Kathleen O'Reilly - Shaken And Stirred

He handed Lindy three cosmopolitans without even breaking a sweat. “There is that.”

“We cannot live together in blissful, platonic harmony. It’s impossible.” Tessa had lived with a colorful menagerie of roommates, all female. And maybe she could have considered a lesser male as a roommate…but Gabe? No. That was just inviting trouble to come on in for a late-night drink.

Sean angled in front of her, fixing his place near a beautifully dressed brunette.

“I thought you were working,” said Gabe.

“I was doing you a favor, but I got the phone number I wanted and now I’m no longer working. Now I’m just shooting the shit with my family and friends and listening to this fascinating conversation on the intricacies of the human libido. A male and a female living together is a huge mistake.”

Gabe shook up a vodka martini. “With Tessa? I’m not worried.”

Tessa coughed, the emotional equivalent of a furball stuck in her throat. “I don’t know why I put up with this place.”

Gabe flashed her an easy grin, and for one second the resemblance between Gabe and Sean was unmissable. Sean was broader, beefier, swore like a sailor, with a nose that had been broken in two bar fights since she’d known him, but somehow he was always impeccably dressed in a suit and tie.

“You put up with us because we like you and you’re the fastest mojito maker on the Atlantic seaboard,” said Gabe. “Sean, tell her she should move in with me.”

Sean rested his chin on his palm. “Why should I contribute to what will be the loss of our finest frozen drink maker and chief barback when Tony doesn’t show? Do I look like a moron? Oh, no, Gabe. This is all about me. I like Tess. I want her to stay gainfully employed at this fine establishment so I can flirt with the female patrons while she works her little ass off, finely shaped as it is. She moves in with you, and you two will be all over each other. Groping, fondling…” Sean illustrated with graphic hand movements. “I’d put good money on that one.”

Tessa strategically avoided looking at Gabe. “I should sue you both. Male chauvinist perverts.”

“Come on, Tess,” Gabe insisted. “You know it’s the perfect solution. We’ll make it temporary.”

“Temporarily forget about having sex then,” added Sean. “With Tessa Trueheart here as your roommate, you can kiss that goodbye. One more reason this is a bad idea.”

Sean was only half-right, and Tessa corrected the attack on her character. “I would never interfere in my roommate’s personal activities. Hailey—the roommate before Janice—she had three boyfriends and none of them knew about the others, except for me, of course. I hated it. All that lying and pretending.” She stuck out her tongue. “Blah.”

Sean’s expression sharpened, transforming into full Law & Order mode. “So you come home and Gabe here is getting busy with some fine young thing on the sofa. What do you do?”

“What time is it?” asked Tessa, pouring a Jack neat for a Wall Street type with kind eyes.

“What does that matter?” asked Gabe.

“It’s important. If it’s still daylight, and under civilized society’s strictures for productivity—i.e. time for Tessa to hit the books—then I don’t care who’s doing it in my living area. I’m going to study or else I’ll never get my degree.”

“That’s cold.”

“You haven’t lived with the number of roommates that I have. You have to have rules and order or you’ll go crazy. You both are on your own. Someday soon I’m going to be on my own.”

Tessa ended with a sigh, picturing herself walking up the mighty stone steps of her most prized apartment building, waving at Rodney the doorman before trudging into the old, quaint gated elevator that shuddered when it passed the third floor. After she made it safely upstairs, she’d open her door to solitary paradise, where she could crank up her Cher CD—the one she hid from the world—and then she’d fall into a neatly covered periwinkle-blue chintz chair. A huge tabby cat would jump into her lap and curl up in the afternoon sun, purring like a vibrator—the one that she’d buy if she lived alone.

There were a lot of advantages to living life alone. Most people took it for granted. Tessa, who had always had someone breathing down her neck—and finishing off the last of the milk, craved it the way some women craved pricey shoes. And at Hudson Towers, not only would she have the apartment she wanted but she could afford the rent on a one-bedroom all on her own. Well, not right at this exact moment but very, very soon. Her savings were piling up nicely, and once she finished her associate’s degree in finance—approximately forty-six more credit hours—she’d be good to go.

Gabe pulled out a bottle of Grey Goose and poured a shot. “Well, right now you need a roommate, and I think you should bunk with me until you find someone who isn’t going to desert you again.”

She shook her head. “Must you try and rescue every female you meet?”

“Yes, he must,” answered Sean and then promptly stuck a celery stick into his mouth.

“At least think about it,” Gabe said. “And if you’re thinking about bunking in the storeroom until your find a place, think again, Tessa. It’s against the law.”

“In what state?”

“In my state. My bar. My state. My rules.”

Tessa shot a lime wedge in his direction, not that it mattered. The writing was pretty much on the wall. With five days left before she had to move, she really didn’t have much choice.

ALL NIGHT GABE POURED drinks, a gazillion cosmopolitans for a gazillion females who were all looking to meet Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong and the gazillion single males who skimmed in their wake. Yeah, it was a rough life. Actually, it was the only life he’d ever dreamed of. Gabe’s great-grandfather had done it right.

In 1929, O’Sullivans had been a speakeasy when his great-grandfather fell dead at the age of fifty-three. Surprisingly enough, his wife had taken over, and ran the place until gin was flowing legally in New York again.

Years had passed and generations of O’Sullivans had worked the old bar. Each generation had taken it over and then spent their lives working to keep the place going. During World War II, Gabe’s grandmother had split the bar into two real estate parcels, keeping one, and selling the other, which had been, up until a few months ago, a bodega. Gabe’s father, Thomas O’Sullivan, had ignored the family business and chose to be a newspaperman until he died of a heart attack at fifty-six.

Gabe had inherited his great-grandfather’s dream, a dream passed down to his grandfather, his uncle and finally Gabe. As a kid, he’d worked behind the bar illegally, which had only made it sweeter. He loved listening to people talk, loved meeting new people and in general loved the bar. Where else could a kid have his picture taken with the New York Yankees and the Teflon Don? Nowhere else but O’Sullivans.

After his uncle had died, Gabe had worked four jobs to pay the back taxes on the place to keep it open, and even then he’d needed his brothers’ financial help. But things had worked out, and voilà, here he was. He’d updated the interior, changed the name from O’Sullivans to Prime and now he was mixing Jell-O shots with seven adoring females eagerly waiting on line to pay him for a drink, tip him another twenty and then scribble their phone numbers on the cocktail napkins. And the next step in the Gabe O’Sullivan hospitality empire? The full restoration of the bar into the space next door.

Considering the medical history of the male O’Sullivan genes, Gabe figured he didn’t have any time to waste.

He winked at a particularly lovely specimen with coal-black hair and honey-colored eyes that dripped with the promise of a good time. Jasmine, he thought, and slid a glass of wine in front of her. “You’re looking lovely tonight. Why aren’t there five guys angling to buy you a drink?” It wasn’t the most creative line in the world, but he wasn’t looking to pick her up, he only wanted her to like his bar.