The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,5

he’d been stocking.

“And I don’t suppose reading each shirt’s color and then putting it in the right pile, I don’t suppose that’s too much.”

“No, Mr. Kroll.”

“And it’s not too much to assume you can read, is it?”

Jem’s face was on fire, but he still smiled. “No, Mr. Kroll.”

“And it’s not too much to hope you can finish this job in an efficient, timely manner, without my standing over you to make sure you do it properly, is it?”

The old perv would have loved that, Jem knew: standing there, mooning over Jem’s ass, snapping out orders that Jem had to obey. Once, he had made Jem pick up pins after another clerk had knocked them on the floor. Mr. Kroll had stayed to observe the whole thing. He hadn’t picked up a damn pin himself; he’d just stood there, swallowing obscenely whenever Jem looked up from where he knelt on the floor.

All Jem said, though, was, “No, Mr. Kroll.”

“Then see that you do it.”

With a snappy little spin—about a half-inch shy of clicking his heels together like a good Nazi—Mr. Kroll headed over to ties, where he was already ripping into Sydney. “If our patrons choose to buy a poorly manufactured tie from a margarita-swilling, beach-bum crooner, that’s their own business—and their own poor taste in judgment,” Mr. Kroll was saying. “But the Snow’s Department Store menswear will go up in flames before we display those ties next to the Stefano Riccis.”

“What got in his garter?” a voice asked behind Jem. Mckenna was barely twenty, Tongan, with glossy black hair that came to her waist. She was also stunningly gorgeous, which seemed to be Snow’s Department Store’s primary requirement for female employees. Distantly related to Jem’s neighbors, the Latus, Mckenna had helped Jem get the job at Snow’s in spite of his lackluster track record—this was his sixth job in three months.

“It’s a phase,” Jem said. “He’s just going through that forty-year-long, involuntary celibacy phase. You know, when creeps like him are awful assholes because they can’t get anybody to look at their junk.”

“I think he wants you to do more than look at it.”

Jem gagged.

“Oh shit, he’s looking over here,” Mckenna said. And, true, Mr. Kroll was glaring at them and already abandoning Sydney, who was sobbing into a rack of Margaritaville neckwear.

“Pretend you’re whispering something,” Jem said.

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.”

“No, I mean, why pretend? I can just whisper something for real.”

Mr. Kroll was getting closer.

“Then whisper something for real,” Jem growled.

Mckenna leaned in and spoke softly into his ear: “I swear to God he’s getting a boner just thinking about yelling at you.”

“You’re the devil,” Jem said, fighting a smile as Mckenna slipped away.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Kroll said as he approached. “Did I miss something? Did I overlook a staff notification that this time is meant to be used for idle conversation and fraternization? This is Snow’s Department Store,” invoking it like the name of God, “and that might not mean anything to you, Mr. Berger, but it certainly does to me. Your behavior reflects on the menswear department as a whole and on me personally, and I’m starting to believe I made a grave error—”

Jem let the rest of the words float past on a cloud of baby powder and gardenia. He might not be able to read LinenTouch—not yet, anyway—but he could read people, and Mr. Kroll couldn’t have bluffed his way past a middle-schooler.

“I’m sorry,” Jem said, lowering his voice and laying a hand on Mr. Kroll’s arm. It was painful, really, the sudden flush in Mr. Kroll’s wrinkled cheeks. “I’m really sorry. I just heard, though, and I thought you should know. Everybody else wanted to let them catch you with your pants down—oops, I mean, you know, unawares; sorry for the vulgarity—but I just don’t think that’s right. You take care of us; we ought to be taking care of you too.”

The cocktail of flattery, physical touch, and conspiracy hit most people hard; Jem had used it plenty of times before. It hit Mr. Kroll harder than most, practically flattening him.

“Yes, well, I don’t—you’ll have to—it’s not entirely clear—”

“Surprise inspection.”

Mr. Kroll’s eyes shot open.

“Mckenna thinks it’s only a sixty-percent chance. She didn’t want to freak you out. But I think the only responsible thing to do is to get ready.”

“Good heavens,” Mr. Kroll breathed, fanning himself. “Merciful heavens.”

“It’s too bad we don’t have much time,” Jem said, “because I was talking to the CEO’s secretary—we bumped into each other when I was filing