AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Will there be anything else tonight, sir?”
“Pardon me?” The object of his absurd little fantasy stepped into his line of vision, which put his eyeballs right in line with the second button of her white shirt—it had looked like it was about to pop off all evening.
“I’m cashing out—got to be up early tomorrow. So if you need anything else, more preserved lemon, maybe,”—one corner of her plump pink mouth turned up—“Edward will help you, okay?” She gestured to the older man at the other corner of the bar, whom he knew to be the owner.
He was not the pursuer. And, God, a bartender? Not exactly his type. “Thank you,” he said flatly, keeping his face neutral.
With a dip of her head, she disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later the door swung back open, and she stepped through transformed. A pink pea coat had been thrown over her shirt and her hair had come down. Freed from its prim bun, it fell well past her shoulders. When it was up, he’d thought of it as merely dark brown. But he saw now that it was a shiny mahogany subtly streaked with auburn and copper.
And she’d lost the tie. He shifted in his seat. The top two buttons of her shirt were undone; that heroic button had been taken off active duty, no longer straining to cover her up. He could see just the barest bit of cleavage, a mere hint of what he suspected lay beneath.
He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the rest.
Well, if fucking Carl was going to take down Winter Enterprises, at least Miss Lemon on the Side had given him something else to think about tonight.
Chapter Two
When Jack arrived at the bar the next night, the bartender was deep in conversation with a…teenager? She was huddled with a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, their attention both drawn by something on the bar.
“Ants, Cassie! Ants! Are they trying to alienate me?”
Cassie—that must be her name—waved a bar towel dismissively. “Ants, trains, whatever, it’s all the same. You just have to think about it the same way you always do.”
The scrape of his stool drew her attention. A flash of surprise flitted across her face, but it was quickly replaced by a grin. When she smiled she crunched up her nose, which, lightly sprinkled with freckles as it was, made for a seriously adorable picture. “Hey! You’re back!” She glanced out at the restaurant proper, toward the far corner where he usually sat.
“Yeah, it’s easier to spread out here at the bar, I found. And I’ve got a crapload of work to get done.” It was not untrue. His head swam when he thought of it. The reality, though, was that he was going to need a bar the size of his boardroom table to sort everything out. But he couldn’t do this work in the office. He huffed a disgusted laugh. Hell, he probably couldn’t do this work at all—that was the terrible irony.
She ducked for a moment, disappearing behind the bar. When she shot up, she was grinning and holding the jug of distilled water. She plunked it down in front of him. “The scotch supplier was here today and we have a bunch of new bottles—they’re still in back. I’m gonna go grab them.” Before he could protest that anything was fine—he wasn’t feeling picky—she was off, hips swaying in her black miniskirt.
He didn’t realize how openly he was staring until he swung his attention back to the bar to find the teenager eyeing him with no less subtlety. In her jeans and too-tight T-shirt, she looked out of place in the dark bar, which was usually filled with stockbrokers and young beautiful people with money to burn.
“You Cassie’s boyfriend?”
He shot her what he hoped was a quelling look. “No.” Then he pulled up the March invoices. Jesus Christ, he was only to March. He’d hoped to have this sorted out before the Wexler deal got underway, but it didn’t look like it was going to happen. He knocked his head momentarily against his fist, as if he could knock some goddamn sense into his head.
“Problem?” The girl was still looking at him.
“You could say that.”
“Well, you’re not the only one. Listen to this. Two ants are at a common point in time. The first ant starts crawling along a straight line at the rate of one meter per minute. Three minutes later, the second ant starts crawling in a direction perpendicular to that of the first, at a rate of one point three meters per minute. How fast is the distance between them changing when the first ant has traveled seven meters?”
His blank stare must have spoken for him because she pounded the bar and said, “Exactly. There’s also the part where we’re talking about ants! Ants! When, I ask you, am I ever going to need to calculate the rate of change of the distance between two ants?”
