by Jill Shalvis
Shaking off the memory, Becca paid for her food at the bar and took in the sign at the register that said: HELP WANTED. She glanced at the piano and gnawed her lower lip. Then she gestured for the bartender. “Who do I talk to about the job?”
“Me,” he said with a smile as he set aside the glass he’d been drying to shake her hand. “I’m Jax Cullen, one of the owners.”
“Is it a hostess position?” she asked hopefully.
“Waitressing,” he said. “You interested?”
Was she? She glanced at the piano and ached. And she knew she was very interested, skills or not. And there were no skills. None. “I am if you are,” she said.
Jax lost his smile. “Shit. You don’t have any experience.”
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m a real quick learner.”
He studied her, and Becca did her best to look like someone who was one hundred percent capable of doing anything—except, of course, handling her own life. She flashed him her most charming smile, her “showtime” smile, and hoped for the best.
Jax chuckled. “You’re spunky,” he said. “I’ll give you that.”
“I’m more than spunky,” she promised. “I bet you by the end of my first night, you’ll want to keep me.”
He held her gaze a moment, considering. “All right, I’ll take that bet. How about a trial by fire starting now?”
She eyed the room. Not full. Not even close. “Who else is working?”
“Usually on a night like this, two others. But both my girls are out sick tonight and I’m on my own, so you’re looking like good timing to me. If you’re any good.”
The piano in the far corner was still calling to her, making her braver than usual. “I’m in,” she said.
Jax gave her an apron and a quick rundown of what was expected. He told her that here in Lucky Harbor, familiarity was key. Everyone knew everyone, and the trick to good service—and good tips—was friendliness.
Then he threw her to the wolves.
The first half hour remained thankfully slow, but every time she walked by the baby grand, she faltered.
Play me, Becca. . .
At about the twentieth pass, she paused and glanced around. Not a soul was looking at her. She eyed the piano again, sitting there so innocuously, looking gorgeous. Damn. She’d played on her keyboard, but not a piano. Not since two years ago when she’d quit. She’d had a near miss with going back to playing a year ago, but then things had gone to all sorts of hell, reinforcing her stage fright and giving her a wicked case of claustrophobia to boot.
Play me, Becca. . .
Fine. Since fighting the urge was like trying not to need air, she sat. Her heart sped up, but she was still breathing. So far so good. She set her fingertips on the cool keys.
Still good.
And almost before she realized it, she’d begun playing a little piece she’d written for Jase years ago. It flowed out of her with shocking ease, and when she finished, she blinked like she was waking from a trance. Then she looked around.
Jax was smiling at her from behind the bar and when he caught her eye, he gave her a thumbs-up. Oh, God. Breaking out in a sweat, she jumped up and raced into the bathroom to stare at herself in the mirror. Flushed. Shaky. She thought about throwing up, but then someone came in to use the facilities and she decided she couldn’t throw up with an audience. So she splashed cold water on her hot face, told herself she was totally fine, and then got back to work to prove it.
Luckily, the dinner crowd hit and she got too busy to think. She worked the friendliness as best she could. But she quickly discovered it wasn’t a substitute for talent. In the first hour, she spilled a pitcher of beer down herself, mixed up two orders—and in doing so nearly poisoned someone when she gave the cashew-allergic customer a cashew chicken salad—and then undercharged a large group by thirty bucks.
Jax stepped in to help her, but by then she was frazzled beyond repair. “Listen,” he said very kindly, considering, “maybe you should stick with playing. You’re amazing on the piano. Can you sing?”
“No,” she said, and grimaced. “Well, yes.” But she couldn’t stick with playing, because she couldn’t play in front of an audience without having heart failure. “I really can do this waitressing thing,” she said.
Jax shook his head but kept his voice very gentle. “You’re not cut out for this job, Becca. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
She was beginning to think she wasn’t cut out for her life, but she met his gaze evenly, her own determined. “I bet you, remember? By the end of the night, you’ll see. Please? One more try?”
He looked at her for a long moment and then sighed. “Okay, then. One more try.”
A group of three guys walked in the door and took a table. Fortifying her courage, Becca gathered menus and strode over there with a ready-made smile, which congealed when she saw who it was.
Sexy Grumpy Surfer and his two cohorts.
Bolstering herself, she set the menus on the table. “Welcome, gentlemen.”
SGS was sprawled back in his chair, long legs stretched out in front of him crossed at the ankles, his sun-streaked hair unruly as ever, looking like sin personified as he took her in. She did her best to smile, ignoring the butterflies suddenly fluttering low in her belly. “What can I get you to start?”
“Pitcher of beer. And you’re new,” one of them said, the one with the sweetest smile and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. He had short brown hair he’d forgotten to comb, some scruff on a square jaw, and was wearing cargo pants and a polo shirt with a small screwdriver sticking out of the breast pocket. “I’m Cole,” he told her, “and this big lug here . . .” He gestured to the dark-haired, dark-eyed, darkly dangerously good-looking guy next to him. “Tanner.” Then he jerked his chin toward SGS. “You apparently already know this one.”
“Yes,” Becca said. “SGS.”
They all just looked at her.
“Sexy Grumpy Surfer,” she clarified.
Cole and Tanner burst out laughing.
SGS just gave her a long, steady, paybacks-are-a-bitch smile.
“Or Grandpa,” Cole offered. “That’s what we call him because he always seems to know the weirdest shit.”
“And Grandma works, too,” Tanner said. “When he’s being a chick. No offense.”
Sam sent them each a look that would’ve had Becca peeing her pants, but neither man looked particularly worried.
“And your name?” Cole asked Becca.
She opened her mouth, but before she could answer Sam spoke for her. “Peeper,” he said. “Her name is Peeper.”
His steely but amused gaze held hers as he said this, which is how Becca finally saw him smile. It transformed his face, softening it, and though he was already ridiculously attractive, the smile—trouble-filled as it was—only made him all the more so. It gave her a little quiver in her tummy, which, as she couldn’t attribute it to either hunger or nerves, was not a good sign.
“Peeper,” Tanner repeated slowly, testing it on his tongue. “That’s unusual.”
Still holding Becca’s gaze, Sam said, “It’s a nickname, because she—”
“It’s my big eyes,” Becca broke in with before he could tell his friends that she’d been caught red-handed watching them like a . . . well, peeper. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve bowled him over with my . . . peepers.”
Sam startled her by laughing, and the sound did something odd and wonderful and horrifying deep inside her, all at the same time. Unbelievably, she could feel herself standing on the precipice of a crush on this guy. She’d been attracted before, of course, plenty of times, but it’d been a while since she’d taken the plunge.
A long while.
She hoped the water was nice, because she could feel the pull of it and knew she was going in.
Chapter 4
When Becca was called to the bar, Sam watched her go, sass in every step. She was in one of those flimsy, gauzy skirts that flirted with a woman’s thi
ghs, and a stretchy white top. Her hair was piled on top of her head, but strands had escaped, flying around her flushed face and clinging to her neck. She’d clearly had a rough night because she appeared to be wearing both beer and barbecue sauce.
“Cute,” Tanner said, also watching.
“She’s off limits,” Sam said, and when they both looked at him in surprise, he shrugged. “We’re concentrating on business right now.”
Tanner coughed and said “bullshit” at the same time.
“It does feel like Grandma here’s holding out on us,” Cole said, still watching Sam.
Sam didn’t want to get into the real reason, which he told himself was that clearly Becca was trying to get her footing, and yeah, she put off a tough, I’ve-got-this vibe, but there was something about her that told him it was a facade. “She’s new to town,” he said. “Let her settle before you start sniffing around her.”
“I will if you will,” Tanner said with a smile. It faded when he caught Sam’s long look. “Kidding,” he said. “Jesus. Hands off your Peeper, got it.”
The nickname of course had jackshit to do with her eyes—though they were indeed big and luminous. They were also a warm, melted milk chocolate, and filled with more than a little trouble.
Sam wasn’t opposed to trouble. In fact, he was absolutely all for it.
When he was the one causing it.
But this woman was trouble in her own right. He’d been amused at catching her watching him from her window—several times—but it wasn’t amusement he felt now. Because this was the second time he’d been within touching distance, and it was now two for two that she’d sucked him in. It wasn’t her looks, though she was pretty in a girl-next-door way. Nor was it her feistiness and ability to laugh at herself.
Instead it was something else, something he suspected had to do with the singular flash of vulnerability he’d caught in her eyes.
She wasn’t quite as tough as she wanted the world to believe.
And hell. That drew him. Because Sam knew all too well what it was like to not be nearly as tough as you needed to be. Something he didn’t like to think about. “We doing this or what?” he asked the guys. “We have shit to decide.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a fun sucker?” Tanner asked.
Sam slid him a look, and Tanner blew out a breath. “Shit. Yeah, we’re doing this.”
Cole lifted a shoulder and nodded.
Neither of them liked these weekly business meetings, but if they didn’t have them, then all the hard decisions were left to Sam. He was good at making hard decisions in his life—he’d had to be—but this was about the three of them, equal partners. “So we agree,” he said. “We’re hiring someone to take over the crap none of us wants to do.”
“Told you,” Cole said. “Ad’s in the paper.”
“You get any calls yet?”
“Yes,” Cole said. “Lucille.”
Lucille was a thousand years old and the local gossip queen. She had a heart of gold, but a nose made for butting into other people’s business. “No,” Sam said. Hell no.
“Way ahead of you,” Cole told him. “Especially after she said she couldn’t wait to sit on the beach and take pics of us on and off the boat for her Pinterest Sexy Guys page. She thought she could manage our phones and scheduling in between her photography. She said something about hoping we go shirtless, and us signing something that allows her to use our images for—and I’m quoting here—the good of women’s mental health everywhere.”
“Christ,” Tanner muttered.
“I told her we had an age requirement,” Cole said, “and that our new admin had to be under the age of seventy.”
“How did she take that?” Sam asked.
“She was bummed, said even her fake ID showed seventy-five, but that she understood.”
Becca arrived with their pitcher of beer, except it wasn’t beer at all; it looked like . . . strawberry margaritas.
“You all decide on your order?” she asked, setting down three glasses.
“New Orleans,” Cole said, watching Tanner pour himself a strawberry margarita.
Becca looked startled. “What?”
“You’re originally from New Orleans,” Cole said.
She stared at him. “How did you know that?”
“You’re good, but I’m better,” Cole said. “I can hear it real faint in your voice.”
“Ignore him,” Tanner said, toasting her with his glass. “He’s a freak.”
“A freak who knows we didn’t order a chick drink,” Cole said as Tanner sipped at his strawberry margarita.
Becca gasped. “Oh, crap. This isn’t yours.” She nabbed the glass right out of Tanner’s hand. “I’m sorry. Don’t move.”
She snatched the pitcher as well and vanished.
“She is cute,” Cole said. “Not much of a waitress, though.”
“She’s not as bad as Tanya,” Tanner said. “She stole from you.”
“Borrowed,” Cole corrected. “I let her borrow some money for her mom, who was going to lose her home in Atlanta.”
“Did you ever get your money back?” Tanner asked mildly.
Cole pulled out his phone and eyed the dark screen as if wishing for a call.
Tanner rolled his eyes. “You didn’t. You let her walk with three grand of your hard-earned money. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got some land to sell you. Swamp land. It’s on sale, just for you.”
Sam shoved his iPad under their noses before a fight could break out. He didn’t mind a good fight now and then, but Jax and Ford, the owners of the Love Shack, frowned on it happening inside their bar. “If you two idiots are done, we’re in the middle of a financial meeting here.”
“You’re right,” Tanner said, and straightened in his seat. “Give it to us, Grandma.”
Sam gave him a long look. “It’s a good thing I’m too hungry to kick your ass.”
He’d been in charge of their money since their rig days. Back then, there’d been four of them: himself, Tanner, Cole, and Gil, the lot of them pretty much penniless. But thanks to his dad’s unique ability to squander his every last penny, Sam had learned to handle money by the age of ten. He’d been tight-fisted with their earnings, squirreling them away—earning him that Grandma moniker. He’d shut his friends up when, at the end of the first year, he’d shown them their savings balance.
They’d had a goal, their dream—the charter company, and their seven years at sea had been extremely profitable.
And deadly.
They’d lost Gil. Just the thought brought the low, dull ache of his passing back as a fresh knife stab, and Sam drew a breath until it passed.
They’d nearly lost Tanner in that rig fire as well. Tanner still limped and was damn lucky to have his leg at all, something Sam tried not to think about. “We talked about expanding,” he said, “hiring on more people and buying a new boat.”
“When we have the money for it,” Tanner said. He was their resident pessimist. Never met a situation he liked. “We said we’d revisit the issue when we were ready. No loan payments.”
Sam hadn’t been the only one to grow up on the wrong side of the poverty line. “No loans,” he said.
Cole hadn’t taken his eyes off Sam. “You already spend all your time bitching and moaning about not having enough hours in the day to make your boats,” he reminded him. “You’d have heart failure if we expanded our business right now. Have you updated your will? You left everything to me, right?”
“We start with more staff,” Sam said, ignoring him. “Office help first, then hire on an additional crew.” He pointed at both Cole and Tanner. “You guys are in charge of that.”
“Why us?” Tanner asked.
“Because I’m busy making you rich,” Sam said.
Becca was back, with a pitcher of beer this time, and a huge plate of nachos, chicken wings, and pesto chips. “Your order,” she said.
The guys all looked at each other, and Becca paused. “What?
” she asked.
