"That's the one uptown, right?" he guessed. I nodded my head. Talking was dangerous. We could be overheard. "Is that all?" He moved to sit back on the cushioned seat, but I grabbed him and yanked him back down. He frowned. "I enjoy your attentions, but this is getting ridiculous."
"Those guys are our arch enemies," I revealed to him. He didn't take this extraordinary bit of news with the seriousness that I hoped for.
Alex snorted. "Arch enemies?" he repeated.
"Yes, arch enemies and enemies forever," I added. "And if they find us here there could be a brawl like on the night I met you."
He scoffed. "They can't hate us that badly just because we work at a rival department store," he protested.
We both jumped when one of the Ken workers pounded his fist on the bar top. He was a large man with arms the size of corgis, but without the soft plushiness, and a neck as thick as Asians at a math conference. His beady black eyes turned and surveyed the room. I yanked Alex down so we viewed the room as a child did; under the table. "Any Stacy workers here?" Ken-worker asked the bartender.
The bartender, a guy named Joe, glanced up from his dispensing of drinks to look around the room. "None I can see," he replied. The guy wasn't lying. He couldn't see us. Then again, he was a friend of mine and didn't want to see his place broken up just after he got the place fixed from the last fight.
"Well, you just tell us if one of them comes in here," Ken-worker ordered him.
"I'll try my best," the bartender replied. Good ol' Joe. He could spit out half-truths better than any politician.
I glanced over to Alex, who sat on that dirty floor with an incredulous expression on his face. "Why do they hate Stacy's so bad?" he whispered.
I shrugged. "Maybe it's the name, maybe it's the fact we're competitors, or maybe a long time ago an employee from each store fell in love only to have their romance squashed by their relatives and they both die by their own hands."
"That's Romeo and Juliet."
"Oh, that explains why I'm reminded of high school English. Why did they make us read that stuff, anyway? Encouraging teen suicide?"
"Focus," he commanded.
"Well, I don't know why they hate us. Just chalk it up to our names and be careful about meeting one in a dark alley."
He snorted. "I think I can at least beat the girls." Alex paused and glanced at the thick legs of the Ken employees. "But these guys here are a different story," he murmured.
"Some of those are girls," I told him.
He did a double take, and squinted his eyes to look at those thick legs. "Are you sure?"
"Positive, now help me get these coveralls off," I ordered him.
A lecherous grin slipped onto his lips. "With pleasure."
I frowned and smacked away his eager hands. "On second thought, I don't think you'd stop at the coveralls."
"Why are you teasing me like this, anyway?" he wondered.
"To get the Stacy emblem off me. Those Ken guys and gals will eat me for sure if they see it," I pointed out. I maneuvered myself out of my coveralls, though not without a few mishaps in that tight space. My foot accidentally connected with Alex's face. "Sorry," I whispered.
He gripped his chin in one hand and rearranged it back into its original position. "It isn't the first time a girl's slapped me, but it is with a foot," he replied.
"I didn't think I was making much of a precedence," I quipped. I slipped out of the coveralls and glanced at the bar, then at my wristwatch. I still didn't have a wristwatch. I really needed to do something about that. "What time is it?" I asked him.
"Quarter after the hour," he told me.
"Good, enough time to order a Mooing Heartburn and get out of here," I mused as I slipped back into the booth seat. The coveralls were shoved behind me and I gestured to Joe for some service. He nodded and signaled a waitress to help us make a quick escape.
"Mooing Heartburn?" he repeated. I grabbed him and pulled him up out of the depths of the table world.
"It's a rare hamburger with onions and hot peppers," I replied.
"You are a strange girl," he commented.
"Does that mean you'll lay off the marriage proposals?" I half-pleaded.
He grinned and shook his head. "No, it just means you're strange, and I like strange."
I sighed and was glad to see the waitress come up to us. "Just order and let's get out of here."
Chapter 3
We ordered, supped, he cuddled me, I rejected him, and in an hour we were back at the department store ready for action. Well, I was ready for action. Alex was still ready to throw in the towel. We stood at the loading dock entrance and faced the large store room with its stacks of stoic stock and piles of perilous products. All that stuff intimidated even me, and I'd worked there for a lot of years.
I looped my arm through Alex's and smiled up at him. "Come on. Let's ford through this jungle and get you knowing the place."
"If I don't make it out alive, promise me you'll tell my family what happened to me," he teased.
I rolled my eyes and dragged him into the wilderness. "The first order of business is to memorize what is where and where it belongs," I instructed him. I gestured to a stack boxes that held fake flowers. "Where do these go?"
"Grocery," he replied. I whipped my head up to him and glared. He sheepishly smiled. "Kidding, just kidding. It's floral."
"Good, so now you know where floral goes. All of it's here. Now we'll-hide!" I hissed. I grabbed his arm and pulled him behind the flowers.
"What's-" I slapped my hand over his mouth and shook my head. While he fought for air between my fingers, I risked a glance around the corner. "She's still there. . ." I muttered.
Alex pulled my hand off his mouth, but didn't let go. "Who's there?" he whispered.
"One of my greatest enemies," I replied.
"A wedding ring?" he teased.
"One of my other greatest enemies, the snitch," I told him.
He raised an eyebrow. "What does a snitch look like?"
I pulled him to the edge of the boxes and pointed at my target. "That is a snitch."
Alex leaned around the corner and saw a woman of about twenty-five with blond hair pulled back in a tight bun and covered in a hair net. She had thick-framed glasses, a tight suit jacket over her small breasts, and wore a skirt that modestly reached below her knees. Her high-heeled feet clacked against the cement floor and her narrowed, snake-like eyes flitted about the room. In her hands was a clipboard and a pen, and she constantly jotted down notes.
I pulled Alex back and looked around for an escape. The flower boxes traveled along the rear wall to the floral department door. If we turned left at the end of the hall there was a chance she'd see us. "Looks like we'll have to go out on The Floor," I mused.
"But who is she?" Alex asked me.
"That is Snitchie Fraser. She's usually caged up in the administrative offices above us, but sometimes Mullen sends her down here to dig up some dirt on an employee they want to fire," I explained to him.
"Snitchie?" he repeated.
"Her real name is lost to time," I replied. He raised both brows for that one, and I sighed and rolled my eyes. "All right, it's Nickie, but if you call her that you'll be insulting the other Nickie's who work here and you wouldn't want to see them when they're angry," I warned him.
"So why is she so dangerous?" he wondered.
"She reports back her findings to Mullen and they use that to fire the person. It's usually bad ordering, incompetence-" I cringed and leaned to Alex. His face was pale.
"That sounds like me," he whispered.
"Can Mullen fire you?" I asked him.
"I'm an employee," he pointed out.
"But your family-"
"-wouldn't get involved because it would show favoritism," he finished. "Even my mom won't save me if it means we play favorites with employees."
I cringed. "Harsh."
"You don't know the half of it."
"I'll keep with my slice of wh
at I know and go with that. Besides, we gotta get out of here."
I grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the door to freedom. We hit the large swinging doors and found ourselves on what we forklifters called The Floor. It was a place of smiles and bright lights where cash registers rang all day and people stomped through gobbling up what we so carefully placed before the department doors. People fought over bobbles and loosed their children upon the unsuspecting populace. The floors were sticky from pop and food, and sometimes it was elbow-to-elbow coverage between the racks. Most people called it a mall, we called it hell.
I was unfamiliar with the layout of hell, much as I was probably heading there when I died. That meant we paused at the doors and I whipped my head to and fro. The floral store's fragrance confused my senses and the flowers blocked my view. I was lost.
"Problems?" Alex asked me.
"Yeah, I don't know where to go from here," I told him.
"Where do we need to go?" he wondered.
"To one of the other department store doors," I replied.
"Then allow me." Alex gripped my hand in his and pulled me through the maze of displays and vases. We broke through the archway that led into that department and strode out into the main thoroughfare. It was bumper to bumper traffic with each side going a different direction except when a kid jaywalked through the stream of walkers. "Which department?" he asked me.
"Um, grocery," I answered. That was the farthest from the floral, but on the bottom floor of the storage room. We wouldn't need to take a lift elevator to get back down to our tour.
He guided me through the traffic and to the large grocery sign across the thoroughfare. We stumbled through the large archway into the quieter and less crowded department of food. Alex led us between the aisles, into the back room, and through the swinging doors. I was never so happy to breath forklift fumes and pallet wood, and collapsed on a nearby box of iceberg lettuce.
I set my head in one hand and sighed. "Let's never do that again," I muttered.
Alex sat down beside me and looked me over. "Don't you ever go shopping here?" he wondered.
I snorted and raised my head to look at him. "No, some of these prices are terrible. I go to a small grocery store closer to my apartment."
"Loyalty runs only pocket-book deep?" he mused.
I shrugged. "A girl's got to live, but how about we get that tour done and call it a day? It'll take that long to get through these departments and all their stock."
He smiled, stood, and offered me his hand. "Lead on, fair maiden." I rolled my eyes, but my treacherous lips twitched at the corners and I took his hand. He hefted me up and looked me over. "You know, you look beautiful when you're beside me."
"And you look too tall beside me," I returned. I yanked on his arm and pulled him toward the stock. "Now fewer compliments and more learning. I expect you to memorize all this stuff in a week, and there will be a test."
My hopes for an uneventful end to the day were dashed by the prong of a forklift.
Halfway through the nitty-gritty tour Jamie found us in the hardware section near where Phil was working on his machine. She noticed who I was with and a sly smile slipped onto her lips while the rest of her slipped beside me. "I see he's making some progress," she teased.
"Just the girl I wanted to beat-er, meet," I growled. I spun her around and marched her down the hall, but not before glancing over my shoulder at Alex. "Stay!" I ordered him.
He frowned. "But-"
"Stay!" Jamie and I turned a corner around some large pallets and I crossed my arms over my chest. "Mind telling me what you're doing here besides teasing me?"
She smiled and shrugged. "Oh, you know, just wanted to get a good look at the latest shipment of tool dohoockies and thingamabobs." I narrowed my eyes and tapped my food against the floor. She backed up and held up her hands. "All right, all right, the foot got me. I was wondering if you knew that Snitchie was snooping around."
"We caught her down in floral a few hours ago, but what's she doing down here?" I asked her.
Jamie lowered her voice and leaned toward me while her eyes darted around the empty area. "I heard from one of the secretaries in the uppers that she was moved down by the old management to snoop out anything that might complicate the new management," she told me.
"So she's here to get rid of Alex?" I guessed.
"Yep."
"Has she found anything out?"
"The bees."
"Anything else?"
"The missed orders."
"Anything-" We heard a loud scream from the hall we'd just left.
We scooted around the corner and our eyes widened when we saw Alex barreling down on us with him at the levers of a forklift. I pushed Jamie back around the corner and dove out of the way, but one of the prongs just grazed my hip. I ended up spinning in the air before I crashed down to the hard floor. Of course, I landed on the injured hip.
Jamie knelt down beside m and turned me onto my back. "Are you all right?" she asked me. Her hands frantically frisked me for any injuries and I batted them away before she tickled me to death.
"I'm fine, now stop that!" I demanded.
I swatted her hands away just as Phil ran past us. He caught up to the forklift and slammed his foot on the brake pedal. The forklift came to a screeching halt a few yards away, and Alex jumped off. He raced to me and gently but firmly pushed Jamie out of the way.
"Are you all right?" he asked me.
"No, I'm dying," I replied.
"But you just said you were fine!" Jamie protested.
I rolled my eyes. "It's sarcasm, Jamie." I tried to sit up, but the pain in my side told me it didn't want to play nice. I cringed and lay back down on the cold, hard floor. "Maybe I'm not so fine." I yelped when Alex scooped me up and proceeded to carry me down the hall with Jamie following close behind us. "What are you doing?" I hissed.
"Taking you to the lounge, and then to the hospital," he replied.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and yanked down. He bent over to where he nearly dropped me, and came to a screeching halt. "Not the lounge! Just take me home!" I ordered him.
He looked at me like he thought I was nuts. Maybe I was. It wouldn't be fun being normal, anyway. "Are you mad?"
"Yes, but I know what I'm doing. My hip's just a little bruised, so just take me home," I insisted.
"But you were injured on the job. This has to be reported," he pointed out.
"If it's reported Snitchie will find out and you'll definitely be doomed," I replied.
"But you could have serious injuries," he protested.
"Then I'll at least die at home with Mr. Smith at my side, but just get-" I paused when I heard the familiar clack of heels on cement. I grabbed Alex's neck and turned it towards the direction of the loading dock. "Take me home and I'll go out on a date with you."
He frowned. "Your life is worth more than one date," he argued.
"Then let me down so I can waddle my way to my car," I insisted. I wiggled and pushed myself out of his arms, and my feet had hardly hit the floor when he scooped me back up.
"Fine, but I'm calling a doctor when we get there," he agreed.
I furiously nodded my head. "Perfect! Wonderful! Now get us out of here!" I turned to Jamie. "Get my stuff from my locker and meet me at my car. Say I got sick or caught the plague or something."
Jamie smiled and saluted. "The plague. Gotcha!" She rushed off, and I had a sinking feeling I shouldn't have suggested a contagious disease to her.
I yelped when Alex hurried forward at a fast gallop and we left the clicking heels behind us. We reached the loading dock, used the exit there, and Alex carried me around the building to the employee parking. We came to my car and I prepared to put both feet on the ground. Alex hugged me tighter to himself and leaned his back against the car.
"Mind letting me down?" I asked him.
"Yes."
"Let me down."
"No."
"I can stand just fine."
"I won't take that risk."
I frowned and crossed my arms. "I'm not dying," I protested.
"I would rather have a doctor tell me that," he insisted.
"I think I can tell if my body is dying."
"Not in your condition."
I threw up my arms and sank into his. "You are so stubborn!" I growled.
"I'll take that as a compliment," he replied.
I grumbled until Jamie arrived with my stuff and car keys. Then I had more to grumble about when Alex carried me around to the passenger side door. Jamie followed, unlocked it, and I was set into the seat. "I can drive my own car. Besides, I don't know if I want you behind the wheel, or stick, of anything," I protested.
"I've had more practice with this," Alex replied. He buckled me tight to the seat, took the stuff from Jamie, and slipped into the driver's seat.
Jamie leaned down to my window and I rolled it down. "Now you two behave," she teased. I scowled and rolled up the window, but I could still hear her cackle through the glass as we drove away to my apartment.
Chapter 4
"You know, you don't have to do this. I can get along just fine." The speaker was me, and I was talking to Alex. We were at my apartment building and climbing the stairs, or rather, he was climbing the stairs. I was stuck in his arms again. "I'm not paralyzed. It's just a bruise," I persisted.
"Bruise or not, I'm going to call a doctor."
I snorted. "Do they even make house calls anymore?"
"If you have enough money they would make houseboat calls," he huffed. Something told me he was getting tired of carrying not-little-old-me. Maybe it was the perspiration covering his face, or the way he dragged each foot up the steps. Or maybe how he was huffing and puffing like the last dinosaur.
Whatever my hunches, he was glad to put me down at my apartment door. He couldn't hold me and open it. I snatched the keys from his hand and opened it myself. Before he could stop me I'd hobbled inside and collapsed on the couch. Mr. Smith bounded from the bedroom and, like all cats, made the situation infinitely more better when he jumped onto the couch and onto my bruised hip.
"Not right now, Smith," I told him as I picked him up and plopped him back on the floor.
Mr. Smith twitched his tail, turned his rear toward me, and marched over to Alex who stood at the end of the couch. Alex had a cellphone in his hand and was listening to it ring. He absently petted the traitorous feline when Mr. Smith jumped up on the arm of the couch and rubbed himself against the man. I was almost jealous if I hadn't been bruised and battered.