Page 7 of Henhouse
“You’re staring,” he said, strained amusement trickling off his tongue.
Her need to quell her embarrassment won out over her tendency to be shy and the words rushed out, tasting sharp. “Just waiting for you to explain all the notes you’re making,” she said without missing a beat as she ushered him back into the storefront. She watched him take a few measured breaths as though trying to remember to be personable.
“Well, for one thing, you’re down about two fire extinguishers. You need one at each of the three exits. You want people fighting the fire on their way out, not running into an inferno to try to find an extinguisher. Also, there are a ton of boxes blocking the egress that need to be cleaned up, moved, or unpacked elsewhere. Your emergency lights only lasted about two minutes, and they need a burn time of ninety minutes to meet code, so those need to be upgraded immediately.”
“Okay, so we have essentially failed your inspection?”
“Yes. And youwerestaring,” he challenged. Effie couldn’t tell if he was angry or flattered.Was he flirting or did she imagine the amusement?
The risk of humiliation was too great, so she said, “Just trying to remember your face so when I tell the sweet old woman that owns the store that we failed, she knows who to look out for.”
“You gonna send her to egg my house or something?” Flattered and flirting felt a little more likely, which left Effie feeling untethered.
“No?” He chuckled, and Effie found herself considering breaking all of her old habits and programming to ask him out on a date. Surliness be damned.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Why?” Effie said with a huff.
“You just like being obstinate, don’t you?” His agitation resurfaced a bit. “I need to note who went through the inspection with me.”
“Oh . . . Effie Thatcher.”
“Alright, Effie. You have a lot of work to do before I come back,” he mused.
“A lot, a lot?”
“Unless you’d like to pawn it off on the sweet old lady that owns the place,” he replied, that bite and something like disapproval slathering his words.
“I wouldn’t pawn it off,” she argued. He gave Effie a once-over, looking for what, she couldn’t be sure. Whatever he saw didn’t convince him.
“Sure you wouldn’t,” he said, raising his brows with such condescension that Effie thought hard about punching him in the face. If Effie did such things. But she was tamer than that.
They rejoined Basil at the counter as he finished filling out the form. Effie leaned over, looking at the clipboard. At the top of the page was a space for the safety inspector’s name. Beside it was written Theodore Tillerman. “Theodore?” Effie mused, and her face immediately scrunched.
“Wow, is my name so bad?” Theodore asked. Effie blanched,unaware that she’d made a face.
“No, sorry.”
Theodore puzzled but brushed past it. He tore off a slip from the bottom of his clipboard and handed it to Effie. “I’ll have to come make sure you cleared that egress and have at least scheduled the work for the emergency lights by next Thursday. I’ll go grab you a couple of fire extinguishers from my van.”
Effie nodded, taking the paper. Theodore sauntered outside, and Basil pounced on her. “My God, he’s gorgeous.”
“I guess,” Effie said before taking a sip from her water bottle that she kept tucked on the shelf beneath the register. She swished the water around before swallowing, like that would help.
“You guess? Girl, I have never seen you blush.” Effie blushed plenty, prone to embarrassment and shrinking-violet syndrome as she was, but she knew what he meant. She didn’t blushlike this.
“I’m not blushing,” Effie spat, and Basil took a full step back.
“My mistake.” Basil lifted his hands in surrender. “But you know he’s fine. And your babies would be knockouts.”
Effie rolled her eyes and went back to the list of tasks they needed to accomplish to make code, her ire building over the not-at-all-creative work ahead and Theodore’s implication that she wouldn’t be up to the job.
Theodore approached on near-silent feet, setting the extinguishers on the counter. He handed Effie an envelope. “Invoice for your boss.” Effie nodded. “See you in a week and a half, Effie Thatcher.”
He was irritating and dour, but she could be polite. “See you then, Theodore,” Effie said with as much gusto as she could summon, but her nose scrunched all the way up as she scraped her tongue on herteeth in near disgust.
“Okay, that was a really rude face,” Theodore said.
