He hadn’t been expecting to have it unthread some of his own tension, too.
Thankfully, the dull thunk of the door dividing the kitchen from the bar interrupted Adrian’s thoughts, and he swung toward it to find Brennan limping slightly toward the stairs to the office.
The guy took a stutter step when he caught sight of Adrian, his surprise obvious. “You’re still here?”
Adrian acknowledged that with raised brows. “Looks that way. Rough night on your feet?” He popped his chin at Brennan, letting his eyes flick toward the bartender’s lower body.
Brennan paused, then gave a shrug, loose and easy. “No more than usual, but it’s getting pretty dead out there.” His dark-eyed gaze took a tour around the now-quiet kitchen space. “Where’s Jesse?”
“I sent him and the new guy home. Kitchen’s broken down.” Adrian waited. While the guy’s voice matched his normally laid-back nature, something small and unspoken lurked beneath the surface of his demeanor.
He measured Adrian with a more serious glance, and bingo, out came the question. “Are you sticking around?”
Huh. He hadn’t really taken the guy for that territorial. Then again, Brennan seemed more concerned than pissed. Adrian decided to proceed with caution regardless. “I’ve got some inventory to check.”
Brennan took a turn at raising his brows. “That doesn’t really answer the question.”
Damn, this guy wasn’t half-bad. Adrian allowed a crooked smile to eke out. “I might stick around for a few. You got a problem at the bar?” Not that he’d be much help if Brennan did. Christ, this broken arm was a monumental pain in the ass.
“Teagan just kicked me out so she could close. I already broke down what I could while we’re still open, but . . .”
“She shouldn’t be here by herself at two A.M.” Seriously, this woman took survival of the fittest as a personal freaking challenge. Was it really so bad to ask for a little help?
Brennan leaned back against the stainless steel counter, his expression one of agreement. “Try telling her that. She’s stubborn as hell.”
“Yeah, I got the memo. I’ll make sure she gets out of here safely.”
Okay, yeah. Maybe there was a kernel of caveman instinct propelling him to keep his weary ass on the premises so Teagan wouldn’t be alone in the bar with the night’s earnings in the register. But the buddy system wasn’t just for swimming, as far as Adrian was concerned.
“Thanks, man.” Brennan pushed back to straighten up. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sure. Go home and get some sleep.”
Adrian watched the guy head up to the office to clock out, palming the clipboard with his uninjured hand. There was no shortage of things to keep him busy, although he knew Teagan wouldn’t buy that as his reason for staying until closing time. It was only another hour and a half, anyway.
He slipped through the door leading to the bar, giving his eyes a minute to adjust to the dusky lighting. The booths and tables in the dining room proper all stood clean and empty, and only a small handful of people lingered at the bar. Teagan was at the opposite end of the service area, popping the cap off a Rolling Rock with a laugh as she chatted up its recipient. Her movements were simple and fluid, not at all like the simmering tension she carried around in the kitchen, and Adrian took them in for a minute before heading to the other side of the polished wood. The cushioned black leather of the bar stool felt way better than it should under his frame, and he sank into it with relief, getting situated at the end of the bar.
Teagan appeared in front of him barely a minute later, confusion in her expression. “Kitchen’s way past closed. Don’t you want to head home and rest?”
“And miss out on this inventory?” Adrian tapped the clipboard in front of him, lifting one corner of his mouth in an approximation of a smile. “No way.”
She crossed her arms under her breasts, and he cursed the very nature of low-cut T-shirts. “You’re off the clock,” she said.
Hold on, here we go. “To be fair, I was never on the clock.”
Other than knowing the Double Shot was being run cleanly, being off the books was the only thing Adrian had cared about when he and Teagan had hashed out the finer details of his helping in the kitchen. He had enough money stuffed away to get by, and on the off chance that Big Ed sniffed out the paperwork, Adrian would be screwed with unapproved work release. Plus, he wasn’t so much working for her as he was just standing in the kitchen and offering his opinion. It didn’t really count. Not in terms of getting paid, anyway.
Teagan cocked her head, her ponytail glinting auburn in the muted light spilling down from over the bar. “Okay. But liquor orders don’t go in until Monday, meat and produce on Tuesday. So that can wait.”
“What can I say? I like to be prepared.” He turned his eyes toward the numbers on the clipboard, not about to let on that his left hand was about as useful as a tree stump. He didn’t need both hands in order to get a handle on the numbers, and anyway, he wasn’t leaving her here alone.
“Fine,” she said, shocking the hell out of him even further by pouring a glass of iced tea and putting it on the bar next to the inventory. “Just do me a favor and stay hydrated, would you? It’s hotter than hell’s waiting room in that kitchen, and you’ve still got a long way to go healing up that arm.”
Adrian laughed, unable to help it. “Fair enough, Red.”
“Are you going to call me that just to try to annoy me?”
Good Christ, she was pretty when she was trying to hide being irritated. “That depends. Is it working?”
“No.” The answer came too fast, and she covered up the rushed cadence with a smooth smile that made his blood spark through his veins. “Now drink up.”
Adrian took a long draw from his glass, grateful for the cold jolt to bring him back to the land of the mentally stable. Flirting with Teagan was far too easy, and he knew there were a variety of reasons he shouldn’t.
Trouble was, it felt far too good not to dare her into it every time she so much as shot him a warm-whiskey glance.
The soundtrack on the overhead speakers looped around for the nth time, the volume comfortably leveled off to match the quiet chatter of the few customers left. Adrian settled into his spot, checking the inventory numbers and making crude tick marks in the margins to delineate ordering patterns. While some people found numbers and inventory to be the most dreaded part of the job, he never really minded it. Food was food, and he loved it from concept to execution.
Adrian lost himself in the rhythm of the work, crosschecking the tally of menu items with the record of what they’d ordered in the past month and what was still left in the kitchen. He compiled a detailed list in his head, although what hit the paper was a lot rougher with the chicken scratch factor. Maybe he could come up with some kind of form like they used at La Dolce Vita, something online that would track inventory automatically. It never hurt to look at your trends and see where you could manage costs. In the long run, it might—
“Are you happy now?”
Teagan’s throaty tone caught him completely off guard, and he blinked up at her, caught smack between what-the-hell and helllloooo-sexy-woman.
“Am I . . . what?”
“Whatever plan you and Brennan cooked up worked. We are officially the last two people in the restaurant.” She sauntered around to the customer side of the bar, swinging the bar stools up to the mahogany with what looked like a well-practiced flip. When the hell had it gotten so late?
“Oh, right. Well, inventory should be a slam dunk. Your father actually keeps pretty detailed records, even though they’re mostly by hand. I can go over it with you, if you want.”
Teagan laughed, putting up the bar stool next to his. “The only thing I want to go over right now is my bed.”
Adrian’s mind zeroed in on the memory of her face, caught up in passionate release, and heat tore through his veins. “Really?”
Her eyes rounded, landing on his with a mixt
ure of embarrassment and something he couldn’t quite nail down. “Oh shit. I mean to sleep. In my bed, all alone. You know, just . . . God, sleep deprivation is not my friend.”
Oh hell, he had to let her off the hook. “I get it. I was just giving you a hard time.”
A small groan escaped her ample mouth, and Christ, he wanted to spend a week just tasting her. “Your unintentional innuendo is just as bad as mine.”
He rewound his words, giving a chuckle as he pushed off from his bar stool and lifted it for her to flip. “Sorry,” he said, although it was mostly untrue.
Teagan paused, fingers still laced through the wood back of the stool now resting on the bar. “Adrian, listen, maybe we should—”
“Well, well, well! Lookie what we have here!” The interrupting voice coming from the kitchen entrance needled Adrian’s ears and nerves all at the same time, and he swung to instinctively put himself between Teagan and the stranger moving toward them. The guy was dressed like every other regular in the Blue Ridge, although the hard-edged menace he wore along with his Levi’s and flannel shirt sent Adrian’s heartbeat into fifth gear and his hackles into overdrive.
“The restaurant’s closed. And since you’re not an employee, you can get out from behind my bar.” Teagan brushed a hard squeeze over Adrian’s unhurt forearm as she moved past, and damn it, every last one of his deep-seated inclinations screamed to get her back behind him.
The man laughed, a raspy, gravel-laden smoker’s hack, before taking a long look over the place that made Adrian want to wipe down everything the guy had laid eyes on. “No need to get uppity now, darlin’. And if you don’t want nobody behind your bar after hours, you might think about lockin’ that side door’a yours.”
Fuck. He knew that damned door was an open invite for trouble. This was going straight from bad to hell in a handbasket. “I’m pretty sure the lady told you to get out from behind her bar.” Adrian shifted forward, cursing both his sling and his situation with renewed vigor. How could he have thought to avoid this kind of thing in a goddamned bar?
The man’s beady eyes screeched to a halt on Adrian, giving him a quick once-over. He moved coolly from his spot in the doorframe to the pass-through between the bar and the restaurant, keeping just enough distance between himself and Adrian to be out of arm’s reach.
“Well, your daddy ain’t stupid, is he, sugar britches? I shoulda known he wouldn’t leave you be in this place all by your lonesome. But that’s okay. See, me and Trigger just came here for a little look-see, now that we’re business partners and all.”
“Excuse me?” Teagan’s words took on the tone of a different two-word directive, but her movement forward was cut short by the appearance of an absolute mountain of a man in the doorframe.
“Oh shit,” Teagan whispered, echoing the sentiment slingshotting through Adrian’s brain. The guy ducked past the threshold, the seams on his black muscle shirt threatening to surrender as he crossed his heavily tattooed arms over his chest.
This time, when Adrian stepped up next to her, she actually let him.
“Now you see how my brother got his nickname.” Asshole Number One grinned, showcasing a mouth full of crooked teeth. “A trigger causes somethin’ to happen. In our case, it’s usually somebody crappin’ their pants.” The grin got bigger and more lascivious, and the guy strolled past her to run a hand down the rounded edge of the bar. “But you don’t have to be scared, darlin’. Trigger ain’t gonna bite ’cha. Not unless I tell him to.”
“What do you want?” Teagan asked, crisp frost on every word in spite of the six-foot-seven pro wrestler knockoff eyeballing her from the doorframe. Adrian stood, firm but quiet at her side, hating every inch of where this conversation was headed.
The mouthy guy turned on one cowboy-booted heel, assessing the dining room as his eyes returned to Teagan’s spot. “My apologies. I do believe we got off on the wrong foot. Name’s Lonnie Armstrong. Your daddy and I do business together on the side.”
“Bullshit,” Teagan countered, chin up, and Christ, she was going to make getting out of this difficult. “My father does all his business here.”
“Does he now?” Lonnie’s eyes glinted, cold and steely, matching the snakelike smile pulling at his thin lips. “Well, that’s gonna make two of us, then. See, your daddy came to me ’bout a month ago, lookin’ for a little money to tide him over. Bank done turned him down for a loan, and he was real desperate. Awful hard to run a quality establishment like this and pay for doctor’s bills.”
“You know about my father’s medical bills?” Despite her rigid stance, Teagan’s voice pitched upward, and Adrian’s pulse went for broke in his veins.
The one place in the entire Blue Ridge where he’d been able to find solace was overrun by redneck loan sharks fleecing sick old men for shits and giggles.
Fucking priceless.
Lonnie smiled, although there was no warmth or humor in the gesture. “I know about lots of things. Not the least of which is that your old man is into me for an awful lot of money, honey. I fixed his payroll problems up real good today, though. Don’t you worry about that.”
Teagan’s shoulders gave a slight sag, one Adrian might not have even noticed if he hadn’t been standing close enough to touch her. “The bounced paychecks weren’t an accounting error.”
Lonnie’s scoff was answer enough. “’Course, that came with a price, namely the need for bigger collateral than normal since he already owed me. Deed to this here fine bar and grill sounded good enough, and your daddy agreed. He’s got one month to pay me back, but ’til he does, I reckon I own a little piece of this place. And I intend to make a little money off it for my trouble.”
Teagan’s head whipped up, her ponytail slapping against her shoulder as she nailed Lonnie with a death glare. “You’re not running anything illegal out of here. No drugs. Period.”
Apparently, priceless had been an understatement. Adrian couldn’t write his ticket back to Rikers better if he was standing over a dead body with a smoking gun and a big, fat who-me look plastered to his kisser. He needed to get out of here, the faster the better.
Lonnie shook his head, circling back through the empty space with a look of mock hurt. “I am wounded that you would think so little of me. I don’t dabble in illegal substances. Too much risk. I prefer to stay on the security side’a things.”
A cold sweat formed between Adrian’s shoulder blades, sending a trickle of moisture and foreboding down his back. “You’re running guns.” Moving weapons had become exponentially more challenging in the last five years. He’d heard plenty about it when he’d had nothing but nine months’ worth of time to listen.
Lonnie clapped his hands, looking at Adrian with a smug stare. “It seems your boyfriend has been around the block a time or two, honey. Matter of fact, he’s got kind of a felonious look about him.” He took a step closer, then another, his shiny black cowboy boots sending an echoing clack over the hardwood as his implication thickened the air.
Teagan swung her eyes up at Adrian in disbelief, and seriously, he wanted to beat the crap out of this guy. “I’m not interested in anything felonious.”
“Well, then. I stand corrected.” Lonnie returned his ratlike gaze to Teagan as he continued his prowl around the empty dining room. “You don’t have to worry about my outside business endeavors creepin’ into your space, darlin’. I ain’t stupid enough to shit where I eat. See, what I need is a bookkeeper a sorts. And the books for this place are so nice and legal-lookin’, what with it bein’ such a fine establishment.”
Adrian’s heart locked in his throat as he added money laundering to the top of the pile. Jesus, Big Ed could have him arrested six ways to Sunday for just standing here.
“My father would never agree to this,” Teagan said, as if she was trying to convince herself. “You have to leave him alone. He’s sick. He’s—”
Lonnie cut her off. “We’re past that, darlin’. Your daddy owes me too much. ’Course he was real insistent
I not come ’round here and let you in on our little deal. But what kind of business partner would I be if I didn’t introduce myself?”
“You can’t do this to him. There has to be something else.” Teagan didn’t even try to mask the panic in her voice, and it ripped through Adrian despite all the other emotions vying for attention in his chest.
“There’s always somethin’ else,” Lonnie said, the words slithering out. “He pays me back in full, with interest, of course, and I don’t have to mess with nothin’.”
“How much?” Adrian watched Lonnie very carefully as he spoke, and saw exactly the hitch in movement he was looking for when the words hit their target.
“Fifteen large, with yesterday’s boost.”
“My father owes you fifteen thousand dollars?” Teagan half yelled, and it was the last nail in the self-preservation coffin. Adrian had to end this conversation and get her out of here, now.
“All right, Lonnie. You made your point,” Adrian said, sending a pointed glance to the door. Teagan opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but Adrian kept talking. “Introductions are done. The bar’s closed.”
For a second, he thought Lonnie was going to argue, and damn it, this was so not how Adrian wanted things to go down. But then the sleazebag eased back to the doorway, nodding to his brother as they both turned to leave.
“Fifteen grand, sweet pea. You got four weeks to scrape it together better’n your old man did.” His eyes narrowed to a suggestive stare. “I’m lookin’ forward to workin’ with you as my . . . bookkeeper.”
Okay, yeah. Adrian had had enough. He took a step forward at the same time Teagan’s spine snapped into place beside him, and Lonnie let out a cackle as he retreated.
“Y’all be safe, now. You never know who’s just outside your door.”
A minute later, the side door closed with an audible slam, and Teagan’s shoulders slumped at the sound.
“Adrian, I can explain . . .”
But he just shook his head as he looked at her, a splash of hot anger replacing the cold fear of a moment ago. “Nothing to explain, Red. I think we’re done here.”
Fire Me Up Page 12
