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His brows went up infinitesimally, his eyes widening with curiosity. “Your bar? You own this place?”
“Not yet. But she’s workin’ on it,” Freddy answered proudly, shooting a wink in my direction. “Our girl’s a fighter.” Poor guy didn’t realize he’d given too much away to the enemy, but I loved him too much to get onto him about it.
“Let me go check on your food, Freddy. Be right back.”
I scurried away from the bar without looking in Beau’s direction. I stopped in the back hallway on my way to the kitchen, taking a moment to breathe, to shake off the effects of Beau Wade. Leaning against the wall, I closed my eyes and dropped my head back, focusing on my breathing. That was how Donovan caught me as he was returning from his break.
“Hey, boss. Everything okay?”
I pushed off the wall, standing tall and giving him a grin. “Yep. All good. Just taking a little breather. I have to grab Freddy’s food, then I’ll be right back out.”
“You got it.”
With Donovan back from his break, I was safe to escape that strange, almost intrusive pull to Beau. I made quick work of dropping Freddy’s dinner off before heading onto the floor to help the waitstaff.
Beau had been right, though. It was impossible for me to do my job without being personable. It was the kind of person I was. Not to mention, I knew most of the people here. And out of that group, actually liked at least three-quarters of them.
I was a nice person, damn it. There was nothing wrong with that, but it didn’t mean I had to be nice to someone who hadn’t earned it. I wasn’t overly nice when Larissa or Anna came in. I just filled their orders and let them be. The same could work with Beau. Itwouldwork.
Only, as I moved around the busy bar, taking orders and clearing empties, I could feel that same tingle on the back of my neck that I used to feel back in high school, that persistent itchthat traveled down my spine and centered between my shoulder blades, and every time I looked, Beau was watching me.
I passed a table of women—I’d clocked them as tourists the moment they walked in dressed more for a club than a small-town watering hole—and couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. Of course, they were going on and on about Beau. Everything from how gorgeous he was to whether or not he was polite in person to what he was doing in a small town like Whitecap. One of them swirled the cocktail straw in her glass as she stared at his back like she was a jungle cat about to swoop in on her prey.
“I think I’m gonna go talk to him,” she announced to her friends.
A strange sensation built in my chest at hearing that; it almost felt like heartburn.
“No, don’t,” one of the other women said as the table fell into a fit of giggles. “What if he doesn’t want to be bothered?”
Yeah,I thought,what if he just wants to relax without people all in his business.
The truth was, I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be him. It might have seemed glamorous to be rich and famous when I was younger, but now I couldn’t imagine being able to stand the lack of privacy. I’d seen enough news coverage about Beau over the years to know it wasn’t only the game that had people interested. Sure, he’d been the best quarterback in the league, but with looks like his, he’d drawn even more attention, and it seemed like the league had done everything they could to monetize that.
There had been cameras in his face all the time, every woman he was seen with was scrutinized and nitpicked. Every move he made—good or bad—was reported on, and if it was bad, he was raked over the coals. And God forbid he had an off game. People were downright brutal, everyone in this day and age thinkingtheir opinions deserved to be thrust on complete strangers because they felt like being an asshole. It wasn’t right, and I actually felt bad for the guy.
But it was more than that. Deeper. That burn in my chest was getting worse, and as ridiculous as it was, I disliked the woman for no apparent reason whatsoever.
The brunette, the one who’d decided to approach Beau and interrupt his evening, spoke again, this time adjusting her chest and pulling the front of her dress down lower to show more cleavage. “If he wanted to be alone, he wouldn’t be sitting in the middle of a bar, would he?” she reasoned selfishly. “Twenty bucks says I can get him to come back to my hotel room with me tonight.”
The other women at the table tittered with laughter as their friend rose to her feet, and something happened in that moment.
I wasn’t sure what came over me. I just... reacted without a single thought. Holding up a partially full glass of red wine I’d cleared from an empty table, I spun around and walked right into the brunette, pretending to stumble as I dumped the contents of the glass down the front of her dress.
“Oh god. I’m so sorry.”
“What the hell?” she shrieked, holding her arms out to her sides as she looked down at her ruined dress in shock.
“I think I slipped on a spilled drink or something. I’m so, so sorry. You know what? Your table’s bill is on me.” Fortunately, they hadn’t been there long, and I could cover the cost of three cosmos. “We have club soda in the back if you’d like to try and get that out before it sets.”
The woman looked at me with open disdain as she snatched her beaded clutch off the table. “Forget it,” she hissed as she waved her friends to their feet. “We’re outta here. This place sucks anyway.”
That didn’t hurt my feelings a bit, and as the three of them stormed out, it took everything I had to keep from smiling.
And as I got back to work, I refused to question why I’d felt the need to take such drastic action in the first damn place.
Best to stuff it in that little box in the back of my head and seal it up tight, right along with what had happened that night back in college.
Chapter Thirteen
