Page 12 of Best Kind of Trouble
“That’s great,” he says. “Do you want to keep it organic?”
“Yes. It’s one of the main draws.”
He whistles through his teeth. “If that’s the main draw, you’ve got a problem on your hands.”
“There aren’t many fully organic breweries.”
“Because it’s BS, and most people know it. There are better ways to stand out.”
“Like what?” I turn in my seat to look at him, not entirely convinced he’s not trying to piss me off.
He gives a careless, one-shoulder shrug. “We’ll talk about it some other time. Once we come to an agreement.”
“If you don’t want to know what my plans are for the future, whatdoyou want to know?”
“Let’s talk shop when we get there.”
I want to askwhere, but something tells me he wants me to ask so he can be withholding. I’ve experienced enough turmoil for one day, so I don’t say anything. We just sit in strained silence—strained on my part, at least. He seems perfectly at ease. I look out the window at the lights we’re drifting past, trying to comb my hair with my fingers without looking like I care about my appearance.
Finally, after pulling onto the highway and then off on Tunnel Road, he parks in the lot of a brick building with no lights on inside.
He turns toward me, his profile illuminated in a way that makes me half tempted to trace my finger down the bridge of his nose—slightly off-center, suggesting it’s been broken at least once—and says, “We’re here.”
“We could have just talked in the car,” I point out.
“Not the way I prefer to do business.”
He gets out of the truck, and I do the same, following him to the front door of the building. There’s a weathered sign above the door that reads: Ring Your Bell Boxing Gym. It looks like a brisk wind would send it flying.
“Why are we at your boxing gym?” I ask in confusion.
But Liam just busies himself with unlocking the door, which unleashes another question in my mind—why does he have a key?
Inside, he flicks on the light switch by the door. The reception area smells musty and a bit like feet. There’s an ugly red-and-gold-patterned carpet on the floor and a front desk with an ancient desktop computer parked on top of it. Several award plaques hang on the wall behind the desk, and a couple of old, doughy-looking armchairs sit in the corner. They might have been white once, but now they’re slightly beige.
I shrug off the coat and hang it from a tilting coat rack.
“We can sit in those chairs,” I suggest, gesturing to them. Immediately hoping he says no, because they look like they could be the source of the smell.
He shakes his head and walks to the opening behind the desk, flicking on another fluorescent light as he goes.
“You don’t believe in open communication, do you?”
He glances over his shoulder with a smirk. “Is that important to you in an employee?”
“Yes.”
I’m surprised by how steely my voice sounds, but my former business partner’s betrayal cut deep. I’d had plans then, too, and my life had been blown apart by her dishonesty. I’d barely pulled any of my pieces back together before they were blown apart again by Jonah’s dishonesty.
So, yes, integrity is important to me.
I only wish I were better at identifying it.
My mind whirling, I follow him down a short hallway that opens into a large room lined with blue mats. A couple of boxing rings sit in the middle, and heavy bags—long, solid-looking blue cylinders—hang from the ceiling on either side of the gym. Smaller speed bags, mounted on swivels, line the back wall.
Liam pauses in front of a floor-to-ceiling rack stacked with worn-looking gloves, then surprises me by taking my hand. A shiver of awareness jolts me as he traces its shape and then carelessly drops it. He frowns and then pulls a pair of gloves off the bottom shelf.
“Here,” he says, trying to hand them to me. “These are probably still too big, but they’ll have to do.”
