Chapter 37

Millie

“I’m sorry, love,” Brent said when I walked in the door. For a second, my heart sank. He knows , I thought furiously, even though I knew he couldn’t. He knows I’m pregnant too. “There’s been a change in uniform and we’ve been sent a hundred boxes all at the same time.” He jerked his head towards the hall, obviously wanting for me to follow him. “The boys are all in compulsory training today, otherwise I’d get them to sort this out.”

This was a lot. I stared at the boxes packed sky high against the wall beside an open store room.

“Whoa…” I turned around abruptly when a very muscular guy tore his shirt up and over his head, replacing it with one taken from an open box.

“Enough of that!” I thought Brent was snapping at me, but nope, it was the other guy. “You can get your new uniforms once they’ve all been counted off and the shelves have been stacked.”

This was more like what I was used to. Stockists dropping slabs of beer or boxes of food for the kitchens during the middle of our peak times was a common thing at the pub, until I put the fear of God into the drivers. They picked far more convenient times after that.

“So you want to check inventory, remove the existing uniforms, box them up, and then sort the new ones by size on the shelves?” I asked.

“That’s it.” Brent’s smile, it was the exact same one Dad wore when I showed some initiative. “I can’t ask Judy?—”

“It’s OK.” I grabbed the small pocket knife I kept on my keys and pulled open the blade. “I’ve got this. Inventory control was a big part of working at the pub.”

“The boys will come by in the breaks and help move the heavier stuff,” Brent promised. “Don’t go hurting yourself.”

But he didn’t know. I’d shifted slabs of beer with the best of them. In some ways, this was perfect. Keeping myself moving, it’d keep my mind off of what I needed to do tonight. With that decided, I went to pick up the nearest box. A stab of pain in my knee made clear I’d need to be careful. I’d worn pants to hide my injuries, but my butt was bruised black and blue and my knee was still weepy and raw. I shoved that aside along with everything else inside my head and went to work.

Sometimes I let myself get a little too caught up in a job.

As I started moving old uniforms off the shelves, I saw the state of them. Dusty, a few dead silverfish in the corners, I knew I couldn’t go putting in new, clean uniforms on top of that. After a search in a few rooms, I found a cloth and a bucket, filling it with soapy water, and that’s when I found a rhythm. Remove the old uniforms, count them and box them up, then label each one before closing the box and pushing it out into the hallway. Clean that shelf and then while it was drying, I moved onto the next one. Over and over I worked, caught up in my own little bubble, until he had to pop it.

“Got one of them for me?”

My head jerked up and I blinked owlishly, the shirt I was in the process of folding up hanging in my hands. Dave stood, leaning against the doorframe, looking me up and down.

I’m sure some women would’ve found him attractive. He was tall, muscular, but so were all the other guys, and they didn’t wear a sleazy smile like it was some kind of accessory. They also didn’t mentally undress me the longer they stared my way.

“Size small?” I said, reaching into a box and grabbing a shirt blindly before throwing it his way.

For just a second, his smile faded as he was forced to grab it. His jaw flexed as he checked the size, his grin returning when he saw what size it actually was.

“Large, actually.”

“Haven’t noticed.”

If this was my pub, I’d be giving him a talking to right now, making clear he could either improve his attitude or get the fuck out. But it wasn’t. I didn’t often miss being the person in charge, but I did right now. Focus on the job at hand , I told myself, he’ll get the message.

He did in a way.

“Maybe you’ll notice now.”

I shouldn’t have looked up. Blokes did this shit to me all the damn time, like they were little boys wanting Mummy’s attention. The only solution was to either fix them with a withering stare or ignore them completely. Instead, I was treated to the sight of him ripping his shirt up and over his head, putting his entire chest and all of his tattoos on display.

I couldn’t help but compare. Knox was broader, Noah leaner, and Charlie had that golden tan, whereas Dave was just showing off. Desperate, that’s what he was giving, so I just turned back to the box I was working on.

“Don’t wanna look, huh? What if I got a couple of my mates to strip down at the same time.” And that was the problem with ignoring them. Guys like Dave, they always found a way to force you to give them the attention they craved. His dark eyes glittered as he watched me frown, one eyebrow jerking up as I gripped the handle of my pocket knife tighter, but as my mind raced, trying to come up with a snappy comeback, he continued. “Think I didn’t know about that?” His eyes felt like intrusive hands, running all over my body. “Figured that’s how you got the job. Did you do Brent?—?”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Knox’s voice was a lifeline thrown out when you were drowning, and I grabbed onto his quiet outrage with both hands.

“I think he was trying to flirt?” Scorn dripped from my tongue. “I mean that’s what it sounded like, kind of, though I have no idea how he thought that line would work with any woman, but hey.” I shrugged nonchalantly. “Ten points for trying, right?”

Dave was the one scowling right now.

“I just came to grab a new shirt.”

“Looks like you have one.” Knox snatched the old one from Dave’s grip and tossed it into a box of old uniforms. No freaking way I was folding that one up. “So head back to the training room.”

“Brent wanted some of us to give Millie a hand,” Dave spluttered.

“Brent asked me to do the job.”

If this was Knox being professional, I was down for it. He stepped into Dave’s space, getting right up into the other man’s face until he was either forced to back down or make an issue of it. I let out a long breath when Dave made a sound of disgust then shoved himself away, to go and slither back into the hole he came from.

“You OK?”

The woman who ended up becoming Mrs. Knox was going to be very lucky indeed. Not only was he packing Cockzilla in his pants, but he was all growly and protective too? Right then, I wished that he was the daddy. He wouldn’t fight to keep me safe, but knowing that my little girl or boy had him to care for them? Yeah, I wanted that real bad. Instead, I smiled politely. Professional, I reminded myself, keep it professional.

“I’m fine. If I got the vapours the moment a guy flashed his tits at me, I’d be like one of those fainting goats.” I brandished my knife. “I also have three brothers who wouldn’t let me go outside the house without at least some kind of weapon on me.”

His lips twitched, ready to smile, but he pursed them instead, shaking his head slowly.

“So, you wanted to talk?”

I’d burned through fear, disbelief, denial, and was now in a state of flat acceptance. The plan with Noah was a good one, but I knew that the minute I dropped the news on him, he’d report back to the others. That wasn’t fair. I’d unblocked Charlie’s number this morning and sent him a message, inviting him to dinner and asking him to pass a message along to Knox.

“Dinner,” I said brightly, like this was all perfectly natural. “My shout, at Piccolino’s, that cafe?—”

“By the beach.” He nodded. “I know it. I walk my dog past it all the time.”

Which meant I might have stumbled into him one afternoon as I went for a walk. What would’ve that been like? For a second, I let myself fantasise, about him jogging past, looking like a total specimen, a cute dog in tow. Maybe I’d get tangled up in the dog lead, tripping over and he’d be forced to grab me lest I fall…

Instead, I got drunk and banged him and his mates.

I let my eyes drop to those full lips for just a second, smiling when I remembered exactly how they felt, before meeting his eyes. They were grey, the colour of ash, but it looked like some hidden embers were stirring to life the longer I stared.

“You’re not paying for my dinner,” he insisted.

“But you’ll come?” I didn’t have it in me to quibble about who was paying for what. Just a small nod, that’s all I got, but I took it as a win. “OK, we’ll meet at the cafe at six?—”

“I’ll pick you up.”

My hand went to my hip as I looked him up and down.

“Professional, remember? I can drive myself.”

I’d need to so I could make a quick getaway once I’d dropped the news on them.

“Wear something like that red dress again and I’ll pay for everyone’s dinner,” he said.

Was he…? Knox was so damn closed off I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me or flirting. Flirting, I decided, which made no bloody sense after the conversation we’d had days ago, but the wink he shot me as he walked out couldn’t be construed as anything else. I was still standing there, mouth hanging open, when Judy appeared.

“How’s it going?” She surveyed the mess. “Sorry for sticking you with this job, but my doctors have said no heavy lifting.”

“Don’t be.” I wove my way between the boxes. “So it's lunchtime. What’s the baby craving today?”

“Chinese food?” she said with an impish grin.

“Well, let's get you all the MSG.” I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “My shout.”

“OK, that was a mistake,” I groaned, rubbing my stomach as we waddled back into the station half an hour later. “Now all I want to do is sleep on the office couch.”

“Now I’m carrying triplets,” Judy said. “I’ve got a food baby to go along with my actual babies.” We walked up to the store room and I glanced at the door, surprised to see it was ajar. I was fairly sure I’d shut it behind me, but maybe some of the men had gone in at lunchtime to grab more shirts. “I’ll send some of the guys down to help. This time of the day, they’ll be itching to get out of training.” She glanced at the boxes. “They can move all the old uniforms out to the shed at least.”

“That would be awesome. Just gotta push through to five o’clock, right?”

“Five o’clock,” she agreed and then went waddling down the hallway.

I pushed open the door, surveying the mess as I mentally kicked my own butt. If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, that was my parent’s rule, but right now I wanted to replace that motto with near enough is good enough. Instead, I bent down to open the next box, only to feel hands going to my waist.

I was an idiot.

For a split second, I thought it was one of my guys having snuck into the room to catch me unawares. Maybe pull me back against him, making clear how hard I had him, even after that night. But as soon as I felt those fingers dig in, I knew. My elbow was jerking backwards, slamming into his ribs, and a satisfying oof had him releasing his hold on me. I whirled around, slapping my hands on my pockets, looking for my pen knife, when Dave dangled it in front of me.

“Looking for something?”

There were sleazy guys and dangerous guys. In my old job, it paid to know which one was which. This was the moment when Dave switched from one to the other. There was a dark light in his eyes, one that flared brighter the longer he stared at me. His smile made me feel nauseous because he knew he was scaring me and that didn’t put him off for a second. This wasn’t a prank; this was an attack.

“You think you’ve got everyone fooled,” he told me in a low snarl of a voice. “That you’re just here to get a pay cheque, but I know.”

“Know what?”

I meant that to be strong, confident, but my words came out a little shaky. Dave smiled.

“That you’re a little slut.”

There was nothing, and I mean nothing, I hated more than that word. The Stafford was a pub frequented by men who worked hard and played hard, so it was bandied around often enough. The weird dichotomy that they were supposed to be having as much sex as possible with women because that made them manly but that women were used up, played out, if they actually fell for their bullshit, was all embedded in those four letters. That’s what had my spine snapping straight, all doubt, all uncertainty, leaving my body.

“Then I’m not worth your time, am I?” I jabbed my finger at the door. “Get the fuck out before I go and have a long and detailed conversation with Brent about the fire service’s sexual harassment policy.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say. His smile faded so fast it was as if it was never there. His brows drew down as he prowled closer.

“Why the hell are you here?” he growled. “You banged the three of them, then you accepted a job at the station?” I swallowed, now able to see the disconnect for him. Dave had become more than just a sleazy guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You’re a badge bunny; I just fucking know it.”

This is why I always kept a baseball bat behind the bar at the pub, I thought, as he approached.

“You don’t want to do this…” I stammered out, my mind shrieking for me to do something, anything, because Dave was escalating fast. “That’s not why I’m here.”

“That pretty little mouth is gonna taste so good.”

He wasn’t seeing me, hearing me, instead, a weird kind of blindness setting up. In his mind, some scenario was playing out and he couldn’t be redirected. I backed up, my legs hitting boxes as I blindly found a path.

“I don’t want that. I don’t want you.”

“That’s what all you bitches say.” He stopped where he was, which wasn’t where I needed him. I eyed the gap between the boxes, remembering the Gates of Thermopylae from Ancient History in Year 11. “You don’t mean it. You say no?—”

“And we mean it.”

The stages of grieving are strange ones, because that’s what I was doing, I realised. Letting go of the Millie I had been, because she’d burned away, just like The Stafford had.

Well, most of her.

My brothers had taught me more than just how to change a tyre. They knew all too well what men could be like, and they wouldn’t allow me to walk around without knowing how to defend myself. I’d lured Dave back until he was wedged between two boxes, then stepped in, wincing in anticipation, before driving my sore knee right into his balls. At the sound of his groan, I slammed the heel of my palm into his nose.

He went down like a sack of shit.

“I’m not here to get spit roasted in the appliance bay, you fucking dickhead.” I was pissed, so I was saying things I had no business talking about. “I never intended to come back here at all, but my parents were going to stage an intervention and force me to move back home.” Shut up , I thought dimly, shut the hell up . My mouth was too busy writing cheques my body couldn’t cash. “I’m pregnant.”

I never intended to say a damn thing about it while working in this place. The plan was to keep my mouth shut until I was showing too much for people not to notice, then work out what to do next. The next step, I could only focus on the next step. Dave took that from me, and right now I hated him for it.

“I’m fucking pregnant, and so I have absolutely no interest in your pathetic dick.”

Of course that was the moment the door creaked open and Charlie stepped into the gap looking way too pale.

“Charlie…”

I’d extended the invitation to him about dinner as well but hadn’t heard back yet, which was perhaps what brought him by.

It wasn’t now.

His jaw locked tight, his eyes blazing molten blue as he stepped forward, grabbing a still moaning Dave and dragging him out of the office.

Well, fuck.