Getting Dumped (2 page)

Burt nodded. “Looks nice. I got an anniversary coming up. Maybe I could get the name of the company so I can see about buying one for my lady friend?”

“Sure, it’s Sophronia Shipping. Let me talk to Macy and see if she can—”

“Sophronia?” Burt asked, frowning slightly.

I sighed. “Yes,
that
family. But it’s her uncle and they aren’t close and Macy is very opposed to—”

“No matter,” Burt said, apparently content to postpone a discussion of mob families until some other time. “So the boss says you’ve operated heavy equipment before. Which company you been working for?”

“Public relations.”

Burt frowned. “What?”

“Albright County Public Relations. I worked mostly under the district attorney for five years.”

Burt couldn’t have looked more confused if I’d told him my last job involved juggling flaming olives. “An office job? But—”

“Hey, it involves shoveling crap one way or another, right? Only here I get to crush televisions.”

At that, Burt looked a little sad. “Not anymore. Environmental protection and all that. They send TVs to hazardous materials now.”

“But you get to crush a lot of other cool stuff, right?”

His expression brightened. “Yeah. Bookshelves. Dead houseplants. Old carpet. Bags of rotten meat. Last week there was this piano—”

“Well let’s get to it,” I said, feeling giddy in my stiff new Carhartt coveralls and neon orange safety vest.

Burt nodded. “So you’re okay with this, um, job switch?”

I grinned. “If I’d had to spend one more day in an office, I would have strangled my boss with his necktie and fed the corpse to the vultures I worked with.”

“Fair enough. Still, isn’t it tough to go from a cushy office job to this?”

“Nope. I spent a lot of years thinking the cushy office job was what I was
supposed
to have. Now I finally get the chance to do the job I wanted to do in the first place.”

Burt seemed to consider this for a moment as he dug a finger in his ear, then inspected it. Flicking something over his shoulder, he gave me a warm smile.

“I like you.”

I grinned back. “I like you too. Can we crush some garbage?”

Burt nodded. “Let’s introduce you to your compactor.”

He said the word
compactor
with the same reverence many men would use to say
The Bible
or
The Superbowl
or
Playboy
. I looked over at the hulking machine with spikes on the wheels.

“I’ve always wanted to operate one,” I admitted. “Of course, you don’t really ever see them outside a landfill.”

Burt started walking and I followed, sidestepping a plastic bag that oozed something orange. He stopped beside the yellow machine hunkered at the edge of the pit.

“Here she is,” he said, caressing the metal with undisguised fondness. “The Caterpillar 836H Landfill Compactor and Wheel Dozer. She’s got a C-18 engine and a semi-universal blade arrangement with the optional secondary steering system and a GPS unit for grid navigation.”

“Wow,” I said, understandably impressed. We both stood there for a moment in respectful silence. I was the first to speak.

“Does it have a name?”

“A name?”

“Sure. Like a racehorse or a pirate ship or a sports car.”

“A name,” Burt repeated, sounding thoughtful.

“Shirley,” I decided.

Burt smiled. I smiled back. He reached up and picked something black from between his teeth.

IN MY FIRST hour on the compactor, I crushed a doghouse, an old dishwasher, a half ton of rotten lettuce, a bag of doll parts, a table with a broken leg, and a box from Nordstrom that turned out to contain a thousand tubes of fuchsia lipstick.

I was in heaven.

Climbing out of the cab for my lunch break, I grinned down at Burt and pocketed the keys.

“Whaddya think?” he asked.

“I love it!”

“You did good,” he said. “Nice job with that mattress.”

“The box springs were a little tricky.”

“You handled it like a pro. Didn’t even get the wires wrapped up around the bar.”

“Thanks! Should we go wash up for lunch?”

Burt frowned. “Wash up?”

The two of us began walking back to the office. I had gotten a tour of the facilities when I’d arrived at six a.m., but most of the office employees hadn’t arrived then and I was looking forward to meeting the rest of the team.

Burt and I pushed through the doors and stood there for a moment, eyes closed, breathing in the clean, odorless air conditioning. A sexy rumble pulled me out of my trance.

“Welcome to the Department of Solid Waste. You must be the new heavy equipment operator.”

I opened my eyes and stared. Behind the front desk was the most beautiful man I had ever seen in my twenty-seven years. Dark hair, bedroom eyes, chiseled cheekbones, and pecs you could pound nails with. I didn’t realize my jaw had actually dropped until Burt discreetly nudged it shut with one filthy knuckle. I swallowed hard and blinked a few times to clear my vision.

“JJ, meet Pete,” Burt said. “Pete, meet JJ. Pete is the secretary for the Department of Solid Waste.”

“Oh,” I said, offering my hand for the sex god to shake. I looked down, belatedly realizing I still wore my work gloves. And that the right one was streaked with something gooey.

“Mayonnaise,” I told him, peeling it off. “I crushed a whole crate of it. Got all over the door of the cab.”

“Excellent,” Pete said, flashing me a smile that would have caused a lesser woman to swoon.

Okay, I
was
a lesser woman. I gripped the edge of the counter and held on tightly, reminding myself I still had a boyfriend.
Technically.
Things had cooled considerably with Daniel since I’d decided to take the landfill job, and I wasn’t quite sure where we stood.

Pete regarded me through eyelashes that were thick and dark, fringing eyes the color of the Heineken bottle I’d just extracted from Shirley’s belly pan.

“Pete’s new here, too,” Burt offered. “Just started a few weeks ago.”

“Really?” I said, wondering at the reason a man who could easily make millions modeling boxer-briefs was sitting behind a plaque that said
SECRETARY
.

“Yup,” Pete said, smiling into my eyes. “Until you got here, I was the new kid in class. Maybe we can share a cubby and take turns on the monkey bars at recess.”

I felt my face grow warm and fought to swallow the butterflies crawling up my throat. “Did you get repositioned, too?”

“Repositioned?”

“In your job. Not sexually, I mean. Or like a cruise ship.
Repositioned
—” I shut my mouth, realizing it was best to stop while he thought me tactless rather than insane. Pete just grinned at me.

“No, I applied for the job a couple months ago, and I had to go through a pretty rigorous interview process to get it. Typing tests, personality assessments... the county’s human resources department is very diligent.”

“Sure,” I agreed, eyeing him with interest. Gay? Had to be. Or was that a photo of his girlfriend framed on the desk behind him? I craned my neck for a better look.

“Anyway, welcome aboard,” Pete said. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Coffee?”

“It’s a hot, brewed beverage made with beans. Very tasty.”

I felt my face flame again.

“She’d love coffee,” Burt said, clearly sensing a rescue was in order. “We’re just heading to the break room for lunch.”

Pete nodded. “Sugar?”

I swallowed. “What?”

“In your coffee. Do you want sugar?”

“Right. Yes. Please. Thank you. Amen.” I turned away and grabbed the nearest doorknob. Burt touched my shoulder.

“That’s a closet,” he murmured. “Break room’s over here.”

He propelled me through another door and deposited me beside a table. I stood there catching my breath while Burt opened a cupboard above the sink.

“Wow,” I said, dropping my voice to a hiss.

“I know,” Burt said, clearly delighted. “Pretty great, huh?”

I eyed Burt, impressed that he was secure enough in his masculinity to admire an attractive man.

“I hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much,” I said, scrubbing my hands at the sink before opening the fridge and taking out my leftover spinach lasagna.

“Nah, you were fine,” Burt said, grabbing a grungy paper bag and a bottle of murky liquid. “He’s already been asked for his autograph three or four times, so staring is no big deal.”

“Autograph?”

“Sure. I thought about it myself, but decided I’d wait until the movie comes out on Blu-ray so he can sign that.”

I stared for a few beats, wondering what I was missing. Burt sat down and unwrapped a wedge of yellow cheese. He held it in one hand, his fingers smearing dirt on the greasy surface.

“Movie?” I prompted.

Burt looked up at me. “That’s Pete Wilco — he played Colt McTrigger in
Bionic Cyber Cops in Monster Trucks
. Haven’t you seen it?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Then why were you staring?”

“Um, because he’s gorgeous.”

Burt laughed and finished his cheese before grabbing a hard-boiled egg. He cracked it on the edge of the table and extracted the squishy orb with his fingers, streaking it with grime.

“Damn fine movie,” he said, taking a bite of the egg. “There’s this cop who drives his monster truck with mind power, and these zombies with skin that glows when it rains and–”

“Geez. And people say
I
have an overactive imagination.” I dropped into the chair beside Burt and forked up a piece of lasagna, whining when I realized I’d forgotten to heat it. “I don’t understand. Why would a movie star work at the county landfill?”

Burt shrugged. “I guess not everyone liked the movie. They didn’t actually release it in any theaters.”

“Hard to imagine.”

“Anyway, Pete moved back here when his mom got sick. He said he wanted something with good benefits and a decent salary and no zombies chasing him with radioactive snow cones.”

“Huh.”

“He’s still got a girlfriend back in L.A. I think she might be moving up here, too.”

“Huh,” I said again, trying for the second time to infuse the syllable with nonchalance instead of disappointment.

I stuck my lasagna in the microwave and punched some buttons, feeling more than a little perplexed. “So Pete is the secretary. Gordy’s the director I met at orientation. There’s that blonde girl who wears the miniskirts and goes around to all the county offices doing the recycling—”

“Green Barbie. She’s the recycling coordinator for Albright County, but is based here at the landfill.”

“My boss in the PR department dislocated a vertebra the day Green Barbie dropped a bottle under his desk and tried to crawl after it.”

Burt nodded and chewed some egg. “She doesn’t much like underwear.”

“Right. So who else haven’t I met?”

“You meet Collin yet?”

“Who’s he?”

“Engineering technician. Came here from London seven or eight years ago. He’s the science guy. Manages all the methane gas wells and does the groundwater monitoring and writes the computer programs for all our GPS units. I think he’s a PhD or something.”

“Okay. Who else?”

Before Burt could even swallow the hunk of egg he’d shoved in his mouth, the door burst open and a tiny, forty-something blonde came bustling into the room. Her hair frizzed around her face like an electrified halo, and she wore strappy heels covered in big, floppy flowers. I felt the instant comfort that comes from meeting another woman with an appreciation for cute footwear.

“Oh my God, are you the new Harold?” the woman gasped as she grabbed my arm. “We’ve been waiting for you to get here! I told Burt there was no way they could find anyone to replace Harold on short notice, especially since he was such a good heavy equipment operator even if he was a chain smoker, but he made the best jalapeno jelly and always had clean fingernails and it was really such a shame he died so suddenly, though the doctor said he didn’t suffer at all, but still, his wife Mary was just so upset and their dog Muffin hasn’t had a proper bowel movement since the funeral and – oh where are my manners, I’m Ernie, like the man’s name, Ernie? It’s short for Ernestine, but everyone just calls me Ernie—”

She took a breath and I stood quickly, extending my hand. “JJ,” I said as she pumped my hand with a wild grin. “Nice to meet you, Ernie.”

“Aren’t you just the cutest little thing? All that long, red hair and that gorgeous complexion and such a lovely figure with those—”

“What is it you do here?” I interrupted as I felt my cheeks turn bright pink.

“Oh, well, I run Albright Alley, the little thrift store out front that sells all the odds and ends people bring to the dump that aren’t really trash but they don’t want them anymore, so sometimes people just drop things off at the store and other times we poke around through the pits and find things and clean them up and put them out on the shelves, so I just putter around the store and keep things running and—”

“Her shop made a quarter-million in revenue for the Department of Solid Waste last year,” Burt interjected, picking up a squishy-looking sandwich and leaving dirt dents in the bread. “She does a little more than putter.”

Ernie blushed prettily. “Well, I do what I can—”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ernie,” I said, really meaning it.

She beamed. “I’m just glad to have someone else to enjoy the male scenery, if you know what I mean – not that I’m doing anything inappropriate. I’m in a committed relationship, of course, and obviously he’s very secure and doesn’t mind if I admire attractive young men, and certainly I’ve been trained in sexual harassment protocol and I never grab anyone or send obscene email except that one time by accident with the picture of the naked cartoon bear, but I don’t think that counts because the bear was wearing a shirt and even if he didn’t have pants—”

“You’re talking about Pete?” I interrupted. “I mean, that’s the male scenery you’re admiring, right?”

She lowered her lashes and gave me a coy smile. “Have you met Collin?”

Just then the radio on Burt’s belt crackled to life.

“Bloody hell, Burt,” shouted a voice heavy with rage and a British accent. “Who is this sodding JJ Shultz and why is she trying to ruin my life?”