Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ROSIE

“You’re full of shit,” I say, grinning at Anthony.

“No, scout’s honor,” he says, making some kind of sign with his hand. Maybe it’s for the scouts. I wouldn’t know. I certainly was never a Girl Scout.

“Why did you want to bartend?”

“I liked the movie Cocktail when I was a kid.”

I narrow my gaze at him, searching for a lie, but he looks earnest and maybe a little embarrassed, and he’s even more charming like this. Which is why I barreled into this whole plan, rushing after my impulse like that very habit hasn’t bitten me in the ass before. “I believe you. I’ll let it pass. But what are you going to do when all the women want to throw their panties over the bar at you.”

“It’ll never happen,” he says, his dimples popping, and I feel another gush of awareness. It’s insane and kind of sweet that he doesn’t realize half the women in this bar would gladly go home with him, rich or not.

“Never say never.” I waggle my eyebrows, and we get up together. Anthony’s fingers brush against mine as we walk toward the bar, and he surprises me by capturing my fingers and squeezing them. He releases them a second later, as if it never happened, but I remember. My hand remembers.

“We’re here to help,” Anthony announces, rolling up the sleeves of his sexy shirt as we approach the bar. His forearms are corded with muscle and flecked with dark hair, and I instantly decide this is my favorite look for him. Two buttons undone, sleeves rolled.

I’m not the only one who’s watching Anthony. He doesn’t seem to realize it yet, but he has quickly and seamlessly become the centerpiece of this bar—and all of the women who were murmuring complaints and shifting on their feet have stopped. There’s a change in the air as their discontent sweetens to anticipation.

And he has no clue.

I feel another tug of…need is really the only word for it. This man is complicated. He’s unexpected. He’s handsome in a way that creeps up on you and then coils around you, tightening until you can’t help but notice, and notice again, and then notice some more. And he’s probably about to get married to another woman.

Go figure. I’ve unintentionally dated two married men. Maybe there’s something hidden in my DNA that drives me to them, the way people have genes that give them cancer.

I’ve never been one to let the doldrums pull me down into the mud, though, so I get in there beside him, my shoes crunching on peanut shells. Behind the bar, Dom has the kind of setup you’d expect in a teenage boy’s bedroom, from a box full of snacks to a pair of discarded socks, a handheld video-game console, and two sacks of peanuts.

“Oh, thank God,” he mutters as he makes room for us. “I flew too close to the sun. The last time I saw this many unhappy women was when I went speed-dating.”

I hear Anthony’s muffled laugh, and I shoot a conspiratorial glance at him, which he returns.

He may not be a crowd-pleasing type who performs for strangers, but when he’s allowed to be himself without study…it’s a beautiful thing. And I’m glad I’ve been given a backstage pass to see it, even if it’s only for a short time.

“What’ve you got for us to work with?” Anthony asks Dom, giving a serious glance to the dusty bottles of alcohol lined up on the shelves next to the beer taps. “Do you have any grenadine? Citrus fruit?”

“Uh…” Dom scratches his head again. “There are some shriveled oranges in the mini-fridge. I think maybe the last guy who worked here bought them.”

“When did you take the job?” Anthony asks, watching him with suspicion.

Dom keeps scratching. “Oranges last a long time.”

“Okay, so no citrus fruit.” Anthony looks through the bottles, his hand glancing off the glass necks.

I’m staring at him, soaking him in, and so is everyone else. The murmuring has started up again, but it sounds more positive.

“You know how to mix a drink?” I whisper to him.

He looks down at me, his face inches away, his beard tempting. I want to pull it. I want to feel it rub between my thighs. I’m a woman entirely without reason. It’s this night—there’s a weird alchemy at play, between this bar, suddenly crowded, and this man, a prince in disguise. “I’ve been mixing cocktails for my mother since I was a teenager,” he says with a glimmer of amusement. “I can muddle through.”

And he does. It’s obvious he’s not comfortable with the attention he’s given, or the phone numbers that get slipped across the counter to him and, in one case, written onto a five-dollar-bill used to tip him, but he mixes a fine drink. I mow through five pieces of strawberry gum while I watch him and occasionally assist.

Most of the women don’t stay long. After all, the bar’s a dirty, dumpy dive, Anthony is gracious but not particularly receptive to flirtation, Gene is zoned out in the best booth in the bar, and Dom looks like he’s about five seconds away from a stress-induced panic-attack or explosive diarrhea. Even so, it’s probably more business than this place has gotten in months, and I feel a swell of satisfaction that’s soured by the knowledge that it might end up being a last hurrah.

If Anthony gets his trust fund, this building—and the bar—will be bulldozed.

After the last customer leaves, Dom heaves the sigh of a tri-athlete at the end of a race and slaps the dish towel he’s had slung over his shoulder onto the bar. “Well, goddamn. If this wasn’t a case of be careful what you wish for… Who’d like to get baked?”

I glance at Anthony, eyebrows raised. “Is that going on your list too?”

He laughs a little. “What? You don’t think I’ve ever smoked pot before?”

“It’s a little hard to imagine, yes,” I say. “Is that why you had to clean all those floors at your house?”

“One of the reasons. I’m a bit of an expert at cleaning floors by now.”

“No takers?” Dom asks.

I shake my head.

“No, thank you,” Anthony says, which has to be the most polite rejection of cheap skunk in history.

Dom gives a “suit yourself” shrug and looks beyond us. “Gene?”

Gene, who’s been asleep, more or less, for the last hour, stirs in his booth. “Change isn’t always good,” he grumbles. “Some gal tried to steal my seat when I went to the can.”

Dom makes a gesture indicating the back room, and Gene sighs as if it’s another imposition, and gets up to follow him back there, the two of them leaving Anthony and me alone with a mess.

He’s a man of action, so I’m not surprised when he starts cleaning the bar. It’s probably the kind of task that would never end if you really let yourself dig into it, but I join him, sticking soiled glasses into the dishwasher. I steal glances at him while I work, taking in his dark hair, his gray eyes, and the elegant line of his jaw. He’s pleasant to look at, to watch, and being close to him makes me notice more of the little details. It’s those small details that make the man, I decide. His dimples, which only make an appearance when they’re earned, his unfeasibly long lashes, beneath stern, well-shaped brows. That hair, so thick and well cut, which might be wild if only it were allowed.

“Seems to me there’s a rule-breaker lurking inside of you,” I finally say, thinking about what he told me the other day about throwing parties at that big estate. I like the thought of Anthony, out of control. Anthony, letting himself be free. Anthony, crazy and driven there by me . “I’m trying to figure out how that squares with you being a man of duty.”

He stops what he’s doing and glances at me. His mouth inches up, revealing one of those dimples. I feel a deep undercurrent of pleasure that he gave to me what he hasn’t given to anyone else tonight. “It doesn’t. That’s probably why I’m so messed up.”

I position another glass in the dishwasher and shut it, leaning my hip against the bar. “So what do you think of bartending?”

“What do you think?” His lips twist with the question.

“That you don’t like being the center of attention.”

“Not particularly, no,” he says with a low laugh, abandoning the thankless pursuit of making this place clean. “Especially not in this county.”

“Because of your mother.”

“Because of my family. Being my father’s son comes with certain expectations. I’ve never been good at meeting them.”

“And he was another crowd pleaser.”

His expression turns bitter as he glances back down at the bar, giving it another pass with the cloth. “Yes. Everything was performative for him, and if it wasn’t, he didn’t care to do it. One time he was giving Emma and me this rousing speech about how important it was to be kind in a world where people mistreated each other. We were in this public room at a museum, and as soon as the other guests left, he cut himself off mid-sentence.”

“No offense.” I lift my hands. “I know people like to talk well of the dead, but he sounds like he was a dick.”

His eyes smile at me. “I hope I’ll never be a man who’s offended by the truth. What do you say we get out of here before Dom tries to feed us edibles?”

“Are you sure, Rule Breaker?” I ask, teasing him. Maybe testing him too.

“Quite. I have a firm policy of taking only one psychedelic trip per year, and your roommate already brought me on one.”

I grin at that and grab my purse up off the floor, where it’s been sitting next to a pile of Dom’s crap.

Then I pause and grab a handful of the Cover Your Nut condoms from the bowl on the counter, mostly because I want to watch Anthony Rosings Smith blush. “Waste not, want not,” I say, pretending to be casual about it.

He watches me, lips parted, and then his expression firms.

“Don’t you want any?” I ask, goading him, although I couldn’t say why. It would be a bad idea for me to take him home tonight. He may not have asked Leigh to marry him yet, but he does need a wife. According to what the others have told me, his mother has already been calling everyone up to inform them that the New Year’s party is again a wedding.

You could marry him, I hear Joy saying. You should.

Anthony’s eyes hold mine, but then he lifts his eyebrows as his gaze flicks to my purse. “No, the normal kind aren’t big enough,” he finally says before heading for the door.

Holy shit. I’m not entirely sure he’s not fucking with me, but even if he is fucking with me…

Well, it’s hot.

I follow him out of the bar, grabbing our coats on the way out. I’m grateful that it’s still freezing outside, because I’m the one with red cheeks. Once the door clicks shut behind me, Anthony turns around, and I see a blaze of heat in his eyes before it’s banked.

I swallow, suddenly unsure of myself, and hand him his coat. He silently pulls it on, while I do the same with mine—a reverse strip tease that’s more loaded than if we’d actually been taking off our clothes.

Which no one would probably know from what I say next, each word emerging in a puff of white air. “Were you messing with me, or is that true?”

His lips lift slightly. “Both. Now, would you like a ride home, or did you drive here?”

“I drove,” I say, regretting it. Also not regretting it, because I don’t know what’s happening here, but I don’t want to run down this road without having any idea where it ends. I’ve done that too many times, with too many men. It always feels exhilarating in the beginning, but it ends with blistered feet and a splintered heart.

Anthony needs to get married, and I can’t be the woman he marries.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he says—a polite statement, but I can tell he’ll brook no objections. He will walk me to my car and see me to safety, dammit, and nothing and no one will convince him otherwise.

I nod, and we walk to the Jeep.

Anthony pauses by the driver’s door, and my heart starts racing. My foolish loser of a heart.

“Thank you,” he says, watching me. His eyes are so much more animated than they were the other night, in this same bar. They twinkle under the starlight, as if the stars themselves reached down and lent him their shine. Maybe all he needed was for someone to see him.

“For what?” I ask thickly.

“For tonight,” he says, his eyes still fixed to mine.

“You actually enjoyed yourself?”

“You’re right about the bartending, but at least I struck one item off my list. I did something different.” He shocks me by reaching up and running his fingers over the purple streak in my hair. I nearly cringe, because I have the bad habit of sucking on the end of it when I’m overwhelmed, but he doesn’t look disgusted. His eyes are studying me like I’m a painting in the museum his family probably owns.

“Tell me about your plan for the building,” I say, although I regret the words as soon as they leave me, because his eyes go flat again—as if an artist just painted them over with matte gray.

“It’ll never happen.” His voice is hoarse, sad.

“I love things that will never happen. Most of the best things will never happen.”

His mouth hitches upward again, as if it can’t help itself, and for a second my fingers want to rise and trace his lips. To pull the beautiful collar of his shirt toward me so I can see what they taste like. But I’ve become a coward, because I don’t.

“Like a horse turning into a unicorn,” he says, his voice soft but deep, rumbling pleasingly through me.

“That’s one of them,” I agree. “Now, show me your unicorn.”