smile.
“Uh-oh. Was the sock puppet too much?”
“Friend,” he snarl-mutters. He finally meets my eyes, but he throws his awl down on his table and steps away, backing away from me.
He commands, “Go back to your station. And don’t let your leader lift one stone.” His gaze rakes me over once, and then he’s gone, his dorsal spines high and his tail looking a little stiff and kinked.
And I grin. Because sure, he’s being abrupt right now.
But he totally made me a custom work glove set.
And he dropped that little edict about Gracie, my ‘leader’—for Gracie’s safety. The great Bubashuu, Quarry Master, is worried about her. He’s not being an asshole; we’re working on rocky ground with alien horses that act a bit dangerous, where there are lots of big boulders, and big working aliens, and busily working humans. He’s got a point—pregnant women probably shouldn’t be doing heavy manual labor in the midst of this chaos.
So Bash is growly… but under all that scowl and growl, Bash is really a pretty nice guy.
CHAPTER 14
ISLA
There’s a big ‘ol number one back on Bash’s No-Crying Counter and he’s almost smug about it. He even bowed his horns when Gracie drew the number in place of the wiped-out zero, and he’s been in a sparkling good mood since.
“Here’s a shower thought,” I share. “In every town I’ve ever lived in, north USA to south, there’s a Maple Street. There’s also always an Oak Street, and a Pine Street—it’s all these deciduous trees,” I explain, “because every region on the East coast that I’ve lived in has these kinds of trees. And it got me thinking: on the other side of my country where the biomes make a hard change, are there Maple Streets in those towns too? Like in Arizona? Or is it more ‘Cactus Blossom Lane’ and desert-themed stuff because they don’t really have a whole bunch of maples and pines?”
Bash spares me a sidelong glance that proves he’s listening, but not surprisingly, he doesn’t comment.
That’s fine. I can keep the talk going enough for the both of us. I began our workday by giving him the CliffsNotes version of Scrooge—with special emphasis on the way he treated his employees—and Cruella de Vil’s disastrous attempt at harvesting speckled puppy coats—to which Bash stated, “Her downfall was trusting two idiot employees. You need stalwart hires or you do the job yourself, if you expect it done right.”
I did inform him that he missed the point.
He reaches for another boulder, and since he hasn’t told me to shut up, I figure he doesn’t mind if I keep talking. “My guess is yes on the desert-only theme.” I heave my rock into a cart, stretch my spine, check the fit of my glove, and wave my leather-protected fingers at him. “Now you share a shower thought.”
Bash gives me serious side-eye. It’s a long up-and-all-the-way-down-and-back-again sort of look before he puts his gruff on. “I’m not sharing my bathing thoughts.”
A happy tingle hits me for some reason. “Well you have to share something.”
“On whose orders?” Bash questions archly. He drops his boulder in the cart.
“Mine.”
And for this, I get a rusty chuff.
“Did you just laugh?” I ask in wonder.
“Here’s a thought,” Bash says, sounding—I swear—lightly amused. “Get—”
“Back to work,” we finish together, with me sounding as put upon as I can make myself sound.
But on the heels of us finishing the suggestion-command together—just like best friends finish each other’s sentences, I’d like to point out—Bash adds, “Or else I’ll beat that hob over there.” His horns tilt to indicate the hob closest to us, and that hob raises his head from where he was bent to lift a huge rock, his eyes darting from Bash to me and back.
“Stop being mean to the hobs!” I admonish, looking around for someone to protect this poor alien. Gracie has taken over Bash’s rock throne, so she’s not here to protect the winged man. She’s holding court at the other end of the quarry, lording her lofty position over the slackers she’s riding herd on, too far away for her to overhear how one of her hobs is being threatened. She would not be okay with this. She would probably tear Bash a new one if she’d heard what he said just now.
Bash shrugs, totally unconcerned. “Stop arousing my need to punish something.”
The hob exhales this massive, audible expression of resignation for this kind of threat-level he definitely shouldn’t have to deal with at work. But then he gives