Package Deal

by Jess Bentley

  To my surprise, though, he doesn’t. Instead, he claps me on the shoulder, his grin wide and wicked. When he speaks, his voice is cool and calculating, all business. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “I know just how you can make it up to me. I’ve got a way to clear this PR mess up, and get us Miss Hall’s location.”

  He stands, and jerks a thumb over his shoulder. “Go start the boat. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Janie

  Kirby Whelan laughs too loudly at my not-that-funny joke, and I wait for the spell to pass. He’s being polite, and as always attracting whatever attention he can get from the other lounge patrons. Friday night is always busy at Red Hall and while I’m grateful for that — I definitely need the business with Ferry Lights across the street trying to suck the oxygen out of our block — there is nothing more stressful. No night that needs to run more smoothly than Friday. Music is playing, and people are enjoying themselves, dancing a little in the center of the room. This is what I need to see.

  So when I spot Jake Ferry, the spoiled son of the man who owns said overpriced, gaudy, classless excuse for a high-end restaurant, strolling right through my front door my eyelid twitches. Kirby raises an eyebrow, and looks around curiously for the source. “Girl, what are you looking at? You don’t have any sharp objects in reach, do you?”

  I don’t answer right away — I’m looking for my resident social climber, Gloria. She can smell a billionaire brat like a shark can smell chum in the water and… yes, there she is, weaving her way through the crowd toward Jake Ferry exactly like a deep sea predator. It would serve Jake right for me to let her get her jaws on him.

  It wasn’t necessarily Jake’s choice to open Ferry Lights. That tactic reeks of Reginald Ferry, but as far as I know Jake is just an asshole, not a professional asshole. And the last thing I need is Gloria stirring up some kind of PR hurricane, or worse, whispering secrets into the competition’s ear.

  “I’m sorry, Kirby,” I tell my friend, “I’m so glad you came by. Can I catch up with you later? I need to… intercept.”

  Kirby gives me a wicked, salacious grin. “Jake Ferry? Really?”

  “Not even a little,” I tell him before we trade cheek kisses and I make my way to where Gloria is already laying it on thick.

  Once I’m on the move, Jake’s eyes catch mine and track me part of the way. Gloria’s follow, and a split second later her fingers brush her prey’s cheek. She leans in and whispers something in his ear. Probably an offer to blow him in the back room.

  I should let her have him. It might make for a good excuse to fire her later on. I’m too damned nice for my own good is what I am.

  “Mr. Ferry,” I say as I close on them not a moment too soon — Gloria’s already escalated to flipping those platinum-blonde curls — and lean against my bar. “To what do we owe this dubious pleasure?”

  “I was just entertaining our special guest,” Gloria informs me, a note of cool irritation in her voice.

  “That’s the only reason I came over,” I say. “I needed someone to check in on the VIP lounge. But if you’re busy — ”

  “No,” Gloria says quickly, predictably. After all, why try and spear one fish when you can cast a net in a barrel? “I don’t mind at all.” She vanishes like smoke on the wind. Dangle a room full of rich dicks in Gloria’s general direction and she can display impressive celerity. It’s like magic.

  Jake Ferry doesn’t even watch the girl go. He settles those smoldering eyes on me — why do spoiled assholes like him always seem to smolder so well? — and his full lips widen into the kind of smile that other girls would crow about getting soaked panties over. Not me; I’d never admit that to a living soul.

  I clear my throat. “What brings you here, Mr. Ferry?” Business, girl. Business.

  “Please, Miss Hall,” Jake urges, “call me Jake. Mr. Ferry is my father.”

  “Is that who your father is?” I wonder out loud. “Well, Jake — what are you doing here?”

  He shrugs, and waves a broad, well-manicured hand at the common lounge around us. “Who wouldn’t want steal a glance at the real work of art behind the infamous Red Hall?” There’s that smile again.

  That kind of flattery probably gets him a lot of places, and people, but I’m not Gloria, or some empty-headed beauty just waiting for my knight to arrive. Still, I take the compliment and smile graciously. It’s what one does, after all. “What do you drink?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Jake says. “Don’t trouble yourself over me.”

  “I insist,” I tell him.

  “Well… I hear you’ve got a pretty good strawberry whiskey in-house.” He winks at me.

  My smile is maybe a little more pride filled than I mean it to be. Oh yes, I sure do — a signature distillation that I worked my pretty little ass off for two years to secure the first three casks of well before it came to market. I’m betting the Ferrys know that, because I made damn sure they couldn’t get their hands on a single bottle of it.

  A gesture and a meaningful smile, and Chester gives me a knowing smirk as he fishes one of the bottles from behind the bar. Oh, Chester. At this point we might as well be telepathic.

  When I turn my attention back to Jake, he’s looking me over the way a man might size up a racehorse or an expensive steak.

  “Eyes up here, Mr. Ferry,” I mutter.

  His eyes linger a moment longer on my ass before he meets my eyes. “I wondered if you were as all-business as everyone says. You’re not seeing anyone, are you?”

  My eyes roll on their own. Real slick, handsome. Subtle as an earthquake. “Some of us have to work hard to get ahead, you know.” I shake my head in disgust. “We weren’t all born with silver spoons in our ass.”

  For a heartbeat, it looks like I actually hurt him. It doesn’t last, though. I suppose a billion dollars in the bank affords thick skin.

  Chester delivers the whiskey, and Jake waits for me to pick up the tumbler as he does. We raise glasses with a congenial sort of professionalism and I watch his face as he sips. His eyes get a little wider, genuine surprise registering as the amber liquid does its work.

  “Wow,” he says. “That’s… really good. Smooth. Not what I expected at all.”

  “It’s not cheap,” I tell him. It’s the truth — four hundred a bottle was steep, and I got it for a bargain.

  “I can see that,” Jake says, but he’s looking me over again, and I’m sure he doesn’t mean the whiskey. Which is fine — he’s right; I’m not cheap, either.

  “It’s on the house,” I say. “Enjoy your visit.”

  I mean to walk away, but a moment later I feel a hand on my shoulder, and then Jake is tugging me out onto the floor. “Have a dance with me.”

  It is the last thing I want, and I try to show him that with an arched eyebrow. But he ignores my expression, grinning like a fool, and inclines his head just slightly toward some of the other patrons. Phones are out; videos and pictures are already being taken.

  The last thing I want is to look like a bitter, ungracious host in front of the entire internet — certainly, I don’t want to hand Reginald Ferry any ammo to fire at me in the PR arena — so I fix my expression to one of pleasant acceptance and follow his son onto the dance floor.

  For a minute, it isn’t so bad. Jake can dance; he’s probably had high-priced lessons for this sort of occasion, and he’s just handsy enough to make it interesting without being outright offensive. His hands are large, and warm, and it’s difficult not to let my imagination get carried away.

  It really has been a long time since I was with anyone, if just this little interaction is enough to get my blood running hot.

  “One song,” I tell him, and let him lead. It’s slow, thankfully. I didn’t wear the kind of outfit that looks good on a flailing mess.

  As we sway, I can feel the heat from his body even through my dress. More, I’m close enough to him that it’s obvious he has a body under that clean, well-fitted suit. We’re not talking yet, so I d
istract myself from all that by doing mental inventory of the storeroom as of this afternoon, before the lounge opened, and recite the types of peppers that are going into the new hot sauce I have planned for later this season.

  “All those cameras,” Jake sighs near my ear. “They never quit, do they?”

  “People like a spectacle,” I reply, disinterested even though I’m already starting to think of what I’ll say when the papers start asking me whether we’re dating, and how I’ll convince them we’re not.

  Jake, though, has the opposite on his mind. “You know, I bet we’d stir up quite a storm, you and I. Imagine what the tabloids would say: Jake Ferry and Janie Hall. Could be a PR goldmine, good for both our ventures.”

  And in that moment, it all makes sense. I should have figured. But I’m a businesswoman, not a celebrity. Not yet, anyway, and not a real one even when it’s forced on me for a while.

  I let go of Jake’s shoulder, and remove his hands from my hips. This little charade is over. “I see,” I tell him quietly, my face still showing a smile for the cameras. “You can see yourself out of my lounge, Mr. Ferry. Thanks for dropping by.”

  His reaction is a mystery; I’m sure I’ll see it on YouTube later when Red Hall gets tagged in the Facebook post for it right alongside Ferry Lights. For now, though, I don’t look at him as I stalk away through the crowd, ignoring the smartphones pointed at me.

  I can’t believe I fell for that.

  Janie

  Chester is a smart guy, and he keeps his mouth shut when I step behind the bar and discreetly pour myself a shot of the closest bottle of dark liquor I can reach — cognac, turns out. His eyes do get a little wide when I turn away from the crowd and quickly down the shot. No, I don’t normally drink when I’m at work and it’s against the rules for everyone else. Sometimes it’s good to be the boss.

  Luckily, Chester knows me well enough to simply retrieve the shot glass from my tense fingers and even tap the bottle in question.

  I shake my head. One shot is fine, just enough to put a different kind of warmth in my stomach than what’s already there.

  Jake fucking Ferry. “I could strangle him, that dirty son of a bitch.”

  Chester clears his throat, his face angled down as though busy with bar work. “Okay,” he mutters, trying to calm me, “do you need a moment? Maybe in the back? Where no one can take any more videos?”

  Shit. I shake my head, and then blow out a long breath to get a handle on myself, just like Mama’s therapist tells her to do. “I’m fine,” I tell Chester.

  “So,” he says when he’s assessed that I might be telling the truth, “that was awkward, huh? What was that all about?”

  Rehashing it is the last thing I want, so I wave Chester’s curiosity off. “Forget it.”

  He seems to — Chester is good like that — but I certainly can’t. Where does that Ferry prick even get off thinking that I would want or need his fucking PR influence like some kind of social climbing groupie slut? Sure, Red Hall is taking a temporary hit from the foray of Ferry Lights into the neighborhood — but that’s just the way the market works. A few more weeks and the pressure will equalize and my place will be back on top where it started.

  After all, every celebrity — A, B, C, or even D-list — that shows up at my place comes because they want to be here. Not because I pay them.

  I’m not good at staying angry. I try to hold grudges, but they never last very long. As this one wanes and I recover myself, my traitorous imagination takes the opportunity to defect. Whispering images of Jake’s flushed lips, and that glint in his eyes that made me briefly imagine what was going on in his head to make him look at me like that. Worst of all was that it had worked; that swell of heat between my legs wasn’t a fever.

  Nope. Nope, nope, nope. I turn, pasting the smile back on my face. It can set like plaster for all I care. Tonight I have guests. Tonight I have work to do. No way am I going to let Jake Ferry screw up my head.

  For me, the best way to clear my head and get focused is to throw myself hard into work. So that’s what I do, schmoozing and mingling until Jake Ferry is a distant, irritating memory.

  Jake

  The wall outside Red Hall meets my fist in a brief conflict that it easily wins, but the pain serves to clear my head. My hand starts to throb almost immediately, and I’m reminded that I need to stop doing shit without thinking of the consequences first.

  I’m an asshole. That’s not really a surprise to me — my apple didn’t fall more than a few feet from my father’s tree — but every time I have the opportunity to tell him no, I just fall in line instead. What kind of man does that?

  And what kind of man tells a woman like Janie Hall that he wants to date her for the PR benefits?

  Nobody in this town opens a business of any kind without having Reginald Ferry’s hard eye on them. That means my eyes are on them as well. I know what Janie’s been through. It wasn’t easy for her to get Red Hall started. She begged, borrowed, and stole to get that place off the ground, and when she finally opened the doors it was epic.

  It’s stayed that way for over a year and opening Ferry Lights literally across the street only barely made a dent in their regular business. Fact is, Red Hall has something that Ferry Lights doesn’t: a modern day heroine for an owner.

  My father had given me the background on my… target. Janie Hall comes from practically nothing. She’s self-made, not just the hobbyist housewife of one of the local boys’ club. And she’s a good girl. Precisely the kind of girl I avoid when I have an itch that needs scratching.

  It doesn’t help that Janie is unbearably hot. That just isn’t a fair game. Plenty of girls are beautiful; they have to be to get through the glass ceiling that guys like my father and me are standing on. All the women, in fact, are so drop-dead gorgeous that they all look the same. Might as well be wallpaper.

  Janie, though… I’ve been with so many beautiful women that one may as well be another. Not her. She has spirit, and poise, and a lot to prove. Hell, she’s already proven herself.

  And she’ll keep doing it, too, won’t she? The way she looked at me when I suggested we make good for the tabloids, like she didn’t want or need my help... why did that turn me on so much?

  I grit my teeth as my hand reminds me it’s still there, and still possibly fractured. To top that off with big red cherry, I can feel the drip of blood off the tip of my middle finger. Great.

  Ferry Lights is across the street, of course. They’ve got napkins, bandages, a whole first aid kit I’m sure. But the thought of being in there at the moment feels a little too much like being under my father’s shadow.

  So I head down the street instead.

  I’m fucking tired of being Reginald’s lackey. I’m tired of feeling like an asshole.

  Janie

  Just days after Mama’s panic attack, she calls me and begs me to come over for dinner. My brothers will be there, she says, and she’ll never hear the end of it from George if I don’t come and see them. I can tell by the sound of her voice that turning the invitation down is going to trigger a meltdown, and only because of that I cave.

  So there I find myself, seated at the table with my brothers — the twins, Chris and Derek — listening to them preen and compare dick sizes under the approving gaze of our stepfather while my mother smiles weakly. It doesn’t get to her eyes.

  “Yeah, we did about fifty grand last quarter,” Derek says, as he and Chris get to the part of dinner where it’s time to impress George. “Gross. Took a little bit of a hit when the new shop opened up down the street, of course, because I had to drop the price of cuts for a couple of weeks. You should have seen their place — crickets in there. Who thinks they can just open up a business next door? I’ve been in that spot for three years.”

  Chris rolls his eyes with a knowing nod. “Upstarts,” he snorts. “Stupid. We had something like that happen a couple of years ago. One of my first therapists up and leaves, right? And she opens her own spa just
two miles from my front door. Of course, she can’t just steal clients — but she can put her face and name up all over town and make it easy to find her.”

  “What did you do?” Derek asks.

  Chris grins like a shark. “I didn’t do anything. But word somehow got around that she was, you know…” He makes the universal gesture for a hand job, and this sets George and Derek both off on a chuckling fit.

  “What about you?” Derek asks me. “Didn’t uh… Ronald Ferry or someone open up that Ferry Lights place right across the street from you?”

  “Reginald,” I say.

  “Yeah, okay,” Derek laughs. “What are you doing about it?”

  “Nothing,” I tell him. “I trust my business model, and my staff, and our customer base trusts us. I don’t have to do anything.”

  “That’s optimistic,” Chris mutters.

  I give them both a baleful eye, and that conversation is done. Chris and Derek are younger than I am. When George came around, he became the only father they knew. They grew up to be his kids, that’s for sure. They’re both ruthless businessmen with one concern: money. To George, of course, that made them the successful ones.

  Red Hall isn’t just a paycheck to me. It never has been. Oh, it turns a profit — I’m good at what I do — but I opened the restaurant as proof I could do it, not to get rich. I wanted something that was mine, and now I have it. More than that, Red Hall saved my life.

  College was a difficult time for me. I had started out going the culinary route because I loved food and I loved to cook. What I discovered was that I was more a theoretical chef than a good chef. It had been my only dream since childhood so, naturally, discovering that I didn’t have the talent for it was crushing.

  Red Hall didn’t just give me a paycheck. It gave me life, gave me a direction. It reminded me, from the day I changed majors to the day the doors finally opened, that I didn’t have to be bound by the ghost of my mother’s instability or the taint of George’s obvious borderline personality disorder. I was free the day I started dreaming.