Jill Shalvis - Kiss Me, I'm Irish

Instead of his father’s Irish eyes, he met a blue gaze as chilly as the glycol cooling block he’d just assembled on the long-dormant beer tap behind the bar.

“It’s five-thirty,” he announced to Kendra. “Time for coffee drinking Internet surfers to pack up and go home. Monroe’s is open for business.”

She lowered the lid of her laptop an inch as she lifted her brows in surprise. “Today? Tonight? You’ve only been in town for two days. Don’t you have to unpack, get settled and give me a week or two or three to prepare for these temporary changes in my business?”

“I’m ready for business. Tonight.”

He stepped into the tiny space, noting that the old green walls were now…pinkish. The window that was really a two-way mirror over the bar was covered with wooden shutters that belonged on a Southern plantation. “And there’s nothing temporary about…” He closed the door and peeked at the space behind it. Aw, hell. “What happened to the plaques commemorating Monroe’s sponsorship of Rockingham’s state champion Little League team?”

Her gaze followed his to yet another of those black-and-white nature still-life shots that he’d seen in about six places now. He could have sworn her lips fought a smile.

“Diana Lynn took that photograph,” she said simply. “She was inside a sequoia in California. Pretty, huh?”

He didn’t comment. He’d find the Little League plaques. Dad must have stored them somewhere. “There are two freaks left on the computers out there,” he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “And they are both immersed not in the new millennium, but in the middle ages from what I can see.”

“Runescape,” she answered with a nod. “That’s a very popular online medieval strategy game. And they are not freaks. That’s Jerry and Larry Gibbons. Those brothers spend hours in here, every day.”

“Do they drink beer?”

She shrugged. “It might impair their ability to trade jewels for farming equipment.”

“They have to—”

“Stay,” she interrupted, jerking her chin up to meet his gaze, even though he towered over her desk. “You can’t kick out my customers at night. If they want to sit on those computers until 2:00 a.m., there’s no reason for them not to.”

“Suit yourself,” he said affably. “But the TV monitors are about to be tuned into Sports Center, and the jukebox will be on all night. Loud.”

She flipped the laptop open again and looked at the screen. “The jukebox hasn’t worked for a year. My customers prefer quiet.”

“It works now.”

She gave him a sharp look. Did she have her head so deep in the books that she hadn’t noticed him out there yesterday morning, installing a CD system in the box?

“No one is going to show up for a drink tonight,” she said, turning her attention back to the computer.

“You don’t know that.” He resisted the urge to reach out and raise that sweet chin, just to see those mesmerizing eyes again. Regardless of how chilly they were. “With the front door open, anyone who passes by could stop in. Walk-in business is the heart of a bar.” The fact that he’d worked the phone and called every familiar name in a fifty-mile radius wouldn’t hurt either.

She shook her head slightly, her smile pure condescension. “Deuce, I hate to break it to you, but Monroe’s pretty much shuts down around the dinner hour. We might have a few stragglers come in after seven or so, and Jerry and Larry usually stay until they realize they’re hungry, but there’s no business done here at night.”

“And you just accept that? Don’t you want to build nighttime revenue? I thought you were an entrepreneur. A capitalist.” He almost made a Harvard joke, but something stopped him.

“I’m a realist,” she said. “People pop into an Internet café during the day, when they need access to cyber space or a break in their schedule. At night, at home, they have computers.”

“So change that,” he countered.

“I’m working on it.” She leaned back in the chair—not Dad’s old squeaker, either, this one was sleek, modern and ergonomic. Crossing her arms over the rolling letters spelling Monroe’s on her chest, she peered at him. “Were you paying any attention the other day or were you so wrapped up in resentment that you didn’t even see my presentation? Remember the plans? The theater? The artists’ gallery? The DVD-rental business?”

He’d gotten stuck on one word. “Resentment? Of what?”

“Of the fact that your father has found…love.”

His elbow throbbed, but he ignored it. “I don’t begrudge my dad happiness. You’re imagining things.”

One blond eyebrow arched in disbelief.

“I don’t,” he insisted. “His…lady friend seems…” Perfect. Attractive. Successful. Attentive. Why wouldn’t he want all that for his dad? “Nice.”

“She is that, and more.” She shifted her focus to the keyboard again, and she began typing briskly. “Now, go run your bar, Deuce. I have work to do.”

You’re dismissed.

“I can’t find any wineglasses.”

She gave him a blank look, then resumed typing. “I have no idea where they are anymore. I may have given them away.”

She wanted to play hardball? With him? “Fine. I’ll just serve chardonnay to the ladies in coffee mugs.”

That jerked her chain enough to drop her jaw. But she closed it fast enough. “You do that.” Type, type, type.

“And you don’t mind if I use those coffee stirrers for the cocktails?”

She narrowed her eyes and studied the screen as though she were writing War and Peace. “Whatever.”

“And until I have time to place some orders for garnishes, I’ll be dipping into your supply of fresh fruit for some cherries and orange slices. Will that be a problem?”

Her fingers paused, but then blasted over the keys at lightning speed. Unless she was the world’s fastest typist, she couldn’t possibly be writing anything comprehensible. “I do a tight inventory on every item in stock,” she said over the tapping sound. “Please have anything you use replaced by tomorrow.”

“Will you give me the names of your suppliers?”

She hit the spacebar four times. Hard. “I’m sure you can find your own.”

“Can I borrow your Rolodex?”

Now her fingers stilled—as though she needed all her brain power to come up with a suitably smartass answer. “There’s a Yellow Pages in the storage room.”

She launched into another supersonic attack on the keyboard, her body language as dismissive as she could make it.

Aw, honey. You don’t want to do this. You’ll lose when I start throwing curves.

She typed. He waited. She typed more. He wound up.

“Kendra?”

“Hmmm?” She didn’t look up.

“That window right there. You know it’s a two-way mirror into the bar?”

“I’m aware of that,” she said, still typing. “I don’t need to monitor my patrons’ activities. I have staff for that, and no one is in there getting drunk or stupid. At least not on my watch.”

Low and inside. Strike one.

“That’s true, but…” Slowly, he crept around the side of the desk toward the fancy white shutters. “Aren’t you just a little bit curious about what I’ll be up to out there?”

“Not in the least. I expect it’ll be you and the empty bar for most of the night. Pretty dull stuff.”

A slider. Strike two.

He opened the shutters with one flick, giving a direct shot through the mirror that hung over his newly assembled beer taps. “I’d think a girl who’d spent so many hours with her face pressed to the heat register just to hear the boys in the basement would be naturally voyeuristic.”

He heard the slight intake of breath just as he turned to see a screen full of jibberish. She opened her mouth to speak. Then closed it with the same force with which she snapped down the lid of the laptop. A soft pink rush of color darkened her pretty cheeks.