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The server showed up just as Jordana took a seat across from me at the table. She rushed off to grab the amaretto sour Jordana ordered.
“Tough night,” I commented.
Jordana closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it out. When she opened her eyes again, she reached down into her purse, which she’d hung on the chair behind her, and pulled out her phone. Whatever she saw there, she immediately dismissed,setting her phone facedown and crossing her arms over her chest.
Then she looked at me and said, “Thank you for everything you said back there.”
Oh. What had I said? All of it was true. The high turnover at Lamplighter Lounge, the inappropriate way Dave spoke to his employees, and the fact that Jordana deserved better.
“You know anybody like you?” she asked.
That got my attention. I opened my mouth to respond but paused as the server returned, setting Jordana’s drink in front of her and asking if she wanted anything to eat.
“I’m fine.” Jordana shook her head. “I couldn’t even eat if I wanted to.”
“You have to eat something,” I said. “You’ll feel better, I promise. It’s my treat.”
Her expression hardened at those words. She didn’t want charity. I got it. This wasn’t charity, though. It was me wanting to take care of her.
Okay, so that might technically qualify as charity. But I thought of it more as treating a woman I was trying to impress.
Finally, she gave in and ordered the nachos.
Once we were alone again, she picked up where she’d left off. “I was asking if you could recommend a good employer. Someone who treats his employees well. Someone like you.”
That wasn’t what I thought she meant by that at all. Maybe it’d been wishful thinking, but I’d hoped she was admiring me for more than my management skills. Which sucked, by the way.
“I may have misrepresented myself back there,” I said. “No one who works for me would call me a good boss. I don’t yell at them. I’m more the annoyingly quiet, surly type.”
“Surly,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. Studying me. “You don’t seem surly or quiet to me.”
“I guess you bring out the nice guy in me.”
I didn’t take my eyes off her as I said the words. She didn’t break the stare either. There was something going on here. Something beyond this need to take care of her. Sparks shot back and forth across the table as I tried not to think about sliding my hands under that T-shirt and finding out if those breasts were as plump and perky as they looked from here.
“You said you wanted to talk to me about something,” she said.
The sudden shift in topic made me wonder if she was looking for a way to break the sexual tension between us. That probably was for the best. But I was enjoying every second of it.
“The timing is actually perfect,” I said.
The funny thing was, I’d been so distracted by her, it hadn’t occurred to me until now that everything was lining up better than expected. I hadn’t deliberately derailed her employment situation, but I’d sensed for a while that this woman wasn’t the happiest employee around. She deserved better than the way her now-former boss was treating her.
“I own Reboot,” I said.
She nodded. That wasn’t news to her. It made me wonder just how much she knew about me. Had she researched me, or had she just overheard the town gossip about me? I hoped it was the former, not the latter, because the thought of her looking me up online got my blood pumping.
I shoved those thoughts aside, took a generous swig of my drink, set it down, and said, “I have a proposition for you.”
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t respond right away. She slowly sipped her drink as she waited, watching me.
Finally, after a long silence where she just stared at that martini glass, she spoke. “I’m not that type of woman.”
“I don’t think?—”
“But I might be interested in a no-strings-attached fling.”
I had to hold my jaw in place as I stared at her. Had she just said what I thought she said?
