Page 20 of Nine-Tenths

"You'll need my contact information." He hands me his phone. "Put yourself in, and I'll text you."

Not a date, not a date, not a date, I scream at myself as I poke at the screen one-handed. "So, um, should I EFT you for my part of the ride or…?"

Dav snorts like I've made the funniest joke he's ever heard.

"Good night, Colin," he says gently.

"Good night, Dav," I reply, hand him back his phone, and shut the door.

My phone buzzes while I'm toeing off my chucks and kicking them into the front closet. The text reads:Take care. I'm sorry.

I save him as Snacc-Dragon.

What?

Don't judge me.

In the cold light of day, my head unclouded by pain-meds, it's a stupid idea. Hadi disagrees.

"I'll take his free labor," she says over speakerphone. I haven't told her about the part where Dav thinks he could roast with his breath, just the java-slinging. "How long will you be armless?"

"I haven't lost a limb." I'm laying in the bathtub, puncture wounds and gauze wrapped in cellophane. My phone is on the closed toilet seat, and I've tied my sling to the towel rack so my arm is supported. "I just can't do any heavy lifting or stretching, anything that'll rip the stitches."

Hadi makes a grump noise that reminds me, sharply, of Dav’s annoyed growl-purr. That gets me thinking of Dav's smile, Dav's mouth, the light dusting of ginger beard that had appeared on his cheeks at the end of the day…

Not a date!

"How long will that be?" The way Hadi says it makes it clear she's repeating herself.

I blink back down to Earth. "Uh, two weeks? Probably?"

She grumbles again and I stare at the cracked seafoam-blue tiles to keep my mind on the conversation. There's a prescription for pills balled up in my jeans pocket. I should fill it. Ugh, butthat means putting on clothes and shuffling to the pharmacy, and that's all the way on the other side of downtown, andugh.

"I guess that's not so bad. We can't open until it's been cleaned, and we've been inspected by the city. The rest of the kitchen is fine, but that whole wall needs to be taken back to the studs. Thank god for oldey-timey architecture, because they’re iron and not wood."

I wince. I haven't admitted it's my fault the scones got scorched in the first place. Maybe in this situation it's best not to fess up. The real damage came from what happened after, anyway.

"How long will that take?" No Beanevolence means no pay cheque.

"Not as long as it could have," Hadi says, and I detect a note of grudging respect. "Your boy must be as rich as they say dragons are, ‘cause I've never had contractors hop to it so fast."

"He's notmine."

"Ten bucks says he'd like to be."

Not you too. First I'm being bullied by my own hopeless romantic tendencies, and now my boss.

"How long?" I growl.

"About a week for everything but the bean roaster. That could be a few months."

"Monthswith the old manual?" I blow out a breath. "Gross."

"A few months of being cooped up in the kitchen with your dragon," Hadi says, warming up to the fantasy of some sort of clandestine affair between us.

"Stoppit," I grump. "I have learned my lesson."

"Oh? And what lessons are those?"

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