Mark greeted most of his customers—her customers—by name, took their orders, poured their drinks. No one had to wait more than forty-five seconds. No one was neglected.
Well, except for Nicole. Mark kept her supplied with Pepsi and otherwise ignored her.
He did a good job for the previous owner.
Maybe. He certainly collected his fair share of tips, Nicole thought, with an eye on the beer mug beside the register. And more than his fair share of interested glances.
A sultry brunette in big hoop earrings leaned her cleavage on the bar. A giggling group of teenage girls, shrink-wrapped in skinny tops and hip-hugging jeans, bumped and nudged each other by the pool table.
Nicole watched as Mark filled their drinks and returned their smiles. The brunette licked salt from the rim of her glass. The gum-snapping cocktail waitress—Diana? Debbie?—unloaded a tray of diet sodas by the giggling girls.
Nicole’s shoulders relaxed slightly. At least her liquor license was safe for another night. Her investment was safe. Everything was going to be fine. She hadn’t made another monumental life mistake, the way her mother said and her father feared.
Nicole glanced again from the hair-flipping teenagers to the brunette laying it all out on the bar. Right. Everything was fine. Unless, of course, a fight broke out over her bartender.
Or he stole from the till.
Nicole watched Mark DeLucca unload a stack of bills from the cash register and start riffling through them. It was late. She consulted her Givenchy watch. After midnight. The front lights were out, the front door was locked, and she was alone with a man who made every tiny hair on her body stand at attention.
“What are you doing?” She hated the way her voice sounded, sharp with suspicion.
He barely glanced at her. “Daily register report.”
That sounded reassuring. He was the bar manager, she reminded herself. He had a responsibility to count the cash and figure the day’s net sales.
Correction. Had had the responsibility.
She shifted on her perch. “I can do that. Since I’m here.”
His lean back stiffened. And then he shrugged and moved away easily from the register. So easily she wondered if she’d imagined that moment of resistance.
“Be my guest,” he said.
She wasn’t his guest. She was his employer, a fact she didn’t need to remind him of. Or apologize for.
Nicole raised her chin and slid off her bar stool.
At least he could take orders, she thought, as she checked his total for the day. And he could add. Apparently he wasn’t dipping into the cash register, either. There was no reason for her to feel so gosh darn uncomfortable around the man.
No reason except he looked like an invitation to be bad.
She watched him prowl around the room, collecting glasses, emptying ashtrays. Maybe it was the hard, long body, the jet-black hair, the take-no-prisoners face. Maybe it was the wicked dark brows over those I’ve-got-a-secret eyes. Maybe it was—
—her problem. She rubbed the space between her eyebrows, as if she could massage her tension away. Her fault. The man couldn’t help the way he looked, for goodness’s sake.
He swung a chair up onto a table, the muscles flexing in his back and arms, and her stomach actually fluttered.
She frowned.
“You want to lock up, too?” Mark asked, his voice flat.
Oh, dear. She didn’t want him to think she didn’t trust him.
Although that had been one of Zack’s favorite ploys, pretending injury at her lack of trust. Don’t you trust me? he’d demanded, making her feel horrible, while he boinked every film student and wannabe actress who would lie down for his camera.
She swallowed hard. That was personal, she told herself. This was business.
She looked at Mark’s hard, expressionless face.
“You can do it,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound as strained as she felt. “I’ll see you in the morning, and we can talk about procedures then. Eight o’clock.”
“Nine,” he said. At least he didn’t make a crack about her being late. “Let me walk you to your car.”
“That’s not necessary, thanks.”
He strolled closer. Her pulse jumped. She made an effort not to retreat. “Because you can take care of yourself.”
“I can, you know.” Suddenly it was important that he see her as a competent, confident individual, and not another bar bunny. “I’ve taken self-defense classes.”
“Great. So you don’t need an escort. Maybe I need to see you to your car anyway.”
That was clever of him, Nicole decided. And rather sweet. As they walked to the entrance, she tried to find a way to say so that wouldn’t sound like a come-on.
“I appreciate your concern for security.”
He slanted a look at her as he opened the door. “Security, hell. I can’t afford to let anything happen to you.”
She was immediately flattered. And suspicious. “Why not?”
“Didn’t you ever ask why the owners were in such a hurry to sell?”
The parking lot was very dark. And isolated. The wind rustled the trees and ruffled the water. High overhead, the pale moon rode the cloudy sky. At this hour all the other Front Street businesses were closed. The other buildings were dark and faraway. The only light came from a bait-and-convenience store at the far end of the marina.
Nicole took a deep breath. She would have to investigate the cost of more lights. “I—no. Kathy never said.”
“Never mind, then.”
She dug her heels into the gravel of the parking lot. “Tell me.”
He shrugged. “Last spring three women were followed or attacked after leaving the Blue Moon. One of them was murdered. The police chief, Denko, finally figured it was the owner who did it. Tim Brown. He was convicted, and his wife put the bar up for sale.”
Nicole was shaken. “That’s terrible. But if the man who did it is locked up—”
“Yeah, if. Some folks still think the police got the wrong guy.”
He slouched beside her car. She couldn’t read his expression in the dark. There was just this general impression of black hair, broad shoulders and male menace.
Her heart pounded. “Who do they think did it?”
His smile gleamed like a knife in the shadows. “Me.”
Chapter 3
He had pulled some boneheaded, shortsighted stunts in the past, Mark thought as he polished off the last Palermo’s crescent for breakfast. School fights. Petty vandalism.
He snagged a quart of milk from the fridge, sniffed and drank from the carton.
Scaring his new boss in the parking lot didn’t rank up there with the time he’d liberated a powerboat to go joyriding at the age of twenty or his career-ending screwup in punching out an officer. But it was still dumb.
He’d be lucky if Blondie didn’t fire him.
Unless… He lowered the milk carton. Unless that had been his aim all along. Piss her off enough, and he wouldn’t even have to take responsibility for quitting.
Self-sabotage, his sister would call it, with the authority of a woman who had gotten her start editing the “Ask Irma” column in the Eden Town Gazette. Mark didn’t believe in that psychobabble self-help bull. He replaced the empty carton in the fridge and closed the door. Anyway, he took responsibility.
When he had to.
Which, admittedly, wasn’t very often.
He shuffled through the bright stack of advertising flyers until he uncovered the cream-colored letterhead from the lawyer.
“Jane Gilbert” was typed below the nearly illegible signature. The phone number was printed above. His gut tightened.
He glanced at his watch. Eight-twenty. He wasn’t due to meet Blondie at the bar for another forty minutes. Plenty of time to call this Gilbert broad and find out what the hell she expected him to do about the bombshell she’d lobbed into his life.
Hell. He picked up the phone.
She had let h
im intimidate her, Nicole thought grimly, meeting her own serious blue gaze in the bathroom mirror. She knew it.
And she knew better.
It was all covered in chapter six of Losing the Losers in Your Life. You couldn’t always control the people around you, but you could control your reactions to them. And her pulse-pounding, breath-catching reaction to Mark DeLucca—which had to be apprehension, it would just be too awful it if were lust—well, anyway, that would have to stop.
She nodded decisively at her reflection and got an encouraging nod in reply. Yanking open the bathroom door, she marched into the hall and collided with her exquisitely turned-out roommate.
“Ouch,” the redhead said. “You’re in a hurry this morning.”
Nicole felt the hot sweep of blood in her cheeks. She didn’t care what the author of Losers said, it was impossible to control a blush. “Sorry. I don’t want to be late.”
Kathy lifted a penciled eyebrow. “Got a hot date with Delicious DeLucca?”
“Yes. No. Sort of. I don’t want to be at a disadvantage when I see him again.”
“Sweetie, a guy that gorgeous puts every woman at a disadvantage.” Kathy peered past her at the mirror, tweaking at her hair. “Well, almost every woman. The man’s a menace.”
“Yes,” Nicole said dryly. “So I heard.”
Kathy’s hand froze. “Who told you?”
“He did.” Nicole swallowed the lump of betrayal that burned in her windpipe. “You should have said something.”
Her roommate continued to fuss at her reflection in the mirror, still not quite meeting Nicole’s eyes. “What was I supposed to say? It happened months ago. Before I came to town. Besides, the paper said he didn’t do it.”
“I know.” She had checked the on-line archives of the McHenry County papers last night. “I also noticed that at least two of the articles were written by someone named DeLucca. Any relation, would you guess?”
“His sister,” Kathy said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that the guy is innocent.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because they locked up somebody else.”
Nicole drew a deep breath. She hated confrontation. Which was one of the reasons her boyfriends had a tendency to wipe their feet on her before they walked away. But all that was changing now. She was changing. “That’s another thing. Why didn’t you tell me the former owner of the bar was convicted of murder?”
“Why should I? His wife was handling the sale.”
Okay. Still…
“You should have told me,” Nicole said stubbornly. “I might have been interested to learn that I was buying the business of a convicted killer and employing the other main suspect in the case.”
“See? That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything. I knew you’d blow things out of proportion. This was a good deal, Nicole.”
Kathy’s voice awoke the echo of other voices, other accusations. Her mother’s. Charles’s. Kevin’s.
Don’t make a fuss, Nicole.
I only kissed her. You’re overreacting.
Why do you always have to make such a big deal out of everything?
“A good deal for you,” Nicole said.
Kathy rolled her eyes. “Well, sure. This was my first big commercial property sale on the new job. What do you want me to say? I appreciate your business?”
Nicole was shaken. “No. I just—”
“Fine. Because I do. And thank you. But you were the one who couldn’t wait to get out of Chicago.”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “You’re right.”
But Kathy was on a roll. “You were the one who lost your job.”
“The owner sold the company,” Nicole corrected her.
“After he broke up with you.”
Nicole flinched. “Yes.”
“And didn’t you say you wanted to move further away from your parents?”
Nicole felt herself visibly shrinking, like Alice at the bottom of the rabbit hole, drinking from a bottle she never should have opened. “You’re right,” she said again. “I’m sorry.”
Kathy shrugged. “I just don’t like you thinking you’re doing me any favors. You were as eager to clinch that sale as I was. An established business in a great location with available living space doesn’t come along every day.”
“It’s a wonderful property,” Nicole said truthfully.
And wondered, as she drove carefully to work along unfamiliar streets, how soon she could renovate the upstairs apartment and move in.
With a sigh, she saw that Mark DeLucca had managed to get to the Blue Moon before her. His black Jeep Cherokee occupied the parking space closest to the entrance.
Nicole wasn’t upset. Really. It wasn’t like the space had a big sign on it that read Owner.
She tugged on the door. Locked.
Well, of course he would lock it while he was alone inside. Hadn’t she told him last night that she appreciated his concern for security?
She fished in her bag for her new keys, trying not to twitch with irritation. Her hand closed on her keyring just as the door opened, and Mark DeLucca stood framed against the shadows, every bit as lean, dark and dangerous as he’d looked last night.
He wore a navy work shirt with the cuffs rolled back, exposing his muscled forearms. His hair clung damply to his temples. A tiny bead of sweat streaked the harsh plane of his face.
Oh, my.
She wanted him the way a nicotine addict craves a last cigarette, wanted to breathe him in and hold him inside her.
Bad idea. Get with the program, Nicole.
He frowned. “Sorry I didn’t answer right away. I was in back cleaning up.”
“Oh.” Because that didn’t seem to be sufficient response, she added, “Thank you. I noticed last night that the place could use a thorough cleaning.”
His expression became shuttered. “I can get you a mop and bucket from the closet, if you want.”
Nicole blinked. Was he teasing? “I thought I would hire a cleaning service.”
He shrugged, already moving away from her toward the bar. “It’s your money.”
It was her bar. Still, she expected to operate it at a profit.
She nibbled her lip. “Do you think that would be too expensive?”
“Depends on what you call expensive.” He began to restock his work station with coasters and napkins, his movements so quick and practiced she had to wonder if he were even aware of what his hands were doing. “Commercial cleaning a place this size, including the degreasing, will run about fifteen hundred dollars. More, if you don’t want to close for the day and have to pay the crew to come in at night.”
She nodded. She would check his figures later, but what he said sounded reasonable. “I’d rather not close if I can help it. There will be enough disruptions with the remodel.”
“Hold the train. What remodel?”
Oh, dear. This was not how she had planned to introduce the topic.
“Well…” She would talk about her plans for the lunch room later, she decided. “There’s that empty storage space upstairs. That could be converted into an apartment.”
“Sure it could. If you could find somebody willing to rent rooms over a bar.”
“I wasn’t planning on renting. I want to live there.”
“What about the noise?”
She shifted on her stool. “Soundproofing would of course be part of the renovation.” God, she sounded stuffy.
“What about the inconvenience?”
“What inconvenience? I’m used to immersing myself in my work. I’ve had enough of hour-long commutes. And this way I’d always be available to keep an eye on things.”
“Swell. The next time I have to break up a bar fight at one in the morning, it’ll be a real comfort to me, knowing you’re on hand to keep an eye on things.”
She stuck out her chin. “I’m not really concerned about your comfort level.”
He muttered something that sounded like, “No kidding.”
“This is a business decision,” she said firmly.
Which was a lie. It was intensely personal, this need to have a place that was wholly hers. She was tired of making room in her heart and her life and her closets for men who moved in, made a mess and moved on. The Blue Moon was hers.
“Anyway, it’s my decision,” she said, which was true and made her feel better.
“Well, that puts me in my place.”
Heat swept her cheeks. “I didn’t mean—”
His lips twisted in a smile. If he hadn’t looked like Lucifer rejoicing over the fall of mankind, she might have thought he was teasing. Or even sympathetic.
“Forget it,” he said. “If you don’t see any problem with a young, single, attractive woman living alone over a bar, it’s not my job to educate you.”
Pleasure spurted through her. He thought she was attractive.
No. He thought she was dumb as a rock.
Keeping her voice cool, she said, “Actually, it is your job. To educate me, I mean.”
He leaned against the bar. “Now that could get interesting.”
She ignored the little jump of her pulse. “Why don’t we start with a review of the employee schedules,” she suggested.
He went very still. And then he nodded once, in a brief gesture of…acquiescence? Respect? “You’re the boss.”
Or was he mocking her?
For over an hour, they discussed schedules and procedures and suppliers. Nicole took notes on her laptop. Mark showed her the work schedule pinned to a bulletin board in the back and the contact numbers taped by the phone, but most of the information he seemed to keep in his head.
It was inefficient, she decided. And intimidating.
“Deanna’s the only waitress with the hours to get benefits,” he was saying. “Then you’ve got Joe on days, and me on nights. Both full-time. And Louis, who runs the kitchen. You meet Louis yet?”
A slightly built, softly spoken black man with a bald head and a dry handshake. She nodded.
“Everybody else is part-time,” Mark continued. “You’ll meet them all eventually.”
She wanted to hold a staff meeting and meet them all at once. “Actually—”
All a Man Can Be Page 3