I decided right then still wasn’t the right time to think about it. Maybe tonight when I got home. Maybe later in my room when I tried to zone Jason out.

In the meantime, I stashed all the bags I’d brought from home and took the cake out of the fridge to set it on the counter. I’d barely stacked up the paper plates—because I sure wasn’t going to wash them and none of the guys would either if they were real plates—when Miguel came into the room and claimed, “You didn’t decorate for my birthday.”

I slid him a look. “It’s Rogelio’s going-away party. You know I don’t put up decorations unless the birthday ends in a zero. And you’ve got what? Five more years until your fiftieth?”

The older man slid me a look. “Don’t remind me.”

I laughed.

He finally laughed too as he made his way inside. “What kind of cake did you get?”

“Angel food, but hold your horses. Ro gets the first slice.”

“He’s leaving, and you know he’s going to want half of it, Luna. You know how he is,” Miguel tried to reason, even as he opened the fridge and started poking around inside.

Rip, who had warmed up his food while I’d been cleaning and talking to Miguel, pulled a chair out from the table and dropped into it, setting a container in front of him.

Done, I picked up the last lunch I might ever get from my little sister and took a seat down the table from him. I’d been eating it in bits and pieces as I decorated. Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, and steamed spinach. Man, I was going to miss her.

Miguel took the seat beside mine, opening up his lunch bag and pulling out a sandwich and a bag of chips.

I nudged him. “Isn’t it your wife’s birthday today?”

He froze, and then he looked up so slowly, straight at the wall ahead, that I knew the answer. “Today is the sixth?” he whispered.

I glanced at Rip, and even he was looking at Miguel curiously. “Yes.”

Miguel cursed long and low in Spanish before glancing at me with a horrified and panicked expression.

“I wondered why she was giving me a dirty look this morning.” He muttered almost thoughtfully, his eyes wide. “She’s gonna kill me. I thought her birthday was tomorrow.”

“She’s not going to kill you,” I tried to assure him, not fully believing the words myself. I’d met her. We were friends. She really would kill him.

The face he made said he didn’t either.

“Okay, maybe, but I know what you can do. Did you buy her present already?”

He hadn’t. He didn’t need to say it, I could tell. “I was going to take the kids with me tomorrow to get it.”

“Okay, good.” I forked some more food into my mouth. “I know this florist that can deliver flowers by three if you order them soon.”

That had added some coloring to his face. “The same ones you ordered for Owen last month?”

I nodded and got a nod in return. This wasn’t the first time the same thing had happened with one of the guys at the shop. I had half the guys’ credit card information saved on my phone. I usually helped them buy Christmas presents for their wives and girlfriends too since they were such slackers.

“What are her favorites?” I asked him.

Silence.

“Miguelito, what flowers does she like?”

He was back to staring blankly.

We both laughed.

“What do you like?” he asked me like that was help.

It wasn’t. “Oh, I don’t care. Don’t ask me.”

Miguel blinked. “Luna, what have your boyfriends sent you?”

Boyfriends. Like that was really plural. I gave him a funny face before pulling my phone out of my pocket and looking through the contacts for the florist that some of the other guys had used before. “They didn’t. Thanks for reminding me,” I said, trying to say it lightly and playfully, like it wasn’t a big deal.

Because it wasn’t.

If I wanted flowers, I could buy them myself.

“None of them?” my coworker asked, not letting it go.

I found the contact and set my phone on the table between us. “Nope.”

“Not even the old one?”

I snickered and shook my head. “Stop.” I pointed at the phone. “Call and order the flowers.”

He grinned and brought out his phone too, dialing the number quickly and then, putting his phone over the receiver, asking, “What about your sisters?”

I wasn’t exactly sure why I shot a look at Rip, but I did, and luckily his attention was down on his food. So I shook my head.

“Your high school graduation?” he threw out next.

“Ah, I got my GED. I didn’t… finish high school the… normal way.”

Miguel blinked, and fortunately the florist answered, because he started rattling off a request and then an address.

I managed to eat the rest of my steak by the time Mr. Cooper made his way into the break room, one hand rubbing his stomach like he was starving, his eyes sweeping across the room. He shot me a big smile. “Looks nice.”

I smiled back at him just as Miguel hung up the phone and let out a big sigh.

“He said he can drop them off at her job by three.”

“See? She’ll only kill you a little now.”

Miguel slapped me on the back twice. “Thank you, Lunita. You’re a lifesaver.”

“You would have figured it out yourself.”

But freaking Miguel wasn’t done. “Luna?”

I tipped my chin up at him as I ate some more mashed potatoes.

He took a bite out of his own sandwich. “I think we need to find you a boyfriend.”

I stopped chewing at the same time that Mr. Cooper started laughing and set what looked like a chicken salad sandwich in the spot in front of where I was sitting.

I shook my head. “Ignore Mr. C, Miguel.”

Unfortunately, this conversation interested the man who had known me for five years. “What? Why you laughing, Mr. C? You think she needs to find a boyfriend too?”

I jumped in before Mr. Cooper could. “We had this conversation on the weekend. All I agreed to was maybe going on a few dates. Maybe. That’s it.”

Miguel nodded thoughtfully, popping a chip into his mouth. “I know five—no, three—”

“Oh, no. I’ve been to your family reunions.”

The other man started laughing.

I was going to use that moment to change the subject. “Anyway, what ended up happening with the guy you interviewed that you liked? Are you hiring him?”

I regretted the question the second it was out of my mouth.

Especially when Mr. Cooper’s eyes slid to Ripley’s direction. The much older man smiled anyway, his nostrils flaring just enough to tell me it wasn’t totally genuine. “He came in today. I think it went well, but we’re going to talk about it.”

“Is he nice?”

Mr. Cooper’s smile turned into a genuine one. “You think I’d hire somebody who wasn’t?”

I grinned at him, but all I could think about was that the only reason I was having a decent day was because Jason had a sore throat and wasn’t talking as much as usual.

But I kept my mouth shut on that topic.

* * *

I had just finished giving Jason instructions for the rest of afternoon, my purse and keys in hand so I could leave for my gynecologist appointment, when I heard the yelling coming from upstairs.

Crap.

Really?

Everyone should have gotten a slice or two of cake. It should have been a pretty decent day. None of the guys in the shop had even come to my room to complain about anything either.

And Jason had barely annoyed me. Considering I was dreading going to an empty house, it had still been an okay day. We had made it through lunch without an issue. The rest of the day should have been free of issues too.

I made my way down the hall toward the main part of the building and found all of my coworkers there, busy, but two of them had stopped and were looking up, like they could see through the ceiling and into the office over our heads.

I stopped there with my bag over my shoulder and looked in the same direction.

“You gonna go do something about it?” Miguel, one of the ones looking up, asked.