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“Hey!” I whispered. “You can join me for morning yoga, but you can’t fuck up my mat!” Leo laughed quietly behind me. Still not looking at him, I whined. “It’s not funny.” Swift rolled over, exposing her fluffy little black-and-white splattered belly.
Leo shuffled around as he got up, and I kept my eyes on the wall so as not to accidentally see something I didn’t want to see. “She’s just trying to be your friend,” he murmured lightly as he walked past me and into the bathroom, shutting the door closed behind him.
I looked down at Swift’s gray eyes. “Is that right?” I asked. “Are you trying to be my friend?” She meowed again, and this time I scratched her gently on the chin. Her eyes closed as she started purring beneath the light touch of my fingers. “Okay, fine, we’re officially friends. I could use some in this place.” She rolled again and bounced back up onto her feet, running like a crazed maniac toward the chair Leo just vacated. I turned to find her nestling in again next to Dolly, whose wide golden eyes were fixed on me.
I didn’t think Dolly was ready to be friends with me yet, and I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t exactly friendly toward her dad either. Still, though, I didn’t like the thought of being unlikeable, so I decided I would try. “You’re next, Dolly.”
Dolly stared at me for a moment longer before she got up and turned to face away from me, settling down into the blanket as she looked out the big window.
I arrived at Larkspur early, insisting I needed to handle a bunch of admin duties despite getting through most of them a couple of days ago. The truth was I needed to get out of Leo’s apartment—away from him and away from his parents—and while I thought about sneaking back to my own apartment for a couple of hours instead, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to spend a few hours inspecting the bar.
The staff had a strict set of closing duties that kept things relatively organized, like washing the rubber mats, putting all dirty glassware into the dishwasher to be cleaned and dried overnight, wiping down the bar with an antibacterial cleaning solution, and mopping the floors throughout the club. We also had a cleaning crew that came twice a week for a deeper cleaning, and a bar maintenance guy named Walter who came weekly to ensure keg lines and beer taps were regularly looked at and sanitized. Still though, I liked to push up my own sleeves now and then to wipe down every door knob and handle throughout the entire club, or to soak all faucet heads in club soda to break down leftover grime, or maybe to reorganize the stock room and the office.
It helped me to feel like I had a finger on the pulse of this whole place, even as we continued to get busier. It was also another great way for me to blow off a little steam, which I was itching for, especially since I’d shut myself away in Leo’s bedroom to avoid his parents for most of the morning. After an awkward, silent lunch around the kitchen island where his mother continued to stare at me with a look of aversion, I bolted, claiming to have a million things to work on at Larkspur.
Much to my surprise, Leo strolled in from the stock room only a half hour into my self-prescribed cleaning spree, wearing a beautiful midnight navy suit and a devilish grin. His wavy hair was styled, and he was freshly shaven. He looked divine, and the juxtaposition of such a finely dressed man inside of a nightclub like this made my blood hum beneath my skin.
I watched as he looked around before turning toward where I was knelt behind the bar with a sudsy sponge in hand, scrubbing the metal caddy that held the bottles of our house liquor. He looked so much more relaxed than he had two mornings ago when he’d summoned me to ask me to be his fake girlfriend, which was odd because when I left him this morning, he was tense as he stared his father down. “You good?” he asked, eyeing me curiously.
I realized the force of my scrubbing was a little . . . much. Giving myself a moment to take inventory, I considered. “My head feels much better. The rest is getting there. Why aren’t you with your parents?” I asked.
“I enjoy the view of you on your knees.” He smirked, ignoring my question, and I nearly choked on my own spit.
“You’re such an asshole,” I muttered, putting a little more oomph into my scrubbing.
“I’m just teasing you, Mara.” His eyes danced as his mouth tipped up in amusement. “What are you doing down there, anyway?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
I watched as his eyes roamed over me, taking in the bar T-shirt and longer bike shorts I’d decided to wear tonight along with the sponge in my hand and the bucket of soapy water in front of me. “It looks like you’re cleaning. Don’t we outsource that?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but it’s never as good as doing it yourself, you know?”
His eyes pinned me into place as he leaned over from the other side of the bar, resting his arms on the glossy surface. “No, I don’t. If the service is unsatisfactory, then we should find an alternative solution.”
“They do a great job!” I retorted.
“I’m just saying”—he flashed his bright white teeth—“I’ve found that, with the right budget, you can hire people to do things exceptionally well.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, moneybags, that sounds a little creepy. And also, the service we hire really does a great job. I just like to find ways to help.”
Leo laughed, his face open and sunny, and it landed in my chest. “All right, point taken. I won’t interfere.”
I stared at him, watching his smile widen from the attention. “What’s gotten into you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look—” I waved a hand out toward his face. “Happy. And when I left, you looked like you wanted to throttle someone.”
“Well, you gave me the tracks to run on, I suppose. I went for a quick jog after you left to try to release some of the tension I was feeling. And then when I got home, my father told me he made dinner reservations for all of us at NoMu Wednesday night—along with that ‘strapping young man’ they met at the airport before their flight.”
Damn. NoMu was probably the fanciest restaurant in Denver, and it usually had a waitlist that was months long. There was no telling how much cash he’d had to throw down to wriggle into a table on such short notice. “I have to work,” I said, focusing back on my task. A dinner on the town with Alaric and Christine sounded about as fun as sitting through a root canal. “And why does NoMu make you so happy? Is the food that good?”
“You’ll take the night off and join me as part of our agreement,” he said firmly, though still with a smile. “And I’m not sure about the food, I’ve never been there. But what I will say is that when my father delivered the news of our impending, likely tortuous dinner together, it stressed me out so much that I’m afraid I might have slipped right into a bit of a delusion. And then I basically did what you did and feigned a bunch of work to get to here, so . . .”
Though his words were humorous enough to laugh at, I could see his eyes dimming at the implication of trouble at the dinner. This sunny disposition he displayed was nothing more than a charade—and based on how well he sold it, I would guess it wasn’t a one-off. It frustrated me, because I knew what it was like to have to pretend. “Leo, if your father stresses you out this much, why even bother?”
His smile disappeared, and he looked at me for a long moment. “It’s, uh . . . complicated.”
