His uncle gasped in outrage as he stole back the muffin. “I apologized for that!”

Danny snorted in disgust as he grabbed a blueberry muffin, knowing that he’d already pushed his luck once by touching something on his uncle’s tray and really in no mood to end up on the ground in a headlock. “Yeah, cause that made up for being pursued by a two hundred pound stripper.”

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Uncle Jared grumbled. “He sent you that really nice cookie basket to make up for the incident in the closet.”

“Which you ate,” Danny pointed out, grabbing two foil-wrapped meatball sandwiches and added them to his tray.

“I was hungry!” Uncle Jared said defensively as he stole one of the sandwiches off his tray.

With a muttered curse about thieving bastards, Danny grabbed another sandwich, which Uncle Jared promptly stole. Knowing what would happen to the food on his tray if he didn’t move his ass, he quickly grabbed another one, five cookies, two waters, three apples, a candy bar, a donut and a large bag of chips and headed towards the very frightened looking cashier.

As she quickly added up his purchases, he couldn’t help but wonder why the guy that owned the coffee trucks that serviced Bradford Construction’s sites kept sending skittish females fresh out of high school to work the trucks. It seemed kind of cruel, especially since they usually ended up quitting after two weeks once they realized that they’d developed an anxiety disorder…..or two.

“I got it,” Uncle Jared said as Danny pulled out his wallet.

“No thanks,” Danny said, quickly pulling the money out and paying for his own food.

“Why not?” Uncle Jared demanded as his gaze drifted down and locked on the stack of cookies that Danny realized he’d have to eat first.

“Because of that bullshit rule of yours,” Danny said, grabbing his tray and headed towards his truck, hoping like hell that his uncle would be too distracted by his overflowing tray to follow after him.

“It’s not bullshit,” Uncle Jared grumbled, following after him.

“Yeah, it really is,” Danny said, resigning himself to the fact that his uncle was joining him for his second midmorning snack.

“If I pay for the food then I should be allowed to have a bite or two,” Uncle Jared explained as he helped lower the tailgate and set his tray down.

“It’s never just a bite or two with you,” Danny argued, not really in the mood to discuss his uncle’s fucked up rules about food, but if that meant that his uncle wasn’t harassing him about this new job, then that was more than fine with-

“You start the new job on Monday,” Uncle Jared said, deftly snatching a cookie off his tray.

“If it’s a summer job,” Danny began, shifting his tray away from his uncle. He could have snatched the cookie back, but he’d most likely be pulling back a stub so he grudgingly let the cookie go, “then let Jason handle it. He needs the extra money.”

“He can’t take this job,” Uncle Jared said distractedly as he tried to steal another cookie.

Knowing his uncle as well as he did, he shifted the tray further out of his reach. “Why not?”

“You cheap bastard!” Uncle Jared gasped with a pout that had him rolling his eyes and tossing the greedy bastard another cookie. It was either that or put up with his pouting for the rest of the day.

“Well?” Danny demanded as his Uncle took his time to savor the cookie.

“He has to work most of the summer at school,” Uncle Jared quickly explained before he washed down the cookie with one of the bottles of chocolate milk that he’d purchased. “He’s going to take hours working with us when he can, but he has a lot to do before school starts back up in September.”

“Isn’t he the head of the history department now?” he asked, pretty sure that Haley had told him about Jason’s promotion last night while they’d been waiting to have their stomachs pumped in the emergency room.

Jared looked proud as he nodded. “Youngest department head in the school’s history.”

“That’s great,” Danny said absently, wondering if his father smiled like that when he spoke about him, but after a minute common sense kicked in. He doubted that his father even remembered his name, never mind bragged about him. Not that there was much to brag about, he thought as he unwrapped one of the sandwiches he’d bought.

“Why don’t you get one of the other guys to run the project?” he suggested, hoping that he could continue with the status quo by punching in everyday, completing the projects assigned to him and going home. He didn’t want to have to run a project, supervise a team or any of the bullshit that came with a leadership position. He’d led enough men in the Marines and was done with the bullshit of being responsible for another human being.

“My other foremen all have projects to handle this summer. Carl is out for the summer to take care of his wife while she’s on bed rest and Jimmy retired last week,” Jared explained.

“So promote someone new. You have plenty of good men to chose from,” he pointed out as he was once again forced to shift his tray away from his uncle.

Uncle Jared shook his head as he considered his next food selection. “None of them are as good as you. You know how to handle a team, how to delegate work, you work your ass off and you’re fair. You’d make a great foreman.”

“What about Trevor?” he asked, touched that his uncle thought so highly of him, but he just wasn’t sure that he wanted to do anything more than follow orders.

“He can’t,” Jared said with a sigh as he settled on a sandwich, “not with his dyslexia.”

Danny could only frown in confusion as he asked, “Why the hell not?

“Because the job is renovating the old library,” his uncle said and with that, Danny knew that he was good and fucked.

Chapter 4

“Fuck off!”

“Aw, is little Danny going to cry?” she heard Trevor ask from the safety of the laundry room where the door was tightly shut. She prayed that she’d have one night, just one night, where she didn’t have to put up with-

“I said fuck off!” Danny snapped as the laundry room door crashed open and the only man in the world that could possibly make her day worse came storming in, carrying an overflowing basket of clothes and looking furious.

Chuckling, Trevor continued to walk past the laundry room door, seemingly oblivious to the panicked looks that she was sending his way. “See you bright and early tomorrow morning, Mr. Foreman!”

“I fucking hate that bastard,” Danny muttered, focusing all of his attention on violently shoving the basketful of clothes into the only other washing machine in the room.

Deciding to take advantage of the fact that he hadn’t seemed to notice her yet, she placed her empty basket on the dryer that she was planning on using once the washing machine was finished, and walked out of the room casually, hoping that she didn’t draw his attention. When he didn’t say anything to make her want to bash her laundry basket upside his head, she walked down the hallway and let herself into her apartment. She set the timer on her phone for thirty minutes and was just about to dig into some of the Ben and Jerry’s that she’d bought herself on the way home when the rolled up city trash bags that she’d also purchased at the gas station caught her eye.