CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I drink to make other people more interesting.
—Ernest Hemingway
“Darlin’, where have you been all my life?”
Quinn aimed her Friendly Bartender Smile at the drunk, midlife crisis wobbling on his feet before her. “Everywhere but here,” she quipped, laying another bourbon on the rocks on the table and moving on down to the next patron in line before he could slur his way onto a reply.
She smiled at the woman at his side, took her order, and used her wrist to dab at the sweat on her temple before she pulled up a bottle and started mixing. Anticipation sparked in her veins, making her heartbeat trip as she worked the bar in the familiar rhythm that thumped a drumbeat in her blood.
The wedding had gone off without a hitch. Quinn knew this because Willow had come up at the last minute to drag her away from the makeshift bar and down the beach to watch the ceremony. The wedding planners took the barefoot part of their name seriously. The bride and her groom stood shoeless by the sea as they took their vows. Quinn had to admit, buckets of a family money notwithstanding, they looked deliriously happy. Inevitably, her thoughts drifted to her wedding to Jasper, far less ostentatious but no less happy.
Little had she known.
Willow sniffed. “You’d think with all the weddings we do, I’d be cynical about the whole process by now, being that they basically fill every moment of my day. But every time…” She sighed, wistfully. “It’s gotten worse since I married Nick. Now I want every wedding we do to have a happy ending like mine.
The side of Quinn’s mouth tilted up. “It’s very sweet,” she agreed.
In Vegas, it’d been a trick to find a wedding chapel that didn’t sport a Liberace or Elvis impersonator. But, contrary to her normal bent, Quinn had wanted her wedding to be as close to traditional as they could manage. Fortunately, it was true what they said about Vegas: you could find whatever you were looking for if you looked hard enough.
Jasper had been as gorgeous as usual in his sky-blue shirt and gray slacks. Quinn had splurged on a white, form-fitting, jersey dress with a neckline that brushed her collarbones and a skirt that hit three inches above her knee and dipped low in the back. Very low. Low enough, that Jasper’s hand had rested on the bare skin of the small of her back without touching the fabric.
Maybe she’d wanted only some parts of their wedding to be traditional.
She hadn’t felt trapped for a single moment. Not when they’d stood before the officiant. Not when they’d repeated the traditional vows (including “with my body, I thee worship,” which still made Quinn quiver). And definitely not when Jasper bent her back over his muscled forearm and kissed her like there was no one else in the room but them.
No one else in the world.
Quinn’s spine tingled with the sense of being watched. Her shoulders shot straight even as she scanned the crowd, twisting her neck until her gaze landed on Jasper standing guard at the back edge of the folding chairs full of attentive guests.
His aviator glasses were back on, hiding his beautiful eyes, but Quinn felt the heat of them track all along her body. Across the distance, she could see his beautiful mouth tip up at the edges and knew if she could see his eyes, they’d be hot with carnal knowledge.
With my body, I thee worship.
“That’s my cue,” Willow whispered as the minister told the groom to kiss his bride.
“Time to work,” Quinn agreed and they split off, Quinn to make drinks, Willow to oversee whatever new calamity had exploded with the caterers.
Unlike the rehearsal dinner, the reception would be outside, stretching down from the patio onto the sand. A floor for dancing had been laid where the two met, with Quinn’s makeshift bar set up on its back edge. She greeted the two extra bartenders who’d come with the catering company. She could only hope they knew what they were doing because Lord knew she could use the extra hands. Altogether, there’d been about sixty people at the rehearsal dinner last night, and that’d knocked her on her ass. This crowd was more than double that size and, by the look of things, promised to be as thirsty.
Now, two few hours later, that promise had been fulfilled. With the buffet dinner cleared and the cake cut, the serious drinking and dancing geared up. A young twenty-something woman placed her order in such a quiet voice that Quinn paused to take her in as she reached for a tumbler and added a small scoop of ice. The girl was quite pretty, dress and hair perfect in that polished way that screamed money. But there was more than a hint of shyness in her mien that called out to Quinn. She knew what it was like to stay quiet and behave around her elders when everything inside her screamed to go wild. This girl may not give off a wild vibe, but she pulled at Quinn all the same.
“Ah, a Manhattan,” she drawled, reaching for the vermouth and rye as she mentally pulled up her spiel. “Old school and classy. What you want with a Manhattan is the flavor of those Knickerbocker bastions of masculinity, the social clubs.” She carefully added three drops of bitters. “All dark oak and soft lighting where men in cravats and ties talk about finance and the last big game they hunted on safari.” Quinn said that last in her best Katharine Hepburn, mid-Atlantic Brahmin accent and when the girl giggled, she felt a shot of triumph. “A good Manhattan will be smoky but smooth, with a bit of the sweet to make it easy going down.” She winked as she laid the finished drink on the table with a bit of flair. “Much like what you want in your man.” That got her a full-fledged smile. She caught the knowing eye of a matron to the girl’s left and tossed in an “Amirite?”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” the matron agreed in a mid-Atlantic Brahmin accent. She nodded at the glass and ignored the choking noise Quinn inadvertently made. “I’ll have what she’s having. The drink,” she amended. “I acquired the man some years past.”
Quinn guffawed. “When I grow up, can I be you?”
“To my eyes, it looks as though you are doing quite well being you,” the matron replied with a warm if edgy smile. “Stick with it.” The young woman beside her sipped her Manhattan and made a wordless exclamation that turned the matron in her direction. “Good?”
“Delicious,” she confirmed.
Quinn handed over the second drink and waited while the matron followed suit. “Excellent,” she declared. “Young lady, you’ve made an old woman very happy.” Discretely, she slipped a hundred-dollar bill in Quinn’s palm under the guise of retrieving a napkin.
“It’s been my pleasure,” Quinn returned.
The matron’s smile dropped, and she studied Quinn with a disturbing intensity. “Yes, I can see that it has.”
Quinn arched a brow and watched for a few seconds as the pair linked arms to make their way back through the crowd before taking her next order. She caught a glare from one of the other bartenders and knew they’d seen her pocket the bill, but she didn’t care. She’d share the pot, that was a given, but anything handed over personally was hers to keep. She needed every penny she could get.
The exchange emboldened Quinn. She fell back into rhythm, of serving drinks and slipping in tidbits along the way with a warm glow in her chest. She’d featured several classics on the short specialty drink list and included Willow’s Malibu Breeze and one Quinn pulled from her “Get Drunk or Die Trying” playlist. The wedding planners had whipped up some placards in the design theme to place on tables and at the makeshift bar. Quinn had given the other bartenders a short tutorial on how she expected them to mix those drinks. She could only hope they’d make the effort.
Half an hour later, her midlife crisis drinker had unfortunately added “persistent” to his established repertoire of “sexist” and “boorish.” “Bourbon on the rocks,” she said flatly, placing the drink before him while ignoring his sad attempt at a seductive smile and conversation. When Willow came into view, she got out the makings for a Malibu Breeze. Quinn caught her eye and gestured with her chin at the glass into which she poured the drink. She could see Willow’s shoulders relax a
cross the distance between them.
“Exactly what I didn’t know I needed,” Willow gasped as she reached the table. “Thank you.” She smacked her lips after the first hefty sip. “Though I probably shouldn’t drink on the job, this is so delicious, I’m making an executive decision. And yes, I know you lied about it being low-cal, and I don’t care. You have got to tell me the secret ingredient.”
“Not a chance.” Quinn said smiling. “You learn all my secrets, why would you need to keep me hanging around?”
“Soothing savage beasts, it seems. I was just speaking with Margaret Worthington Thornquist.”
“Hoo. There’s a mouthful.”
“So is the old harridan,” Willow muttered in a low voice. “But you didn’t hear that from me. She’s the bride’s paternal grandmother and dotes on the girl. Naturally, she’s had an opinion on absolutely everything, but you seem to have worked wonders.” Puzzled, Quinn blinked up at her as she took another order. “Apparently, you make a mean Manhattan,” Willow added and comprehension dawned.
“Yeesh. Suddenly, I’m glad I didn’t offer her the Pink Panty Pulldown.”
Willow snorted. “Good call. What’s in a Pink Panty Pulldown anyways?”
“Vodka, lemon juice, Sprite, and a mess of cherries.”
Willow’s mouth pursed. “That’d pull down my panties for sure.”
“I only make sure things, babe. I like that woman. And the girl with her, who I guess was what? Another granddaughter?”
“Probably. There seems to be no end to them. This one recently lost her childhood pet. You made her smile for the first time all week.”
Quinn brought the young woman back up in her mind and realized she’d read grief for shyness. “Poor girl,” she murmured.
“You doing okay otherwise?” Willow asked with a lift of her brow toward Midlife Crisis.
“Sure.” She shot a cheeky grin at the wedding planner. “Nothin’ I haven’t dealt with before.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.” The frown stayed on her pretty features and her blue eyes were concerned as they rested on Quinn. “Be sure to send up a flare if things get tight. Might as well make use of your gorgeous ex-husband.”
Yeah, that’s what Quinn needed. Jasper roughing up a rich drunk on her behalf. Quinn lined up a trio of steins and bottles of IPAs. “That won’t be necessary. If I can’t handle a bunch of wealthy, oversexed wedding guests, I’ve got no business being behind a bar. Table,” she amended.
“Mmm hmm.” But Willow took Quinn at her word and went back to seeing that her bride’s wedding continued to go off without a hitch.
Another hour passed and the mad rush for drinks eased as the dancing began in earnest. Midlife Crisis toddled off, and Quinn grinned as Frankie and all the Four Seasons hit the speakers with “December 1963,” making the crowd of dancers roar with approval. A pair of tipsy bridesmaids ordered off the specialty menu, and Quinn got her groove on. “You ladies know about Prohibition?” she began. One of the pair looked confused, but the other nodded, which mildly surprised Quinn. Usually she had to throw in a little history lesson at this point, but clearly this one’s boarding school was up to scratch. “That’s when this drink, the Bee’s Knees, became popular, in the 1920s. With alcohol illegal, people added honey or lemon, sometimes orange, too, to their gin because they made it up in a bathtub—which is why it was called ‘bathtub gin,’ by the way.”
A small crowd gathered as she got into it. “Gin made in a bathtub tastes like crap, which is why they needed some sweetness. And that’s how this drink got the name, ‘The Bee’s Knees,’ slang in the twenties for ‘the best evah’.” She grinned at them. “Basically, the Prohibition version of a happy emoji.”
As Quinn took several more orders for the drink from the happy group, she felt that warm satisfaction that came with knowing she’d done her job well. More than mixing things for people to enjoy and more than the high she got from standing before a crowd and being entertaining, she liked knowing she’d given something new to her patrons, and maybe, on the best nights, a piece of happy.
There hadn’t been a lot of happy where she’d been raised. Birthdays were ignored, holidays nonexistent, and laughter a rare and precious commodity. Communal mindsets might sound good as a philosophy or in a policy paper, but the truth was, when one vision dominated the lives and the direction of many, bad things happened. Things like fascism and persecution on the large scale and the slow stifling of independence and self-worth on the personal level.
For Quinn, it’d taken a long time and one life-changing incident to know she had to shake free of it all. Even if it meant leaving her parents, true believers to the core, behind. Even if it meant having no one and nothing in the world at her side.
Until she met Jasper.
“Taking fifteen,” she called down to the other bartenders, once the crowd thinned out and there was a lull in drink orders. Winding her way around those partiers eschewing the dancing and the seashore, she eased into the restaurant proper and made her way to the ladies’, sending a wave to Nettie on shift bussing tables along the way.
It was when she’d turned the corner down the short hall that housed the restrooms that an arm snaked around her waist, yanking her back.
“Finally, we’re alone,” a man slurred in her ear. Quinn stiffened, but the cloud of bourbon fumes and a glance into the wall mirror proved it was Midlife Crisis at her back, not a Russian mobster.
“Let me go,” she demanded.
“You don’t want that, darlin’.” The “darlin’” had amused her at first given the guy was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and trying to sound like a cowboy, but it stopped being amusing when he laid hands on her.
“Funny, still said it.”
She wasn’t really that alarmed. He had a long way to go to match the scary level of a burly Russian thug. She’d been much more terrified last night in the dark before she’d known the bulky man in her room was Jasper. She could handle one entitled jackhole who believed the world—and Quinn—was his to take. But it’d been a good night, and if he ruined it by going any farther, that would seriously piss her off.
Midlife Crisis forced her down the hall and toward the men’s room. Quinn nearly rolled her eyes. Where’s the originality? She managed to bump them to the side so she wound up pressed against the wall that separated the men’s room from the ladies’.
But then, Midlife Crisis took the opportunity to press his unimpressive erection against her ass, covering her shoulders to shoulders to hips so that she had to turn her head not to kiss the wall.
Trapped.
“Get off!” she shrieked.
“Heard you say you were taking a fifteen-minute break,” he slurred into her ear, failing to notice she’d morphed into something wild and desperate. “Way you’ve been working me all night, won’t take me more than five once I get inside.”
“You prick!” Incensed, she bucked uselessly. He pinched her nipple when she failed.
“You’ve been flashing your tits all night. Nothin’ but a cheap slut who thinks she can rope some dumb kid into your game, hook him deep and latch onto his trust fund along with his dick.” His saliva dripped down her cheek, making her stomach roll. “I’ll give you exactly what a whore like you needs.”
God, he reeked. “Lysol with an antibiotic chaser?”
She gasped when his hand clamped down painfully on her breast. The arm around her waist rooted for the fastening to her pants, getting them open despite her struggles.
“Play hard to get,” he encouraged with another disgusting grind against her ass. “I love that game.”
“Game over, fucker,” a hard voice declared. Quinn had her heel up to jab Midlife Crisis’s instep, hand poised to grab his dick and not in a way he would not enjoy, when that fast, his weight was off her back. She whirled to see her assailant dangling two feet off the ground, pinned against the opposing wall solely by Jasper’s grip on his throat.
Quickly, she did up her pants while sn
apping, “I was handling that,” relief and delayed reaction redirecting her ire onto Jasper’s taut back.
“You’re done handling shit,” he retorted through his teeth. Jasper leaned into Midlife Crisis’ face and took an elaborate whiff. “You’ve had too much to drink, Congressman.” Quinn winced. Of course, she had to get attacked by an elected official. “Perhaps you’d like to rethink the last ten minutes and apologize to the lady?”
“Lady, right,” Midlife Crisis choked out then gurgled when Jasper’s grip tightened. “Bitch like that needs a lesson in respecting her betters.”
At his words, Jasper’s rigid jaw flexed, and Quinn sincerely feared for the guy.
“Release me,” the congressman managed, too arrogant to heed the warning signs of danger. “Or I’ll have your job before I have you arrested.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” a new party disagreed. Quinn craned her neck to see around Jasper. McBain lounged against the doorframe at the mouth of the hallway. He jerked his chin toward a corner of the ceiling. “Casa Blanca is wired throughout with cameras. Junonia’s no different. Your attack on Quinn is on record. I doubt your reputation can take another hit, Congressman.”
The congressman’s eyes bugged out and not due to any physical pressure from Jasper. He hung there another second, then managed a nod.
“Let him go,” McBain ordered.
Jasper immediately released the congressman, who made a show of brushing down his rumpled suit and coughing his throat clear.
“We’re not done,” he said to McBain, ignoring Jasper’s threatening bulk blocking his way.
“You’re right,” McBain agreed. “You lost my vote too.”
Quinn failed to stifle a surprised gurgle, which earned her a glare from the congressman. Jasper took a step backward and blocked her from his view.
“This way, Congressman,” McBain instructed, gesturing back into the restaurant and stepping out of the way when the congressman harrumphed past him. “Five minutes,” he said to Jasper before following.
Barefoot Bay: Wild on the Rocks (Kindle Worlds) Page 14
