Page 43 of Boss Me

“It’s what you like, right? With skim milk?”

“How did you know? I bring you coffee. It’s, like, almost in my job description.”

He scuffed his high-tech sneaker in the sand. “I pay attention.”

“Oh, right.” Of course. One of the secrets to Cooper Fallon’s success was his attention to details. He had to have a million of them flitting through his genius brain at that very second. “Thank you.”

“You have, ah, something on your shirt.”

I looked down. Shit, there was a drizzle of syrup over my right pec. I couldn’t even eat my feelings without looking like a toddler. I held out the bag. “I got these for you.”

“For me.” His lips twitched like he wanted to smile. He took the bag and peered inside. “Buñuelos! These are my fav—” He trailed off when he looked up at me, and his eyes went hot like they did when I called him “Mr. Fallon” in the office. “You have some miel—some syrup—on your lip.”

When I licked the corner of my mouth and found the sweetness there, my face blazed. It wasn’t all from the sun creeping up into the sky. Some of it was from those blue laser beams of his eyes that followed the path of my tongue.

I rolled my lips between my teeth. If I didn’t say anything, didn’t eat or drink anything, maybe I could salvage my dignity.

He cleared his throat. “I have somewhere I need to be. You should try out the spa here today. Or relax by the pool.” He nodded toward the resort.

I narrowed my eyes. This again? “You can’t get rid of me with your hot-stone massage temptation. I go where you go. Until you go home.”

He didn’t look angry. He looked almost…pleased? Though his gaze cooled a little. “All right, then. Come on.” Without waiting for me to respond, he turned and headed back toward the resort.

By the time we made it to the jobsite, the buñuelos were gone, and I had a stitch in my side from Cooper’s brisk pace.

The building stood in a cleared space with pickup trucks parked haphazardly around it. It was coated in that plastic wrapping I’d seen on additions to homes in my parents’ neighborhood. The roof was bare plywood. A few brave souls in orange hard hats stood on the roof, and a machine on the ground lifted materials up to them. God, it was like my favorite Village People fantasy come to life.

“What are they building?” I asked.

“This will be the new community center. The hurricane damaged the old one.” Cooper set one hand on his hip and shielded his eyes with the other to peer up at the roof.

“¡Oye!” Cooper shouted to the men on the roof. In Spanish, he asked something about metal.

The guys nodded, and one of them shouted something in response and pointed at the materials slowly rising toward them.

Cooper strode to the nearest ladder and was a quarter of the way up before I realized what was happening and scurried to his side. Coco followed me, barking his head off. He might be as worried as I was, or else he thought chasing Cooper was a fun game.

The guys on the roof shook their heads, and the guy who’d talked to Cooper waved his palms in a clear don’t-come-up-here signal. One guy wearing jeans and a white hard hat reached the ladder at the same time I did.

“¡Lito, no!”

Cooper stopped and looked down. He shot off a string of Spanish and waved up at the roof. White-hat guy planted his hands on his hips, shook his head, and responded. My high-school class hadn’t given me any building vocabulary, but I caught the word peligroso—dangerous. I agreed.

The guy tapped his helmet and pointed at Cooper’s hands. Cooper rolled his eyes and then gestured at the man’s hat. He shook his head, his expression serious except for the twitch at the corner of his mouth.

The guy in the white hat, apparently a supervisor, shouted at another guy on the ground who brought over a pair of work gloves and a couple of metal trowels. With a full-body sigh, Cooper trudged back down the rungs of the ladder until he stood at my side. Reluctantly, he took the trowels and the gloves. The supervisor didn’t move until Cooper tugged on the gloves and waved them in a “happy now?” gesture.

He squinted at Cooper and then pointed him to the side of the building, where a couple of guys tacked metal mesh over the plastic. Then he turned and walked away.

“What was that about?” I asked.

Cooper gazed up at the guys on the roof like he wished he had wings. “I was the one who recommended the metal roofing. It’s more resistant to strong winds. And I wanted to help install it. But”—his cheeks went red—“the foreman won’t let me. He says he doesn’t have any spare hard hats, and my brain and my hands are too valuable to risk in a fall. Jesus Christ! I worked in construction when he was learning his ABCs!”

“Hey, now.” I rubbed his biceps. “It’s not a reflection on your ability. But you’re more valuable here on the ground. Any schmo can install roofing. You’re the only one who can run Synergy and keep writing checks to support the rebuilding here.”

He didn’t deny it. Still, he stared hard at the roofers as they rolled a dark material onto the roof and tacked it down with nail guns.

“Did you really work construction?”

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