by Anne Calhoun
She wasn’t going to think about what it would mean to her and the East Side if the vote failed. She’d poured her life savings and a hefty small business loan into the interior. Any hint of insolvency and her family would pounce on the excuse to send her back to a desk job.
The way Chad blocked her in left no other option than to use the heel of her boot to hitch herself onto the stool next to his. She crossed her legs, and his gaze flickered over their length, displayed to their best advantage in the short skirt slit to the top of her thigh. His gaze slowly returned to her face, and when that green-brown gaze met hers, she felt a heady charge flicker across her skin.
“Tell me about your experience,” she said, trying to focus because each second of silence amped up the current crackling between them.
“I’m at Gino’s.”
Not good. A neighborhood bar south of downtown, Gino’s was a cop hangout, a laid-back, low-energy, peanut-shells-on-the-floor-ESPN-on-the-TV kind of place, where local law enforcement went to unwind, not raise hell. As bars went, it was about as far from Eye Candy’s high-energy dance club vibe as possible.
“Why leave? Getting beers for cops is much easier than mixing hundreds of cocktails a night.”
“I need full-time hours.” He looked around again. “And better tips.”
“This isn’t Gino’s. Not by a long shot,” she said. “You’ll work for your tips here.”
She didn’t mean to infuse a sexual overtone into that comment, but somehow the insinuation hung between them. His eyes darkened from hazel to mossy green and a hint of color stained his cheekbones. Okay, they had chemistry, that heart-pounding, shallow-breathing feeling that meant the pheromones were surging.
Chemistry with you means chemistry with customers, she thought firmly. Watching him work would tell her all she needed to know. “Feel up to making me something?” she asked lightly.
“Mojito? Cosmo? Cum in a Hot Tub?”
He got points for naming her three most popular cocktails, in order no less, and major points for including the last one without a hint of innuendo in his face or voice. “Let’s try a Cosmo,” she said.
He moved past her, close enough that she felt the soft denim of his jeans brush against her bare thigh, then strolled behind the bar, found the Absolut, the Triple Sec, and the juices, and measured all the ingredients over ice scooped into a metal shaker, his movements precise. A couple of deft twists of his wrist, then he poured the drink into a chilled glass snagged from the fridge under the bar.
“I haven’t sliced the oranges yet,” she said when he scanned the half-filled tubs of garnishes.
He set the drink on a napkin in front of her, offering it to her with the stem between his index and middle fingers to avoid leaving prints on the glass. She sipped as he splashed the shaker through the wash, rinse, and sanitize sinks, then set it on a towel to dry. His ease in his body boded well for someone who’d spend eight-plus hours a night on his feet, handling glass and premium liquor.
“Nice.” He nodded his thanks and reached for a bar towel. “You’ll have to pick up the pace, though. We’ve got a line out the door nearly every night.”
“No problem,” he said as he dried his hands, then looked at his abraded knuckles. Not a wince, or a comment.
“You don’t talk much.”
In the silence that followed, the door between her office and her apartment slammed closed. Chad looked up at the noise, then back at her, clearly expecting an explanation, but she held his gaze and waited. Finally he said, “Bartenders should be good listeners.”
Based on that comment, she’d better set the tone now. “Eye Candy isn’t just a bar. It’s an experience. Women come for hot bartenders, dance music, great drinks, and a chance to unwind with girlfriends. The hookup quotient is high because the men come for what they call ‘prime pussy’.” A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth and formed crinkles around his eyes, the flash of personality an appealing insight into an otherwise blank front, so she added, “My office is over the men’s room and unfortunately voices carry up the ductwork.
“The ground rules are that you’ve got a smile for everyone, no matter if she’s the prettiest girl in the room or the pretty girl’s chunky, self-conscious best friend. No outrageous flirting, no requests for phone numbers or email addresses. No calling numbers if they come across the bar on a napkin or a twenty or a thong, which happened on Tuesday and led to one of my bartenders hooking up with a customer in the back of a pickup in my parking lot. I fired him before he had his jeans up. She went home alone, unsatisfied, and pissed off. That’s not good for business and therefore pisses me off. Are we clear?”
A moment of silence, then, “Your bar, your rules.”
Not many men could make that sound sexy, yet coming in Chad’s whiskey-rough voice, it sounded like temptation poured from a bottle. Eve thought for a moment, unable to put her finger on how he struck her, but the weekend was coming, he was clearly competent behind a bar, and her gut told her he wouldn’t get caught bare-assed in the bed of a Dodge Ram.
“Take a shift tonight,” she said. “If I like what I see, you’re hired. If not, we go our separate ways.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Come back around just before five and I’ll get you your shirt and introduce you to the rest of the crew.”
This time all she got was a nod. She continued to study him, absently running her thumb and index finger up and down the glass stem. He met her eyes without reservation, as comfortable with her assessment as he was without it. The silence stretching between them took on an increasingly intemperate life of its own, and she broke eye contact first.
She handed him the glass. His fingers brushed hers as he took it from her, and the brief contact struck sparks along her fingers and halted her breath for a long second.
“Thanks for coming by. I’ll lock up behind you,” she said.
He came around from behind the bar to follow her to the big steel door. She didn’t peek over her shoulder at him. She didn’t put any additional sass into her walk. Yet with each click of her heels against the cement floor, the tension hovering in the bar’s dim, silent air ratcheted up another notch. She opened the door and waited while he slipped between her body and the edge, into the parking lot. Then it was her turn to watch him walk to his Jeep and climb in. The engine caught, revved, the back end of the Jeep skittered a little as the tires spun, then got enough traction to propel the car into traffic.
Startled into laughter, she leaned a shoulder against the doorframe and watched the Jeep zip away. “Not what I expected,” she said. “Not what I expected at all.”
She let the big steel door swing shut, shot the bolt, and was halfway back to the bar when a knock on the door had her turning on her heel and retracing her steps. When she opened the door, her father stood blinking in the sunlight.
“Dad,” she said, heard delight and surprise in her voice.
“Hello, Eve.”
She stepped back to let him in, then gave him a quick hug. “I didn’t know you were coming. What can I get you? Juice? Soda?”
“Just water,” he said.
Her father, a pastor for a small, vibrant church in the heart of the East Side, didn’t drink. She scooped ice into a glass and dispensed water from the nozzle, then set the glass on the bar. Despite a grand opening that drew hundreds of Lancaster’s young professionals, and an entertainment reporter and photographer from the Times-Courier, this was her father’s first visit to Eye Candy. Her heart was pounding, so she picked up the knife and took refuge in the never-ending prep tasks. “What brings you by?”
“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, and looked around again. He looked around the bar, and this time Eve saw a sound system costing more than the average East Side family spent on housing for a year. The wall of premium liquor represented money that could have helped families facing shut-off notices, or repair the only vehicle available to get a breadwinner to a job.
The silence s
tretched. Eve swept the ends of the lemons into a trash bin, felt the juice sting in a small paper cut on her index finger much as the old argument stung her pride. Pastors’ daughters didn’t open nightclubs. They married sensible, stable men, got nine-to-five jobs with sensible, stable companies, and raised sensible, stable children. She’d tried sensible and stable on for size right after college, because her family deemed her dream of opening her own entertainment venue a frivolous waste of her time and education. So she’d dutifully gone to work in the marketing department of an insurance company, and spent two years gasping for air in a sea of gray-walled cubicles before “throwing her life away” to return to her position as an events coordinator for The Metropolitan Club. She’d saved her commissions, studied the market and the community needs, written business plan after business plan, and a year ago, bought the building housing Eye Candy.
“I’m glad you came. Nat and I missed you at the soft opening,” she said as she ripped open the top of a box of limes with a little more force than necessary. Getting her parents to the grand opening never would have happened.
“Your mother and I thought this was another one of your impulses.” His normally deep, confident voice came with pauses between. The heart attack earlier in the summer had left him weakened, and he’d rushed his recovery to return to his vocation: taking care of the people in his congregation, and the East Side. They’d fought over Eye Candy, and for a moment Eve considered closing her doors to ease her father’s mind.
“It’s two years of work, Dad,” she said simply, “not an impulse.”
The words fell flat in the empty bar, but her father said nothing about the folly of putting all her eggs in one basket. “This will help the East Side, Dad.”
“I was out at the prison yesterday. Victor said Lyle showed up without warning during visiting hours last Friday,” he said. “He says his son is full of big talk and improbable dreams, like always.”
Her heart thudded against her breastbone, then stayed lodged in her throat. That’s why she wouldn’t shut down. Her family had a long history with the Murphys, from her father’s lifelong friendship with Victor to her own unpredictable, complicated relationship with his ambitious son, Lyle. Lyle had paid her a visit, asking for some help with his own startup.
“A business associate of mine will bring you some cash during the evening, when you’re open. You deposit it with your nightly take, then transfer it into another company’s online account. A trip to the bank and a couple of clicks of the mouse.”
“You’re starting a new business,” she said, her brain whirring furiously away. “Selling…?”
“I’m in recreation,” Lyle said.
Which meant drugs. Lyle would be back only if the opportunity was worth his while, which meant something big, generating enough income that he’d need it laundered. A bar like hers that took in thousands of dollars a week in cash without providing a tangible product was the perfect front. “The bank will notice if my deposits jump suddenly.”
“It won’t be much,” he said easily. “A little more on Fridays and Saturdays, a little less during the week. You’re busy. Doing well. No one will notice.”
“And you’d want me to transfer it to other accounts?”
He nodded.
“Business income must be accounted for and taxed,” she said, as if she was worried about tax evasion. “Taxes pay for schools and roads and business development parks that provide jobs for local residents.”
He leaned forward, all earnestness. “I don’t mind funding local projects. Five percent ongoing for your trouble, to get you through the dry spells, or to help any community organization you want. Your dad’s new program. The basketball court looks pretty rough. He could buy new computers for the job training program.”
He thought he could buy her. She pursed her lips, like she was considering the offer.
“You don’t have to give me an answer now,” he said. “I’ll catch you later, see what you’ve decided.”
She’d seen a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take apart a prominent pipeline of cocaine and heroin into Lancaster, and gone to the police with the information. They’d asked her if she’d help them get the evidence they’d need to take out the biggest threat to the East Side’s economic and social health.
She was the linchpin, and she couldn’t tell anyone. Lieutenant Ian Hawthorn, her contact, made two things abundantly clear: they needed hard and fast evidence of Lyle Murphy’s intent to launder drug money through Eye Candy, and she couldn’t tell a soul what she was doing. Not her father, who believed in salvation and second chances. Not her brother, a defense attorney who believed all cops were lying bullies with badges. Not her best friend and manager. No one. Which meant she couldn’t say anything to her father about staying away from Victor, his best friend from childhood, because Victor might tip off Lyle.
“Nothing wrong with dreaming, Dad,” she said finally.
“You’ll be at dinner Monday night?”
Two years ago, before the rift over her job that kept her from the Webber Monday family nights for eighteen months, he wouldn’t have asked. “I will,” she said lightly. “Love to Mom.”
The door closed behind her father, and Eve went back to the cartons of fruit waiting for her, wielding the knife precisely, as if lemons sliced in quarter-inch increments would settle her nerves. But as she worked, the memory of the shuttered look in Chad’s dark hazel eyes skittered across her skin to settle deep in her belly. While every owner and manager paid lip service to appropriate relationships and professional work environments, the sexually charged atmosphere of bars and nightclubs was a breeding ground for quick, explosive, short-lived relationships based on chemistry—the kind of chemistry she’d felt in one ten-minute interview. With the bar finally launched to a promising whirlwind of buzz and a whole lot of chemistry with her newest bartender candidate, for the first time in a very long time, she could look forward to mixing a little pleasure with business.
What her parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Everyone kept secrets, even a pastor’s daughter.
* * *
Mistake number one: the Yes, ma’am that came right after he opened the door and made eye contact with Eve Webber. The connection hit him like a blow to the sternum, dropping him twelve years in the past to boot camp, where ma’am and sir became spinal reflexes. While a bartender in need of a job might use ma’am out of respect, his tone would have been gentler, less authoritative.
Mistake number two: getting scratch on the way onto the street. Ideal employees didn’t drive like a sixteen-year-old trying to impress a girl in the school parking lot. But the adrenaline contracted the muscles in his calf, and the next thing he knew the rear tires were spinning. Once again, instinct took over and he automatically corrected for the swerve. In an effort to slow his pulse he exhaled slow and deep, relaxed his grip on the wheel, and, most important, lifted the gas pedal from the Jeep’s floor.
For Detective Matt Dorchester, one of the most treacherous parts of undercover work for the Lancaster Police Department was discovering exactly how deeply military and paramilitary organizations were carved into his bones. Twenty minutes into his newest role and he’d already made two dangerous mistakes, two more than he’d made in either of his previous, months-long undercover assignments.
Most men know how to steer out of a skid. It’s not a tell for months of training in handling a Crown Vic with the Interceptor package. Most important, you’re not clinging to your honor with your fingertips.
The sun hung low in the sky, the mid-afternoon heat index just over a hundred degrees. The humidity-saturated air lay thick and damp against his skin as he scrupulously obeyed the speed limit all the way from Eye Candy to the Eastern precinct. Storefronts’ glass windows and chrome bumpers reflected the sun’s glare as heat and shimmer, much like the thick layers of Eve Webber’s black hair fell in her face as she talked, glinting against her jaw, her cheekbone. Intellectually he knew it would be cool to the touch, bu
t that didn’t stop his hand from tingling with the desire to slide through the strands.
Get a grip, Dorchester. That wasn’t a job interview, let alone a date. You’re a cop. She’s an informant in danger.
At the stoplight before the turn into the Eastern precinct he flexed his hand to short-circuit the sensation in his fingers, felt the scabs covering his knuckles tug at the healing skin. He’d stop tonight, get another bottle of ibuprofen for his brother, and pick up a tube of antibacterial ointment while he was at it. Battered knuckles wouldn’t go over well in a bar like Eye Candy. Once inside the building, he sidestepped Connor McCormick bringing in a handcuffed, viciously swearing man.
“Busy night?” Matt asked, taking in his arrest’s prison-honed muscles and ink. Conn was a couple of inches shorter than Matt but built like a tank. Matt knew him as a solid cop, never last to a scene, always pushing the edge to get the job done.
“Never a dull moment,” Conn said, grinning.
“What’d he do?” Matt asked, nodding at Conn’s detainee.
“Breaking and entering, assault, resisting arrest,” Conn said. “For starters. Pattern matches a string of similar incidents.”
“You got nothing, motherfucker,” the guy snarled.
“What I’ve got is DNA from when you spit on me,” Conn said, almost cheerful as the guy tried to wrench free. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re handcuffed and in the middle of a police station,” he said, tightening his grip on the pressure point in the guy’s elbow. “This dance is just getting started.”
The guy snarled out a string of profanity describing his night with Conn’s mother.
“Sounds about right,” Conn said, but Matt didn’t miss the glint in Conn’s eye. “She’s been dead for twenty years, but dead’s probably the only way you get laid.”
The guy checked for a second. “Respects, man,” he said, “but you’re still a pig motherfucker. Get your fucking hand off my fucking elbow! I can’t feel my fucking fingers!”
“Need a hand?” Matt asked.