by Gina Drayer
“You aren’t an idiot.” She reached out to touch his arm but stopped. Instead, she picked up a deposit slip off the table and examined it like it was the most interesting thing in the room. “I can sort this out and give you some tools. You’ll be able to dazzle her with your newfound business savvy.”
“Don’t go overboard. If you change my image too much, I’ll have to live up to it.”
“I’ll be gentle. I won’t make you into a financial wizard overnight.”
He looked at her. “Thanks.” Then he paused. “You really don’t have to do this.”
“I want to help,” she said. “I need something … else.”
“We could …” He caught himself before he did something stupid like offer to take her out on a date. He wouldn’t mind exploring this physical attraction they were dancing around, but he didn’t want to give her the wrong impression. He wasn’t the dating kind. Sure, he’d take a girl out, but only as a prelude to something more that evening. The trouble was, the more he got to know Lee, the more he enjoyed just spending time with her. No matter how the evening ended. “We can talk about this more tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said.
She hopped up on the now cleared desk, and then flashed him a smile. That insane attraction pulled at him again. He had a flash of her splayed across that desk, head tossed back in pleasure as he tasted her. His hand itched to pull up her skirt. There was no denying that he wanted Lee. He just needed to figure out what to do about it.
“I just don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of the situation.” He brushed her knee as he stood and she shivered under the light touch. Fuck. If she responded that way to a casual touch, he could just imagine how she’d be in bed.
She shook her head and hopped off the desk, papers in front of her chest like a shield. “I like bookkeeping. Honest,” she said. “Besides, if I sort out your finances maybe you’ll be able to pay me more.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Give me what you have for the whole year,” she said, backing toward the door, “and let me see what I can do for you.”
“The whole year?”
“Everything,” she said. “With accounting, like a lot of things in life, it’s all or nothing.”
Truer words were never spoken. Lee was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. And that was exactly what had been stopping him. He opened the closet, pulled out a large cardboard box, and set it on his desk. “Here you go. My books for the last year.”
She peeked in and laughed. “This grand assortment of bits of paper is your filing system?”
“In my defense, someone else was doing the books last year. Everything should be in that fancy computer program. Personally, I’d be much happier if we could go back to paper. At least then I’d have a fighting chance.”
“Do you want me to pull around your horse-drawn carriages?” She sighed. “Okay, I asked for a challenge.”
“You don’t have to,” he said again.
“I have to for my own sake. I’ll go crazy watching you play Victorian accountant every night scribbling in that ledger.”
“Well, I don’t want to be responsible for your madness.”
She put the papers from his desk in an envelope, dated it, and tossed it into the box. “It will probably be easier if I just start from scratch. Would you mind bringing the box up to my apartment?”
He picked up the box and followed her. Lee held open the door, and as he passed her, their hips brushed, sending a shot of desire coursing through him. Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure that going back to her apartment was such a good idea. But once they got upstairs, she took the box from him in the hall and bade him goodnight. It was as if she was equally afraid to be that alone with him with a bed just feet away.
Michael was right. They couldn’t keep up this dance. Something had to give.
For the next few evenings, after they had closed Lee came to him and collected the receipts and vouchers for the night.
“How is it going?” he asked as he watched her flip through the papers, sorting them into some order that eluded him.
“It’s coming along nicely. I’ve got things sorted into envelopes and boxes that almost make sense.”
“I’m supposed to send my sister a balance sheet at the end of each week.”
She grinned. “Never fear. That’s the easy part.”
“Easy?”
“Relatively easy, how’s that? I’ll tell you what, if you have time, tomorrow night after closing I’d like to show you where I’ve gotten with the accounts. I have a few suggestions for you that might improve your cash flow.”
Improved cash flow. That would be nice. He didn’t want to bankrupt the bar in order to keep the building from going into foreclosure.
Dylon loved Bernadette's. Besides his sister, his uncle Mac and this bar had been the only constants in his life. His mother was always hitching her wagon to one loser or another. Growing up, he never knew if they’d have to move in the middle of the night because his mom was leaving her current sugar daddy or if she’d dump her kids off on his uncle’s doorstep yet again to run off with some new guy. When she finally assigned temporary guardianship to Mac, it had been the happiest day of Dylon’s life.
He’d do anything to keep from losing the bar. Even learn accounting, and he hated the numbers. No matter what he did, getting the business part of things worked out was a struggle. It was a foreign territory and forced him to speak and think in a language he didn’t understand.
He knew people and body language. Those made sense. Figuring out a way to make his loan payments and still pay the distributor was something else entirely.
The next night was a busy one with a rush that started at opening and seemed to run incessantly until closing.
Several regulars came in, and they required his attention. He’d greet the women with a kiss on the cheek, and the men with a nod or a slap on the back. The personal touches were one of the things that made Bernadette's so popular.
Normally, the electric buzz of the crowd energized him. But tonight, for some reason, it was all tiring and Dylon was relieved when it was time to walk the last reluctant customers to the door.
Abbie was cleaning up, putting glasses and dishware in the dishwasher. He scanned the room but didn’t see Lee.
“She went into your office,” Abbie said. “Lying in wait for you, I’ll bet.”
“I agreed to go over the books with her tonight.”
The woman grinned. “My boyfriend likes to go over my books too, make sure everything is accounted for.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter. This is a business.”
“You are a such an idiot,” she said.
“She’s just doing the bookkeeping. It’s not like that.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said with an exaggerated eye roll. “And you can’t stand the sight of her. Dylon, you are wallowing so deep in your own bullshit I’m surprised you can breathe.”
“Why is everyone suddenly interested in my love life?”
“Because I’ve never seen you act like this. You’re going out of your way to deny your attraction. And her—my God, she’s trying to fight it, being all independent and sophisticated, but she’s got it bad. Look at everything she’s doing for you. I guarantee the second you even look in her direction, she’ll race you into your bed.”
“She’s trying to help, not get in my pants.”
She grinned. “For a guy who spends so much time studying women, you’re blind about some things.” She closed the dishwasher. “Well, I’m beat and going home. I’ll come in early tomorrow and mop. You go see Lee and”—she winked at him—“go over the books. I’m sure that desk is sturdy enough for the both of you.” She gave him a wicked grin and tossed her coat over her shoulder. “Good night.”
Lee was in the back working at his desk. The big, sturdy desk. She’d brought her laptop down from her room. She looked up and smiled. “There you are. I’m ready for you.”
But was he ready for her? She wasn’t like the other women he chased after. It wasn’t her education or her high-class tastes. No, it was her innocence and trusting nature that made her different. He could ruin her.
“Okay. But is this going to be a computer lesson?”
“Not really. It’s a pretty easy interface. Just enter the data, and you get the reports,” she said as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “Do you know how to use a spreadsheet?”
“A little.”
“Good. It was easier for me to drill down the information on a spreadsheet. I’ve categorized your expenses and income; that way we can see exactly where the money goes without having to shuffle unmatched bits of paper around.”
“That easy, huh?”
She grinned at him. “Here is a basic rule that won’t fail you: The figures always balance if you match them to the right categories. That’s the challenge.”
He sat down and sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
“It’s understanding the numbers, seeing what they are telling you. Trust me, the numbers tell a story. If you aren’t learning something from your books, you’re doing it wrong.”
“You really do like this stuff.”
She looked surprised. “Yeah. I do.”
“But you like it on the computer.”
She pointed to his cardboard box, which sat on the floor beside her. She’d put all the papers into envelopes, and they were marked with the year and month. “Everything we need to know is right there, but it’s hard to find. When you have to go back and find something, it’s easy to miss things.”
“So I can’t just write a check out of the book. I have to enter it in the computer? Computers and I aren’t the best of friends.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to love a computer, but it’s better if you use it. However, you have two choices. You can enter all the information in the computer every night—I can teach you enough to make it seem easy—or you can collect your precious scraps of paper and let me do it for you.”
“You’ve already done too much.”
“I don’t mind. Besides, I want to help you.”
There were very few people in his life who cared about his needs. And none of them were the women he kept company with. The fact that Lee wanted to help him and didn’t expect anything in return was new. He wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Now, I did find a few things that you should think about changing. I think we could save some significant money.”
“Really?”
“Like you are overpaying your taxes. Your accountant should have caught this. You can refile and get some money back. And you’re not taking advantage of some discounts offered by your vendors.”
“Discounts?”
“For one thing, you save almost five percent when you buy by the case and not the bottle. A lot of this stuff you're buying two or three bottles every couple of weeks. If you just order a case once a month, you could save hundreds of dollars. And then there’s how you’re paying.” She pulled out an invoice and showed it to him. “Do you understand what it means when they write ‘2/10 net 30’ on the invoice?”
“No.”
“You can subtract two percent from the bill if you pay it within ten days.”
“No shit?”
“It adds up.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And I was going over the catering budget for Cash and Kim’s wedding reception. We can save some money by doing things a little differently—not by cutting any corners, mostly just using different vendors. I asked for a few bids, and there is a huge price difference.”
Dylon sat back, listening and overwhelmed with amazement as Lee went through a series of improvements they could make. She was incredibly smart.
But that realization was less than comforting. With all this knowledge, she shouldn’t be waiting tables. Now he began to wonder if her knowledge of finance was the key to her mysterious past. Had she embezzled some money and needed to disappear? He’d heard of weirder things.
He really didn’t know much about her, and that made him uneasy. Still, letting her remake his business certainly wouldn’t make things any worse. Without something changing he could lose the building, and if that happened, he couldn’t ensure the fate of Bernadette's.
He looked at Lee as if really seeing her for the first time. “You make it look so easy.”
“It is.” She grinned. “Walking in heels while carrying a tray full of drinks, not so much.”
He put a handful of papers on the desk. “Here’s the stuff for tonight. I closed out the till. If you don’t mind doing this, I’d be grateful. And if you can find some ways to save money, well, I’d love you forever.” Then he stood. “Now I need to get my sorry ass to bed.”
Then he looked at her. Really looked, and he knew that everything that was holding him back, all that stupid bullshit about her being out of place in his world or concern about the trouble that followed her, was just that—bullshit. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Especially, himself. There was something about Lee that he couldn’t ignore.
But he needed to, for both their sakes. An affair with her could end only one way.
He took a deep breath and left the office while things were still all business—while he could still manage to keep from grabbing her and kissing her until she melted in his arms.
Chapter Nine
Lee sat in the office for a long time after Dylon had crawled off to bed. She was exhausted from a long day at work, but her mind was too busy to let her get any rest.
She was supposed to be avoiding making connections, not forging new relationships. Yet here she was offering to fix Dylon’s bookkeeping problems. She was stupid. A stupid woman with no sense of self-preservation. Because when Dylon said ‘I’d love you forever,’ she would have done almost anything to hear him say it again.
He’d meant it as a simple platitude, she knew. People said that sort of thing all the time. But when she’d heard those words come out of his perfect mouth, her silly heart actually skipped a beat.
She was glad he’d been too tired to stay and chat. Lee needed space to regroup. Her brain wasn’t functioning properly. She kept imagining those words in a different context. One where they meant something real.
Anger bubbled up into her chest. She felt like a silly schoolgirl. She knew better than to let a little lust turn into an infatuation. What she felt for Dylon was just physical attraction for a guy who was hot and nothing more. She was just lonely, and horny, that was all. Even if she acted on her desire, words like ‘love’ had nothing to do with it.
Dylon was one of the good guys, but that didn’t mean he was going to fall in love with her. Men like Dylon didn’t do love. And she was in no position to even think about starting a relationship. Christian’s last text had been clear. He was still looking for her. Love, and sex for that matter, were the very last things she should be thinking about.
Luckily, the bookkeeping had given her something tangible to occupy her mind. If she had to stay in hiding, she could damn well put her years of training to work and help Dylon’s business.
Bernadette's was surprisingly solvent despite his less-than-stellar business practices. There were so many missed opportunities and chances to improve things it was almost too easy. She couldn’t make customers walk in, but she could make sure that the bar didn’t hemorrhage money.
But even as she tried to focus on doing something normal for a change, her problems still lurked just on the outskirts of her mind. They were an ever-present reminder that things in her life were far from normal.
Her next day off, Lee decided to venture out of her safe bubble and do a little research into some small business loans for the area. And while she was out she’d also look up a few things on Del Rossi. She had a few ideas and needed to check the LexisNexis database at the library.
Abbie and Dylan were working the bar when Lee told them she was going out. Dylon frowned and started to say something, but then turned
back to the drink he was mixing.
“Going someplace fun?” Abbie was setting out glasses behind the bar. “I love to go to the movies on my night off. Have you seen the new Meryl Streep movie?”
“She’s not a movie-goer. She doesn’t even own a TV.” Dylon winked at Lee and smiled. Her heart skipped a beat, and she couldn’t hide the blush. “My bet is she’s going shopping.”
“No,” Roxie said. “Lee’s off to have lunch with friends.”
Abbie looked at Lee. “And the winner is?”
“No one. I’m going to the library."
Abbie laughed. “Wow! Silly me, I wonder why I didn’t think of that? That sounds so much more exciting than a movie.”
“Hey, I like the library.” Lee grinned. Abbie sounded exactly like every one of her friends, growing up. They were more interested in parties and dating, but Lee had been all about getting out of that small town. “Besides,” she said, walking past them. “It’s not like I can hang out at a bar, because that’s too much like work. So it’s the library—just another part of my wild and crazy day off. The laundromat and the library … Look at me living large.”
“Why the library?” Roxie asked, leaning back against the bar. “I didn’t think people went to the library anymore.”
“I'm working on a special project and need to research a few things."
“A project? And research?” Abbie made a face as if she’d bitten into something bitter. “That’s giving me flashbacks of high school.”
“Even though I’d like you to think I know everything, sometimes I need a little help.”
“Can’t you do research at home?” Roxie said. “I thought that was why God invented the internet."
“No,” Dylon said. “The internet was invented for porn.”
Lee laughed. “As it turns out, there are still a few things you need to leave the house to do. Not a lot of things, but there are still a few. The internet gives you a lot of general information, but much of the good stuff is stuck behind paywalls a poor waitress can’t afford to access. Fortunately for those of us who don’t have the money to spare, a lot of that stuff is available for free at libraries.” She grinned.