SOUL TIES (The Sánchez Brothers Series, Book 1)

CHAPTER 18 : ANDRE

My fingers slid across my phone screen as I contemplated what to send. Damn, I had to be careful cos if there was one thing I was sure of, it's the fact that Miss Deborah Rodriguez was a ticking time bomb. You couldn't be too careful with her.

I loved today, we should do this next week.

My eyes skimmed through the text and I shook my head. I could almost visualize her scowl if she read that message, she'd probably think I was trying to make demands on her time since I was her boss. I deleted the text and my thumbs hovered over the screen. What was I supposed to write?

I really loved today, we should do this again.

I clicked on the send button and saw it got delivered almost immediately. She'd read it! I set my phone on the marbletop counter and wiped my palms on my sweatpants. They weren't sweaty or anything but I hadn't dropped that terrible habit since my highschool days. Although I hated to admit it, I was nervous. It was hard not to be, Miss Rodriguez was actually quite intimidating with her death stares, dry tone and sarcastic comments. I'd heard a few stories about her and they all pointed towards the same thing: She was a force to be reckoned with.

A few minutes later and there was still no reply, I decided that there'd probably be no response that day. She was almost drunk when I dropped her off at her house anyways, I was even surprised that the text got delivered in the first place. I chuckled as I thought about my altercation with her friend, the woman wasn't easy to deal with either. Looking at Miss Rodriguez and her friend, the idiom "Birds of a feather flock together" made perfect sense. They were both the same type of people. In my opinion, her friend seemed even fiercer than her. The woman's height didn't deter her from showing a lot of aggression when I dropped her friend, apparently she wasn't informed about the date and went haywire when she didn't find her friend at home. I got two deductions from the incident.

1. She was a close friend of Miss Rodriguez.

2. Miss Rodriguez didn't have much of a social life

Deciding I needed a drink, I walked towards the bar and swiped my eyes across the rows of alcohol bottles. Which one should I drink? I wasn't a heavy drinker, the last time I got drunk was in probably in college. I spotted a bottle of Jack and she came to my mind. Seems like I'd start thinking about her anytime I see that whiskey. Crazy how someone would waltz into your life unintentionally and disrupt the whole system. She did that from the moment she stepped into that elevator and snapped at me, I was thrown off and turned on at the time. Turned on in a nonsexual way, more than enthralled.

Then the swearing-in ceremony came up the next day, and she was the only thing on my mind. I had to meet that fiery woman again so while I gave my first speech, I kept searching the crowd. Disappointed didn't cover the way I felt when I had learnt from Amber that she wasn't present due to a sickness or something. So I decided to learn more about her before we met again and requested all the employees files, but I was only interested in hers. She'd told me her name in the elevator. Deborah Rodriguez. Through the weekend, I was head deep in her files and was fucking impressed by how proficient she was. She'd won Employee of the year four times and by the look of things, she was about to win it the fifth time.

So she was sexy, smart, hardworking and during the week I had to stay with her as she did her log-ins, I discovered she also had a sense of humor. Her motherhood status didn't deter me in the slightest, if anything, it made me admire her more. Pretty sure working a full-time job and trying to be an active parent was hard. My thoughts were interrupted as I heard the ringtone of my phone, who was calling by 11:38pm? Damn, maybe Miss Rodriguez had decided to put a call through cos of my message. With that line of thought, I raced to get my phone and let out a disapproving sound when I saw it wasn't her.