“Um…I can go this way,” I said, pointing to the left.
He grinned. “Either way.” Taking my face in his hands, he leaned down slowly, his smile broadening when my head moved to the left. And then closer…closer…until I felt the warmth of his breath on my li—
BLEEP. BLEEP. BLEEP. BLEEP. BLEEP. BLEEP. BLEEP. BLE—
We both jerked back, the car alarm next to us going off at an ear-splitting volume.
Yeah. This was not gonna happen tonight.
With a sigh, I picked up my clutch from the floorboard. “I should probably go check on things inside,” I said, nodding at Licked. It was past closing time, and of course Zoe would’ve done a perfect job of closing things up, but it felt like a good excuse. We’d just start over when he got back from Hong Kong. “I’ll see you when you get back?”
Cameron nodded, giving me a smile, but he looked a little disappointed. Or maybe I was projecting. I wanted him to feel disappointed. Hmm, maybe that can work in my favor. Disappointment could turn into missing me madly, and he’d probably jump me when he got back in town. The girls would be so excited. And, of course, so would I.
“You can count on it,” he said. “Let me walk you to the door.” He reached for his door handle, and I laid my hand on his arm.
“No need for you to get soaked again. I’m just gonna make a run for it.” When he didn’t look convinced, I said, “Really. I already know you’re a gentlemen.” And then I jumped out of the car and dashed for the door, not bothering to turn back until I was inside the private entrance that led to my apartment.
No need for his last glimpse of me to be a soggy mess. I’d rather him think of me as the hot woman he couldn’t wait to come back to and do all sorts of inappropriate things with. Yeah, let him think on that while he was gone.
“THAT’S YOUR NEW contractor? Bloody hell.” Shayne’s eyes were wide as she watched Hunter giving instructions to his crew. By the way she was eyeballing him, I had a feeling I’d have to kick her out of the shop soon.
“Aren’t you a few hours late for work?” I asked, wiping down the already clean countertops. I wasn’t about to admit it, but I was keeping an eye on those guys too. One specifically. But just to make sure he wasn’t a lazy good-for-nothing like the last guy.
Oh yeah. And Hunter had replaced the black tarp with a clear one. He said it was for transparency reasons, meaning I could check in at any time and make sure they weren’t sitting around having a beer.
But as I checked out his crew, a mix of guys aged twenty to fortyish, I thought maybe that wasn’t the whole reason. It was like he’d found the Magic Mike crew of construction. Which made Hunter…Channing Tatum. But no, that wasn’t completely accurate. With his tousled brown hair, olive skin, and intense eyes, he was more like James Dean’s older brother. I bit down hard on my lip.
“…just here to check your schedule. Hello? Ryleigh?” Shayne waved her hand in front of my face, and I snapped out of my stupor.
“What?”
Her gaze followed mine to where Hunter was looking right at me. And his eyes on mine snapped me back to reality, and I quickly looked away.
“Sorry, what were you saying?” I asked. “Check my schedule for what?”
Shayne’s eyebrow went up. “Isn’t that Cameron’s roommate? The one staring at you?”
I didn’t bother looking to see who she meant. Or if he was still looking at me. “Yeah, apparently so. So you were saying—”
“He’s hot. Holy cow.” Shayne fanned herself with her hand. “I don’t know how you plan to get any work done with the Chippendales over there.”
Rolling my eyes, I wiped the counter with a little more vigor. “I do have world domination plans to deal with, so I think I’ll be a little preoccupied.”
She laughed. “Of course you do. So how’s this Sunday night for a mixer? I know it’s Wednesday and less than a week notice is crazy last-minute, but you know—”
“Val,” I said, shaking my head. “You have the most demanding, psychotic boss in the world, you know that, right?”
“Girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. She’s entertaining, at the very least.”
“She’s a pill-popping sexual deviant diva whore.”
“True.”
“She sets you up with all the client rejects as ‘interviews.’”
“And there’s that.”
“And what about the time she made you go to her house to FedEx her favorite pair of panties to her while she was on vacation?”
Shayne laughed. “That too.” She ran her hands over her long, curly red locks, the kind that made you think of the quintessential feisty Irish lass—which was far from what she actually was.
A sweet Australian transplant, that’s what she was. She’d been such a quiet thing when she’d first arrived in L.A., all bright-eyed with an accent everyone fainted over, but after a decade in the U.S., she’d been thoroughly corrupted and lost most of the loony Aussie words we didn’t understand, though she could pull them back out when she needed to. And damn, did the boys love that.
I grabbed my appointment book from behind the counter and looked at this week’s schedule. Not that I didn’t already know it, but it never hurt to double-check myself.
We closed the shop Sunday evenings and Mondays, leaving it open for private parties and events, and if we didn’t have those—a much-needed break. Shayne worked with one of the top matchmaking companies in the city, and they frequently held mixers at Licked. I loved it—watching all that first-date awkwardness was entertaining as hell.
“Sunday works,” I said, tossing the appointment book back in its spot.
“You’re a goddess.” Shayne leaned over the bar and grabbed me in a tackle hug. “I’ll make sure to tell Val last-minute bookings require a twenty percent surcharge.”
“No complaints about that. Want a shake to go?”
“Nah, I have a feeling I’ll be stopping by quite a bit over the next few weeks. You know. For the view.” She looked back at the guys working next door and grinned.
I swiped her with my dishrag. “Out, you perv. Go slack somewhere else.”
She waved as she left, and her timing was perfect. We were slammed with a rush of customers for a good three hours straight, several of them asking for flavors reserved for our Friday night ‘Flavors from Your Favorite Flicks’ theme. That day always proved to be a popular one. I mean, who could resist buying a Bleedin’ Armadillo Grooms Cake shake or a Cinderfuckinrella sundae?
When it slowed, I took the opportunity to go next door to check things out and make sure there were no issues. It’d been a steady mix of drills and hammering throughout the day, so I wasn’t worried, though I’d had to turn up the music in the shop to help drown it out a bit.
Hunter was in the middle of sawing a long piece of wood when he looked over at me. He held up his hand for me to stay where I was, and then set down the saw and grabbed a hardhat and goggles from the set lined against the wall. Handing them to me, he said, “No entering without one.”
“It’ll smash my hair.”
He gave me a look I didn’t dare argue with, and I sighed before donning the glasses and gently placing the bright yellow hat on my head, holding on to it so it didn’t sit completely on my curls.
“How come you’re not wearing a hat?”
“Because I’m the boss.”
“That’s not a good reason. I’m not paying workman’s comp when you get knocked out by a flying hammer.”
“I’ve got a strict policy about tools in the workplace. They don’t fly.”
“Good, then I won’t have to worry about your brain damage. That’s a weight off.” I looked around at their progress, noting that even though it’d only been half a day, they were almost done knocking down everything that needed to go. It had taken the other crew weeks to do half that. Once again, I kicked myself for not busting their balls. “So how’s it going?” I asked.
As Hunter launched into the spiel about what they’d been doi
ng, I caught myself paying more attention to his mouth than what was coming out of it. A very stupid thing to do, because he soon noticed.
“Your eyes are glazing over,” he said.
“What?” I knew what he meant, but he was wrong about the why.
“Sorry, I won’t bore you with the details if you don’t want to know.”
“No, no, that’s… This is great. Progress. You guys are on top of it. Really.”
Hunter’s brow creased as if he were trying to decide if I was being sincere, and then it smoothed out. “Well, we’ve got a long way to go, but we’ll get it done. I do have a question about the seating arrangements.” He walked over to where the blueprint was taped to the wall and pointed. “With the seating area, you’re going to want to make this path right here a little wider or it’ll be too cramped for people to walk to the back area easily. Maybe if you made the high-tops a bit smaller, like for two people instead of four, it’d save you a ton of space.”
Slowly nodding, I said, “That makes sense, but Scott ordered the tables weeks ago.”
“Scott ordered them?”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess we could call the company and see if they can switch them out for a smaller version.”
Hunter stared at me. “Right…yeah, okay, I’ll check into that.”
I smiled. “Great. Good catch. I wasn’t even thinking about how wide the walkway would actually be. I was more focused on the front of the store. Thanks.”
He nodded slowly. “No problem. I’d better get back to it, but I’ll, uh, keep you posted on the tables.”
“Perfect.” I removed the hat and glasses and handed them to him, and then patted my hair to make sure it wasn’t a complete mess.
“It still looks good,” Hunter said, as he backed away. “Your hair. It all looks”—he scanned the rest of my body before looking back at my face—“really good.”
As I stood there, frozen, he picked up the saw from the bar and went back to cutting through the wood. I tried not to notice the strong muscles in his back as he—
Move. Move your feet, Ryleigh.
With an awkward shuffle, I made my way back to the other side of the tarp, also now known as my safe haven. I took in a deep lungful of sweet-scented air, the cheerful room a welcome change from the testosterone-filled space.
“Everything good next door?” Zoe asked, as I tied my apron back on and washed my hands.
“Gonna be breathtaking.”
Zoe bumped my hip with hers. “I wasn’t referring to him.”
“Who?” I asked, knowing good and full well whom the hell she meant.
“That dark-headed one with the dreamy eyes.”
“The dreamy… Oh Lord, not you too.”
“I’m not mooning over the guy, but I can appreciate an attractive specimen when I see one.”
“Mhmm. Sure.” I grabbed a clean stack of glass sundae dishes and carried them to the front counter as Zoe followed.
“If you need to test him out, I can cover another evening shift—”
After setting down the dishes, I whirled around. “Wait a minute. Just the other day you were telling me to take the night off to go on a date with Cameron. That’s his roommate, Z.”
“Yeah, and then I saw the way you flushed when that Hunter guy walked in.”
“I didn’t flush,” I said, turning my back on her. “There was no flushing.”
“Whatever you say. I’m guessing it’s just the temperature that has your cheeks all pink right now.”
As Zoe took over the register, I spun away and put the back of my hand up to my cheek. It did feel a little warm, but that didn’t have anything to do with a guy. Especially an off-limits one I had absolutely no interest in.
Riiiiiiiight.
I WAS DOING inventory when Hunter came walking into my shop Friday afternoon. He always stayed on the After Dark side, so that was my first clue that something wasn’t right. My second clue was the look on his face.
Mentally preparing myself for whatever it was he wanted to dump on me, I held the notepad to my chest and plastered a smile on my face as he walked up to the register.
“Please tell me you don’t have bad news,” I said through my teeth.
Hunter frowned. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is that some kind of Botox shit?”
I let my smile drop. “No, it’s not some kind of Botox…anything, and watch your mouth around my customers.” When I realized what I just said, I shook my head. “Sorry, I sounded like my grandma just then. And it’s not like I don’t sell ice cream that’s called worse.”
“No, you’re right.” He made the motion of zipping his lips.
Chimes went off as the front door opened, and a pair of twenty-somethings entered the store.
“Hey there. Ready to Get Licked?” I said in greeting, which earned high-pitched giggles from them and a raised eyebrow from Hunter. There was a wicked gleam in his eyes, and I nodded at him to take a seat at the bar. Turning back to the women, I asked, “First time here?”
“Yeah, our coworker told us about this place and said we had to come,” the first girl with shaggy blond hair said. She looked around the store with an approving eye. “This is so rad. I love the colors.” Then she looked at the bright pink and aqua rockabilly dress I was sporting today. “And you match. Is this your store?”
I glanced down at my outfit and laughed. “Yeah, I suppose that’s obvious. What can I make for you ladies today? One of the specials today is a Dammit Spike from Notting Hill.”
Their eyes went big and round.
“We’re a little unconventional here,” I said with a wink.
“That’s cool,” the blond said before turning to her friend. “What was that she told us to get? Something salted caramel?”
“I thought it had candy in it?” her friend said.
“You mean the S&M&M?” I asked. “Salted caramel ice cream with two handfuls of M&M’s? Sound about right?”
“Yeah,” the blond said with a chuckle. “That’s it. But just two small ones.”
I smiled at her and swiped the card she handed to me. “Comin’ right up.”
After putting together their sundaes and letting Amber and Heather, two of my employees, cover the counter, I went over to where Hunter was seated at the far end on a barstool.
Though he’d been working for hours, he wasn’t a sweaty mess like he should’ve been. No dirty construction guys over here. This reaffirmed Shayne’s Chippendales theory.
“Okay, tell me,” I said, stopping in front of him and crossing my arms, as if that would somehow act as a barrier for whatever the bad news was. Please let them be able to finish on time. Please please please.
Hunter rubbed the stubble on his jaw and sighed. “I need you to promise you won’t freak out. There’s always a solution.”
“You’re asking me to promise I won’t freak out when you know I have a reason to or you wouldn’t be telling me that. Spit it out.”
“The orders you gave to Scott were not put through.”
I blinked. “What? What does that mean?”
“It means the tables, the chairs, the lighting fixtures, the bar…none of that has been ordered.”
“What! Oh my God.”
“I said don’t freak out.”
“Don’t tell me not to freak out. What did he do, buy a house in the Bahamas with the money? Oh my God.”
“Hey, keep your voice down.” He inclined his head at a few customers close by who were watching my meltdown and then looked back at me, his lips tipping up in a grin as he threw my earlier words back in my face.
“Sorry about that,” I said, addressing the customers and putting on a smile before pointing at the tarp. “You know. Renovations.” When they went back to eating, I white-knuckled the counter. “I think I’m gonna pass out.”
“You’re not gonna pass out,” Hunter said, standing up. “Can we go to your office or somewhere more private to discu
ss this?”
I moaned. “I don’t have an office. And now I don’t have furniture. Or lights. I’ll have to serve everyone in plastic cups by candlelight while they sit on the floor.”
“All right, stay there.” Hunter rounded the end of the bar and grabbed my elbow, his other hand on my lower back as he helped me and my wobbly legs to an empty booth. I plopped down, super ladylike, on the hot-pink vinyl and scooted to the middle before dropping my head in my hands.
“Do you need a paper bag?” he asked, as he sat down across from me.
“No. Just…you said there’s always a solution. I’m gonna need to hear that right now before I go drown myself in a vat of ice cream.”
“Look at me.”
“That’s not a solu—”
“Look at me.” His voice was demanding this time, and I lifted my head to see eyes intense on mine. Intense and yet comforting. Like just gazing at them set my mind more at ease and had the tension escaping my body.
How does he do that? Does he have some kind of mood stabilizer superpower or something?
Apparently I said that last part out loud, because he chuckled. “Not that I know of, but I’m glad to see I have that kind of effect on you.”
For some reason, that made me squirm. Relaxed wasn’t the only effect he had on my traitorous body, it seemed. Which pissed me off.
“Okay, I’m looking at you, what now?” I said. “Is this where you convince me it’s not the end of the world, and we can bring in plastic chairs if we have to and call it chic?”
Hunter leaned forward and clasped his hands together. Rough, manly hands, the kind that knew their way around…well, probably everything. I shivered.
“I wanted you to look me in the eye and believe me when I tell you we’ve got this. I won’t lie, though. Your orders are fucked. There’s no way on your timeline to get any of those pieces custom-made and shipped in time. It’s just not gonna happen.”
“Oh my G—”
“But I’ve got a better idea. I think I get the look you’re going for, and there’s a place near Palm Desert that makes incredible one-of-a-kind pieces. I know the owner, and he can guarantee having them done when you need them. It’s just a matter of picking out what you like.”
Licked (L.A. Liaisons Book 1) Page 5