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God, what was it with tonight? She was pretty sure she had covered about all her sore spots already. Truth was she wasn’t looking to scope out any man anywhere. Men were not her strong suit. She had the bar. That was enough.
Keep telling yourself that, Bloom.
But she put on her smile again. “I’m not interested, Tam. I’ve got a good thing going with this business and I’m not looking to screw it up by bringing a man into the picture. Been there, done that. No, thank you.”
For a moment it seemed that was enough for Tam to get the message. “It’s just that, you’re so pretty, and...”
Time for the big guns. One strategic death stare was enough. It stopped Tam mid-sentence. “Okay, I get it. Just sayin’,” she said as she turned on her heel. “I’m going to go mingle.”
“Love ya, Tam,” she said, blowing her a kiss.
She couldn’t blame Tam, not really, and she hoped the death stare wasn’t too much. Her last shit show attempt at a relationship had pre-dated her friendship with Tam so she couldn’t really understand. And she had no interest in bringing Tam up to speed. No, she’d had enough of men. Didn’t even seem to matter, Fae or shifter. No, thanks.
Definitely not shifter.
She literally shook her whole body to clear out all the old garbage that was threatening to surface.
Deep breath.
She breathed out.
Turning the page.
Her life circumstances struck her as ironic on more than one occasion. Here she was, the proprietor of the town hub, and yet she was probably the loneliest person in the room. At least that’s what she told herself.I guess I have them pretty well fooled, she thought sadly as she surveyed the bar.
Still, she tried to remember that she had it pretty good. Fae Crossingwasa special place. All were welcome there. If they had a tourist bureau, she thought that’s what it would say on the brochures.Fae Crossing, where everyone is welcome.
It was a nice idea. But the reality was often far from that lofty ideal. She shook her head as Marius sidled up to the bar.
“The usual, love,” he called.
Right, one scotch on the rocks.
“Coming up,” she called as she set to make the drink.
Allwerewelcome but that didn’t mean they were one big happy family. To say Fae and shifters were a natural fit was more than a stretch. More like oil and water.Facts.As she got a rocks glass down, she refocused.Don’t go down that road, Bloom. It had already been five years, which seemed impossible. But it had been. It still hurt as much today as when it had first happened. Back to the task at hand.
“Scotch on the rocks.” She poured in a few fingers and pushed it across the bar to him.
“What’s with the hat, Marius? Never took you for the baseball cap type,” she chirped conversationally. Marius was a pretty nondescript sort of middle management type fae. Nondescript beyond being about six foot two and two hundred fifty pounds with a serious case of dad bod as they called it these days. He could definitely use some time on the stair master. Work-wise he did something with the governing body if she remembered correctly. Usually came in and had a drink on his own. A good customer really.
“What? Oh, nothing, just thought I’d give it a try,” he said, a little more animated than usual. She really wished he’d take it off inside, but that courtesy seemed to only be something seen in old movies now.
“Got it,” she replied as she rinsed out her bar rag and started a wash of glasses.
Scanning the room to see if anyone was in need of something, she noted a group of shifters off in the corner were getting a little loud. When the drinks started flowing, even the most sedate people got loud. Shifters? Forget it. She was all for them wanting to broaden their horizons, but man, they could get loud. Still, she tried to give people a fairly long leash when it came to blowing off steam, and she had instructed her staff to do the same. Even shifters. The Tree was, after all, kind of the town’s main watering hole – for fae at least, and as such, it should be their happy place. That was the vibe the bar held as well.
But every once in a while, limits had to be enforced, of course. The Fair Folk bar was right at the heart of Fae Crossing, quite literally. Right at the main intersection of Mountain View and Willow Way. They didn’t hold back on their strong drinks. In fact, if drinks were going to have any effect at all on most of the clients, they had to be both strong and enchanted to one degree or another. The shifters were fine for the moment but she gave Mack a nod in their direction anyhow. He was handling the other end of the bar and sided up to her to be heard over the crowd.
“Oh, don’t you worry, I got my eye on them,” he said. “And I told Wendy already to start watering down their drinks a bit,” he added with a wink. “Comped, of course.”
“Just checking.” She smiled back.
“No worries, your father was the master of handling that sort. He trained me well.”
She had known Mack as long as she had known her father, really, and with her father gone now, he was sort of like a father to her. And with the circumstances of her father’s demise that had become doubly so. And besides the connection to her father, his perspective as a human was also invaluable. Even though she had been in the magical world going on two decades, it was still often strange and overwhelming.
Mack, even more so that Tam was really the only one who knew just how alone she often felt.
