Page 13 of Close to Heaven

Five

Avery had been working there for a week, and he didn’t have one bad thing to say about her. Dammit. He was hoping she’d make some colossal mistake that would give him an excuse to let her go. On the contrary, she showed up early every day and made the coffee before he’d even arrived. It was maddening.

Not only that, but Mary raved about the woman. One day, when Avery had stepped outside to call her dad, Mary had taken the opportunity to tell him what a stellar job she’d been doing.

“She picks things up really fast, and she pays attention to every detail. She’s a keeper, that one,” Mary had said with a smile.

Little did Mary know he was trying to find reasons not to keep Avery. So far, the only downside of having her there was that she attracted too much attention from the men on the property, including his rascal brother.

“Man, that new girl in the office is smokin’,” one of the landscapers said one day. “Would you happen to know if she’s single?”

“I think she’s taken,” Jax said, though he had no idea if that was true. He thought he recalled Dakota mentioning a boyfriend, but that had been quite some time ago. If Avery was taken, she’d given no indication of it. Still, he didn’t want the landscapers sniffing around her or any of his employees.

In the meantime, Cody kept bringing her up too. “If only she wasn’t Dakota’s friend,” he said one afternoon at lunch.

“Even if she wasn’t, she’s our employee, and she’d still be off limits,” Jax said a bit too harshly.

“You don’t have to keep reminding me,” Cody huffed.

Jax raised his brows at him.

“It only happened one time, I swear,” Cody insisted, referring to an incident that occurred a year ago.

He’d taken a liking to one of the maids who’d cleaned the cabins, and Jax had caught them in a compromising position one afternoon. The maid had never shown her face there again, but he couldn’t say the same about Cody. It was impossible to fire his brother since he owned an equal share of the company and he was family. Jax had thought about what their dad might have done and settled on giving Cody a firm talking to. As far as he knew, Cody hadn’t repeated that mistake, but he seemed a bit too enamored with Avery for Jax’s liking.

“I think she has a boyfriend,” Jax added, just so Cody wouldn’t mistakenly think he was interested in her.

“Says who?”

“Dakota mentioned it one time.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. The good ones are always taken,” Cody lamented.

Jax didn’t feel the least bit sorry for his younger brother since he got more action than all three siblings combined!

At five o’clock on Friday afternoon, Jax was still in his office, reviewing some monthly reports he’d run, when Mary poked her head in. “Bye, Jax. Have a good weekend.”

“You too, Mary. Enjoy your grandkids.”

“Oh, I will!”

He continued to work on the reports for a while, though he was having trouble concentrating. After sitting behind the desk too long, he became restless, and the only thing that would cure him was hiking. Finally, he shut down his laptop, pocketed his phone, and strolled out the door.

He’d made it partway down the hall when Avery’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

“I thought you said you were coming this weekend.”

She was sitting behind the reception desk with her back to him and her cell phone pressed to her ear. He should have either gone back to his office and waited for her to finish or hurried out the front door. For some crazy reason, he did neither. He could tell from her tone of voice that she was upset, and he wondered who she was talking to.

“Trevor, we talked about this… You know why I can’t come home.”

So there is a boyfriend, Jax thought, feeling an odd mix of relief and disappointment. At least he hadn’t lied to the landscaper or Cody, so there was that.

“I’m tired of arguing about this. If you want to see me, you know where to find me!” She pulled the phone away from her ear and swiveled her chair around.

Jax didn’t react quickly enough, and she caught him standing there. “Sorry,” he said as he approached the front desk.

“I didn’t know you were still here.”