Harlow was being dead serious, but I had to laugh. Knowing who she was talking about had me snorting through my nose. Professionalism. Mmhmm. Well, he had a lot of money and influence—that was true. But I knew the circle of people that Gabe ran with, and I had a feeling that he could be convinced to give Harlow a shot. If not him, I knew someone else who owed me a favor.
“Hang on, Harlow, don’t give up yet. I might be able to help you at least get your interview rescheduled,” I said with a smile. Two pairs of matching brown eyes turned to look at me. One from her position on a stool at the bar, and one barely high enough to see over the counter from where he stood, still clinging to his mom. I poured the coffee and set it on the counter in front of her. She shook her head at the offer of cream or milk and took a tentative sip. I could tell the minute the coffee slid down her throat and hit her belly because her eyes closed and she sighed. Yeah, coffee didn’t fix problems, but it sure did relax a person enough to calm down and think rationally. I didn’t know this woman, she was a stranger, but for some reason, I really wanted to help her. It sounded like she had it rough, and I couldn’t fault a woman doing everything she could to make a better life for her kid. My own mom had tried hard enough.
She set her cup down and regarded me curiously, “How can you help? Do you know Gabe Anderson?” Hope laced her voice and I hated saying anything that might bring her down from that temporary high.
“Well, I know him a little bit, but I know someone else even better. Someone who actually owes me a favor.”
“Who’s that?” Harlow asked with a frown, trying to figure out how knowing someone besides Gabe could help her out of her predicament.
I smiled at her then, confidence stretching my lips wide enough to show teeth. “I know Gabe Anderson’s girlfriend.”
“Did you used to date or something?” she questioned over the top of her coffee cup. And then, embarrassed at the question, she averted her eyes until she was looking at the bar counter, a pale blush staining her olive complexion.
“Oh no, even better. I was her boss.”
“Gabe Anderson’s girlfriend works at a bar?” She wrinkled her nose, trying to add up the math and not coming up with a satisfactory answer.
“Angel wasn’t an employee per se. She’s a musician so she plays gigs here sometimes. She’s also a romance author. She writes under a different name though…what is it? Something Ice…I think. It starts with an S.” I couldn’t remember. I didn’t read the books so it wasn’t important to me.
“You know Samantha Ice?” It came out as a quiet screech, and I realized that even though I didn’t pay much attention to girly romance novels, it seemed Harlow did. And she was interested. Very interested.
“Well, I know Angel Jax and that’s her pen name, so I guess you could say I know Samantha Ice.” I’ve never name dropped in my life but seeing the way Harlow’s eyes lit up at my connection I was kind of glad that I did.
“If you can get my interview rescheduled I will love you forever. If you can introduce me to Samantha Ice I will name my firstborn after you.” She was dead serious. So serious that it took me a moment to realize that she already had a firstborn, and we already shared a name, and it had nothing to do at all with any kind of favor I might do for her, now or in the future. “I’m serious, I’ll do it,” she deadpanned, and then we both laughed. Her son laughed too, probably wanting to be included, and grateful that he wasn’t in trouble for something, even though he hadn’t done anything wrong.
The son in question peeked up over the counter of the bar, he was short so just his eyes and the tip of his nose showed. “My real name is Jesse,” I told me like he was sharing a grand secret. “But my Mama calls me JJ all the time. She just calls me Jesse when she’s mad.”
“Or scared out of my mind,” Harlow amended, ruffling his hair with her fingers.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, I was so looking forward to making this call. I got to play white knight for a pretty damsel in distress, and I got to call in a favor from Angel, and maybe mess with her a little bit at the same time.
If only my damn phone would cooperate.
Ugh. What the hell was wrong with this thing? Stupid smartphone, so slow to load anything and when I finally got my call screen to come up, I was barely able to scroll through my contacts before it froze again. Come on.
“What’s the matter with your phone?” Harlow asked, curiosity peaked for some reason. “What kind of OS do you have?”
“I don’t know what you just asked me, but there was a software update that I’ve been putting off. Every time I do a stupid update something goes screwy with my phone. I tried putting this one off as long as possible, but yesterday it did it automatically and now my sh—, er my stuff freezes constantly. Every time I try to make a call I can’t get past scrolling through my contacts list.”
“Did you try to shut it down and turn it back on?” I gave her a baleful look. The old—did you unplug it and plug it back in—question. Did I look like an idiot?
“Let me see it,” she held out her hand, and for lack of anything better I gave her the phone. Let her poke at it if she wanted too, it wasn’t like she could hurt it any worse than it was. If I couldn’t make calls the thing was basically a brick anyway. When I was at work I used the bar phone mostly, so at least I had that fallback.
JJ shifted his feet back and forth as he stood next to his Mom and she powered down my phone, probably getting bored and wondering what he could get into. I watched as Harlow counted to ten under her breath, not even paying attention to me anymore, and then hit the power button on the phone and the volume button on the back simultaneously. When the phone powered up there was a screen I’d never seen before, and rows of text scrolling through in neon green.
“Wait a minute, what’s that?” I’d never seen anything like that on my phone before.
“Secret reboot screen, don’t worry about it,” she mumbled, head down and fingers swiping, scrolling and tapping away so fast I couldn’t keep up with what she was doing. In less than two minutes she had powered it down again, and brought it back up, my home screen replacing whatever wizarding world of code had been on there before.
“Try it now, it should be good,” she said as she handed me my phone.
“What did you do?”
“Do you really want to know? Because people ask that sometimes you know?” she asked, running her hand absentmindedly through her hair, once again getting it stuck. She grunted and pulled the ponytail holder out of her hair. Unwinding and unwinding all of that hair until it fell in thick waves around her shoulders and down her back. “That’s better,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t do a darn thing with my hair but to be professional I have to keep it up you know?” she asked but she didn’t wait for an answer. “It gets so heavy it gives me a headache. I’d much rather leave it down. Also, I could tell you what I did to your phone but you would be bored in a second. Basically, I deleted some extra stuff you didn’t need that was taking up space. Cleared the cache, so to speak.”
“If I would have taken this to the store for service they would have charged me a fee, wouldn’t they have?”
“Yeah probably,” she muttered, blushing a little under the praise. “It was an easy fix though, no big deal.”
Yeah, no big deal even though I have no clue what sciency thing you just did with my phone.
I was interrupted from further commentary by Jesse pulling on his mom’s arm and whispering loudly. “Mama, my bottom itches, and I need to go potty again.” Startled, Harlow looked down at her son.
“Oh, JJ, I’m so sorry sweetie, we need to get you out of those wet pants.” She turned her wide brown eyes to me. “Do you have a restroom we can borrow?”
“Absolutely,” I said, pointing to the men’s and ladies sign above the short hallway next to the bar. “Help yourselves.”
Harlow grabbed the mismatched clothes I had given her and hopped off her stool, looking concerned for her son as she led him down the hallw
ay, clutching his tiny little hand in hers. I could hear her talking to him as the turned the corner.
“Sorry, Babe, let’s get you taken care of, you’ve been such a good boy.”
I waited until I heard the bathroom door open and close before I picked up my phone and scrolled through my contacts list with ease. Damn my phone is snappy now. Finding the name, I pushed the button and the ringing began immediately. Hell, it was like having a new phone, the thing was responding so fast. What the hell had Harlow done?
“Hello?” Angel answered on the second ring.
“Hey Angel, it’s Jesse, you got a minute?”
“Yeah, I actually do considering I’m helping Gabe with the new office today and his latest appointment didn’t even show up. Ugh, not even a phone call—man who does that anymore?”
“Well, about that…” I trailed off, unsure of how to proceed since she was already in some kind of mood.
“What do you mean about that? You know who Gabe’s twelve o clock interview was? You know a lot of people, Jesse, but you don’t know everybody.”
“Actually, I didn’t, but I kind of do now. Also, I’m calling in a favor. Remember that time you ran out in the middle of a set and never came back?” I know she remembered, and her gasp on the other end of the phone confirmed that I had just pushed a hot button.
“You mean remember that time I was almost kidnapped behind the bar and tased?” she remarked dryly. I laughed at her, even though at the time it hadn’t been funny, it had really worked out for her in the end.
“I was not present for any tasing,” I teased gently, “I just remember you taking off like a bat out of hell and me having to explain to a bar full of patrons who had been listening to your music that you had a family emergency, even though I had no idea what happened. I was so worried, Angel. So worried.”
Angel was exasperated, and she let me know. “What do you want, Jesse? I don’t owe you a favor, but you clearly want something so spit it out. Ask me nice and I’ll think about it,” she teased. Angel and I could talk that way to each other, we had that kind of easy relationship.
“So Gabe’s noon interview? She ended up at my bar this morning,” I began, not sure of how much to tell Angel about what happened.
“This sounds like a story, and we don’t have anyone scheduled for another hour so spill it.” I heard a door opening in the background on the other end of the phone, and a masculine voice saying, “Angel, it doesn’t look like she’s coming, you want to order lunch before the next applicant comes?”
“Hold on, Gabe, I’m getting some juice from Jesse on your favorite draft pick. Seems like there’s a story behind our afternoon no show.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I butted into their conversation, not wanting them to get the wrong idea. “She’s really had a rough go this morning and I think she deserves another shot at her interview. Like, some really—horrible no good very bad day—type of piss poor luck. Emphasis on the piss.”
“Wait, what?” Angel asked, curiosity peaked. “Is she pretty?”
Was she pretty? How did I even answer that? And why was she even asking?
“I’m just trying to figure out why you care enough about someone you just met to try to pull strings for them. Is it because she’s pretty?”
“That’s an asshole question and it doesn’t deserve an answer, Angel. But because you are you, I can only assume you had a reason. To answer it I’ll tell you this. She’s pretty damned interesting. She lost her babysitter at the last minute, had to bring her little boy with her to the interview, but had a mild emergency on the way and got sidetracked. Her four-year-old peed down the front of my shirt, and she did some ninja shit with my busted ass phone. Now it works like a brand-new computer and she’s in the bathroom cleaning up her son who was crying because he thinks he ruined his mommy’s chances at getting this new job. A job they desperately need. Now you answer me this,” I said into the phone, on a roll and really getting into being a champion for the young mom currently in my bathroom. “Why did you say she was Gabe’s favorite earlier? What’s the job she’s interviewing for?”
I’m surprised Angel could hear anything I said over the sound of her own laughter. She’d started cracking up right about the part where I mentioned getting peed on. “Oh God, Jesse, it sounds like an absolutely shittastic story. That poor girl. Poor you.”
I heard some more mumbling on the other end of the phone, which must have been Gabe asking questions because Angel repeated everything I had just said, almost verbatim, and I heard a roar of male laughter in the background seconds later.
Yeah, okay everybody. Yuck it up assholes. As long as Harlow gets her interview.
“There’s one other thing I should probably mention, Angel,” I said mysteriously, hoping this would be the key to tipping things in our favor. I don’t know why I started thinking of it as our situation. It just kind of happened, and I felt emotionally invested in the outcome.
“What?” she said, still having a hard time catching her breath after her laugh attack.
“She’s a huge Samantha Ice fan.”
“Give me fifteen minutes, then have her call the office.” Then the line went dead.
Angel would come through. I knew she would.
4
Harlow
The clothes were a little big for JJ, but they fit pretty well considering his other option was soggy and starting to smell a bit rank. I cleaned his lower body the best I could with hand soap and wet paper towels, but we would definitely need to get in the bath when we got back home. Sheepishly I walked back towards the bar area, JJ bouncing beside me, full of a four-year-old’s boundless energy now that he was out of his wet clothes. Jesse was at the bar, leaning on his elbow with a conspiratorial smile on his face.
“I have some news,” he said as we came into view.
“What kind of news?”
“The kind of—give it ten more minutes and then call the Glass City Guard office and tell them what happened this morning so you can reschedule your appointment—kind of news.”
“Shut up!” I dropped JJ’s hand and screamed.
“Mama!” JJ was aghast. Once again I had used a dirty word in his presence.
“I know, you can thank me later.”
Ten minutes later I had made a call and sat at the empty bar dumbfounded. Not only was I able to reschedule my interview for the same time tomorrow, but they were really freaking nice about it. The lady who answered the phone was almost too nice, actually. I turned to Jesse, tears pricking my eyes again. I’ve never cried so much in a single day before, not since I’d given birth to JJ and held him in my arms for the first time anyway. “I rescheduled the interview for tomorrow. Oh, my God, I have the interview tomorrow. Shoot! JJ, I need to find you a sitter. I still have no clue what happened to Ashley today.” Crap. Double crap. There was no way they would be cool with me bringing my four-year-old to a job interview, but if Ashley wasn’t available, and I still hadn’t been able to get ahold of her since she didn’t show up to watch JJ this morning, coming up with someone else at the last minute was going to be nearly impossible.
“I’ll watch him.”
I looked up, shocked. Jesse looked shocked too, and the words had come out of his own mouth.
“What?”
“Yeah, I’ll watch him so you can have your interview if you don’t mind bringing him here. I mean, it can’t be more than a couple of hours and the bar isn’t even open then. Or I can come to your place and watch him there if you didn’t want to bring him to a bar? I mean, I could watch him at my house I guess but you’ve never been there before, and it just seemed like this place was on your way since you were passing by here today and…”
He was rambling. He was embarrassed, and he was rambling and a man had never looked more attractive to me than he did at that moment, blushing and stammering while he offered to watch my four-year-old so I could go to my job interview.
“That is amazing. Why would you do that for me?” I didn�
��t mean for it to sound so rude but in my experience, people didn’t just volunteer to help. They just didn’t. There always had to be something in it for them, and I literally had nothing to give this man. I obviously had no money, I lived in a trailer in the worst part of town, and I was desperate. Did this guy have a savior complex?
“No I do not have a savior complex,” Jesse said, and I realized I had said that last part out loud. “After everything you went through today, you ended up in my bar for a reason. And through six degrees of Kevin Bacon, it turns out that we are acquainted with some of the same people, or will be by tomorrow anyway. It’s not a hardship for me to hang out with JJ for a couple of hours. Plus, I had a super-secret project tomorrow that he can totally help me with.”
“Super-secret? In a bar?” JJ’s expression perked up, and he stopped picking at the thread on one of the barstools to pay closer attention to our conversation. Jesse leaned over the bar conspiratorially.
“The bar isn’t open yet, so technically it’s just a building with a lot of glass bottles in it. Plus, during the early hours it’s my workshop.” He leaned over even further and whispered loudly, “For man stuff.”
JJ started hopping up and down excitedly. “Mama, I want to do man stuff. Can I come play with Mr. Jesse tomorrow? Please? I’ll be so good, I promise.”
“What kind of secret stuff?” I hedged, even knowing that I was definitely going to be taking him up on his offer, but watching my four-year-old freak out in excitement was too good not to drag out a little. Jesse straightened behind the counter again and gave JJ a wink. Then he turned back to me with a bored look on his face.
Jesse (Glass City Hearts Book 3) Page 3
