Boss On Notice. Janet Lee Nye

She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. Tired. She was so damn tired. Of every little thing being an obstacle. Of keeping a smiling face and happy voice for Ian. Of hiding the tears and her fears from him. None of this was his fault. The car didn’t move and she opened her eyes.

      “Where are we going?”

      “Oh. Yeah. That’d help, huh? That garage a little ways down on Devine Street. Next to the Jiffy Lube?”

      He dropped the car in Drive and pulled out into the light Sunday traffic. “You lived at the garage?”

      “No. My car is at the garage.”

      Actually, her car was dead. She should have been grateful that it decided to pop its transmission out onto the road so close to her new place, but still...this was the new place that she couldn’t afford anymore since the job she’d counted on had crapped out. Then the car crapped out. She rubbed her eyes. It’ll be okay. You have some left in savings. The apartment is on the bus line. You’ll find another job. She twisted in her seat to look at Ian. He was passed out. Poor baby. This guy must think she was the worst mother in the world, dragging him around in the heat.

      “How old is he?” Josh asked.

      She looked over at Josh, this strange man. Cute, but really? From the way he’d carried Ian out of his apartment that morning, a sight she’d giggled long and hard over once her fright had diminished, she knew he had zero to no experience with children. Good-looking, with curly, black hair, and a bit shaggy, but that was okay. Blue eyes. No rings on his fingers, she could see that as he held the steering wheel. And they were nice hands. Strong-looking hands. She looked away. “Almost two,” she said.

      “Oh.”

      Silence followed. So much silence that when he hit the turn signal, it startled her. “Why did you ask?” she asked as they pulled into the garage’s parking lot. She pointed to her poor dead car, parked to the side.

      He shrugged. “Aren’t you supposed to ask things like that about people’s kids?”

      Instead of answering, she unhooked her seat belt and opened the door. She glanced back at Ian. He was still sleeping. Good.

      “I’ll leave the AC running,” Josh said. He pulled the parking brake, slid out, popped open the back hatch.

      Mickie frowned. Part of her was screaming to not leave Ian alone in a running car, but what else could she do? She left her door open just in case she had to jump in and save him. Her eyes scanned the parking lot as she walked to her car and unlocked the back door and the trunk. Everything she owned in the world was crammed in there. Well, everything that would fit anyway. She’d left some furniture behind. Well, hey, it wasn’t like it had been Queen Anne antiques. Mostly Wal-Mart and sidewalk-salvage, chipboard, snap-together stuff. Hey, you could afford what you could afford. She reached into the backseat and hauled out a box. She’d replace it. Right. With the money from the job that you, oh, yeah, no longer have.

      “All of it?” Josh asked as he started moving boxes from the trunk of her car to his SUV.

      “Yeah, everything that will fit. Guy here told me he was having the car hauled to the junkyard in the morning whether I had my stuff out or not.”

      “What a dick. Seriously?”

      She nodded and swallowed down the lump in her throat. Yeah, the guy had been a dick. But he’d given her two hundred dollars for the corpse of her car and a day to get her stuff out. She could sleep on the floor. She could eat ramen noodles. But Ian needed real food and the money, well, that would get it for him. It took a depressingly short amount of time to move everything out of the car.

      “Where’s your furniture?” Josh asked as they got back in his car.

      She felt her cheeks burn hot. “It’s coming,” she lied. There was nothing coming. She couldn’t afford to rent a U-Haul. She certainly couldn’t afford a moving company. It wasn’t like they were family heirlooms. She hoped the next tenants would have use of it, maybe for kindling in the fireplace when winter began to make its way south.

      She and Josh didn’t talk at all on the ride back to the apartment. That was actually something Mickie was very grateful for. She was exhausted and worried and seemed to be constantly on the edge of tears. She needed to get settled and get some sleep and regroup. She’d be fine. She needed a moment.

      “Hey,” he said.

      She jumped at the soft whisper and the gentle touch on her arm. The seat belt tightened against her. Damn. She’d fallen asleep? In a strange car? With a strange man? And her baby in the back? She twisted to look over her shoulder. Ian was still asleep. Josh had driven across the grass and had backed the SUV up to her front door.

      “Wow,” she said. “Oh, my God. Sorry. Must be my naptime, too.”

      She blew out a breath, got herself together. Wow.

      Then she climbed out and got the car seat unhooked, not even bothering to take out Ian. She manhandled the entire thing out of the SUV with him in it. Josh was there and he took it in one hand. “I’ve got it. Open the door and you can get him settled. I’ll bring all the stuff in for you.”

      “You don’t have to. I can get it. I’ll let you know when I’m done and you can move the car back.”

      He stayed on the front porch, leaning in to put the car seat inside the front door. “Now, that isn’t going to happen. But if you don’t want me inside, I’ll move things to the porch and you can take them from there.”

      She opened to her mouth to protest. Stop it. Stop it, Mickie. He’s being a normal nice guy. Stop treating everyone like the enemy. “I’m sorry to be so...” So what? She didn’t know. Scared? Bitchy? Suspicious?

      “Cautious? Don’t worry about it. I understand.”

      He walked off and opened the hatch. Mickie watched for a moment the way that the muscles of his back shifted against the fabric of his T-shirt, how his biceps flexed as he lifted boxes. A flutter of warm appreciation for a gorgeous male body tried to come to life deep in her belly. She turned to Ian, snorting out a hard laugh at her stupidity. Because a man would make all this better. Right. That’s what got you into this mess, Mickie. A good-looking, sweet-talking, nice-acting man.

      JOSH MOVED THE boxes to the porch and let Mickie carry them deeper into the apartment. Most of the boxes looked old, like they’d been used and reused and kept together with duct tape. She was cagey about letting him in and he could understand that. She was a young mother. Living alone, it seemed. Well, alone except for Ian. Which had to make it even more difficult. There was nothing he could do or say to put her more at ease other than try not to make it worse.

      As he set the last of the boxes down inside the door, she came over and pushed it out of the way with her foot. He glanced inside. She’d moved them all into the empty living room. His eyes went back to her. She leaned against the door frame with one hand on the doorknob. Her khaki shorts and black T-shirt were streaked with dust. She pushed a hand through blond hair that looked like a fall of silk and looked up at him with ice-blue eyes. She was very pretty. And very young. And had a kid.

      “Thank you for letting me help you,” he said. “This means I’m all caught up on my good deeds for at least a week.”

      She smiled and he felt something within him warm at the sight. “Thank you for insisting. I’m sorry if I was treating you like you were a creep or something.”

      “Understandable.” He stuck his hands in his back pockets as he searched for something else to say. He wanted to keep looking into those eyes, wanted to ask about those distant shield maiden genes. Where was she from, where was she going? Then, he noticed the dark smudges beneath those eyes. She’d fallen asleep on the short ride home. Tired, right. She was exhausted, and he could respect that. “Let me know if you need anything else,” he said.

      Back in his own place, Josh powered up the laptop. He could still hear her moving around. Strange that he’d never noticed