Giving It All by Arianna Hart

to do. She doesn’t do bored well and he didn’t want to cut her hours. Anyway, she told me after Greg let her go she still had access to the customer-contact email for a few weeks, and one of the clients in Athens wrote a long letter of complaint about the poor quality of the parts and the terrible customer service he got when he called the store.”
    “Yet Greg told me he was going to take the store places. Looks like the only place he’s taking it is down the shitter, pardon my language.”
    “I’ve heard the word shitter before, honest. I may have even used it or a derivative of it myself.”
    “Fine, just don’t tell my momma”
    “My lips are sealed.” She mimed turning a key in a lock over her lips.
    “I wanted to talk to you when we got back, but you got that phone call and tore out like—” He cut himself off.
    “Like my ass was on fire? Grant, I’m not some sheltered Southern belle. I don’t get offended if you swear around me. You don’t have to censor your every word.”
    “I’ll take that under consideration. I wanted to ask you to go over the accounts with me and help me get a feel for the business. I know car parts, but I don’t know anything about inventory or taxes or any of that. I tried to look at some of the papers my dad had in his office and I realized I was in way over my head.”
    “I would think most of what he has at home would be copies of his applications and permits, everything else should be at the store. Your dad insisted on keeping a paper copy of everything even though I had it all on the computer.”
    “Sounds like Dad. So if I were able to get you into the store, you’d be able to figure out what was important and gather the intel?”
    “Absolutely.” Ellie didn’t know that anything she’d ever done in her life could be classified as gathering intel, but it sounded cool.
    “Great. Can we take your car? I don’t want my mom knowing about this, and if her car goes missing in the middle of the night she might panic.”
    She almost spewed the wine she’d just sipped. “Wait, what? Middle of the night? Where are we going in the middle of the night and why?”
    “We’re going to the store and getting everything we can without Greg knowing about it so he can’t destroy evidence.”
    “Evidence?”
    “You were dead on in your estimation that Greg is up to something. He was not happy I was back in the picture.”
    “I thought he was just being a lazy ass. I didn’t think he was up to anything illegal.”
    “Maybe he’s not, but whatever he’s doing, it’s not on the up-and-up and I want to know what it is before it bites me in the ass.”
    “I see.”
    “Are you in or out? I can get in and download everything, but it’ll take me a lot longer without a partner, and I might not get the important stuff.”
    Ellie had to think about this a second. Grant had gone from asking her to explain inventory management to breaking and entering in the same conversation. But was it really breaking and entering if he was an owner also? Didn’t he have every right to check out his business interests?
    “Do you have keys to the store?”
    “Yup, Mom gave them to me today and I never gave them back.”
    “Okay, I’m in. When do you want to do this?”
    “Meet me at your car at zero one hundred.”
    “Great. I’m parked around back, under the balcony.”
    “Wear dark clothes. Something like you had on this morning should do.”
    “Oh, so I’ll blend in. I get it.”
    “That and those pants you wore today were hot. See you tonight.” Grant flashed her a grin that shot her blood pressure so high she felt lightheaded. She’d been with her ex-boyfriend, Josh, for two years and he hadn’t ever made her feel that worked up, even when they were having sex.
    Ellie drained her wine glass and took two deep breaths, hoping to calm her heart rate before it beat clear out of her chest. The grin Grant had just tossed her was the same one he’d give Chastity when they were in