by Aiden Bates
Sam put his helmet onto the bike. Yeah, okay, so Logan was just another yuppie. That didn't mean that he didn't have feelings about this. And it was good that he wanted his people to keep their jobs. Sam guessed the guy had some redeeming qualities. One or two, anyway. "You can't get blood from a stone, man. I get it. You're worried about your livelihood, you're worried about your career, and you’re worried about the people you hired. It would take a miracle to pull this off. Running roughshod over people, and treating them like crap because you see us as second-class citizens? Not going to make things better. We don't live like you do. We don't want to. Doesn't mean we have less of a right to be here, you get that?"
Logan's jaw dropped. Sam didn't think that anyone had ever spoken to him like that before. "I never said that you don't have a right to exist. I'm just trying to make sure that my business succeeds."
"Sure. At the expense of the people who were already here in the first place." Sam tightened his mouth. "Do you really think I'm too dumb to notice that?"
"Look, sometimes progress is hard." Logan looked away.
"And sometimes people overreach." Sam stepped in. "Go back to your bosses and tell them that it's not going to work here. Try setting up closer to Portland. Try setting up closer to the water, to the summer places where all the tourists go. This ain't going to be someplace that's going to work for you. Even if we give you your wildest dreams, shut it all down tomorrow, and replace a bar of a hundred years' standing with a goddamn flower shop and ladies' tea circle or whatever, you're not going to get a place like that off the ground here. Go play golf somewhere, get out of my garage, and get out of my sight."
Logan narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. "You know, for a guy who keeps ranting about the evil yuppies moving in and making assumptions, you've made an awful lot of assumptions about me."
"Probably." Sam gripped the handlebars of his bike. "See, the difference is that you assume that because I'm a biker, and tend bar for a living, that I'm dumb as a post. I keep proving you wrong." He stabbed a finger at Logan, only stopping himself from touching the angry alpha thanks to his own sense of self-control. "I assume that because you interrupt my day off to make asinine demands that you wouldn't ask of someone you respected, and because Foster Dad Number Four had that same tie, that you're a yuppie douche with no respect for people or things who aren't just like you. And you keep proving me right. I already told you to get out of here once, buddy. You going to make me say it again? Because once we hit the third time I get nasty."
Logan bit the inside of his cheek. "We don't have to have an adversarial relationship, Sam."
"Well, see, now, I think we do." Sam forced a grin onto his face. He knew it was one of the nastier ones. "Stick to your lease, buddy. Just focus on your side of the property line, stop trying to encroach on what happens on our side, and let the chips fall where they do. If you can't listen to the people who've been here for years, just leave us alone."
"Damn it, Sam, I'm trying to come to a win-win here."
"Now you sound like Foster Dad Five." Foster Dad Five had been a real bastard. Most of the fosters had been okay, at least, but Five had sucked. "You've got five seconds to get out of this garage before I remove you."
"Are you threatening me?"
"You're trespassing." Sam pointed to the bright orange "No Trespassing" sign. "Four. Three."
Logan left.
Sam slumped. Damn it. Why did Logan have to come out and ruin a perfectly good day off? If he was going to have to deal with a hot alpha on his day off, shouldn't he at least get a good roll in the hay out of it?
He wheeled his bike out into the alley and started it up. She sounded perfect. A ride out in the early autumn sun would make him feel better.
He sent a quick text to Silas, warning him to be on the alert for Logan, and then he headed out. He headed around Sebago Lake, taking in the scenery and just enjoying the feel of that powerful engine under him. Riding always calmed him down.
Why was it that Logan got under his skin so much? It wasn't just the yuppie thing. Joe's got those kind of guys in all the time, and they never bugged Sam much. Some of them were attractive, and sometimes he even acted on that attraction if Silas wasn't feeling twitchy about it.
Logan, though. Silas didn't need to get twitchy about Logan (even though he was, incredibly so). Sam had never been so attracted to a guy who he wanted to throw into a lake, and he didn't understand it at all. Logan smelled better than any guy he'd ever met. That black-tea scent was too much to resist, and Sam found himself wanting to bare his neck just for Logan.
It was too bad about the attitude. Sam didn't need his partners to be bikers, or even to be blue-collar guys like himself. He wouldn't want a long-term partner who didn't come from the same kind of background, but for a night or two? Yeah, Foster Dad Four had that same tie. He wouldn't have to look at the damn tie if it were on the floor.
Sam had been forced to tolerate a lot of things, from a lot of people, in his life. One thing he'd never learned to take was contempt. It occurred to Sam, as he started back around the other side of Sebago Lake, that what bothered him the most about Logan was that he continued to feel drawn to Logan despite the contempt that pretty much dripped from the guy.
Now that he understood the problem, he could deal with it. He didn't understand why he was so attracted to Logan, but he didn't need to. That happened, between alphas and omegas sometimes, and it was just part of life. He could ignore it and move on, hopefully while keeping his temper in check. Logan had been way out of line today, but Sam knew that it wasn't like him to lash out the way he had.
He headed back to the apartment. He couldn't avoid the trattoria as he passed. It looked like they had a few people in there, but if Logan was smart he'd have people seated near the front of the place to keep it looking full. That was what Sam would do, anyway, especially if he wanted to drum up business.
He parked his bike back in the garage and went inside. He did some chores — cleaning, laundry, a little light cooking for the week — and then he headed downstairs.
Silas was there, chatting with the cute chef from next door. Sam slunk over to the corner and got himself a beer. There was no way that he was going to interrupt his brother's flirt time.
At least, he didn't plan to interrupt his brother's flirt time. Kaylee, the chef, beckoned him over with a loud, "Hey, Sam! C'mere!"
Sam groaned and dragged himself and his beer over to her barstool. "Hey, Kaylee. How's things?"
"Well, they started out well. Then someone cast an evil spell and turned my boss into a moody dick." She rolled her magnificent brown eyes and took a sip of her Amaretto sour.
"Sorry." Sam couldn't muster much regret, but he did feel bad that Logan had taken his bad day out on her. "He heard some stuff he didn't want to hear, I guess. He shouldn't have taken it out on you."
"I don't think I like that guy, Sam." Silas rubbed at his knuckles.
"It's not his fault." Kaylee hunched her shoulders. "He's trying really hard to make this place profitable, and his bosses haven't given him much time to do it. He's under a lot of pressure, you know? He doesn't really know anyone up here and he's… well. He's under pressure."
"That's fine. I get pressure." Sam put his beer down on the bar. "I think everyone in this room gets pressure. The thing is, he's treating other people badly, which is kind of crappy of him, and he's having trouble with the word no. Which is an issue."
Silas drew himself up to his full height. "What's this?"
Sam held up his hands, palms out in a placatory gesture. "Dude. It's okay. He was trying to pressure me into letting them block in the alley behind the bar for valet parking, without talking to you, and I had to tell him like three times to leave. It wasn't what you were thinking."
Silas calmed a little. "I still think that I need to go and have a little talk with him." He glared at the wall closest to the trattoria.
Kaylee gave Sam a measuring look. "He's not that bad."
; Sam sighed and picked his beer up again. "He probably isn't. But he doesn't respect us, and that's getting to be a real problem. It's a shame."
Sam meandered over to one of the pool tables and picked up a game, making a few extra bucks to line his pockets. He didn't want to think about Logan anymore, or his bad attitude, or what could happen if he were just a bit better at hiding that attitude. He just wanted to relax and enjoy the rest of his day off.
***
Logan moped through the rest of the day after his confrontation with Sam, and then through the next day too. He knew that his staff noticed. Kaylee, as always, told him exactly what she thought about his behavior. She practically had a bullet-point list about all of the most ridiculous aspects of it. Logan didn't pay attention. He knew that he was being absurd; he didn't need someone else to tell him that.
By the time Friday rolled around, though, he had to pull himself together. He could get away with hiding out in his office, for the most part, on a weeknight. Staring at the numbers for the first couple of weeks didn't make him feel any better about things, but at least he could be out of sight for a while. He couldn't get away with that on the weekends.
They'd been open for almost two weeks by now, and while that wasn't long enough to call anything a pattern, he'd been in the business long enough to know that weekends were going to be the big, make-or-break times for Trattoria Siena. Weekends were usually big for any restaurant, but seeing as how they had weeknights go by that had only one or two tables filled, the Trattoria depended on weekend receipts more than most.
That would get better. It had to.
It didn't help that the damn bikers had started up a Monday night trivia night next door. Logan had tried to play nice, and had asked them to maybe not open during his opening night. They hadn't had more than five people in there when he went in to ask, for crying out loud. It must have cost them more to keep the lights on than they'd have made by opening.
Instead of cooperating and being good neighbors, they'd started up Monday Night Trivia Nights, with the proceeds to benefit the Cumberland County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Kaylee, who'd started spending way more time in that dive than Logan had thought she could possibly want, told him that the two Mondays that had passed between then and now were their highest grossing weeknights.
Okay, he could sort of understand why the Marlowe brothers might be a little resistant. Just as Joe's didn't bring the kind of clientele around that Logan's customers wanted, the Trattoria didn't tend to bring around the kind of clientele that would even remotely benefit Joe's. Sure, they could probably clean the place up a little, add a few more upscale items to their drink menu, get rid of the pool tables. That would risk losing them their existing clientele, and there was no doubt in Logan's mind that Joe's was a very popular establishment.
Logan had asked for something unreasonable when he'd asked about the alley. He hadn't realized it at the time, but he certainly got it now. He hadn't realized that the garage was occupied. He hadn't thought even for a minute about the people who lived above the bar, the apartments that didn't belong to the Marlowes.
He hadn't gone in intending to offend, and he could see why his words had offended, but to be honest the Marlowes seemed to go into every interaction with him looking to be offended. They saw his clothes, saw his job, and wrote him off as a yuppie. Were they really just jealous of his success? Did they not realize how hard he'd worked just to get to where he was, how much further he still had to go?
He couldn't focus on them tonight. At least, he couldn't focus on their feelings. He needed to be sharp and firing on all cylinders, to make sure that nothing went wrong. Trattoria Siena couldn't afford to have any setbacks.
The night started off well enough. They had enough reservations to keep a steady stream of customers coming in the door, mostly people coming out from Portland. Some customers were locals looking for something new, which was great even if they couldn't usually afford to become regulars. That would change as the neighborhood improved, but those were long-range plans.
Walk-in traffic picked up as the night went on, and that was a good thing too. That meant that people were sitting around at home and making a choice, a last minute choice, to come out to Westbrook and try Trattoria Siena. One or two were familiar faces, and that was the best thing of all. That meant that they were doing well enough to get repeat business. Their owners would be ecstatic about that.
The problem with increasing foot traffic was that they had to pick up the pace on pretty much everything. They had to turn tables over faster, and no one wants to be rushed when they're sitting down to a luxury Italian dinner. Turning the tables over faster meant not getting bogged down in the kitchen, which meant getting every order out right the first time. That shouldn't have been an issue, and Kaylee did her side of things right. The line cooks weren't quite as on top of things as Kaylee was, though, and they had to re-do a few things. Logan had to smooth a few ruffled feathers about that, but dealing with irate customers was part of the job. Quite frankly, if he paid thirty-five dollars a plate and got served the wrong dish, he'd be irate too.
Scaling up to accommodate the increased traffic also meant dealing with parking. Logan still had valets; he just wasn't able to offer the premium valet service he wanted. Instead, the valets parked cars in the parking lot of a nearby office building where he'd negotiated favorable rates.
Logan was near the front of the trattoria, calming a customer who had been forced to wait ten minutes longer than he wanted to for his check, when he heard the sickening crunch of metal on metal. There were no screaming brakes, just the crash and a terrible silence.
"Excuse me," Logan said, through a dry mouth. "That sounds expensive."
Logan's back had been to the door. The customer could see whatever had just happened. He had been very angry about having had to wait, and was more than happy to let Logan know about it, but now he just clapped Logan on the arm. "I don't think expensive is the word you're going to need here, buddy. Good luck."
Logan slid outside. The valet was sliding out of a Mercedes convertible, one whose glossy black paint job was now enhanced with significant scratches down the front. A badly damaged motorcycle lay on its side, under the front bumper, in a clearly marked legal parking spot.
The valet scowled as a tall, bald black man charged out of Joe's. "My bike!" The biker clapped his hands to the side of his head and ran over to his stricken motorcycle. "What the hell did you just do?"
The valet sneered. "Well, maybe if you hadn't parked it there, you wouldn't have chipped the paint on this sweet Benz."
Logan hid his eyes with one hand. "Oh my God, shut up."
Sam ran out of the bar, long brown hair flying out behind him, and picked up on the situation right away. "Aw, geez, Nelson, that sucks."
"This little prick hit my bike with that — that thing!" Nelson turned and pointed to the valet. "I'm going to break every bone in his skinny little neck." He advanced on the valet. A few other bikers followed him, smacking a fist into their hand or laughing lewdly.
None of this had any effect on the valet at all. The little man stepped right up and into Nelson's space, pointing a stubby finger into his face. "Buddy, if you hadn't parked your scooter right in the way, none of this would be a problem. Why don't you just go crawl back under whatever rock you crawled out from under before my boss sues you back to the eighties, or whenever that outfit came from."
Sam slipped himself in between Nelson and the valet. "Look. Nelson, your bike was legally parked. The security cameras on our place and on the restaurant will show that." He glanced at Logan. "You called the cops yet, there, Logan?"
Logan jumped. "What?"
"For the insurance?"
One of the other bikers shook his head in disgust. This one hadn't been heading toward the valet but just watching. Now he reached into his pocket and pulled out a badge and his phone. "Hang on." He made a quick call. "They're on their way now. No one's leaving 'till they
get here."
The valet spat onto the sidewalk and cursed. "I ain't listening to you, Crackerjack. Stupid bikers, thinking you own the place." He took a swing at Sam, one that he telegraphed so badly that they could probably see it in Russia.
Sam moved so quickly that Logan could hardly see him move. He caught the valet in a full nelson and held him while the biker with the badge slapped some handcuffs on him. "It's supposed to be my night off," the cop groused. "Thanks for that, and by the way, whose bright idea was it to employ a valet that smells like a damn distillery?"
Logan stepped forward. He'd never felt the urge to murder someone before, but right now he wanted to rip this punk's head from his shoulders. How dared he try to punch Sam? "We outsource the valet function." He stepped into the bound valet's space. "I would certainly hope that they'll be ending their contract with someone who's been arrested for DUI. Either way, you won't be returning here." He grabbed the younger man's arm, intending to drag him away.
"Ow! Hey!" the drunken valet cried.