Virginia Kantra - All A Man Can Be

“What’s in a Manhattan?” she asked as Mark approached her perch.

“Vermouth, bourbon. Bitters.” He barely glanced at her. His eyes and hands were busy on his bottles. Below his turned-back sleeves, he had long, lean hands and muscled forearms and—heavens, was that a tattoo riding the curve of his biceps, peeking below the cuff? “But our guy doesn’t want that,” he continued. “He wants a Rob Roy.”

Nicole tore her attention from his arm. Liquor was expensive. She wasn’t giving away free drinks because Mr. Hairpiece didn’t know his ingredients. “I’m sure if you explained to him that he ordered the wrong drink—”

“—I’d be wasting my breath.” Mark added a twist of lemon peel to the fresh drink. “The customer’s always right, boss. I’m surprised they didn’t teach you that in business school,” he added over his shoulder.

Cocky, conceited, know-it-all jerk. Nicole twisted her rings in her lap.

“Well, hel-lo, pretty lady.” A warm, male, lookee-what-we-got-here voice swam up on her other side. “I haven’t seen you here before.”

Nicole squeezed her eyes briefly shut. She was a loser magnet, that’s what she was. She took a quick peek through her lashes at the man crowding her bar stool. Not quite young, not exactly good-looking, and married. She would bet on it. She sighed.

“That’s because I haven’t been here before.”

He laughed as if she’d said something funny. “Guess it’s up to me to make you feel welcome, then.”

“No, thank you, I—”

He leaned into her, his stomach nudging the back of her arm, his face earnest and too close. “What’ll you have?”

“Miss Reed doesn’t need you to buy her a drink, Carl.” Mark DeLucca’s voice was edged with amusement and something else. “She owns the bar.”

The pressure on her arm eased as the man—Carl—took a step back. “This bar?”

“This very one. And if you want to come back, I suggest you take your beer and go join your pals.”

“Well, excuse me,” Carl blustered.

“You bet,” Mark said.

Nicole was grateful. Embarrassed. Defensive. The author of Losing the Losers in Your Life was adamant that a successful life plan did not include waiting for rescue.

As soon as her new admirer was out of earshot, Nicole snapped, “I could have handled him.”

Mark removed a couple of glasses from the bar and gave the surface a quick wipe down. “Old Carl would have liked that.”

Her face flamed. “I meant, I can look after myself.”

Mark paused in the act of emptying an ashtray. He gave her a quick, black, unreadable look that scanned her from the top of her smooth blond head to the glittering rings on her fingers and nodded once. “Yeah, I can see that. My mistake.”

And after that he pretty much treated her as if she wasn’t there.

Nicole squirmed on her wooden bar stool. Well, she squirmed on the inside. On the outside, she sat with perfect poise, her spine straight, her knees crossed, typing her observations into the slim-line laptop she’d set up on the bar.

Men and women on their way home from work were replaced by young people out to have a good time. Couples pressed together in the booths in the back. Singles hooked up at tables or swayed by the jukebox. Nicole sipped her Diet Pepsi and let it all wash over her, the raucous music and the flickering TV, the drifts of cigarette smoke, the bursts of laughter. It was louder, looser, more exciting than she’d imagined.

Thrilling, because now it was hers.

She typed a note about the music. The jukebox selection needed updating. She couldn’t imagine her clientele playing “Takin’ Care of Business” that often if they had an adequate choice.

Mark greeted most of his customers—her customers—by name, took their orders, poured their drinks. No one had to wait more than forty-five seconds. No one was neglected.

Well, except for Nicole. Mark kept her supplied with Pepsi and otherwise ignored her.

He did a good job for the previous owner.

Maybe. He certainly collected his fair share of tips, Nicole thought, with an eye on the beer mug beside the register. And more than his fair share of interested glances.

A sultry brunette in big hoop earrings leaned her cleavage on the bar. A giggling group of teenage girls, shrink-wrapped in skinny tops and hip-hugging jeans, bumped and nudged each other by the pool table.

Nicole watched as Mark filled their drinks and returned their smiles. The brunette licked salt from the rim of her glass. The gum-snapping cocktail waitress—Diana? Debbie?—unloaded a tray of diet sodas by the giggling girls.

Nicole’s shoulders relaxed slightly. At least her liquor license was safe for another night. Her investment was safe. Everything was going to be fine. She hadn’t made another monumental life mistake, the way her mother said and her father feared.

Nicole glanced again from the hair-flipping teenagers to the brunette laying it all out on the bar. Right. Everything was fine. Unless, of course, a fight broke out over her bartender.

Or he stole from the till.

Nicole watched Mark DeLucca unload a stack of bills from the cash register and start riffling through them. It was late. She consulted her Givenchy watch. After midnight. The front lights were out, the front door was locked, and she was alone with a man who made every tiny hair on her body stand at attention.

“What are you doing?” She hated the way her voice sounded, sharp with suspicion.

He barely glanced at her. “Daily register report.”

That sounded reassuring. He was the bar manager, she reminded herself. He had a responsibility to count the cash and figure the day’s net sales.

Correction. Had had the responsibility.

She shifted on her perch. “I can do that. Since I’m here.”

His lean back stiffened. And then he shrugged and moved away easily from the register. So easily she wondered if she’d imagined that moment of resistance.

“Be my guest,” he said.

She wasn’t his guest. She was his employer, a fact she didn’t need to remind him of. Or apologize for.

Nicole raised her chin and slid off her bar stool.

At least he could take orders, she thought, as she checked his total for the day. And he could add. Apparently he wasn’t dipping into the cash register, either. There was no reason for her to feel so gosh darn uncomfortable around the man.

No reason except he looked like an invitation to be bad.

She watched him prowl around the room, collecting glasses, emptying ashtrays. Maybe it was the hard, long body, the jet-black hair, the take-no-prisoners face. Maybe it was the wicked dark brows over those I’ve-got-a-secret eyes. Maybe it was—

—her problem. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows, as if she could massage her tension away. Her fault. The man couldn’t help the way he looked, for goodness’s sake.

He swung a chair up onto a table, the muscles flexing in his back and arms, and her stomach actually fluttered.

She frowned.

“You want to lock up, too?” Mark asked, his voice flat.

Oh, dear. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t trust him.

Although that had been one of Zack’s favorite ploys, pretending injury at her lack of trust. Don’t you trust me? he’d demanded, making her feel horrible, while he boinked every film student and wannabe actress who would lie down for his camera.

She swallowed hard. That was personal, she told herself. This was business.

She looked at Mark’s hard, expressionless face.

“You can do it,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as strained as she felt. “I’ll see you in the morning, and we can talk about procedures then. Eight o’clock.”

“Nine,” he said. At least he didn’t make a crack about her being late. “Let me walk you to your car.”