“Swell. The next time I have to break up a bar fight at one in the morning, it’ll be a real comfort to me, knowing you’re on hand to keep an eye on things.”
She stuck out her chin. “I’m not really concerned about your comfort level.”
He muttered something that sounded like, “No kidding.”
“This is a business decision,” she said firmly.
Which was a lie. It was intensely personal, this need to have a place that was wholly hers. She was tired of making room in her heart and her life and her closets for men who moved in, made a mess and moved on. The Blue Moon was hers.
“Anyway, it’s my decision,” she said, which was true and made her feel better.
“Well, that puts me in my place.”
Heat swept her cheeks. “I didn’t mean—”
His lips twisted in a smile. If he hadn’t looked like Lucifer rejoicing over the fall of mankind, she might have thought he was teasing. Or even sympathetic.
“Forget it,” he said. “If you don’t see any problem with a young, single, attractive woman living alone over a bar, it’s not my job to educate you.”
Pleasure spurted through her. He thought she was attractive.
No. He thought she was dumb as a rock.
Keeping her voice cool, she said, “Actually, it is your job. To educate me, I mean.”
He leaned against the bar. “Now that could get interesting.”
She ignored the little jump of her pulse. “Why don’t we start with a review of the employee schedules,” she suggested.
He went very still. And then he nodded once, in a brief gesture of…acquiescence? Respect? “You’re the boss.”
Or was he mocking her?
For over an hour, they discussed schedules and procedures and suppliers. Nicole took notes on her laptop. Mark showed her the work schedule pinned to a bulletin board in the back and the contact numbers taped by the phone, but most of the information he seemed to keep in his head.
It was inefficient, she decided. And intimidating.
“Deanna’s the only waitress with the hours to get benefits,” he was saying. “Then you’ve got Joe on days, and me on nights. Both full-time. And Louis, who runs the kitchen. You meet Louis yet?”
A slightly built, softly spoken black man with a bald head and a dry handshake. She nodded.
“Everybody else is part-time,” Mark continued. “You’ll meet them all eventually.”
She wanted to hold a staff meeting and meet them all at once. “Actually—”
“Payroll’s done by a service,” he went on. “I’ll give you—”
Nicole cleared her throat. She was getting tired of interruptions. It was time to take control. “Wouldn’t it be cheaper to calculate the deductions and write the checks ourselves?”
“Yeah. If you have time for that kind of thing. Which I don’t.”
She smiled, pleased to have discovered an area where she could make an immediate and positive difference. “But I do. Have the time. And the software.”
“You want me to give you a gold star?”
He didn’t sound jeering, she decided. More…amused.
“How about a cherry in my drink?”
He grinned suddenly, and the shock of it ran through her system like a computer virus. “You don’t strike me as the fruit-and-paper-umbrella type.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope.”
Drop it, her new, improved self ordered. You are not a healthy woman. You are a relationship addict. You cannot indulge in a flirtation, even a tiny one, without going on a love binge.
She moistened her lips with her tongue. “What type am I?” she asked.
Her better self groaned and threatened to call their mother.
Mark DeLucca studied her with his flat, black eyes. “Hard to say. Yesterday I had you pegged as a chardonnay girl.”
“And…today?”
“Today I think that’s too ordinary.”
He thought she wasn’t ordinary. Excitement licked along her nerves like flame set to paper.
The phone behind the bar rang.
They both reached for it.
Mark’s hand, hard and lean, closed over Nicole’s. She felt her cheeks color, but held on. This was her establishment. It was her phone.
After a moment he let go.
“Good morning, Blue Moon,” she said breathlessly into the receiver.
“Good morning.” The woman’s voice was pure Gold Coast, warm and rich as melted butter over lobster. “Is Mark DeLucca in?”
Nicole’s insides congealed. “One moment, please.” She thrust the phone at Mark. “It’s for you.”
He took the receiver from her cold hand. “Thanks. Mind if I—”
“Please, take the call. I think we’re done here.”
She was looking at him funny, like he’d said or done something on purpose to upset her, instead of just flirting with her a little.
But Mark didn’t have time to figure it out.
He didn’t have time to figure her out, not if this was the call he was expecting.
He held the receiver to his ear. “DeLucca here.”
“Mr. DeLucca, this is Jane Gilbert. What can I do for you?”
He turned his back on Nicole Reed, with her too-blue, too-interested eyes. “Isn’t that supposed to be my line? You wrote to me.”
“Yes.”
“So, what do you want?”
“I want whatever is in the best interests of six-year-old Daniel Wainscott. It remains to be seen if you can help me there.”
He didn’t bother to take offense at her tone. Hell, he agreed with her.
“Have you—” His heart was beating harder than it had on the airstrip at Kabul. His palm was sweaty on the receiver. “Have you said anything to him about me?”
“No. I see no point in raising the child’s hopes unless and until it is established that you are indeed his father. Are you?”
He was dimly aware of Nicole behind him, moving away to the other end of the bar. To give him more privacy?
“I don’t know,” he said.
He sure hadn’t thought about becoming a father seven years ago when he was making it with shy blond Betsy every chance they could both sneak away. Or when her mother figured out what they were up to and her daddy put a stop to it. Or at the end of that summer, when he’d joined up and shipped out, or in any of the intervening years since. But he’d given it plenty of thought in the last twenty-four hours.
“I could be,” he said.
“Then your first step should be a paternity test,” Jane Gilbert said briskly. “There are home kits, of course, but it would be better if you had the test done at a collection center, to establish a proper chain of custody. In case your claim to Daniel were to be questioned