by Drea Stein
She surveyed the bar. Most of the customers, excitement over, had gone back to what they were doing. She went over to where Charlie had been sitting, saw that his friend had left just enough to cover the bill with a generous two-cent tip. At least she wouldn’t owe Quent any money at the end of her shift.
She sighed. Being a bartender was supposed to be a fun, uncomplicated job.
“Here.” Jake was there, and he was counting out some money from his wallet.
“I don’t need your charity,” she said stiffly, keeping her hands busy cleaning glasses, sweeping up damp napkins, anything to avoid looking at him in the eye.
“I want a beer.”
“Last call already went out. See if there’s any in the pitcher over there,” she said and tipped her head to the tables where the remnants of the softball team were getting up.
She saw Colby and Tory come up, say goodbye to Ellie. Tory looked over at them, and when she knew that Colleen knew that, she said, “Bye Colleen. See you around.”
Colleen smiled. It was nothing, just a pleasantry, but it made Colleen feel ordinary and at home.
“You too. Better luck next game.”
Tory nodded, and she and Colby disappeared into the spring night, arms wrapped around each other.
Colleen took the pitcher Tory had brought up and poured what was left of it into a glass and pushed it over toward Jake.
“On the house,” she said.
He looked down at the warm, foamy beer then at her, and said. “I was trying to do something nice for you.”
“I told you, I can take care of myself, and that wasn’t help. That was practically assault.”
“You didn’t push me away,” he said.
“You had no right. Kissing a girl without asking is just as creepy as following her from bar to bar.”
He didn’t reply.
She paused, thought for a moment. “Why are you here tonight, anyway? Are you following me?”
He spread out his hands. “I didn’t know you’d be working here tonight. The team always comes here after softball.”
Colleen knew he was lying and was about to call him on it when he said, “Besides, you kissed me.”
“I what?” She stopped in her tracks. “You told me to.”
“I didn’t think you would actually do it,” Jake said.
She turned and stared at him. A lesser man would have walked away, but Jake just sat there, casually looking at her.
“You’re joking.”
“Teasing, maybe.”
She shook her head.
“Maybe I was just testing your feminine wiles for myself.”
She froze, her whole body stiff with rage, and she knew it for what it was, a sudden all-consuming anger. She knew that she couldn’t let it get to her. That she couldn’t let him get to her.
“I don’t know what you heard or thought you heard, but get out of here. If I kiss you, I am not trying to get something from you, or steal you from someone else.”
He eyes narrowed, saw the look on her face, then reconsidered. “It’s not your place, you can’t kick me out.”
“Bartender rules: I can kick out anyone I want to.” She raised her voice just a little and knew that Quent had heard her, saw the small, swift smile cross his face. Quent liked to play the tough guy, and knowing that Quent had her back made her bold.
Jake looked around. Saw Quent standing there with his arms folded over his chest.
“You looked like you needed help,” Jake said.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Fine. Next time I’ll let you,” he said, and there was just a bit of a sulky edge to his voice.
“Good,” she said and knew hers sounded just as petulant.
Jake scowled back at her, and Colleen felt slightly ridiculous as if she had just had a battle of wills with a three year old, not a thirty-year-old man.
Apparently there was nothing left to say because Jake huffed, turned on his heel, and stormed out. She watched him go, sure that if he could, he would have slammed the door, but it closed softly and slowly on its well-oiled hinges.
She sighed, looked around. Most everyone was gone, except for Ellie and Lydia, who were looking at her.
“Well, honey, that was a show,” Ellie drawled.
Colleen said nothing, just turned away and found some more dirty pitchers to gather up.
Chapter 22
Lydia drove her home. She climbed into Lydia’s Jeep, grateful for once to not have to make the walk home. It had been a rough night. She didn’t know why she was so angry at Jake. He had been trying to help. His method was a little heavy-handed, and it had in a resulted in a kiss that half the town had seen. The kiss had been … well, amazing didn’t quite cover it, but she didn’t need to build that kind of reputation around town.
Lydia didn’t say much, just kept shooting concerned glances her way.
Colleen sighed. She appreciated the concern, but wanted to tell everyone that she’d been taking care of herself for a long time. She maybe had been overconfident because Queensbay was such a small town, but luckily she’d been reminded that it was always right to take some basic precautions.
“I already told you I’m calling the security company first thing tomorrow,” she told Lydia. “Cameras, panic button, whole nine yards in the shop.”
“Good thing, but I was thinking more about the kiss.”
Colleen shrugged his shoulders. “It was just a kiss.”
“That was not just a kiss,” Lydia pointed out. “And it seems to me that Jake has his sights set on more than kissing you.”
“Just not going to happen,” Colleen said empathically.
“Why not? He’s perfectly good looking, you know, and I bet he’s pretty good with his hands.”
“No comment,” Colleen said, though her lips twitched a little as she fought the smile.
“Then what is it?”
Colleen sighed. “When I came back home, I promised myself that this time I would do it by myself, make a life for myself and Adele without relying on anyone, especially a man.”
“Not one of us makes it alone, you know,” Lydia said.
Collen looked out the window as Queensbay, dark and quiet, rolled by.
“I just want to prove to myself that I can be my own person.”
“To yourself or to Adele’s father?” Lydia asked. “I’ve never met him, but I don’t like him. Sounds a bit manipulative if you ask me, coming to you and telling you he’d buy you a store if you became his mistress.”
Colleen tried not to remember how he had reacted when she had suggested that she run her own shop. He had said something along the lines, of “you silly little girl.” Okay, so La Belle Vie wasn’t on the Parisian High Street, but at least she was starting somewhere. Nothing to say she wouldn’t be selling all over the country through her website or opening another store. Queensbay today, maybe New York or London tomorrow.
“He just didn’t believe in me,” Colleen said. And he was a jerk. She didn’t need him and she needed to prove that to him once and for all. The money he sent, she had been carefully banking in an account for Adele, for college, for her future. He could contribute to his daughter, even if he wouldn’t acknowledge her, but Colleen was determined to live on her own.
“I think Jake believes in you,” Lydia said as the Jeep pulled up to Colleen’s house.
“I am just afraid that he’ll want too much of me. Olivier wanted all of me, but he didn’t give any of himself.”
“Like a little kid who doesn’t want the toy but doesn’t want anyone else to have it?”
“Exactly,” Colleen said. She looked up at Adele’s nightlight in the window. She was eager to go in, get into her pajamas, give her daughter a kiss, and remind herself that it was all going to be okay because they had each other.
“Jake seems like the type of kid who was pretty good at teamwork, if you know what I mean,” Lydia said.
Colleen leaned her head against the glass window,
letting the coolness transfer to her, trying to still the mix of thoughts and hormones in her body. She wanted Jake Owen, but she needed to not need him. How to untangle the two was never something she’d been very good at.
Chapter 23
“What are you doing here?” Quent asked Jake as he appeared out of the early morning fog.
Jake stopped his perusal of the boats moored at the marina. He’d been reading names, looking for the right one. It was still early, and a light mist clung to water as the rising sun inched above the horizon. Quent looked dangerous in black jeans, black boots, and a black motorcycle jacket.
“You’re up pretty early for a bartender,” Jake said, not answering the question.
“I’ve got some business to attend to,” Quent said shortly.
“Your boat looks pretty ship-shape to me,” Jake said and gestured toward Quent’s neat little runabout.
“That’s not the business I was looking for,” Quent said. He nodded in the direction of the coffee cup Jake was holding.
“Meeting anyone for coffee?”
“Just thought I’d have a friendly chat with someone.”
Quent nodded, cracked his knuckles. “Same thought occurred to me. Can’t have the patrons hassling my staff like that, not with me trying to run a decent, family-friendly establishment.”
“Can’t have lowlifes hassling my girl like that,” Jake concurred. It didn’t matter that Colleen had yet to agree to be his girl.
Quent smiled, looking pleased. “What do ya say we pay this chucklehead a visit together and make it clear he’d be better off in another port of call?”
Jake squared his shoulders, smiled. “Sounds good to me.”
Charlie had been surprisingly cooperative. A quick chat with the harbor master had helped them track down the boat, a sweet forty-foot cabin cruiser, equipped for deep sea fishing. Charlie had been asleep, but they had roused him, sat him down in his skivvies and laid the situation out for him, making it very clear that he wasn’t welcome in Queensbay again. Jake had done enough research between last night and this morning to know just enough about Charlie, like where he lived, his wife’s name and that he had two teenage daughters. All of this was more than enough to convince Charlie to take his business elsewhere.
As they stepped off the boat into the bright morning sun, Jake saw that the fog had indeed burned away. Behind him, he could hear the engines firing up.
“Shaping up to be a glorious day, what do you think, Quent?”
“Absolutely,” Quent agreed, shaking his hand.
They parted ways, both whistling, ready for the day.
Chapter 24
“That was some lip-lock last night.”
Jake looked up. Ellie had stepped out onto her balcony. As usual she was impeccably dressed, ready for work.
Jack said nothing. After he and Quent had taken care of Charlie, he’d come back to his place. He decided to enjoy his own cup of coffee as he watched Charlie’s boat head away from the dock. Ellie leaned on her railing. A partition divided the two balconies, but with them both leaning out, it as if they were next to each other.
“The guy was upsetting her,” he said. He didn’t regret what he’d done.
“You could have said something to him, told him to get lost. You kissed her in the middle of the whole damn bar. Pretty over-the-top way to send a message.”
“So?” he said. His good mood was rapidly deteriorating.
“I don’t know all of the details, but it seems like you two have a bit of a history together.”
“Maybe. Sort of,” he admitted.
Ellie nodded. “Going to be a beautiful day. Maybe you should try to get to know her better.”
“I know her. I’ve known her all my life.”
“People change, and maybe you want to get to know her before you go in and start kissing her.”
“I don’t know,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Ever since she’s been back, I sort of can’t stop thinking about her. I try to avoid her, and I run into her and then I think about her and then, I don’t know, I see some guys giving her a hard time, and all I want to do is …”
“Kiss her?”
“Something like that. What do you think I should do?” He didn’t want to tell Ellie any more, but she and Colleen were friendly and he needed all the help he could get.
Ellie thought for a moment. “Maybe, you know, you need to be honest with her. Ask her on a date. You know, treat her like someone you’re interested in and not some sort of sketchy high school fling.”
“She wasn’t some sort of high school fling. And that’s not what I have in mind.”
Ellie shook her head slowly. “Like I said, maybe you need to stop kissing girls in bars and take one on a date. Just saying. Maybe she has her reasons for being serious and not just falling into your arms.”
“We’re two healthy, unattached adults,” Jake said.
Ellie paused, as is she were thinking, then said, “Doesn’t mean you can’t be a gentleman about it.”
“I thought I was,” he said. That had been his intention last night. To show that creep that Colleen wasn’t just some girl he could hassle.
“You kissed her in front of her boss and half the town. You didn’t really give her a chance to say no or, you know, have that moment in private.”
“So you’re saying, even though I thought I was being a good guy, I was being my usual moronic self?” Jake said, sighing. He wasn’t good at relationships. Never had been. Colleen had run out on him, and then after that, he never was able to get close to anyone. Or, as the women he had dated liked to point out, he had commitment issues or was “emotionally unavailable.”
But the problem was that since none of them had been Colleen, he hadn’t wanted to be committed. Now that she was back, she wanted to have nothing to do with him. And it was eating away at him.
“Something like that,” Ellie said. “I’m just saying that you’ve both changed, so maybe you need to take it slow, like grownups.”
Ellie smiled at him and slipped back into her apartment, leaving Jake alone, staring at the water, considering his options. He could be grown-up about this. He could go over to the shop right now, apologize for being overbearing, and ask if they could go on a date together. They needed to reset the whole scenario. They weren’t horny teenagers any more. They were adults, grownups, and he could act like one. And, now that they weren’t horny teenagers, they could take their time getting to know each other. No more worries about being found out or burst-in upon. As he drained the last of the coffee and soaked in the morning sun, he decided that he was going to ask Colleen McShane out on a date.
Chapter 25
Colleen took a step back, admired her handiwork and then decided that it looked like crap. She was setting up her merchandise, trying to decide how the store was going to be laid out. The vision she had in her mind’s eye was just not coming together, and she knew why and who to blame.
Jake. And Chino Charlie. But mostly Jake. He had kissed her. A real kiss in front of everyone, and she had kissed him back. It had happened exactly thirty-six hours ago, give or take, and she hadn’t been able to do anything but think about it. She’d barely slept, hadn’t eaten, except for coffee, and now she was trying to work, and all she could think about was the kiss. She sighed and checked her watch, mindful of the time. Lydia had agreed to do her a favor, pick up Adele, and walk her and Josh over to the shop. Then, they’d all go the park. Being in the fresh air would be good for all of them. Still, she wished she had more time.
There was a knock on the door and shake of the handle. She had decided to keep it locked if she was there alone. The security company was coming tomorrow to do an evaluation.
She stepped toward the door, saw who it was and almost told him to go away.
“I know you’re in there. I can see you,” he said, his voice insistent. She hesitated, not sure what she should do. To let him in would be to invite him in and could be the start of something.
She wasn’t sure she was ready for that.
“You can’t ignore me forever,” he pointed out. She sighed. He was right about that. She needed to cut this off, stop it, nip it in the bud, and plainly tell him that she was not interested. Not if he was going to treat her like something that needed protecting. She pulled herself together and unlocked the door.
He came in and looked at her. She blinked, swallowed as if she were about to say something. It wasn’t supposed to be seductive but it was, and suddenly he had to be close to her. If she pushed him away, well fine, but he needed to kiss her, really kiss her, while they were alone, when it wasn’t for show, when it was just the two of them. No distractions.
He moved to her, so that they were so close, no space between them. He took his hands and rested them on her shoulders, angling his head down. He moved in, and she said nothing, just rose to her feet and met him, kissed him back, hungrily, full of want.
But she broke the kiss off, gently, a look of worry on her face.
“Jake.”
He opened his eyes and looked deeply into hers.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Won’t or can’t?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” he said. She was shaking, and her hand was on her throat.
“What do you want?”
“To kiss you again,” he said. He took a step forward, and she took one back.
He stopped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be a jerk.”
“Just take a step back.”
“Done.” He took two steps back, and she seemed to calm down.
“It’s not you, Jake.”
He held up his hands. “I get it, it’s not me, it’s you. Heard it before.” He couldn’t hide the frustration in his voice.
“No, I don’t think you understand,” she said, struggling to get the words right. “I just, you … you don’t know me. You should stay away.”
