Maybe that was what she was here for, to watch him lose the bar only so she could then take over? Not a chance in hell he’d ever let that happen.
Sailor’s hands stilled in the water, her fingertips flattened against the glass’s rim. “I…I didn’t mean it like that.”
The air stretched around him, thinning out his breaths. He faced her, the edge of the counter digging into the side of his leg. “What did you mean it like then? Because to me all I heard was I’m not doing a good job and you could do better.” She shook her head and opened her mouth, but Ryan wasn’t done. “Well, guess what? I would bet the title of this bar on the mere fact that you know nothing about running it. Your father apparently knew that, too. So don’t sit here and try to talk shop with me about how I could improve business.”
“That wasn’t—” she started but pinched her lips shut. That wasn’t what she was doing? Right, and he wasn’t wishing Marty could come back and show him how to run this business more effectively.
Under the bar lights’ glow, tears glistened in the corners of her eyes. The comment about her father might’ve been a little harsh, though it was nothing but the truth. Well, that and the simple fact that Sailor had walked out on her father and left him no choice but to pass the business down to someone he knew would care about it as much as he had instead of someone like Sailor, who would’ve sold it for money to support whatever habit she’d had back then.
…
Don’t cry, don’t cry, Sailor, don’t you dare let a single tear fall.
First telling her he didn’t care about her—that one stung, though it shouldn’t have. Just because they’d had sex didn’t mean she knew him. But now this… She fully deserved that comment about her father, and she was just going to have to get used to the fact that she’d met someone who had known the man she’d left years ago. And regardless of the way she kind of wanted to punch Ryan for the way he was talking to her, she was a mature adult now and needed to take the high road, which meant giving Ryan a chance to see the person she’d become, instead of the person he obviously thought she still was. It’d be the only way he’d ever consider selling the Alibi to her.
Sailor brushed her hair back with her forearm and cleaned the rest of the glasses without a word. When she was done, she crossed to the other side of the bar where Ryan was standing, his front side leaning into the edge of the counter, a pretty brunette opposite him giggling and petting his beard.
“Sorry to break up your”—she flicked her gaze from Ryan to the girl to the hand in his beard and then back to Ryan’s face. Jeez, what a pig. He probably took girls home from the bar like this every night—“whatever this is, but I need to take my break now.”
Pressure stretched at her neck, like her feet were locked in place at the same time something yanked her head in the reverse direction. She wasn’t going to lie, seeing a beautiful girl touch him like that bothered her.
“Thirty minutes,” he said, muscles in his jaw pulsing.
Without looking back, she hurried to the back room to retrieve Drex, praying down the length of the hallway that her little pooch hadn’t spent the last three hours practicing his Houdini skills, or worse, pooping nervously.
When she opened the door, his fuzzy head popped up from where he was lying on the top of the wooden desk. Sailor scanned the room. Everything seemed to be in place. No nervous poos on the floor, either. “Were you a good boy?”
He yipped at her and licked her hand as she clipped on the leash. A door in the back of the room led to an alley outside, and once Drex was settled into his sniff-walking routine, Sailor pulled out her phone and dialed her cousin. “I need a favor,” she said as soon as Marissa answered.
Beads of moisture from the night air clung to her cheeks. Lit with a row of floodlights along the top of the building, the alley stretched for blocks. Sailor had no desire to walk that far, so after passing a few closed doors and garages, she turned and walked back, steering Drex away from a pile of cigarette butts.
“Drink too many mojitos and need a ride?” Marissa laughed.
“No, but I may need you to do that again.” Drex stopped and lifted his leg, and Sailor turned to give him privacy. “Well, not the barfing part. That was a little gross. Or…a lot gross.” Sailor cringed at the memory of the smell. “But business is really slow here tonight and could use some Marissa-fying.”
“Do I want to know what Marissa-fying means?”
“Spread your love. Spread your cheer. Tell everyone you know to spread the word that the Alibi is where they should be tonight.” Drex lowered his leg and performed his end-of-pee dance by kicking out his back feet a few times. Sailor smiled. Her dog was so weird.
“You want me to help bring business to that place? But I thought—”
“The owner has made it crystal clear that he won’t be giving up the bar anytime soon.” Especially to someone he hated, but she didn’t want to get into that at the moment. “I need to get in on his good side, and bringing people to the bar just might do that. Plus, the hair of the dog might do you some good. Can you help me or not?”
Drex tugged on the leash, and Sailor let him lead her back to the bar’s alley door.
Her cousin sighed out a heavy breath. “If I have a hangover tomorrow, you’re taking care of me. All day.”
Sailor chuckled. “You don’t have to drink, you know.”
“Grace a bar with my presence and not drink?” She scoffed. “That’s like telling a frat boy he doesn’t have to break a keg-stand record. See you in a bit.”
Fifty-two minutes later, Marissa swept through the door wearing a flowy teal halter over a tight pair of jeans. The same group of girls who’d joined her at the Dirty Bird filed in behind her, each one done up as if they’d had hours to get ready instead of minutes, and each one breezing right past the redheaded bartender who’d been stationed on a stool since the room had started to fill up.
“Since you work here now,” Marissa said, sauntering up to the bar where Sailor was stacking clean glasses, “do we at least get free drinks?”
“Nothing’s free in here.” Ryan’s deep voice cut into the air from where he’d been standing at the opposite end of the bar. “Especially to someone who will likely throw it up anyway.” A small smile graced his lips, one that had been flitting about each time another group of people entered the bar.
Marissa’s brow crinkled, her gaze sliding from Sailor’s to his. “You look kind of familiar,” she said to Ryan, squinting as if that would help her see him better. If she squeezed her eyes hard enough, would she realize his beard was the very one she’d had her hands buried in the other night?
Sailor flushed at the way she’d done the same thing, pulling him closer to her, deeper inside her—
No. Jesus. She couldn’t go there again.
Marissa pointed at him and continued, “And I’m having this weird vision of…me and you in a hallway?”
Oh, jeez, Sailor needed to do some explaining. “That’s called a flashback, Riss.”
“Flashback?” Marissa flittered her gaze to the ceiling, something she always did when she was thinking. “Was it last Christmas?” she asked, her head bobbing back and forth between the two behind the bar. “Because for some reason I keep imagining Santa Claus— Ohhh.”
The group of girls flanking Marissa giggled, one of them making a comment about how naughty Marissa had been.
Yeah, Sailor definitely didn’t want a repeat of that night. Well, the first part, anyway. Sailor laughed and handed Ryan a glass. “She’ll have the lightest beer you have on tap,” she said to him. Then she turned to her cousin. “This is Ryan, he’s the one who carried you home the other night.”
Marissa waggled her eyebrows, a look Sailor knew meant her cousin was up to something. Ryan poured the beer and took orders from the other girls. As he turned to mix their assortment of vodka this and Bacardi that, Marissa leaned over the counter, her sweet perfume tickling the inside of Sailor’s nose.
“Why didn’t
you tell me that hottie worked here? I would’ve worn my red, spiky Louboutins.
Somehow, Sailor guessed Ryan couldn’t care less about the type of shoes someone wore. Unless they bore pictures of their wearers’ skeletons—that’d probably interest him. “Riss, there’s something I didn’t tell you about that night.”
Marissa rested her elbows on the bar and folded her arms over each other. “You felt guilty about killing your plant, and that’s why you brought it with you?”
“What? No.”
“Speaking of the plant. I had to throw it away. I couldn’t get the smell of puke out of it. May it rest in peace.”
Sailor chuckled and shook her head. “You’re so weird.”
“So what didn’t you tell me?”
Hmm, how did she put this in a non he-effed-her-properly sort of way? “After we got you into your room, we, um, did…things.”
Things she’d really enjoyed.
Things that’d made her go mmmm.
Things that she, for the life of her, she couldn’t stop thinking about.
Marissa straightened, one eyebrow arching up like a bow. “What kind of things?”
Moving her hands, stacking glasses, trying to make it look like she was still working, Sailor coughed out the words, “Late-night things.”
A laugh belted out of her cousin and she whispered, “You had sexy times with him? In my house? While I was sleeping?”
“Passed out. Big difference.”
Marissa flicked her fingers into the air. “I want all the details. What’s it like working with him? Will there be more late-night things happening after your shift?” She winked.
Yeah, about that… Sailor cringed. “There’s something else I didn’t tell you.” She paused, not for dramatic effect, but because saying the words physically hurt her mouth, and she needed a moment to brace herself for them. “He’s also the owner of this bar. The one I was trying to—”
“Shut. The. Front. Gate.” She lunged forward, gripping Sailor’s forearm with a muddled smile and whispered, “You had… With the… Oh my God, I can’t even. How is that possible?” She shook her head, chuckling. “I mean, I know how that is possible, but… Crap, Sail, what’re you going to do?”
Good question. Sailor shrugged. “Smile and play nice, all the while trying to come up with a diabolical plan to get him to sell me the bar for an unreasonably low price even though he pretty much hates me for what I did to my dad.”
Marissa stared blankly. “You’re not joking, are you?”
“Wish I was.” Sailor spied an empty glass beside Marissa and added it to her pile of dirty ones. That panicky feeling—the one that felt like a scratchy rope had been twisted around the base of her neck—started to creep in. She sucked in a deep breath. “I wasn’t there for my dad.” To her left, Ryan’s shirt sleeve stretched against his biceps, his attention on the group of college-aged guys he was serving. “Ryan was, apparently, and has made it very clear what a horrible person I am for leaving him with the responsibility of taking care of my dad.”
“Wow”
“Yeah, wow.”
…
Ryan handed over the last beer, his ears still trained on Sailor and her redheaded cousin. Regardless of what she’d told him earlier about needing forgiveness, it wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. Sailor was looking for redemption by means of his bar, but it was the way her face puckered and voice strained when she thought only Marissa could hear.
The same look Marty used to get when talking about his late wife, who’d been killed in a boating accident long before Ryan had met him. The ghost of loss, a look only someone who’d known what it was like to be stripped of someone they loved deeply could pull off.
Only Sailor hadn’t lost her father. She’d turned her back and run far away from him. Left him to suffer alone. So that was where Ryan stopped listening and focused on the large crowd funneling in through the doorway.
There had to be at least ten or fifteen—all sorority-type girls—who were followed by another clutch of guys who could’ve easily been their fraternity counterparts by their variety of North Face and Brooks Brothers attire. They all looked like tonight was their night to party.
A punch of excitement shot through him. If each one bought two drinks, he’d make up for the slow week he’d had. Three, and he’d more than cover the cost of his supply bill for the week, too.
Trevor stopped the group to check IDs with a fleeting glance to Ryan. They both grinned, and then Ryan prepared for a flood of orders by grabbing a stack of clean glasses from Sailor. “Time to stop gabbing, Carlson,” he said, not failing to notice the way Sailor stiffened when he neared. Both girls stood straight, hands gripping the edge of the counter.
“She has a name,” Marissa spouted out, her tight features more strained now that she wasn’t sloppy drunk. Marty hadn’t ever talked about a niece similar to his daughter’s age. The two girls seemed close, though, so maybe Marissa had been a runaway like Sailor.
“Two names,” Ryan snapped back, zeroing his gaze on Sailor. “And I don’t know which one to call her.” Cradling the glasses in one arm, he stalked back to the other side of the bar and started taking orders.
Throughout the hour and into the next, the Alibi filled up to what had to be capacity. Moving about the crowd proved to be particularly challenging, especially making his way back to the bar where he’d left Sailor in charge of pouring beers while he grabbed more glasses from the storeroom. It was like trying to walk through a crop of corn stalks planted too closely together.
With the bar in sight, two heads near the taps caught his attention. It wasn’t the short blond hair that had him quickening his pace, but the tuft of dark hair right beside Sailor.
What the fuck?
Parting the crowd with the large box of glasses, Ryan kept watch on his bar. The dark hair suddenly had a face, and then hands that were clasped around Sailor’s and the glass she was holding. Their hands moved, tilting the glass under the flow of a tap.
A taut smile pushed into Sailor’s cheeks—the kind that screamed she wasn’t comfortable with this at all. Ryan hurried through the mass of people, not waiting until he was near to call out, “As far as I remember, she was the last employee I hired.”
Now that he was closer, Ryan could see the guy was much younger than him—the age of getting drunk and hitting on girls at bars. The pretty boy, Justin Bieber type.
The Biebs leaned in and whispered something into Sailor’s ear, running his hand from her arm down to the small of her back. “I don’t know which is worse,” the guy said to Ryan, “her pouring skills or your ability to train employees on how to pour a beer without half a glass of foam.” He took the now-full glass—only a thumb nail’s depth of frothy head—from Sailor and tapped her chin with the tip of his finger. “No offense, beautiful.”
The skin beneath Ryan’s beard grew hot. Was this guy really standing behind his bar telling him how to run it? Forget the fact that the way he was touching Sailor was causing her to stiffen, this guy needed to have the cockiness knocked the fuck out of him.
But this was his business, and he’d be damned if he had to shut down for the night because he couldn’t hold his shit together. Fucking high road it was. “You want a job, you can take hers. But if you do, you’re needed tonight, which means no more drinking for you. It would also mean going home sweaty and with sore feet instead of with a pretty girl from out there.” Ryan pointed to a collection of girls standing around a bar table. “Your choice, man.”
“Nah, I’m good.” Biebs swatted Sailor’s ass with his hand. “Thanks for the beer, beautiful.”
Quickly, Sailor spun, planting her feet apart, and slapped the guy across the face. A light sheen of sweat glistened along her forehead. “Did puberty also steal your respect for women?” she snapped out. “Or were you just born without it, you fat-headed pig?”
Ryan stepped between them, his arms extended out to his sides but facing behind him to catch Sailor in case sh
e decided to launch at the Biebs. Based on the tick in her jaw, one wrong move from him, and she’d be flying. “You deserved that,” he told the guy, pointing at his flat chest. “Now go back to your friends and get wasted, or whatever you kids do these days.”
With a smirk and a reset of his shoulders, Biebs slunk into the crowd. Ryan caught Sailor’s arm as she was returning to the washing station. “Next time you need someone to show you how to pour a beer, ask me, not some frat-boy douchebag.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, glancing from his face to where his fingers lightly gripped her elbow. “He was taunting me, so I told him to show me how it was done. I didn’t think he’d actually do it.”
Ryan’s focus drifted from the tiny divot between her brows down to the outline of her figure—black against the gray cement flooring, the material of her shirt tight against her tits, hips that begged to take a beating from his.
A tiny part of him wished she wasn’t who she was—the very person who’d destroyed the man who had been more of a father to him than his own blood, the ones who’d left him. He wanted to feel her tongue on his, the warmth and softness of her skin again, the way she quivered in pleasure beneath him. But then his senses returned, and he released her arm. “Welcome to the world of bartending.”
As the night drew on, orders at the bar seemed to double. And then triple. Now would be a great time to have a second bartender. Ryan rushed back and forth between the liquor shelf and soda tap, filling a round of Jack and Cokes. Just as soon as he set them on the counter and took the name for the tab, another order for lemon-drop shots came in. Or a second set of arms. At the other end of the bar, Sailor worked to cycle the glasses through. Soapy water, clean water, drying rack. Opposite her and hovering like a pack of sex-craved fifteen-year-olds stood a knot of guys laughing and chatting with her.
Voices buzzed around the room, much too loud to hear what they were talking about, but by the way her smile pushed into her cheeks and her eyes lit with laughter, she obviously didn’t mind the attention.
Was that what she’d been like when she was younger? A party girl at heart, the center of attention? By the easy way she moved about, talking and laughing with all the attention on her, he could see how she could’ve been. The neckline of her shirt stretched taut against her chest, drawing a parade of gazes to the mounds peeking out. Including Ryan’s. Damn that one-night stand. And double damn that he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
A Moment of Madness (Boston Alibi) Page 7
