At Your Service

by Amy Jo Cousins

  She reminded herself to find out if Sarah would be out of the house on the day of her meeting with the would-be restaurant buyers. Otherwise, she would have to rent yet another room at the Drake for herself, so she could dress in private, which verged on the ridiculous.

  Using her condo as a base of operations for the day would solve many of her problems, but she didn't feel quite ready to go home yet. And she was certain that the minute she set foot in the front door, someone on staff would be calling Charles to alert him to her return. No doubt he paid well for that sort of information.

  No, she would stay in hiding for just a little bit longer.

  Monday evening, she had paced around the apartment, wondering if she should have stopped by the restaurant to see Tyler, and then thinking that she shouldn't assume they would be spending every night together from now on. A minute later she was scooping Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream out of a carton with a spoon, standing in front of the open freezer door, convinced that the previous night was definitely a onetime thing that Tyler probably didn't care about repeating.

  When the phone rang and she'd shrieked, startled by the sudden noise, Grace had decided that her nerves might be the teensiest bit shot. She'd yanked the receiver off its base.

  "Hello?"

  "Why aren't you at my house?" Tyler's voice had been a low rumble in her ear.

  She'd smiled and felt the heat of her own blush. "I didn't want to assume—"

  "What? That I wouldn't want to come home at three in the morning and find you sleeping in my bed?" The words were a smooth caress. "Darlin', you can assume I'd like that every night of the week."

  "All right, then." She'd set out to tease. "I hope you don't mind that I prefer to sleep in the nude."

  He'd groaned. "You're trying to torture me, aren't you?"

  "Is it working?"

  "Just get your butt over to my place, will you? You've got the spare key." She had heard his grin over the wire. "I'm not quite up to crawling into bed with you when my little sister is sleeping down the hall, but I'll do it if you make me."

  "I won't. Close up quickly. Darlin'."

  "I'll try to get there as early as I can, but—"

  "Don't be ridiculous. I know what it's like, remember? You'll get here when you can."

  She could almost hear his surprise over the telephone. He'd thanked her and hung up and she'd known that someone in the past hadn't understood his willingness to devote himself to his work. She'd felt sorry for the woman who'd missed out on this man.

  Not that she'd give him up if someone came knocking.

  Since that evening a week ago, she had slept at Tyler's apartment almost every night, coming home with him after closing up the restaurant, making love before falling asleep in a tangle of arms and legs and breath.

  One day she arrived at work to find out that Tyler's growing staff had been increased by the addition of Jack, a skinny but undeniably good-looking young man, who quickly picked up the routine. He turned out to be a whiz at charming ladies, particularly those who were old enough to be his mother. But after the fourth time he showed up more than an hour late for his shift, she decided to sit down with Tyler.

  "It's not that I don't like him. When he's here, he definitely works hard, but..."

  "But?"

  "When he's here," she admitted. "I just don't think being here on time, or at all, is a big concern for him. He told me today that he was late because the girl he picked up last night wanted one last, uh, session."

  "Really?" She suspected Tyler's mouth was twitching from amusement, not irritation.

  "Yes, really. He told me that he's too young to turn down sex." At this, Tyler laughed out loud. Grace fumed. "I told him that when you're older, you learn how to set the alarm clock early enough to fit in sex and getting to work on time. His job should be important enough to him for that."

  "I agree. So, that does it," he said, wringing out a bar towel over the sink.

  "Whoa, wait a minute! I wasn't trying to get the kid fired." She should learn to keep her mouth shut. Tyler looked at her oddly.

  "You didn't. And you can't," he said after a moment's pause. "Although I'm surprised you don't want to, since he's just making your job more difficult. But only Jack can get himself fired, which will happen if he comes in late again after getting a warning."

  "Okay," she said, after thinking it over for a minute. "That seems fair."

  "I'm so glad you approve."

  A few days later, she hoped he meant those words when Tyler returned to the bar after a bank appointment to find that she'd fired Jack in his absence.

  "You what?"

  She'd acted at the time without thinking, and knowing thatj made her even more uncomfortable now.

  "I only did what you would have done. He was over an hour late, he didn't call, and I fired him."

  "You fired him."

  Hurrying on, before Tyler could threaten her with the fate she'd recently dealt out to young Jack, she continued, "But don't worry, we've got a new waitress coming in for training tonight. We'll be fine."

  "You fired Jack, and you hired someone? Who?"

  Even to her own ears, this was sounding worse and worse.

  "That girl you interviewed last week. Anita."

  She could see him trying to remember, and the expression on his face when he did was not pleasant. "That girl? She was so nervous talking to me I could hardly make heads or tails of anything she said. Have you completely lost your mind?"

  "Of course not. But we chatted after you were through." She lost some of her nervousness at this point. One thing she knew she did well was hire staff. That she had no real right to do so at this restaurant was irrelevant, she told herself. "She was scared because she really wants this job. She needs it. I'll train her and she'll knock herself out to do a good job, Tyler. I promise you."

  "I don't know why I even bother coming in anymore. You're running this place just fine without me," he grumbled as he walked behind the bar.

  "Sorry. I know I overstepped my bounds today." She tried to look sheepish, which seemed to amuse Tyler more than anything else.

  "I ought to fire your butt," he said. Then he leaned over the bar, grabbed her face and attacked her mouth with soft, nipping kisses. She felt the roller coaster dip of sex bloom in her stomach and opened her mouth to his. His tongue tangled with hers and then he pulled away slowly, sucking gently on the curve of her bottom lip. "But you'd probably stop sleeping with me." As she sputtered, he went on. "Besides, you did the right thing. If Anita drives all my customers away with her stuttering, though, I'm taking it out on your hide."

  She grinned, relieved that she was getting off so easy.

  "Promise?"

  "Witch. Get to work." He snapped a bar towel at her and jerked his head at a table of newcomers.

  From that moment on, although Grace managed to refrain from taking any similarly large liberties with Tyler's business, she knew he wouldn't be fazed by anything she did on the job. Privately, the incident seemed to somehow bring them closer, too.

  One Sunday morning, she made him pancakes for breakfast, letting him laugh at how closely she read the instructions on the box.

  "You thought I was kidding about the no-cooking-without-a-recipe thing," she said, and laughed as Tyler's guilty look confirmed it. "Don't worry. As long as the recipe's in English or—well, I promise not to poison you." She turned her back on him and leaned over her pans on the stovetop. Catching herself before saying Or in French was all well and good, but sooner or later she'd let something slip that would force Tyler to question her more closely.

  "I'll take my chances," he murmured in her ear, stepping up against her back and tucking her hair aside to kiss her neck. Her hands shook as she poured the batter into the sizzling pan, spattering pancake polka dots across the hot surface. Her neck arched involuntarily as his hand skimmed up her side to cup her breast beneath the T-shirt she'd stolen off him. She searched for his mouth with her own as he leaned over her
shoulder, her hands fumbling blindly at the range top dials to shut the damn stove off.

  She twisted frantically in his arms and attacked him. His hands under her bare bottom urged her up and with a jump she wrapped herself around him, legs hooked around his waist.

  "Pancakes." She said the word in between kisses.

  "Some other time," he muttered as he walked with her out of the kitchen, heading to the bedroom.

  "Mmm, hmm." She was too busy running her mouth and her hands over every inch of his bare skin she could reach to answer.

  After he left for the restaurant, she called her attorney. The meeting had been arranged for the following week.

  "Call them back and make it for Friday noon. And anyone who can't make it will be notified by mail as to the results. I can't take this much longer."

  "But, Ms. Haley—"

  "Don't argue with me, Franklin. Just make it happen."

  With seventy-two hours to go before her meeting, Grace began having a little trouble. The near slip while cooking breakfast was the beginning of a string of incidents in which she slid closer to the tricky slope of revealing herself by her words and actions.

  When her alma mater won its first basketball game of the season and she shouted out "Go Stanford!" to a bar packed with customers, she blamed it on wishful thinking.

  "Always thought it would be great to go to school there." And smacked herself in the forehead as soon as she escaped to the bathroom.

  Grace stared at her face in the mirror. "Just be Grace Desmond for a few more days. Grace Desmond, that's all."

  But it was no use. All Autumn long, Grace had submerged her own personality in the role as much as possible, so that she'd only occasionally had to question her reactions. Now, with the return to her own life imminent, and so much of her time spent strategizing for that return, she was finding it even more difficult to keep Grace Haley shut up in a box. It seemed that she could not turn her own personality on and off like a faucet. To act as Grace Haley part of the time, apparently meant that her instincts would lead her to respond as Grace Haley at anytime.

  And her judgment was shot. She could no longer tell what was harmless and what was dangerously inappropriate behavior on her part. Second-guessing herself was becoming a habit, but now she started questioning herself for questioning herself.

  I'm going crazy here, and it's going to be hard to miss. The best I can do is to try to minimize the damage. I can't avoid Tyler. Aside from the fact that I don't want to avoid him, we work together, and sleep together. Makes that whole avoidance thing a bit tricky, no? But I can stay away from him during the day, and watch my mouth the rest of the time.

  So she shut up.

  If Tyler thought it was strange that she started leaving his apartment before he did each morning, he said nothing about it. And he didn't seem to notice that she avoided entering into conversations with him unless they were work-related, which frankly she found a little annoying.

  Sarah did notice however, and cornered Grace Wednesday night in the kitchen.

  "What's up with you, Grace? You haven't said more than ten words to me since you got here tonight. And I notice you're not exactly chatting with my brother, either. What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," Grace said. She saw by Sarah's shake of her head that she wasn't being particularly convincing, and repeated herself. "Really, it's nothing." She grabbed the tubful of dirty dishes that Sarah had forgotten to put down out of her roommate's arms and lugged it over to the dish room. "I've been thinking a lot lately about my family. I'm trying to figure out what to do. How to make sure the right thing happens." She turned and flashed a grin at Sarah, ignoring the tug of guilt she felt as she used knowledge gained from their growing friendship to change the subject. "It's not like I'm spending my time trying to plot ways to do away with my boyfriend."

  "Ex!" Sarah's shout had her mother turning from the stove where she was attempting to train a new cook how to make her special pesto sauce. Grace didn't know if Susannah's recipe was especially complicated, if the new cook was less bright than he seemed, or if Tyler's mother was more reluctant to give up her position in the kitchen than she wanted to admit. In any case, Sarah lowered her voice. "And I am not plotting to do away with him."

  "Mmm, hmm?"

  "Fantasizing out loud about shutting him up in one of the clinic's dog cages and poking him with a sharp stick until he begs for mercy is not plotting." Sarah slammed the door down on the dishwasher and poked the start button with stiff, accusatory fingers. "Can you believe that bastard told me he doesn't see why we can't continue working together?"

  "I don't understand why you still are, frankly," Grace said, spraying hot water on the waiting tub of dishes. "It would serve him right to be left high and dry if you never showed up again."

  "I know," Sarah said grimly. She attacked a scorched pot that had been soaking in the sink. "But finding a good veterinary assistant isn't as easy as you might think. And I am not going to have those animals suffer poor quality of care, just because my ex-boyfriend is a low-life, lying, scheming, idiot married schmuck!"

  The laughter Grace had strapped down burst out of her.

  Sarah threatened her with a .spray from the hot water hose and Grace threw up her hands in self-defense, still laughing.

  "Wait! It's just because you're so fierce." She started to lower her hands and then thought better of giving Sarah a free shot. "I was afraid you were going to be depressed for ages when you told me'. You'd already seemed to be upsel about things with him in the past."

  "Yeah, well, I was upset because I thought I was doing something stupid by dating my boss." Her laugh was genuine. "Now that I know he's an even bigger idiot, I'm just pissed."

  "Good. I'll sharpen the stick for you."

  "I think my brother's beaten you to it."

  "I'm just happy he hasn't been arrested yet for intention to cause bodily harm. He was ready to tear the guy's heart out when he heard." A shout from the front of the bar let her escape while Sarah was distracted by the pleasing thought of Tyler vivisecting her ex-boyfriend. And escape was essential, because Grace most definitely did not want to think about how angry Tyler was that his sister had been lied to.

  She was already stressing enough about the idea of confess- ing her multitude of deceptions to Tyler and his family. She didn't think she could lake the thought of all of them comparing her to the slimeball who'd just admitted to lying to Sarah about his marital status. Pile lying about her name, occupation, financial situation, and general history on top of the fact that most of Chicago high society considered her as good as married, and she thought that Sarah's ex might come off pretty good in comparison.

  Push it out of your mind, girl. There's still a job to be done tonight.

  At the front of the house, her party of twenty had arrived and were milling about in confusion. Reeling off directions to the coatrack and the bathrooms, Grace began herding everyone to the large table she'd assembled along the wall. Ten minutes later, after serving all twenty people drinks, no two of which were the same, and scattering plates of preordered appetizers about the table, the party rhythm was (lowing nicely, and Grace waved Tyler off from covering for her at another table. She headed back to the bar a minute later and called out her order.

  "Glenlivet up, Stoli rocks, splash of tonic and a water back." Streams of liquor arced between bottle and glass, tonic and water shot from the soda gun, and her order was ready. She eyed the bar setup critically. "You know, if you installed another soda gun on this side of the wait station, your servers could save you some time. Since you're the only bartender, you shouldn't waste time pouring sodas."

  Tyler shook his head, but waited to answer until she returned from distributing the drinks. "You're just trying to conceal your caffeine addiction from the world, you diet cola-guzzling fiend. At least now I can keep track of how many you ask me to pour you, and nag you about it."

  "It's mother's milk to me, I swear."

  "It's bad for you, I swear
. Particularly when you make it a fifth food group."

  Grace grinned, stood on tiptoe, craned her arm around the napkin holder and snagged the soda gun with two fingers. She pushed a button and poured herself a diet Coke, then fumbled the gun back into the holder screwed onto the inner edge of the counter.

  Tyler's eyes narrowed with menace. "Exactly how long have you been able to pull that trick?"

  "Since my first day," she said. The arm he cocked in prep-aration for a throw was loaded with a dirty bar rag. "Hey! I hardly ever use it! It's more fun listening to you scold me ."

  "C'mere." He beckoned her in closer. Wary she leaned over the counter.

  His hand snaked around the back of her neck and lugged her all the way to his mouth. His other palm cupped her cheek as Tyler covered her lips with his own in a long, luxunous kiss that set her skin on file. He let her go, fingertips trailing along her jaw, and Grace slid her elbows off the bar and fell back onto her feet. Dazzled.

  Loud noise poked at hei awareness. Hearing and vision, out-side of the closed circle of her and Tyler, returned in a rush of cheers and clapping hands. One of their regulars started whacking the side of his glass with a spoon, the age old signal for the bride and groom to kiss at the reception.

  "Way to go, Gracie!"

  "Never thought I'd see Tyler in love!"

  "Give it up, ladies! The man is most definitely off the mar-ket!"

  Tyler let his gaze rest gently on Grace, looking lor the inevitable blush that flamed over her face every time he made a show of affection for her in public.

  Grabbing her tray and hefting it onto her shoulders, she started to swing away from the bar and back to her table, until Tyler caught her eye. Was he worried about the regulars' gossip? Or about the fact that she'd consistently tried to hide their relationship from everyone around them? It didn't matter anymore. She was too close to freedom, to telling the truth about everything. Why shouldn't everyone know about the two of them now?