“It’s okay,” Earl says. “Care to join me for coffee?”

My heart pounds inside my chest, pumping blood to my organs. Because that’s what hearts do. Is Earl Grey asking me out on a date?

“When?”

“Now,” he says.

“My shift isn’t over until six,” I say glumly.

“Hold on,” he says. He pulls a BlackBerry from his pants pocket and taps something out on it, then stashes it away. “I think you can take the rest of the afternoon off.”

“We’re so busy on Saturdays. I really can’t—my boss would kill me,” I say.

“I’m your boss now, Miss Steal.”

“What do you mean?”

There’s that smile again, the one with all those teeth. “I just bought Wal-Mart,” he says.

“The whole company? Just so I could take the afternoon off to get coffee with you?”

“Yes, Miss Steal,” he says. “Now take off that ugly blue smock and let’s go.”

He’s so confident and forceful, unlike any boyfriend I’ve ever had. Well, he’s not my boyfriend, and I haven’t ever had a boyfriend, but you know what I mean, right? He’s like a really rich caveman. Me. Want. Anna!

“What about your shopping list?” I ask.

“Forget it. I’ll have one of my assistants do my shopping.”

“Um—Mr. Grey—I don’ t know what to say.”

“Just say ‘yes.’” He smiles at me again with that smiling smile of his, all of his teeth in a straight line. How I’d like to run my tongue along those teeth . . .

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes—oh yes, Mr. Grey!” I scream, throwing my smock off. It hits a customer riding a Rascal scooter in the face, and she crashes into a display of Katy Perry perfume. I pull my shirt over my nose to avoid choking on the fumes from the spilled perfume; Walmart suddenly smells like a prosti-tot pageant. Earl takes my hand in his and leads me out of the store before the hazmat team arrives.