At Your Service (Silhouette Desire)

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “Holy—” Max cut herself off with a glance at her mother, whose face clearly forbade cursing in the kitchen “—cow. Really?”

  “No, not really,” Grace answered firmly. “He just thought he might be. But now he isn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t look at me like you’re the one who’s confused.” She was finished with the cocktail straws and slammed the box back onto the shelf. “You’re not the one he’s saying all this nonsense to.”

  Max scrunched her face up and was silent for a moment. A moment that didn’t last.

  “So you’re not in love with him?”

  “I can’t be.” The answer was automatic. She could feel the other women in the room watching her speculatively. She didn’t notice when she repeated her answer.

  “Can, can’t. Should, shouldn’t. That isn’t the question.” Susannah had come out from behind the prep counter to stand by Grace. Now she laid a hand on Grace’s arm, as if to hold her in place. “My son, whatever he says, cares about you. The question is, how much do you care about him?”

  Her vision blurred as the tears rose and she pressed her lips together. If she didn’t answer, then none of it was true. She could retain some small hold on her sanity if she simply didn’t answer the question. She felt Susannah’s hand grip her arm tightly for a moment, comforting her.

  “Such a sad girl.” The older woman’s hand brushed softly against her hair before dropping to her shoulder and patting gently. “I’m afraid you’ll hurt my boy very badly.”

  Grace shook her head. I don’t want to hurt anybody, she wanted to cry out. I’m just trying to find my way out of all these disasters. She tilted her head back and blinked rapidly until the tears dried. She wouldn’t break down in front of these women, no matter how kind they were. When she stood straight again, Max and Sarah had moved off to another part of the kitchen. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Smiled like brittle glass and said to Susannah, “Everything will be fine.”

  A moment. Then Susannah nodded in understanding and sighed herself, before physically shaking off the mood with her whole body. “So, maybe it’s better this way. You won’t fall in love with him. He will not fall in love with you. There are still limes that need to be squeezed for pie. Come help me, and you can have the first piece.”

  “Hey!” Maxie’s shout from the dish room was outraged.

  And with that, the Saturday night shift at Tyler’s began, all the women working smoothly together as if in agreement that nothing more need be said about preshift matters. When Grace wiped down the menus in preparation for the dinner rush and noticed that at some time during the day, Tyler had reprinted the paper inserts to include the two vegetarian dishes she’d suggested earlier, she managed to feel only an employee’s pride at making a contribution.

  When she called out her first drink order of the night at the bar and Tyler smiled and teased her like a sister, she told herself she was glad he could move on. They both could.

  She was even able to laugh with everyone else at the bar when a heavily made-up blonde performed impromptu karaoke, singing along with Ella Fitzgerald on “Let’s Do It” and gesturing boldly at Tyler.

  Birds do it, bees do it,

  Even educated fleas do it,

  Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.

  “I need a Heineken, two Lites and a diet, please,” Grace called from the wait station at the end of the song. She shoved her ticket in the metal coil that served to hold it for the bartender to ring up. “Educated fleas, my ass.”

  “Jealous?” Tyler handed the ticket back to her after ringing up the round. “I thought she did pretty good myself.”

  “She was great,” Grace said in a voice sweet enough to make a diabetic go into shock, “if you go for the obvious type.”

  “Better obvious than oblivious,” he shot back just as sweetly.

  She snatched her tray off the bar and walked away before giving in to the temptation to use a rude hand gesture.

  At home that night, in her little room under the eaves, Grace stripped off her clothes, threw them in the corner and climbed into bed. The moon shining through the blinds cast thin stripes of pale light across her ceiling. She told herself that it had been another good night, a steady, happy crowd at the bar and full tables on the floor all night long. She’d made good money waiting on her customers, and things were running much more smoothly these days.

  That she’d been disappointed when Tyler had called a cab to drive her the short distance to Sarah’s apartment, saying he had paperwork he wanted to get done, was a weakness she would overcome soon enough. Making a work relationship into something more personal was inadvisable. And unprofessional.

  You wanted the job, and you got it, she told herself in the cool dark. Don’t be foolish and keep wanting something more.

  Something that you can’t have.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on relaxing tense muscles, tightening each individual fiber in her body and then releasing it back to a state of complete relaxation. She would unwind and sleep, and tomorrow she would be able to go through her day without the constant emotional stress of the recent summer. It would be lovely to be on an even keel again.

  One week later she was crawling the walls and seriously considering climbing the Sears Tower with her bare hands and no net. Just to relieve a little of the frustration and bottled-up energy she had.

  Hey, that French guy did it a while ago, blocked traffic in the Loop for hours, she thought. She was wiping down tables in the dining room and watching a trio of office women on a two-martini-or-more lunch practically fling themselves over the bar at Tyler. Climbing one hundred and twenty stories couldn’t be any more draining than watching this every day.

  Tyler and his harem of hopefuls.

  To be fair, she reminded herself, Tyler hadn’t actually taken any of them up on their increasingly blatant offers, as far as she knew. But did he have to be so goddamn charming?

  The man would flirt with a fence post, I swear.

  Grace dismissed the niggling thought that some of her irritation might arise from the fact that Tyler seemed to be turning that flirtatious charm on every woman who set foot in the bar, except for her.

  She dragged a chair roughly from the middle of an aisle and slammed it into place at the proper table. She couldn’t count how many times each night she found little, folded-up napkins behind the bar, all with women’s names and telephone numbers scribbled on them. Some had more explicit invitations on them and most had the inevitable lipstick-print kiss.

  And that man, with his smiles and his shrugs and his words about not wanting to hurt the women’s feelings by throwing the napkins away while they might see him do it.

  When Grace had replied that to hurt most of these women’s feelings, you’d have to kick them rather hard in the rear because their heads had obviously already been affected by their cocktails, Tyler had simply laughed.

  Even with these three at the bar, one of whom looked ready to slide off her bar stool into a liquid puddle on the floor, he was at his most charming, winking and smiling like a politician.

  When he finally came down to the wait station to collect her checks and money from lunch, Grace was already untying her apron, ready to walk out the door.

  “Don’t tell me you’re abandoning me to those three?”

  Grace flicked a dismissive glance at the three beauties at the other end of the bar. The one in the middle had her fingers hooked in her mouth in what Grace hoped was an attempt to whistle Tyler back down to them. “Looks like they’re having a grand old time. You should be proud.”

  “Grace, please.” Tyler grabbed her hand and pulled it to his chest. “They’re blitzed, they’ve been coming here for lunch every day for a week, and now the dark-haired one is threatening to make me judge a lingerie contest between the three of them.”

  “A lingerie contest?” Grace tried to keep the grin she felt from creeping onto her face as she realized that Tyler’s d
esperation was very much real.

  “All I know is that they said something about demi versus full cup,” he said. “And then I ran away. Come on, Gracie, help me out here. In another ten minutes I’m going to have a bunch of half-naked women sitting at my bar.”

  “Big John and Ted would be thrilled,” she drawled, referring to the two construction workers who came in every day after work for a beer. Then she took pity on him and ducked beneath the countertop to join him behind the bar. She turned sideways to scoot past Tyler in the narrow space and was surprised to feel his hands wrap themselves around her waist.

  He bent over her and buried his face against her neck for one long moment while she stood frozen. In a week, he hadn’t touched her, except by accident, and now she could feel his lips pressed against her neck, not kissing her, but just resting there softly. When he lifted his head, brushed his lips across her cheekbone and ear, his breath washing against her skin warmly, she shivered, and knew he felt it.

  “Just in case you have to pretend to be my girlfriend,” he whispered in her ear. His hands where they rested on her waist were warm. His fingers flexed gently. “To save me.”

  She wedged her hands between them and shoved him away with a sharp push to his chest, sure that he was making fun of her. Wondered how long she would remember the feel of the flat planes and smooth ridges of his body beneath her hands.

  “I wouldn’t pretend to be your girlfriend,” she said sweetly, “to save you from a pack of ravening wolves.”

  “Hopefully the wolves wouldn’t be trying to get me into bed.” Tyler threw up his hands in surrender before she made up her mind to take a swing at him. “Just make them go away, Gracie, please.”

  “Relax, Mr. Magnetism. I’ll have them out of here faster than you can say, ‘Check, please.’” When the wicked impulse slid over her she didn’t resist. Rising on tiptoe, she pressed her entire body against his, until she could feel his shirt buttons pressing through her blouse against her breasts.

  She coiled an arm slowly around Tyler’s neck and pressed a palm against the back of his head, holding him in place. Lifting her mouth to his ear, she exhaled softly and then whispered, “I’ll have them back for lunch next week, too. And believe me—” she walked the fingers of her free hand silkily up his arm “—they’ll never hit on you again.”

  She scraped her fingernails gently across the side of his face and walked to the other end of the bar.

  Tyler felt as though he’d been punched in the gut.

  He rubbed his stomach reflexively and watched Grace saunter down to where the three women sat. “Damn,” he muttered, and raised a hand to his face to scrub away the ghost of a soft mouth brushing with the barest touch against him. He was a grade-school boy with an uncontrollable erection in math class.

  Totally inappropriate, potentially humiliating, and absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  He yanked free the bar rag that was tucked in the back of his belt and switched it to the front of his pants, attempting some artful draping, and hoped that thoughts of baseball would help.

  Where the hell had that come from?

  Okay, he probably shouldn’t have teased Grace like that about pretending to be his girlfriend. And he knew the moment he set hands on her that that was not a good idea at all. He’d felt the sudden tightening of her stomach muscles beneath his fingers and had to fight himself to leave his hands sitting in place on her small waist. The urge to skim them up the sides of her rib cage, brushing against the sides of her breasts, had been near irresistible.

  But he’d promised her that he’d back off.

  And I’ve done it, haven’t I? Even if it’s damn near killed me to watch her walk out that door every night and slide into the back seat of a cab, looking so worn-out after her shift.

  Would she even take a night off when he tried to insist on it?

  Of course not. She claimed they were still staffed too thinly, and worked yet another night in a row. And if she was right, that didn’t make it any easier to watch.

  The fact that his heart hurt every time he looked at her was another problem. One that he kept to himself, although he felt his mother’s gaze rest sadly on him from time to time, and knew she knew.

  He’d watched Grace all through October, even as he kept his distance and tried to look at her as a younger sister or cousin. He’d seen the way she flinched sometimes at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and didn’t relax again until she searched out the voice’s owner and reassured herself that it wasn’t whoever she feared.

  The strength of his need to find that person, the man Grace feared in every unidentified voice, and beat him until he lay hurt and bleeding on the ground, came close to frightening Tyler.

  A series of ringing, feminine laughs broke out at the far end of the bar, and he saw uncomfortably that all four women, including his innocent Grace, were staring at him with wickedly speculative looks in their eyes. Then they turned back to each other and laughter burst out again.

  Tenderly patting his ego—after all, they couldn’t be laughing at him, could they?—Tyler watched as Grace rang a total bill on the ladies’ check and collected three credit cards without visibly flinching at the thought of splitting the bill three ways. After the women signed their tabs, Grace smiled at them and said something more in a low voice that had the women giggling again as they made their way out the front door, hopefully to return to bosses tolerant of long Friday lunches.

  As Grace made her way back up the bar, a self-satisfied grin on her face, another wave of desire washed over him, making him want simply to tuck her under his arm and hang on to her forever. Instead he managed to comment lightly, “I see you worked your magic. How’d you do it?”

  “Piece of cake, darlin’.” She patted his butt casually as she squeezed past him. Tyler felt himself jump and cursed himself for a fool.

  “Let me guess. They now think I have some bizarre medical condition?” At an even more disturbing thought, he narrowed his eyes and drilled a hole in the back of her neck as she ducked beneath the bar and crossed to the outside. “If you even mention the word impotent, I’ll be over this bar with my hands around your neck so fast—”

  “Relax, Romeo,” she teased. The chat with the women seemed to have cheered her up. “Your Don Juan reputation is safe.”

  “So? Cough it up, Grace.”

  “Well, first off, I mentioned that they’d been coming in here fairly regularly, and then agreed with them when they said they couldn’t think of a better way to spend lunch than looking at your ass.” She grinned and hopped up on a bar stool. “Didn’t you ever wonder why they were constantly asking you to pull different bottles from the beer coolers? Surely you didn’t think they actually wanted to compare the labels.”

  “What are you saying? That they wanted to—”

  “Watch you bend over?” Her grin could scarcely fit on her face. “You bet.”

  Tyler felt himself flushing. He was used to flirting, enjoyed it, and thought he was good at making a woman feel special, attractive. But this was something else. The thought that three women were calculatingly setting him tasks for the sole purpose of watching his butt was highly embarrassing.

  “And I suppose when they accidentally dropped their money on the floor when they handed it across the bar to me, that wasn’t really an accident.”

  Grace laughed hard enough to lose her breath and shook her head. “Not hardly.”

  Good Lord. He wanted to fan himself, his face was so hot.

  “What did you say to make them stop all this?”

  Her eyes widened. “Not a thing. You just told me to get rid of them.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. It did nothing to hide her smile. “I’m afraid they’ll be dropping dollar bills on the floor for a long time to come.”

  “Grace,” he growled at her.

  “Don’t worry, they’re just teasing, especially after I told them how great it was that they were such steady customers of the tavern. You know, since most restauran
ts run in the red for the first five years. And since you’re undoubtedly going to be broke as a college student for the next couple of years, it’s sweet of them to help you out.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “They promised to come in at least three times a week for lunch, and they’ll bring their friends.”

  Tyler needed to confirm what he was hearing. “Because they think I’m a charity case?”

  “Do you care?” Grace shrugged at him. “They’re nice ladies, but they are serious husband-hunters. This way, they’ll still come here and spend money, but you’re basically safe from the total come-on.”

  He just gaped at her, torn between gratitude and being offended.

  Meanwhile, Grace had started tapping her fingernails sharply against the varnish of the bar. Her eyes locked on her rapidly moving fingers.

  “Is that night off you mentioned still available?”

  “What? Yes. Of course it is. Tomorrow will be crazy, but take Sunday night off. Monday, too, if you want it. You’ve certainly put in enough hours in the last week, and you should have some regular days off anyway.”

  “So should you, you know. You ought to think about a night off yourself.”

  What was this sudden concern on her part? Grace looked edgy and still kept her head down. “I might, at that. Spencer offered to watch the bar for me on Sunday night, since it should be quiet.”

  As he watched, she twisted a cocktail straw until it was tied in knots. She stopped abruptly as if suddenly noticing what her hands were doing, and threw the straw in the trash with a grimace.

  Her eyes, when she turned her face toward him, were not quite happy.

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner on Sunday, then?”

  Six

  “What on earth was I thinking?”

  Grace demanded the question of her closet, standing in front of the open door for the sixth time on Sunday morning. She’d already raced through two loads of laundry and an hour at the ironing board in a desperate attempt to find something suitable to wear for dinner with Tyler. Crossed off the list were jeans and a T-shirt or shorts and a halter top, both too casual. Slacks and a blouse, too much like work clothes. The one short, cocktail dress she’d brought with her, God knows why, was much too dressy.