Coop

I hang up the phone in frustration and walk over to the whiteboard on my office wall that holds the schedule of all my employees for the workweek. Using the eraser, I remove Todd Crawley’s name from tomorrow’s mulch job at the public library. With a grunt of dissatisfaction, I pencil my name in to take his place. Can’t be too mad at the dude, though. He’s got a stomach bug that’s been sweeping through our little town of Newberry, Georgia, and it’s knocked out practically every one of my staff, which includes four men and two women landscape maintenance workers.

Tossing the erasable marker onto my desk, I sit back behind it and stare at my computer. I’ve got about four more hours of work on these 3-D landscape renderings for a new client I picked up in Athens. It’s a doctor who bought a house on a small lake, and he wants to redo the entire front and backyard. It’s a huge project, with man-made structures and water features. It will come in at close to seventy-five thousand dollars for the entire thing, and while the yard maintenance part of my business yields decent money, I make my really good gravy from my design projects.

My plan had been to complete these tomorrow, as I had a meeting with the client the following day. But now that I’ll be working in Todd’s place on the mulch job, it looks like I’ll be working into the night.

Oh well…wouldn’t be the first time, and as the owner of this company, I do what it takes to keep the doors open. Besides, I don’t mind getting out there and working up a sweat under the hot Georgia sun. I’ve been doing it since I was eleven years old, when I’d help my dad with the business. Back then it was just simple yard maintenance: he would cut lawns, trim hedges, and spread mulch in flower beds. But when I came on board after I graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in landscape architecture, we sort of bumped the business up a notch. Dad was certainly proud, and not a day goes by that I don’t miss him being in this office with me, or outside working with our hands in the dirt. He raised me on his own, and it’s still hard for me to believe he’s gone.

So work comes first, and I’m not all that put out by it. I nab my cellphone off my desk, prepared to call Ashley to cancel our date tonight. I know I should be more upset about it, but I’m not. She’s been getting a little clingy lately.

My jaw drops, though, because before I can even flip through my contacts for her number, the little bell above the door of Mayfield Landscape and Design jingles and Ashley herself is strutting in my door. I grit my teeth, because I do not like social visits at my office, and I can’t imagine what would be so important that she couldn’t have waited to tell me on our date that’s not actually going to happen tonight.

Mayfield Landscape has a small lobby with an empty desk because I really don’t need a full-time receptionist. To the left is my glass-walled office, and to the right, a small break room, and that’s all there is to it. I pay extra rent in this small shopping center two blocks off the main street that runs through Newberry for extra parking spaces for my trucks, trailers, and other daily landscape maintenance equipment. My heavier equipment is locked up at Goodnight House in one of the large barns on the property.

Ashley smiles at me through the glass wall and walks right in with a distinct sway to her hips. She’s wearing a pair of very short shorts today, as it’s blazing hot, and a low-cut V-neck T-shirt that reveals the soft swells of her breasts. I know those tits well, and in fact fucked them three nights ago. No doubt about it…Ashley’s hot as hell.

“Hey, sugar,” she says in her thick southern accent. It’s so thick it’s lost a lot the charm and sometimes makes me wince. I give her a pass on it, though, because that mouth is really quite talented in other things.

“What are you doing here?” I ask her, keeping my tone pleasant. Although I don’t like people showing up at my place of business, in fairness to Ashley, I’ve never told her that. Never thought I had to, as we weren’t that serious and had only been seeing each other about a month. And by seeing each other, I mean once, maybe twice a week, because my schedule is insanely hectic.

“I just was walking by on my way to get my nails done,” she says as she leans half of her shapely ass on the corner of my desk. “Thought I’d stop in for a kiss. I know I’ll be seeing you in a few hours, but I just couldn’t wait that long to get me some of your sugar, sugar.”

I wince again, because that right there…that smacks of a woman who wants to sink her nails into me deep. Swinging by my place of work for a kiss because she can’t wait two fucking hours to see me? Something like that would have me breaking this off with her, because it’s definitely signifying she’s not maintaining the boundaries we set.

Still, she’s a firecracker between the sheets, so I tell myself to exercise a little patience with her. Ashley knows the deal with me, as I spelled it out about as clear as I could when after our first date she invited me into her house and the minute the door closed, she dropped to her knees to give me a blow job. Had to say I wasn’t expecting it, but I wasn’t turning it down either. After an all-night bender where I swear she almost broke me, I had to have that “serious” conversation with her about the way I am.

I’m not a long-term type of guy, and this is well known in our little town of Newberry not only because the residents have watched me be a playboy my entire adult life, but because I’ve made it very clear to more than one lady that I’m only into casual dating.

“I’d love to keep seeing you, Ashley, but I don’t do relationships,” I had explained to her the next morning as I was leaving. And she had assured me she understood.

Regardless, I’m definitely giving her a pass on stopping by for a kiss, mainly because I have to cancel our date tonight. And since I’m a big believer in up-front communication, face-to-face works just great for me.

“Listen,” I say as I get up from my desk and come to stand in front of her. I reach out and tug on her long blond hair, which is a calculated gesture of touch but not too intimate. “I’m going to have to cancel tonight. I’ve got too much work to get done for this design project.”

As expected, Ashley forms that sweet little mouth into a pout. Her hands come to my chest and she sweeps them upward to curl around my neck. She purrs like a cat when she says, “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to get you to change your mind?”

I just stare at her, watching in fascination as she tries to work her magic on me.

“Anything at all?” she adds with enough innuendo that I get what she’s offering.

I could whip my dick out and she’d get me off with that mouth. Or I could bend her over my desk and fuck her hard. But I’m not interested, because it’s too damn easy, and without challenge comes mediocrity. Besides…I give in to her, I’ll have to go out with her tonight, and that’s something I cannot do.

Work comes first.

“Sorry, Ash,” I say as I step back from her and go back to my desk chair. “But I’m really swamped. Raincheck, okay?”

“When?” she asks as she stands up from the desk.

I sigh. I know she isn’t going to let me be complacent about our next date. “Maybe Saturday? We’ll eat wherever you want and then maybe we’ll go to Tilley’s and listen to the band.”

“Saturday?” she says, and the whine grates on my nerves. It’s subtle, but it’s there. “But that’s four days away.”

“But I’ll be able to focus all my attention on you,” I say playfully as I reach out and tug on the edge of her shorts.

This pacifies her somewhat, but I can still see the calculation in her eyes. She’s trying to figure out how I could possibly go four days without her golden pussy. Why I’m not entranced enough with her to want to spend every single night with her.

The answer is simple.

I haven’t felt that way about someone in a long fucking time, and doubt I ever will again.

Ashley finally gives me a smile, and my shoulders relax to know she’s heading out and I can get back to work. But her next words feel like a punch in the chest. “Did you see the news about Eden?”

I’m nonchalant. Casual. Don’t care. “Nope. She win another award or something?”

Ashley laughs with clear delight. “Maybe the ‘loser’ award. She found out her fiancé had been cheating on her while she was walking the red carpet for a premiere night before last. It was all on video. Some reporter showed her the photographs just seconds after she got done posing for cozy little pictures with Brad Wright.”

I don’t hear much of what she says, as a loud buzzing started in my ears when she said Eden had a fiancé. And then I distinctly heard Brad Wright.

Eden was engaged to Brad Wright? Like the biggest-action-star-in-the-world Brad Wright?

The buzzing recedes as my mood deflates.

Well, of course she was fucking engaged to him.

She’s Eden Goodnight.

I give a slight cough to clear my throat, the rest of what she said coming back to me. “He was cheating on her?”

Ashley nods and leans in closer to me to deliver the rest of her gossip. “Apparently with his costar, Lilliana Prentice. Eden made a big scene about it, and then later Brad confirmed to the press that they’d broken up, and that he was driven into his costar’s arms because Eden was terrible in bed.”

She finishes that last part with a cackle of glee, then tacks on, “Of course, I’m sure you know all about that.”

Now granted, my time with Eden was many years ago and we were young, didn’t know what we were doing half the time. But she was in no way bad in bed. In fact, I remember her to be very, very perfect. We had been wildly in love—or so we thought, as we were only eighteen—and both of us had been devastated when we broke up. It was mutual, after a very long time of trying to make it work long distance. And you know what happens with time? You move on and you leave that shit behind. It’s what I did, and it’s why I don’t really keep up to speed with Eden’s glamorous Hollywood life. I just really don’t care; not in a mean way, but there’s nothing left there to care about. She left and she never came back. I’ve only seen her once in fourteen years, and frankly, I’m just not that curious about her.

Eden was a lifetime ago, or so it seems, and besides that, I’d never talk bad about any of the women I’ve fucked, and not going to start now.

“So, I’ll see you Saturday night. Pick you up at seven?” I say in a complete change of subject. Then I tilt my head toward the door. “And you better hurry along to your nail appointment. Wouldn’t want you to be late.”

Ashley nods, disappointment filling her eyes because I won’t engage in the gossip about Eden with her. Ashley went to high school with us and she knows how serious we were. I have no clue why she’d feel threatened about that now, but I’m not going to bad-mouth Eden to make Ashley feel good about herself.

No, any bitter feelings I have for Eden will remain my own, and they have nothing to do with us breaking up. Those came much later.