Bad Boy Best Friend - Hope Ford Page 0,16

but Austin still has one arm around me and with the other one, he knocks Shawn to the ground again. I’m struggling to get free to stop this craziness, but Austin’s grip just tightens around me. I lift my foot and hit Austin with the heel of my shoe between his legs to get him to stop.

“Get out of here, Shawn. This is over,” I say as Austin puts me down and bends forward to recover. I may have knocked the breath out of him.

“I’ll sue you for this,” he says as he wiggles a loose tooth.

“I wouldn’t do that, Shawn,” I say, not about to let Austin get in trouble for standing up for me even though I didn’t need him to. “The things you said just before and during this argument are sexually degrading and I might realize you’ve been harassing me if I were to be called into court as a witness.”

Shawn curses as he walks away, and Austin’s red angry face doesn’t scare me for a second when I turn to face him.

11

Austin

“You kicked me in the fuckin’ nuts? What the hell?” I ask her as she pulls me along behind her back into the shop.

“Rod, take over at the desk,” Laney yells out, her voice sounding as though she’s furious.

What does she have to be angry about? I’m the one who got kicked in the jewels while trying to protect her.

She opens my office and leads me over to one of the chairs in front of my desk. I fall into it, my testicles still not fully recovered from the blow. “You kicked me!” I remind her when she gives me one of her scolding, teacherly looks. I still can’t understand what she’s mad about. She leaves the office but returns with a first aid kit in her hand and slams it down on the desk.

Mike and Owen are conveniently filling their cups at the water cooler next to my office trying to get a look inside, so I kick the door shut and close the blinds.

“Sit down, you maniac, you’re hurt,” Laney says as she opens up the first aid kit on my desk.

“Yeah, I am hurt. That’s what happens when you kick a man in the balls, Laney! Why did you do that?”

She pushes me back into the seat and takes my hand in hers, inspecting my bleeding knuckles. “Why did I do that? Why did you launch yourself at Shawn? He said something stupid. You think I can’t handle someone saying something stupid?”

“He was calling you stupid, and no one ever gets to talk to you like that. No one!”

“You should’ve let me handle it,” she yells back at me as she swabs the cuts with an alcohol wipe.

“Fuck!” I curse and try to pull my hand away. “I don’t give a shit about this cut. What the hell was he talking about? Have you been putting money into the register?”

She shakes her head, but I see the guilty flare in her eyes before she looks back down at my knuckles. “No, not like he said I was. I just messed up yesterday and again today somehow when I was ringing people up because my till came up short yesterday and today. I was off by five bucks yesterday and two today, it’s nothing. I’ll get it.”

“Fuck!” I say again as she wipes across another knuckle. “I don’t want you using your money to make up a short till! You don’t think I fuckin’ trust you?”

She wipes the alcohol wipe over my knuckles again with an angry expression on her face. “It was seven dollars, it’s not like I was emptying my wallet into the till. I just wanted to do a good job for you.”

I grit my teeth. “And I wanted to let that asshole know he wasn’t allowed around you anymore.”

She looks at me with disbelief. “That’s not up to you!”

I can’t help it. Seeing Shawn in the office had been enough to have me leaping over the desk. Forget about what came out of his mouth. There’s no way anyone is going to talk to her or about her like that, not ever. “He’s lucky I didn’t knock him the fuck out for looking at you like he was,” I say, standing up again, close to her.

She shakes her head and jerks my hand back to her. “I will kick you in the legs again if you do anything that stupid. What if he sues you? What if you