All a Man Can Be

by Virginia Kantra

  Strictly professional, Nicole reminded herself. She scrambled around on the seat.

  “No, he, um, left.” Oh, that was smooth.

  Joe’s cheerful, chubby face creased. “His car’s our front.”

  “Yes. He got a ride.” She gritted her teeth. “From Tess somebody.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Joe grinned. “Wonder if she roped him into helping with the wedding.”

  Oh, God. It hurt. Nicole hadn’t expected it to hurt. Not this soon. Not this much. She barely knew the man. She didn’t even like him.

  “I think so. Yes,” she said stiffly.

  Joe moved behind the bar. “Hard to believe they’re getting married in just three weeks.”

  “Very hard,” Nicole agreed.

  Mark didn’t look like a soon-to-be-married man. He didn’t act like an engaged man.

  All her instincts rejected the possibility that he belonged to another woman.

  Of course, her instincts generally sucked.

  “I’m sure they’ll be very happy together,” she said. “They seem very—” sexy, careless, confident, all the things she was not and never would be “—well suited.”

  “You know Chief Denko?”

  Nicole blinked. “Who?”

  “Jarek Denko. The chief of police. Tess’s fiancé.”

  “Wait. I thought—” she took a careful breath “—I thought Mark was her fiancé.”

  Joe laughed. “Mark? Nah. Mark is Tess’s brother. She’s making him give her away at the wedding.”

  Relief bloomed in Nicole’s chest. She was almost dizzy with it.

  The brunette was Mark’s sister. Mark wasn’t engaged.

  Maybe just this once her instincts weren’t entirely wrong.

  Tess pulled into the lot beside Mark’s Jeep Cherokee. Her wiper blades shuddered and streaked against the windshield.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I hope your boss isn’t going to be too upset with you for taking off.”

  Mark grinned. “Maybe you should write me a note.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Tess said tartly. “When are you going to get married and let some other woman take care of you?”

  His last experience with a married woman hadn’t left him feeling cared for at all. But Mark didn’t tell his sister that. He never talked to anybody about that.

  He teased, instead. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

  But she replied seriously, “I love you. That’s why I want you to be happy.”

  “Uh-huh. And tying myself down to one woman is going to make me happy.”

  “It would. If she were the right woman.”

  This was what came of being disgustingly crazy in love. Tess was a bright girl. But her engagement to Jarek Denko had obviously shorted out a few brain cells.

  “Yeah, well, the right woman isn’t going to want to have anything to do with me. Not if she’s in her right mind.”

  Tess rolled her eyes. But he noticed she didn’t argue with him. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to stay out of trouble.

  Yeah, like that had ever worked.

  He hunched his shoulders against the rain and stomped up the plank walk to the entrance, vaguely surprised to see Nicole’s gold-toned Lexus still in the parking lot. The new owner was putting in some long hours. Either she was really conscientious, or she’d decided to stick around long enough to bust his butt.

  But when Mark opened the door, it wasn’t his butt that occupied his attention.

  It was hers.

  Nicole was leaning over a table in one of the booths, her knees on the seat and her khaki-covered behind in the air. And she had, without question, one of the finest female rear ends he had seen in his life. Lush. Heart-shaped. Hot.

  It wiggled. She turned. And—oh, jeez—caught him staring.

  Only she didn’t seem to notice.

  At least, she didn’t seem to mind.

  She smiled, her face all sunshine despite the gray day outside, and asked cheerfully, “Like it?”

  Surprise almost made him laugh.

  “Love it,” he told her solemnly.

  “Good. I know you can’t see it too well now, but you’ll have a much better view tomorrow.”

  Okay, he was confused. Or she was. Not that he would object or anything, but it didn’t seem real likely that she was inviting him to ogle her butt.

  “Why tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Well, obviously clean windows are more noticeable on a clear day.”

  Windows. She was talking about windows. And now that he didn’t have her cute rear end burning into his eyeballs like the sun at noon, he could see that the glass behind her shone. Even the wooden shutters gleamed, free of their usual coat of crud. A pile of crumpled rags lay on the floor beside a bucket. Nicole’s sleeves were pushed back, water spotted her left breast, and a smudge decorated her forehead.

  She looked damp and untidy and very pleased with herself.

  “Looks…good,” Mark said.

  She beamed. “Thank you. Do you want to move those chairs, and I’ll get the windows by the—”

  He hated to snuff her enthusiasm. But—

  “No,” he said.

  Her shoulders squared. “Is this the part where you tell me you don’t do windows? Moving furniture is not in your job description?”

  He had to admire her spunk, even if she was wrong. “No. This is when I tell you the eight-to-four shift just ended at the plant and the four-to-seven rush is starting here. You need me behind the bar pushing drinks right now. Not out front pushing tables.”

  “All right. I can do it myself.”

  “Bad idea.”

  Her voice rose in frustration. “For heaven’s sake, why? I won’t be in the way. The tables don’t fill up that quickly.”

  “Because, babe, the guys who stop in here for a beer after work don’t care about clean windows. They don’t want to be reminded that they have chores and wives waiting at home. They want to relax, not watch you rearrange the furniture.”

  To his surprise she nodded. “Selling atmosphere.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in one of my books on restaurant management. We’re not simply providing drinks, we are selling a total ambiance.”

  “You aren’t going to be selling much of anything if I don’t get behind the bar.”

  She wiped her hands on a rag and folded it in precise quarters. “Well then, you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”

  He didn’t know whether to laugh or go smack his head with a bottle.

  He did neither. It wouldn’t be cool, and cool was something Mark had cultivated since he was a scabby six-year-old trying desperately to find his place in the first-grade pecking order. He’d never been smart like Tess. He wasn’t well dressed like the kids from the big houses across the lake. He didn’t have the kind of mother who baked cupcakes for the class on his birthday or the kind of home you invited friends to after school. But he was cool. Man, was he cool.

  He got behind the bar and pulled a draft for one of the regulars. Jimmy Greene was just off his shift at the paper plant, looking for a beer to wash away the taste of wood pulp and his general dissatisfaction with his life.

  Right there with you, Jimmy boy.

  When Nicole bent over to pick up her bucket and rags, Mark let himself look. She was just a hot body with a snotty attitude, no different from any other blonde who’d done a hit-and-run on his life.

  He didn’t want her to be any different, because then he would want her, and wanting her wouldn’t get him anywhere.

  Jimmy nudged him. “Nice, huh?”

  The son of a bitch was leering at Nicole’s butt.

  “Watch it,” Mark warned. “That’s my boss.”

  “Oh, I’m watching,” Jimmy said. “And I bet you’re doing more than that, you lucky bastard. She any good?”

  “She’s my boss, Jimmy,” Mark said quietly. “So put your eyes in your head and your tongue in your mouth before I have to knock your teeth down y
our throat.”

  Jimmy slumped on his bar stool and sulked in his beer. So much for selling atmosphere.

  But over the next week, Mark was forced to watch as Nicole did her damnedest to create ambiance—whatever the hell that was—in his bar. She attacked dirt like it was her personal enemy, coming in, Joe had reported, before the bar opened and working sometimes through the quiet hours of early afternoon.

  Her ideas weren’t bad. Not all bad, anyway. Mark had had some ideas himself, back when he’d thought he had a chance of buying the place. But…

  “What are these? Handkerchiefs? Doilies?” Mark asked on Thursday, brandishing a little white square with a stylized cobalt moon rocking over a purple wave.

  Nicole didn’t miss a beat. “New cocktail napkins. They match the new menus,” she explained, and went out to plant flowers in the tub outside the front door.

  New menus?

  Strange sandwiches appeared from the kitchen and on the chalkboard that listed the daily specials, grilled sandwiches with tasty ingredients and stupid names.

  “What the hell is a Tuscany Twosome?” Mark grumbled to Louis.

  Nicole overheard. “Capicolla and provolone with pesto aioli on focaccia,” she said. “And before you start getting negative, you might as well know I’m not adding them to the permanent menu. They haven’t sold very well.”

  “There’s a surprise,” Mark said.

  “When I want your opinion, DeLucca, I’ll ask for it,” Nicole snapped, but she didn’t sound so tough. Just tired.

  And there was that sad baby droop to her lip when she thought no one was looking that made him long to…do something for her.

  Mark rubbed his jaw. It was kind of too bad about the sandwiches. The one he’d wolfed down when he came to work today had actually tasted pretty good. And Louis seemed okay with the idea of occasionally cooking something besides chicken wings and loaded fries.

  Maybe Mark didn’t know food. Dinner in the DeLucca household had mostly been a matter of Tess opening cans. And neither the chow at the mess or the MREs he’d bolted down in the field were exactly dining at the Algonquin.

  But he did know the Blue Moon’s clientele.

  “Try changing the name,” he suggested.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Call it Italian ham-and-cheese,” he said.

  “Thank you. I’ll consider that,” she said stiffly.

  Like she didn’t gave a rat’s ass for him or his opinions or anything. But then he walked into the kitchen at the end of the night and caught her packing the unused sandwiches into a big white box.

  “What are you doing?”

  Nicole blushed like he’d spotted her adding water to the vodka bottles over the bar. “I’m packing a carton for the interfaith food shuttle.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you giving food away?”

  She tossed her blond hair over her shoulders. “Better than throwing it away.”

  But he wasn’t fooled by her snippy attitude this time.

  “Yeah,” he agreed slowly. “I guess you’re right.”

  And when some of the guys wandered in after league night at the Thunder Bowl, he gave out a couple of the new sandwiches for them to try.

  “We sold out of ham-and-cheese,” Nicole announced three nights later. “And it’s not even seven o’clock.”

  Mark set up the drink order for table five—two Millers and a seven-and-seven—and slid it over the counter for Deanna.

  “Congratulations.”

  But Nicole didn’t look very happy. “Do you think Palermo’s is still open? Because I need to pick up more focaccia, and—”

  “Hey,” he interrupted her. “Relax. This place isn’t going to close down because we ran out of one sandwich.”

  “But—”

  “Erase the specials board, and increase the bakery order for tomorrow.”

  “Yes. All right.” She flushed. “I suppose you think I’m pretty silly, getting all worked up over a sandwich.”

  “I think you’re—”

  Sweet. Special. And trying too hard.

  Uh-huh. Like he could say any of those things to his boss.

  “—anxious to see things succeed.”

  Nicole beamed at him as if he’d said something really deep. “I am.” She laid her slim hand gleaming with golden rings on his arm and squeezed gently. His tongue dried to the roof of his mouth. “I want you to know I realize it wouldn’t have happened without your support. I really need you here.”

  He almost fell for it. Staring into her baby blues, feeling the warmth that stole through him at her words, he almost fell for her.

  Was anything more seductive than those whispers?

  Betsy, her eyes swimming with easy tears. I need you, Mark.

  Hayley, her voice trembling with well-assumed anguish. Mark, I need you.

  Was anything more painful than those memories?

  Mark’s jaw clenched. He so did not need this. Not again. Not with her. Not ever.

  And so he did the one thing guaranteed to end it, made the one move sure to drive her away. Or get him fired.

  “Not here, babe.” He turned to set up the drinks for another ticket, checking to make sure no one was near enough to overhear. Grateful he wouldn’t have to watch her face as he said the words. “We’re kind of busy, you know? But after we close, maybe we can get naked.”

  Chapter 5

  She should have slapped him.

  There simply were no words to describe how awful he had been. There were no words to describe how terrible he made her feel.

  Nicole bent over the sink in the ladies’ room, feeling as if she was going to throw up. Her face burned. Her eyes burned. Her throat burned.

  But of course she wouldn’t throw up. Any more than she could have slapped him. She could not show—not by the flicker of an eyelash—how devastated she was by Mark DeLucca taking her sincere overture of friendship and turning it into something casual and dirty.

  And so she had pulled her totally shaken self together enough to say, “You are a jackass. And I am your boss. So our ‘getting naked,’ as you so charmingly put it, here, now or ever, would be as wildly inappropriate as it is unlikely.”

  Inappropriate was good. She’d managed all five syllables without a stammer.

  And then she’d retreated to the ladies’ room to bawl her eyes out.

  Nicole pulled her hands out from under the cold water and pressed her fingers to her face. She was not going out there with puffy eyes. Hadn’t she humiliated herself enough already?

  She’d told him she appreciated his help at the bar.

  And he’d thought…

  He’d said…

  She blotted the mascara from her lower lids with the tips of her fingers. He was worse than a jackass. He was a snake. A pig. A wolf.

  And she was a fool.

  She ought to fire his butt.

  But what if his stupid, cruel, crass remark was somehow her fault? Nicole raised her head and stared into the mirror. The author of Losing the Losers in Your Life made it clear that the actions of those around us were often reactions to our own signals, spoken and unspoken.

  Had she inadvertently said the wrong thing? Sent the wrong message?

  Her teeth dug into her lower lip. She had touched him, she remembered. Only on his arm, but…

  He had nice arms. Lean and muscled, with strong wrists and warm skin under a dusting of dark hair. She had pressed his arm and looked up into those black, amused eyes and said—and said—oh, God. Her cheeks, her face, her whole body burned. I really need you here.

  He probably thought she was coming on to him. Women did. All the time. She watched them. He probably thought that she was one of them.

  And she knew what he was. She ought to know. If the University of Chicago had offered a degree in Men Behaving Badly, she would have graduated magna cum laude.

  Nicole tore off a piece of toilet paper and blew her nose vigorously. Okay. She was an adult woman, fully responsible for ho
w she felt. Mark was a typical unevolved clueless male. So wasn’t it up to her to set the tone of their relationship?

  Of course it was.

  This was all her fault, really, she thought, lashing herself with the old arguments. She had let things get out of hand. She had overreacted.

  She balled up the tissue and threw it away. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would do better.

  If he didn’t think about her, he didn’t feel too bad.

  Mark sent four glasses of house white to the ladies’ booth in the corner and slapped a couple of coasters on the bar for the next round of drafts.

  The problem was it was hard not to think about her. The woman left evidence behind her everywhere, like a messy picnicker littering an unspoiled beach. Her menus on the tables. Her music on the jukebox. Her perfume in the air.

  Even the damn coasters, with their fancy stylized logo, were her idea.

  Three days had passed since he had brutally rejected her tentative thanks. She should be over it. So should he. Hell, this wasn’t the first time he’d been called a jackass. Or worse.

  The real problem was, this time he felt like a jackass.

  Mark filled two mugs, took another order, wiped the counter clean. As long as he was working, it was still his bar. Behind it, he was in control.

  Until Nicole appeared from the kitchen, wearing one of those buttoned-down blouses and an I’m-going-to-be-nice-to-this-jerk-if-it-kills-me smile. He wanted to rip off the blouse. He wanted to dig behind that defensive smile and find…what, exactly?

  Whatever she’d hidden away from him since he’d slapped her down the other night. The warm, vulnerable, hopeful woman under the ice boss routine.

  She hovered just out of arm’s reach. “How’s it going out here?”

  He could be nice, too, he decided. It wouldn’t kill him. Say something nice, he ordered himself.

  But what came out of his mouth was, “We need a basket of cheese fries and one of those fancy sandwiches down at the end of the bar.”

  He could have passed the ticket to the kitchen himself. He wasn’t that busy. Weekday lunchtime traffic was light: a couple of boat heads, an office birthday party, three or four suits looking to escape for an hour. Nothing he couldn’t handle.