the call.
I don't know why I was always second-guessing him, and myself, instead of just realizing that it was probably an important work call that needed to be addressed. But then I remembered that it was a Saturday, so it shouldn't have been work calling at all.
I went over to the side door and pressed my ear up against the wood to try to hear what he was saying. I was hoping that the call was on speakerphone so that it would be obvious who was on the other end, but it wasn't.
"No, she has no idea," Tim said. "Are you sure it's all done?"
I pressed my ear tighter to the wood and squeezed my eyelids shut as if that would somehow help me hear what was being said better.
"Okay, but not a word about it to anyone. Yeah, I realize that's going to totally blow up in my face, but I’ll deal with it afterward. This is the most important thing right now. Well, I'm not really sure about that. She wants to leave, I think, but I'm going to try to keep her here. How many more hours do you need?"
I definitely knew that he was talking about me. There was no one else here besides the two of us. Now I really was starting to feel a bit like a prisoner.
I heard footsteps coming closer to the door, so I quickly backed away and hopped onto the couch to pretend that I'd been sitting there, waiting the whole time.
"Okay, sorry about that," he said as he came back in.
"No problem, who was it?"
"Just Max, but he had an important work question."
"On a Saturday?"
Max never worked on the weekends. I knew Tim was lying.
"Oh yeah, he's really into this Spokane project, so