Beck Kendall sighed as she dropped into a seat on the Go Train. God, she hated getting up this early to take the train into Toronto. It was always incredibly crowded, everyone was fighting for a seat, people wound up standing arm to arm and front to back with barely a centimetre between them. Half the time people wound up sitting on the stairs - dangerous as hell if the driver suddenly hit the brakes. Luckily, she was able to find an actual available seat in a quad on the top level, next to a grumpy man in a business suit on his phone and across from a pair of teenagers in school uniforms.
Rather than listen to the guy next to her yell into his phone, she pulled out her earbuds and started her ‘Go Train’ playlist. Loud enough to drown out the rest of the noise; not like anyone would hear it when it was so crowded anyway.
It would be hard to get her full laptop set up in the space available to her, so she took out her tablet and started reviewing her documentation. Working on the public transit always made her sick, but at least she had managed to - miraculously - snag a window seat to recover if needed.
Whatever had been done to Josh Tanner’s computer, it was a doozy and it would take possibly weeks or months for her to recover the files and work out what happened. Good thing he was paying her well and hadn’t tried to lowball her rate. And it wasn’t remotely intimidating, having to interact with someone as famous as him for upwards of months. After the other day at his…office building house, he probably couldn’t wait to get rid of her, between the muttering to herself over his laptop and her annoying questions about his internet habits.
One of these days she would have to start reigning herself in and develop a filter before she opened her damned mouth. As a grown-ass woman in her late thirties, she should have learned that lesson ages ago. Instead, here she was making an ass of herself in front of every new person she met. Hopefully, it wouldn’t affect the loan approval she had in the works. As soon as she had that money, she would be able to start her own website in earnest, instead of the Geocities-looking basic site she had now, and get her digital forensics business off the ground.
Sighing, she glanced down at the backpack between her legs. It was a little larger than usual, since she had put in a dress to change into later. Not that she’d had much luck with dating sites, but the guy who asked her out seemed pretty cool. And since she was planning to be in Toronto anyway, why not meet up for dinner? Socializing was not her strong suit. Especially with strangers on dating apps. There wasn’t even a single date she could pick out that went well when she had met the guy on a dating app. Why the hell was she doing this again?
Was it the thought of her impending date, the idea of running a business, or the motion of the train that was making her nauseated? With a deep breath, she looked up out the window at the green and white floral company logos and blinked. How the hell was she already that close to Union Station?
“Now arriving at Exhibition Station.”
Beck sat up straighter and started putting her tablet away, though she kept her earbuds in. Easy way to not talk to anyone on the train while escaping the crowd. Thank god. She checked her phone to make sure the playlist was downloaded so she would have the excuse to not talk to people on the subway too.
As the train arrived at Union, she pulled up her phone and checked the time. Not too bad, only a few minutes late. She should still have time to catch the subway up to Lawrence and make it to the Bridle Path before ten, maybe with a stop at Timmies. Just hook the coffee to her veins right now.
After waiting for the train to empty and the crowd on the platform to die down, she headed out. One of the platform announcement TVs caught her eye as she descended to the main level of the station. There was an awful lot of red for her liking. And when she made it to the concourse, it was full of angry passengers, loud complaints, and…just too much. People complaining about service, complaining about needing to get to work, complaining about finding a taxi. Someone was saying that there was also a passenger incident that had taken out the subway. Great.
Wincing, she took the nearest exit to the street and found a place with relatively few people to plan her reroute up to Josh Tanner’s house. As she pulled up the browser on her phone, she sighed. Looked like a signalling issue at Union in addition to whatever passenger incident, which meant that instead of taking an hour, she was looking at double that. Easily. If she could manage to catch a bus in the chaos.
“Fuck,” she sighed. At least, she supposed, she had Josh Tanner’s number to call him and let him know. How fucking unprofessional to show up late on what, technically, was her first appointment with him.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled up his number and dialled.
“Hey,” Josh Tanner’s bright voice greeted. “You almost here?”
“About that….”
“Everything okay?”
Sighing, Beck said, “I mean, I’m okay, the trains and buses aren’t.” His laugh made her smile a little. “The only things that are running right now are the Lakeshore East and West trains. I’m gonna have to cross my fingers for a taxi or a bus, but who knows how long that’ll take. My best guess is I’m about 2 hours out. I’m really sorry!”
“Not your fault,” he replied. “You Canadians and your ‘sorrey’.” The exaggerated mimic of her accent made her laugh. “You’re at Union station?”
“Yeah.”
“One sec, okay?”
“Yeah.” She pushed out a breath and scanned the area around her as she waited. The roads were clogged up more so than usual with the construction on the station. People were crowding the sidewalks around the station and several people were making their way to the Fairmont - probably in the hopes of catching a taxi. Maybe she would have more luck catching a bus closer to the lake? She glanced back inside and chewed on her lower lip - what were the odds she would be able to grab a coffee? Whole damned thing was almost certainly going to be wall to wall angry people. God, she didn’t envy the workers at Union today.
“You’re at Union?”
His voice startled her out of her thoughts.
“Yeah.”
“And the Lakeshore East train is running?”
“As far as I can tell?”
“What time can you get to Scarborough station?”
Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, that wasn’t it. “Uh…let me go inside and check the trains.” Fighting past the mass exodus to search for buses and taxis, she made her way inside and found a platform board announcing the next train in eleven minutes. Scarborough was only, she thought, two stops away, so…. “I think about half an hour?”
“Okay, do that,” he said. “I’ll text you. Gotta go.”
Beck stared blankly at her phone. What the hell had just happened?
A little over half an hour later, Beck’s train was pulling into Scarborough Go station only slightly delayed due to panicked and angry passengers preventing the train doors from closing. If their day was interrupted, so too was everyone else’s. Or at least that seemed to be the mentality. Of course, that assumed they were even thinking about other passengers at all, which the majority probably weren’t.
Assholes.
In case Josh Tanner had decided to elaborate on ‘I’ll text you’, she pulled out her phone and checked the messages. Nothing.
Sighing, she opened his contact and started to text him when a message came through.
‘Where are you?’
‘Train’s just pulling in to the station’
‘Ok, blue Range Rover’
A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth; that was nice of him to send a car for her. She texted back a thank you, then put her phone away as the train came to a stop. Luckily the train wasn’t too crowded this time, but she still waited for most of the occupants to clear before following out the door. Fighting to get out of the station wasn’t her idea of a good time and she couldn’t imagine a situation where she would be so rushed to escape the crowd that she’d be fighting people. Well. Maybe a fire or something, she supposed.
She tapped her Presto card as she exited to the station and walked out to the parking lot, scanning for the blue car. Before she could find it, it drove up to the sidewalk and Beck blinked. He was driving the car himself, smiling at her as she opened the passenger door. He hadn’t sent a car, he was the car.
“You didn’t have to -.”
“What, you wanted to spend hours trying to find a way up to my place?” he laughed. “Nah, it’s fine. I wasn’t doing anything important.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled, unsure how else to respond. It really was above and beyond what she would have expected.
“Nothing to thank me for,” he said, pulling away from the sidewalk. “You’re helping me too.”
Beck snorted a laugh. “You’re paying me,” she said. “And paying me well.”
Grinning, he said, “Technically my agency is paying you, I’m just your local guide to my house. You want to stop and get a coffee? I’m dying.”
For once in her life, Beck managed to catch herself before saying something she might regret and bit down on both the comment and the smile it brought to her face.
“What?”
When she looked over at him, he was giving her a sidelong smirk as he turned onto Midland Avenue. “It’s nothing.”
“Not with that look it’s not,” he laughed. “Come on, tell me. I don’t bite.” A spark lit in his eyes as his lips pressed tightly together, the corners of his mouth pulling down, and he added, “Much.”
A loud laugh escaped her and she reached up to cover her mouth and stifle it. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Not much of a fan of Starbucks is all.”
“You think Oliver hasn’t trained me better than that?” he chuckled. “In ‘Ch-rah-noh’ you go to Timmies, eh.”
That did it. Laughter bubbled up out of her at his pronunciation of ‘Toronto’. “Literally nobody talks like that.”
“All Canadians,” he said, pulling to a stop in the turning lane. The Tim Horton’s he’d chosen looked relatively quiet for being on a main road this early in the day. Only a couple of cars in the drive-thru. “Every single one.”
“In what reality?” she giggled.
“Every reality.” He pulled into the drive-thru lane and asked, “What do you want? On me.”
Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, she looked over at him. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to, but I am, so what do you want?” He turned to grin at her. “Double double?”
“Are you just picking the most stereotypical sounding order?” Was she amused or annoyed? On the one hand, she hated being a stereotype, on the other, he was being nice. A lot nicer than she had even expected.
“Am I right?”
Shaking her head, she admitted, “Yeah, I’m a walking stereotype.”
“Sorry,” he said.
Turning her grin on him, she laughed, “You’re turning into a local.”
Ahead of them, the car next in line moved up and he tossed her a wink as he pulled up to order an extra large black coffee for himself, then turned to her to confirm what size she wanted. She struggled not to laugh when the kid at the pay window saw Josh Tanner had ordered the coffees and donuts. Poor guy looked ready to faint. The kid closed the window and practically ran back inside.
“I think you made his day,” Beck said.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, blushing a little as he pulled ahead. “Hope I don’t hold up the line.” It was a bit odd to be at a drive-thru with someone so famous he can’t even get a cup of coffee without worrying he’ll cause a scene. “I don’t want to hold you up either. Maybe I can just sign some napkins?”
“I’m in no rush,” she assured him. “After all, it’s your place we’re going back to so I can inspect your laptop again. Somehow I think you can convince my employer it’ll be okay.”
The grin he levelled at her made her cheeks warm. “I do have a little sway with them, being one of their biggest contracts.”
“Do you want to go inside to get the coffee?” she suggested, matching his smile with her own. Shouldn’t someone like him have his head buried further up his ass? It surprised her how nice he was, how easy to talk to.
“You don’t mind?”
“Nah, it’s fine,” she said. “I’ll help with the pictures.”
The corners of his mouth nearly reached his eyes as he smiled at her, pulling the car out of the drive thru line.
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