by Katie McCoy
Then, suddenly, there was silence.
“Thank you!” I cried out, pulling off my headphones. I wanted to dance for joy. Sweet, blessed relief! I’d be able to finish up in silence, and then maybe even
—
RREEEEEOOOOWWWWWWWRRRRRR
They brought out the electric saw.
No!
My phone started vibrating with a call. The office line. “Hello? Arthur?” I answered, but I could hardly make out what my boss was saying on the other end.
“Filing . . . assets . . . leveraged . . .”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you?” I pulled a towel over my head, but it didn’t help.
“We’ll talk about this on Monday,” Arthur finally shouted.
I agreed quickly and hung up, immediately dropping my phone onto the floor and my face into my hands.
“Dammit,” I muttered to myself, not that I could even hear it over the noise coming from downstairs.
The last thing I wanted was for Arthur to think that I was difficult to get a hold of or inaccessible on the weekends. I knew that most people drew a strict line between their work life and their personal life, but that was not how my firm was. And I was perfectly willing to play by their rules.
But not the bozos downstairs, playing havoc with my Saturday.
Enough!
I grabbed my keys and stormed downstairs. I’d seen the workmen around and all the construction materials stacked in the hallway, and I assumed they were renovating the condo beneath me. Maybe someone would be able to give me a timeline, how much longer the racket would last.
But when I got downstairs, I saw what had been making all the noise.
They’d taken the wall out. The front wall, separating the unit from the street. It was gone, and instead, they were building big, iron-paned windows and wide double-doors. I could see inside for the first time: the condo was gone, and in its place, was a wide-open area with polished concrete floors and custom shelving along the wall, with furniture stacked under dust sheets.
I began to get a sinking feeling.
I stepped inside and went looking for the source of all the noise. Instead, I found an extremely attractive guy bent over a table saw.
He had blonde hair, the kind that looked like it had been naturally lightened by a lot of time in the sun, which also probably explained his tanned skin and ripped physique. He was wearing jeans and a ratty T-shirt, but it was pretty clear that he was built. But despite his undeniable sex appeal, I didn’t get nearly the same thrill I had gotten when I saw Emerson the night before.
He gave me a smile as I entered, but held up a hand to halt me.
“Sorry,” he said. “We’re not open.”
“Yeah.” I pointed towards the front. “The lack of a door kind of gave that away.”
He laughed and snapped his fingers. “Darn it, I knew we forgot something.” He mimed writing something down. “Note to self, buy door.” He glanced up and gave me a wink.
He was charming. Very charming.
But my sinking feeling just grew.
“I’m your upstairs neighbor,” I told him, and the smile faded a little.
“Ah,” he said, understanding dawning on his handsome face. “Let me guess, you’ve come to yell at us about the noise?”
“Not yell,” I corrected. “Just discuss,” I told him, in my most lawyerly voice. “Do you know about the city regulations regarding noise pollution on weekends?”
I didn’t, but I was betting he was in the dark, too.
His eyes widened a little bit.
“You’ll want to talk to the boss,” he said, backing away from me. “I just work here.”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Why do I have a hard time believing that?”
He shrugged. “Must be my natural skills as a leader,” he said before hurrying off and out of my sight.
I looked around. The inside of the building was just as nice as the outside. The whole place had a bit of an old-fashioned kind of feel—classic meets industrial. The wood on the shelving, the detailing on the ceiling . . . it was all subtle, and rustic. There were framed pictures on the wall, the one closest to me showed five guys, college-aged. They were all decked out in Cubs gear, their arms slung around each other, grinning from ear to ear.
One of them looked a little familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it. Until I heard a familiar voice from behind me.
“I think you owe me some beef jerky,” Emerson said.
I whirled around, hoping that I was hearing things.
I wasn’t. There he was. The guy from the drug store. The guy from the ATM. The guy from the greatest kiss of my entire life. Standing right in front of me, smirking like he knew my secrets.
Which he kind of did.
“I didn’t take it,” I said, the words spilling out of my mouth. “You gave me that beef jerky!”
He cocked his head to the side, doing that annoyingly sexy slow examination of me.
“I suppose I did,” he finally said.
“I’m not stalking you,” I blurted out, belatedly realizing that it was practically the same thing he had said to me after showing up in the ATM vestibule.
“That’s too bad,” he teased. “Because if you had given me your last name or your number, I definitely would have been stalking you.”
My face got hot, and his grin grew wider. He looked just as amazing as he had last night, another dark shirt and pair of well-worn jeans. But his hair was still adorably messy and his dimple still creased his cheek when he smiled. Which he seemed to do a lot. I tried to be annoyed, but it wasn’t easy.
“So.” Emerson folded his arms and leaned up against the sleek, wood bar. “Chase told me that someone was out here complaining about the noise.”
“Chase?” I jerked my chin in the direction the other guy had gone. “Is that your employee?”
He laughed. “Employee? Oh, yeah, he’ll love that.”
I frowned, confused. “I thought he said you were the boss.”
Emerson rolled his eyes. “I’m always the boss when it’s something he doesn’t want to deal with. This joint is ours. His, mine.” He gestured towards the picture I had been looking at. “Ours.”
“You’re friends?” I asked, now able to see Emerson’s features in one of the guys in the picture.
“Yep,” he confirmed.
“And co-owners.”
“So all five of you own this place,” I looked around. A restaurant then, I could live with that. They probably wouldn’t be open before noon most days, and closed by eleven at night.
“We’re naming it Rascals.”
“Cute. But please tell me that you own enough of it that you can do something about the noise,” I begged him, seeing my in. “I live right upstairs.”
“Chase mentioned,” Emerson said, observing me again.
He looked long and hard, not saying anything else. I squirmed under his intense gaze.
“What?” I finally demanded.
“You’re not going to say anything about what happened last night?” he asked, a smile curving his lips.
Lips that I knew to be very talented. But that wasn’t the point.
“I don’t know what there is to say,” I stammered.
“Obviously you tracked me down for a reason,” Emerson said.
I gaped at him. “I had no idea you were here!”
“Sure, sure.” He waved me off. “A likely story. I bet you are stalking me.”
“You wish!”
“Actually.” Emerson leaned towards me. “I totally do.”
“That is so not the point,” I sputtered, hating that I was kind of turned on. But how could I not be? Emerson hadn’t gotten any less hot and now I knew exactly what it felt like to kiss him. Why couldn’t he have been like any good one night stand and just ceased to exist after I was done with him? The last thing he was supposed to do was show up in my building. Life just wasn’t fair.
“I’m here to talk to you about the noise, not about wh
at happened last night—which, by the way, is not something that will be happening again. Ever.”
Emerson just gave me a look. One that said that he saw right through me. That he knew that I had enjoyed the kiss.
“So you’re here about the noise,” Emerson finally said.
“Yes!” I told him, relieved that my real purpose for being here had actually sunk in.
“Well, we should be done with the construction after tonight,” he told me.
“Oh, thank God,” I sighed with relief.
“But.” Emerson held his hand up. “We will be opening next weekend.”
“Maybe I’ll drop by,” I said, feeling happier now. A hot guy and easy access to food right downstairs? I could live with that. “What kind of food will the restaurant serve?”
“Restaurant?” Emerson looked amused. “I never said anything about that. Rascals is a bar,” he added.
My heart sank.
Bar. Liquor license. Chicago crowds. My dreams of peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep straight up and walked out the door.
“But, that means . . .”
Emerson nodded. “We’ll be open until four in the morning every day except for Saturdays. Saturdays we’ll be open until five a.m.”
I sat down on the nearest bar stool. Hard.
Emerson flashed me a smile. “Welcome to the building, neighbor.”
4
Emerson
“ . . .inspector walk-through is tomorrow . . .”
I was only half paying attention to our unofficial partners meeting as we went down the seemingly endless list of things we had to do before the bar opened.
The problem was that my mind was somewhere else. Specifically, it was stuck replaying a brief yet amazing moment that I had shared with a near stranger in an ATM vestibule a few nights before. A stranger who had ditched me without exchanging numbers, haunted my dreams with the memory of her lush, full mouth, and then unexpectedly shown up on the doorstep of our soon-to-be-opened bar yesterday.
Fate was a tricky minx, and she was really fucking with me right now, it seemed.
Because the timing for all of this couldn’t have been worse.
I was all for the perusal of gorgeous women. And I had done my fair share of said perusal in the past. The same went for my friends, especially Chase, who sat across the table from me, most likely texting his latest hookup to arrange tonight’s plans.
But while Chase was all about the one-night stand, all about the casual hook-up, I was much more of the serial monogamy type. I wasn’t looking to settle down, but I did like to get to know a woman before jumping into bed with her. I also liked to get to know her afterwards. I wanted to know what she liked, what she didn’t, and I especially wanted to know what turned her on. I was a fan of finding the right buttons and knowing exactly in what order to push them.
But it was also the last thing in the world I had time for right now. The bar was the priority. It needed to be a success, not just because we were depending on it financially, but all of us had something to prove—myself especially.
Which is why I needed to focus my attention on my to-do list instead of imagining how hot it might have been to fuck Alex against the very wall across from me. Because from the way she had reacted to my kiss in the ATM vestibule the other night, I could tell that she would be very, very receptive.
Ahem.
I dragged my attention back to the list. “We should probably scout out the neighborhood watering holes,” I spoke up. “Knowing our competition will allow us to better see what needs aren’t being filled and how best we can fill them.”
My mind was definitely focused on needs being filled (as well as other things) but it had absolutely nothing to do with the bar.
“I don’t think we’re going to have any problems on the weekend,” our finance guy-slash-business strategist Liam spoke up. “We got lucky with this location—tons of businesses within walking distance, but we’re the closest bar by far. But weekdays are always where a bar can make it or break it. We need to be busy all week. That means finding creative ways to get people to come in after work. Happy hour is great, but we should see if we can up the ante. Do something unique.”
He paused and looked around the room. Chase was still texting. Sawyer, the resident contractor/architect, let out a yawn. Dante hadn’t even shown up. And me? My mind was still doing dirty things back in that ATM vestibule.
Liam sighed.
“Maybe we should just call it a night.”
“Sorry, man,” Sawyer apologized. “I think we’re all just a little distracted.”
“I’m working,” Chase argued, holding up a hand but not looking up from his phone. “This is work.”
Liam rolled his eyes. The two of them could not have been more different, but that’s what made us all work. Where Liam was the strong and silent type, Chase was impulsive and charming.
“Are we at least on schedule with the build-out?” I asked Sawyer. Construction was his domain. Well, anything with a tool-kit. He had a studio making hand-crafted furniture, the kind hipsters ate up.
He nodded. “The bar looks great, just a few finishing details.”
“We’ll have our first signature ale ready for the opening,” Chase chimed in, before frowning at his phone. “Once I can get the recipe right.”
This time I was the one who rolled my eyes. Chase was probably one of the most chill people I knew—except when it came to alcohol. Then he was a savant. An obsessive savant. An annoying, obsessive savant. He had been talking about this signature ale of his for months now, but none of us had seen the results of all his labor.
“The mysterious ale.” Liam’s comment echoed my thoughts. “I think often of that ale. And how it doesn’t exist.”
“But it will!” Chase insisted.
Liam shook his head. “I’m going to head out.”
“I left some paperwork on the desk,” I tell them all. “I need it signed by tomorrow.”
He nodded. All five of us—Chase, Sawyer, Liam, Dante and myself—had an equal share of the bar, but I was the one who would be managing it. That meant I’d probably be living in that office for the first few months the bar was open.
Still, nothing could dampen my enthusiasm. We had talked about making this place a reality for so many years, and even though we were so close to opening, I still couldn’t believe that it was happening. I wasn’t even sure I would truly believe it until we started pulling a profit. Until we were a success.
The others headed out, leaving me alone with Chase. And his phone.
“I’m going to go check on that paperwork.” I pushed back from the table.
“Want me to bring me the latest brew from the back?” Chase asked.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask if it’s the ale,” I joked.
“It’s an IPA.” Chase gave me a look. “You know the ale is special.”
“So you’ve told me,” I reminded him. “So you’ve told all of us. Yet, we’ve seen no proof that this ale is anything more than just a dream.”
“It’s a dream like the bar was a dream,” Chase countered.
“So the ale is going to take five years, several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and possibly put all of us into crippling debt?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Chase responded. “But it will be worth it.”
I walked around the table, headed for my office, but before I could leave the room, Chase’s arm shot out, stopping me. For such a laid-back guy, he had pretty damn good reflexes.
“So.” He leaned back in his chair casually, his napkin apparently forgotten. “How’d it go with our hot neighbor?”
I should have known that Chase would have noticed Alex’s aforementioned hotness. I felt an unusual twinge of jealousy. It wasn’t something I was used to. Chase was my friend, basically my brother. I would take a bullet for him. So why was I getting angry at the thought of him checking out Alex, a girl I barely knew?
I tried to play it cool.
“Our neighbor?” I asked casually.
“She lives upstairs, doesn’t she?”
“I guess so.” I shrugged. “She just wanted to complain about the noise.”
“Yeah, I got that much.” Chase laced his fingers over his chest and gave me a look. “What did you say?”
“That we were finishing construction soon, but we would be open late, so she might have to get used to a different kind of noise,” I told him.
Her face had definitely fallen when I had given her that information, which had given me a twinge of guilt. I felt bad that we might contribute to an unpleasant living situation, but there wasn’t much that I could do about it. The bar was our dream and I couldn’t let guilty feelings for a girl I barely knew get in the way of that.
She hadn’t stuck around long after I’d told her that. Not that I could blame her. The whole thing was a little awkward. Incredibly hot, but definitely awkward. It had been especially hard—hard being the word—to stand that close to her and not be able to touch her. Everything about her had been touchable.
Unlike the night in the vestibule, when she had been the literal definition of buttoned up, yesterday, she had been in jeans and a sweater, her gorgeous blonde hair down and silky around her shoulders. I remembered how it had felt in my hands, and my fingers itched to touch her again.
“You like her!” Chase’s proclamation startled me out of my daydream.
I blinked at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He scoffed. “Please. I had my suspicions, but the dopey dreamy look on your face right now totally gave it away.”
“You had your suspicions yesterday?” I demanded. “You weren’t even in the same room as us!”
“I was watching from the backroom,” Chase told me, looking entirely too pleased for someone who had basically just admitted to spying. “The tension was so thick that I was practically choking on it.”
“I barely know her,” I objected.
“But you know her enough,” Chase confirmed.
It annoyed me that he could see through me so quickly. But the boy knew two things: women and beer. And he was basically an expert in both.