Chapter Twenty

“Aggie?” a guy’s voice said.

Aggie stopped singing and jumped, as much as one can jump while in a sea of squishy plastic sacks, and lost her balance. This time she went backward, landing ass down in the array of bulging bags.

Swiping her hair out of her face, she glanced up into the bright sunlight. Toward the direction in which the voice came. When she saw who the voice belonged to, she was engulfed with true humiliation.

“What?” The word came out more a dog growl than a human sound. Which any sane person would deem appropriate, since it wasn’t the janitor whose eyes she met. That left only one other soul who knew where to find her.

Her horrible, horrible boss man stared, with what looked suspiciously like disgust, from over the safe edge of the bin.

“What in the hell are you doing in there?” he snapped. “Didn’t you get my text?”

“What text?” she bit out.

He leaned across and down a little and whispered, “To abort the mission.”

“Obviously not!”

“Well, I sent it. Get out of there.”

She tapped the fingers of her right hand on a discarded Captain Crunch cereal box. She’d eaten a lot of generic Captain Crunch growing up. “I haven’t found what you sent me to find.”

He cleared his throat. “Funny story. I found the page. I hadn’t actually thrown it away.” In what looked like an effort to not touch his body to the bin, he held out a helping hand.

A loud ringing filled her ears, and a red haze blurred her vision. “I’m ass-high in trash for no reason?” She struggled into a standing position. It was a damn good thing for him she hadn’t brought a gun with her to this trash party.

He wiggled his fingers at her, as if in a hurry to get her out of the trash and himself back into his office before someone saw them. “To be fair—”

“Fair.” Was he really about to try and justify his part in her current predicament? “If I were you, I’d choose my next words exceptionally carefully.” She reached out to grab his hand and got nothing but air. On purpose. The last thing she wanted was for him to try dead-lifting her ass out of this bin. He could give it his best shot, with all those muscles that bulged under his dress shirts, and she’d still not leave the ground.

“Come closer,” he ordered. “We can talk about the events leading up to this later.”

“Did you know there are five million trillion-trillion germs on our planet? That’s a five with thirty zeroes after it.”

“Can’t say I knew that.”

“Well, there are. And for every step I take forward, I’m introduced to at least a gazillion of those germs.”

He sighed. “Aggie, move closer. I can’t reach any farther and maintain my balance.”

“Call the fire department, then. Ask them to send a rescue unit. Preferably the one with the crew who modeled for this year’s sexy firemen calendar. I’m sure one of them would get dirty to save a damsel in distress.”

He shrugged off his suit jacket and removed his tie. “Damsel, huh?” He used his charming voice.

“Fuck you.”

“Fair enough.” He bent farther over the edge of the dumpster, allowing his white shirt to touch the green metal and, this time, reached out with both hands. “Why not a princess?”

“When you’re a princess, your options are limited. Not so when you’re a damsel. Any hunk can save a damsel. A princess has to wait for a prince.”

He wiggled his fingers as if enticing a one-year-old to waddle toward him. “This is your lucky day, damsel in distress. I’m the hunk who came to save you.”

She didn’t budge. “The hunk who puts a damsel in danger can’t be the same hunk who saves her.” Dick prick. Dick prick. Dick prick.

“Why not?”

“Fairytales don’t work that way.”

“Damn it, move closer. Grab my hands.” His boss man voice came out to play.

She shuffled a few steps and reached for his hands, but they still didn’t connect. Again, that was by design on her part. “What’s the hurry? Is Richard waiting for you to get back to your meeting? Did you tell him what you asked me to do?”

“He left about five minutes ago.”

“So you waited until your meeting ended and he’d cleared the building before checking to see if I received your text?”

Max huffed out a sigh as if he stood in trash instead of her. “I don’t blame you for being mad. I’d be mad, too. But right now, we need to get you out of there.”

“Mad doesn’t even begin to describe what I’m feeling.” Humiliated. Hurt. Scared. Stupid.

“Be resourceful. Stack some of those larger bags on top of each other and then climb up on them.”

She screwed up her hands into balls, causing her nails to dig into her palms. “That’s a bloody brilliant idea.” The guy was practically begging for payback. She stacked four bags on top of one another and climbed her way up. Once she had her balance, she placed her hands in his.

If there was one thing Aggie Johansson was good at, it was payback.

When he relaxed and smiled, she yanked. Not a light yank. A yank of a woman trying to get her vibrator away from a Rottweiler.

She didn’t need a fucking hunk to come to her rescue. This damsel would save herself.

…

Max realized her intent at the same moment she yanked him down. The option to save himself from the fall didn’t exist. For such a slender thing, Aggie possessed the strength of a body-building demon.

Part of him, a small part, admired her tenacity. No wonder she hadn’t lasted longer than two weeks at any job until this point. She didn’t understand what to do with authority or an apology. He had apologized…right?

The majority of his parts—including the part that gagged at the sight of maggots—stared in horror at the rotting trash gleefully awaiting his magnificent belly flop.

“Agg—” Her name cut off at impact, which didn’t hurt. Unless you count the Alaska-sized bruise to his ego.

“Get off me.” She pushed at his shoulders, and in a late attempt not to hurt her with his weight, he rolled. They struggled to their feet, grabbing at each other’s arms for balance, resulting in sways and wobbles.

Following their final wobble, their gazes crashed into each other like a high-speed car wreck. Hers held a mixture of revenge and, well…not fucking remorse. Oh, hell no. Aggie, who should have been preparing to grovel, apparently didn’t suffer from second-guessing regrets. Instead, she held her sides as if to hold back a laugh.

“You’re fired—”

Sure enough, laughter burst from her clenched lips, flooding the dumpster with its lyrical hysterics. “I know. I know. Oh. My. God.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she rubbed at them, leaving streaks of black mascara in their place.

Unbelievable. She really wasn’t sorry. Damn it. Even if he was an asshole, he was still her boss. Maybe his gaze wasn’t telling her how much trouble she’d landed herself into with this prank. He tried to summon self-righteous indignation. “If you were pissed, you could have just sued me for tasks unbecoming an assistant. I could have even recommended a good lawyer to you.” He was certainly not going to have to pay for drinks tonight.

“I prefer to leave the courts out of the matters of my anger when dealing with my colossally privileged boss.”

Without warning, laughter bubbled up inside of him and spilled from his lips. After a few seconds, she joined him.

For several minutes, raucous, childhood-like laughter, the kind you got when absolutely nothing was funny, but you and your best friend couldn’t stop laughing no matter how many warning frowns your teacher sent your way, bounced off the walls of the trash bin.

The kind of laughter between a guy and the girl who had stolen his heart. Son of a bitch.

She reached up and pulled a piece of lettuce out of his hair. “I’m pretty sure you will have to unfire me or face the wrath of Meemaw and Ms. Grace.”

A leftover chuckle slipped out of his lips. Unfiring her seemed to be what he did best. How many times did that make now? Twice? Three times? He imagined the scene with him explaining to the grandmothers why he’d fired her.

“Fine.” God help him. He’d bet his right nut this wouldn’t be the last time. “You’re unfired.”

“And you’ll double my salary?”

He nodded. It was the least he could do. “But only if—”

“You don’t get to add a but. I’m—”

“Hey, you two, I’ve got work that ain’t gonna do itself. If you want my help, shake a leg.”

They looked up.

The janitor, leaning over the edge, held out a gloved hand. “You know,” he said, his gaze on Max, “there are finer places to meet a woman.” And then he glanced at Aggie. “And you…you can do better.”

A sharp elbow to his ribs drew a grunt from Max. Aggie smirked at him and then shined a sweet-as-syrup smile up at the janitor. “Aren’t you a peach for noticing.”

Once again, Aggie Johansson had gotten the last word.