Rum and Notes

by Elise Faber

  Rum and Notes

  A Love After Midnight Novel

  Elise Faber

  RUM AND NOTES

  BY ELISE FABER

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  * * *

  RUM AND NOTES

  Copyright © 2020 Elise Faber

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-62-3

  Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-61-6

  Cover Art by Jena Brignola

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Virgin Daiquiri

  Also by Elise Faber

  About the Author

  One

  Brooke

  He thrust home, her scream of pleasure ringing in his ears, then reached a hand down to—

  “Want another?”

  I jumped and slammed the screen of my laptop shut, even as the raspy voice slid over my skin like sandpaper, scouring my nerve endings, making the hairs on my nape stand on end, and my thighs clench together.

  Okay, so maybe not sandpaper so much as velvet.

  Smooth with a bit of body.

  But still sexy as shit trailing over my skin.

  “Yo.”

  I blinked, stopped my mental comparison of velvet to sandpaper and looked up, way up into the eyes of Kace. Bartender extraordinaire, possessor of that sexy voice and along with that, owner of a body that should be illegal. Narrow hips, broad shoulders, flat abs, and biceps that stretched the sleeves of the simple T-shirts he always wore. Completing the look was dark brown hair, piercing blue eyes, a straight nose, and lush, kissable lips.

  Beyond enjoyable to view. Also, beyond dangerous to my well-being.

  Those blue eyes cut to my glass, almost empty, the diet soda well below the line of ice in the cup.

  “Yes,” I murmured. “Another would be great.”

  He lifted his chin, snagged my drink, then turned away to refill it.

  Kace didn’t linger, didn’t tend to interrupt—though in this case, I’d probably asked for it, staring at him unabashedly for inspiration. He’d become the hero in the book I was writing, and what a damn inspiration he was. But because of that, I’d been admiring him, daydreaming, plotting in my head as my hero and heroine got extremely familiar between the sheets. It was all strictly for research purposes . . . well, that and also wondering how many orgasms he could give my fictional heroine.

  A lot.

  The answer to that wondering was a lot.

  I knew it in the way he moved, fluid and efficient, confidence in every action. Kace might be taciturn with a jawline that was as sharp as a knife, my very own incarnation of Mr. Darcy, albeit with tattoos, killer stubble, and an immense knowledge of top-shelf liquor, but he was also a man who knew his body.

  I might be a shy, awkward author, but DNA and three million years of evolution told me he was a man that wouldn’t be satisfied without his woman having at least one orgasm.

  Hence the reason he’d been the inspiration for my last five heroes.

  And the reason I was ahead on my deadlines for the first time in about a hundred years, or perhaps I should say ever. In fact, I’d spent the last six months working almost every evening through to early morning in this bar, having stumbled upon it after my neighbor had interrupted my work with his snoring. You’d think that my night owl tendencies would be a good thing when it came to securing quiet—or at the very least a base level of consistent noise that was not of the chainsaw-esque variety—but my neighbor’s snoring wasn’t conducive to that.

  Thus, my need to vacate my apartment and its thin walls.

  But, funny story, no coffee shop was open past nine o’clock, the neighborhood restaurants closed at ten, and me returning to my apartment had garnered not even a single chapter.

  So, I’d Yelped. Then I’d wandered. Eventually, I’d discovered Bobby’s.

  Not the front room with all the young and rowdy college coeds, but the mostly hidden back room with its warm wood and slightly sticky bar top and comfortable stools with an extra rung that my ridiculously short legs could actually reach.

  This was critical.

  I thanked Kace when he deposited my glass in front of me, full of ice and soda, then waited until he’d left before I opened my laptop again. But before I could finish the scene—or finish my heroine, rather—my mind and eyes drifted back down the bar to him.

  Kace rhymed with mace, not immediately clear when it came to his name badge. It had taken me a full week of visits to discover it was pronounced that way.

  Bobby’s was a problem.

  A gorgeous feast for the eyes, but still a problem.

  Luckily, I’d gotten good at ignoring the distraction that was Kace, and my task was made easier that evening because he disappeared through the swinging doors that led into the kitchen.

  With a quick slurp of my soda, I got back to work.

  The ice in my glass had melted by the time I glanced up again, and my lucky heroine had finished twice.

  You go, girl, I thought with a smirk, hitting save and taking a big swig. The soda was warm, flat, and unpleasant, and I wrinkled my nose before setting my glass down. I wish I could say it was an uncommon occurrence, my wasting of a perfectly good Diet Coke, but unfortunately, I ruined them on a regular basis.

  “Want a fresh one?”

  My eyes flew up from the glass to meet Kace’s.

  “Um,” I murmured. “Sure. But can you add a little rum?”

  A flash of white teeth. “All done, then?” He leaned toward me, resting his forearms on the bar, the long sleeves of his shirt riding up to reveal just the edge of a tattoo. I’d seen the whole tat before. On Day 36. He’d worn short sleeves for a change, a bone thrown to the unseasonably hot weather that day, and suddenly my hero had gotten tattoos, beautiful swirling lines crawling along his skin, sweeping around and up his forearms, twisting together and disappearing under the cotton of his short sleeves, tempting a woman to trace them with her tongue.

  No.

  My heroine’s tongue.

  Fantasy was fine, so long as I kept it between the pages.

  I bit my bottom lip until the mental image faded, kept my tongue firmly in my mouth, and nodded at Kace.

  He rapped his knuckles against the counter once, reciprocated my nod, then snagged my glass and turned away, dumping the contents, adding ice, rum, then soda before coming back over to me. He plunked the drink on the bar, but when I went to reach for it, he rested his hand on mine. “What are you working on so diligently?” he asked, and the contact, paired with his eyes locked on mine, stole my breath.

  “Wh-what?”

  His response was to release my hand, and while I was mourning the loss of his touch, he grabbed my computer, spun it to face him, and opened it.

  “No—”

  But it was too late.

&nb
sp; It was open, the screen lighting up, illuminating his sharp but beautiful features, and he was reading.

  Oh fuck, he was reading!

  I made a mad grab for the laptop, but he swept it off the bar, lifting it in the air and continuing to read. My computer obscured most of his face, but not his eyebrows. Those brows kept rising until they were tight sideways C’s on his forehead, well above the edge of my screen.

  Then he lowered the laptop and stared at me.

  “This is what you’ve been writing?”

  In fairness, he’d caught me in the middle of a hot scene, made hotter because he’d been my inspiration for it.

  A fact he seemed to understand when his eyes met mine. “Jace?”

  I coughed. “It’s a common name.”

  “Blue eyes?” He glanced back at the screen. “Tats? Brown hair?”

  “Not an uncommon combination.” I picked up my glass, drained it, eyes watering against the burn.

  “A scar on the right side of his bottom lip?” he asked, putting my laptop down.

  Okay, now was the time for running.

  Something I normally abhorred, but in this case, it was critical. I snatched up my computer, reached into my wallet and pulled out some cash, and tossed it on the bar.

  Then I jumped off the stool and ran.

  Two

  Brooke

  I made it as far as the hall.

  Because the moment I made it into the drab space, covered in floor-to-ceiling wood paneling, a hand found my arm.

  Hot fingers, a scorching palm, and when my gaze drifted down, I saw the swirling lines of the bottom of Kace’s tattoo.

  Yum.

  But that was the briefest thought because ones that immediately followed were: “Shit!” “Fuck!” and “Son of a typewriter!” In that exact order. Because I’m me, and beyond being cringeworthy and quiet, although less so in the literary world, I’m also really freaking weird. Scrunchies before they became cool again, obsessed with Doctor Who, mom-jeans wearing (though I’ve never had a serious enough boyfriend to have been at risk of becoming a mother) weird.

  So on the scale of odd, I was firmly in the exceeds expectations category.

  And normally, I didn’t give a crap. I was me, and I liked my nerdy TV shows and clothes that belonged in the 80s. If someone didn’t like me, then whatever.

  I was old enough that I lived my life by the mantra, you do you.

  Which meant that I also did me without apology

  But Kace was just so freaking cool and sexy and . . . I was just me. Me, who was having an existential crisis knowing that I’d fantasized about him, that I was basically writing multiple odes of passion to him, and now he knew the depth of my crazy and would be judging me and—

  “Wait,” he murmured, thumb brushing along the hem of the sleeve of my T-shirt, making me shiver.

  Making me panic further.

  I tugged free of his grasp, fully aware that the only reason I was able to do so was because he let me. “I need to go.”

  “Brooke,” he murmured.

  I shook my head and slid a step away. “I really need to go.” I turned, ready to bolt.

  Fingers on my nape stopped me. “Don’t be embarrassed, baby.”

  I stiffened, spun around to glare at him. “I’m not embarrassed.”

  Lie.

  His brow lifted. “Then why are you running off?”

  Yeah. Why was I doing that?

  “I’m tired.”

  Another lie.

  Well, I was tired, and I was embarrassed, but those two emotions couldn’t begin to cover the breadth of all I was feeling. Most dominant among my swirling thoughts was shame. Logically I knew I had nothing to feel shame over—who cared that I’d written a hero—cough, heroes—loosely based on Kace? Who cared that I wrote romance novels? But . . . I was ashamed, and that made me feel worse than anything else could, which subsequently made me more embarrassed and more exhausted and—

  Cue horrible perpetuating cycle in my brain.

  It didn’t matter if he thought my work was stupid. I didn’t, and I valued providing some snarky, funny happily-ever-after escapes to my readers.

  “Bullshit,” he muttered in response to my excuse of tiredness.

  I tried again. “It’s late.”

  “More bullshit,” he said with a flash of white teeth. “You’ve hung till closing almost every day over the last six months.”

  My heart skipped a beat, my thighs clenched, and my panties went damp, all as easily as breathing. Partly because his smile was just that deadly, and partly because he knew exactly how long I’d been coming to the bar.

  He. Knew.

  Kace reached for me, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, and I stumbled back a step. Heat. His touch had so much fucking heat coursing through me that I wanted to lean closer . . .

  “It’s okay,” he murmured. “You shouldn’t—”

  Thankfully that was the moment I forgot about shame and sexy bartenders and piercing blue eyes and found my mad. Mad because I was enthralled with a man I hardly knew, mad because I’d had a man in my life once that had tried to control me. Mad because men didn’t get to tell me how to feel.

  Not any longer.

  “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,” I snapped, stabbing a finger into his chest. “But you have no right to tell me what to do!”

  That damned brow lifted again. “Baby, I wasn’t trying to tell you—”

  “And I’m not your baby,” I said, jabbing him again.

  The other brow joined the first, as though this were the first time in the freaking man’s life that someone had refused the honor of his endearments. “Baby.”

  “I said.” Another poke. “Not.” Another. “Your.” One more. “Bab—”

  He grabbed my finger.

  Which should have sounded gross or at the very least like the beginning of a bad joke, but instead was sexy as hell. Probably because his skin was slightly rough and very warm and made prickles of awareness crawl down the length of my arm.

  Then lower.

  Much lower.

  I tugged, albeit not strongly, because it felt good to have Kace’s hand on me, even if it was wrapped around what I’d previously considered a non-erogenous body part. He stepped close, pressing my hand flat against the chest I’d been poking. And I was not unaware of how good the broad expanse of it felt against my palm. Hot and hard and—

  Trouble.

  “Baby,” he said. “I—”

  “Ugh! Did you not hear a word of what I just said?” I yanked my hand free, anger fueling me as I spun rapidly, only feeling the smallest bit of remorse when my backpack swung up and collided with his arm.

  His wince was warranted, considering how heavy it was. My backpack contained the proverbial kitchen sink because I never knew what I would need when I was working. Snacks. (What if wherever I ended up ran out of snacks?) Notebooks. (What if my computer battery died, along with my cell, and I needed to write something down?) Water. (Who knew when the next zombie apocalypse would happen and I’d need potable water?) Rapid charger. Wall plug for both phone and laptop. Gum. Seventeen different pens and pencils because . . . pens and pencils. A paperback and a bookmark, though I could never seem to find the latter when I needed it and usually ended up using some scrap of paper or a receipt.

  Anyway, I digress.

  The point was, he’d pissed me off and I’d spun away, and he’d taken the hard edge of my laptop against his chest.

  But I wasn’t going to feel bad. A feat that was made easier when he opened his mouth again.

  “Sweetheart.”

  “Not that either,” I gritted out.

  “I—”

  “No.”

  I bolted. I’d reached my limit of resistance, of verbal dueling . . . of Kace, and so like the giant coward I was, I took off down the hallway, bursting through into the main room, pushing through the pretty college coeds, and out the front door.

  This time Kace let me go.r />
  Which was fine. Totally, absolutely fine. He was him (beautiful, dangerous, sexy) and I was me (normal, perfectly fine, just not even close to the realm of beautiful, dangerous, and sexy). So, it was time to put my stupid crush aside and find a new place to work.

  Good plan. Smart plan. Safe plan.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize I’d left my credit card behind.

  Three

  Kace

  I watched the flash of red disappear down the hall and shook my head, biting back the urge to chase after her. I didn’t chase after women. Not to be a dick about it, but there was no need for me to chase.

  They came to me.

  And came often.

  Snorting at the thought, I ignored my gut telling me to chase Brooke down under the guise of returning her credit card.

  She’d opened a tab earlier that evening, and I hadn’t wanted to disturb her to return her card while she was busy working.

  More bullshit.

  Because I’d held on to it as an excuse to talk to her later. I’d been watching sweet little Brooke for months now, appreciating her curves, including lusting after her ass that could only be described as luscious, coveting the rare flash of dimples she tossed my way, and really enjoying the blush that appeared on her cheeks every time I came near.

  Rare for me.

  Because I didn’t do sweet, and I definitely didn’t crave blushes.

  But I’d committed Brooke’s to memory six months ago then made sure to cash her out so I’d discovered her name.

  I would have asked for her number, too, but I’d had the notion that she would shy away if I’d done so.

  So I’d waited. Watched and bided my time and waited.