“No, he, um, left.” Oh, that was smooth.
Joe’s cheerful, chubby face creased. “His car’s our front.”
“Yes. He got a ride.” She gritted her teeth. “From Tess somebody.”
“Oh, yeah?” Joe grinned. “Wonder if she roped him into helping with the wedding.”
Oh, God. It hurt. Nicole hadn’t expected it to hurt. Not this soon. Not this much. She barely knew the man. She didn’t even like him.
“I think so. Yes,” she said stiffly.
Joe moved behind the bar. “Hard to believe they’re getting married in just three weeks.”
“Very hard,” Nicole agreed.
Mark didn’t look like a soon-to-be-married man. He didn’t act like an engaged man.
All her instincts rejected the possibility that he belonged to another woman.
Of course, her instincts generally sucked.
“I’m sure they’ll be very happy together,” she said. “They seem very—” sexy, careless, confident, all the things she was not and never would be “—well suited.”
“You know Chief Denko?”
Nicole blinked. “Who?”
“Jarek Denko. The chief of police. Tess’s fiancé.”
“Wait. I thought—” she took a careful breath “—I thought Mark was her fiancé.”
Joe laughed. “Mark? Nah. Mark is Tess’s brother. She’s making him give her away at the wedding.”
Relief bloomed in Nicole’s chest. She was almost dizzy with it.
The brunette was Mark’s sister. Mark wasn’t engaged.
Maybe just this once her instincts weren’t entirely wrong.
Tess pulled into the lot beside Mark’s Jeep Cherokee. Her wiper blades shuddered and streaked against the windshield.
“Thanks,” she said. “I hope your boss isn’t going to be too upset with you for taking off.”
Mark grinned. “Maybe you should write me a note.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Tess said tartly. “When are you going to get married and let some other woman take care of you?”
His last experience with a married woman hadn’t left him feeling cared for at all. But Mark didn’t tell his sister that. He never talked to anybody about that.
He teased, instead. “Don’t you love me anymore?”
But she replied seriously, “I love you. That’s why I want you to be happy.”
“Uh-huh. And tying myself down to one woman is going to make me happy.”
“It would. If she were the right woman.”
This was what came of being disgustingly crazy in love. Tess was a bright girl. But her engagement to Jarek Denko had obviously shorted out a few brain cells.
“Yeah, well, the right woman isn’t going to want to have anything to do with me. Not if she’s in her right mind.”
Tess rolled her eyes. But he noticed she didn’t argue with him. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to stay out of trouble.
Yeah, like that had ever worked.
He hunched his shoulders against the rain and stomped up the plank walk to the entrance, vaguely surprised to see Nicole’s gold-toned Lexus still in the parking lot. The new owner was putting in some long hours. Either she was really conscientious, or she’d decided to stick around long enough to bust his butt.
But when Mark opened the door, it wasn’t his butt that occupied his attention.
It was hers.
Nicole was leaning over a table in one of the booths, her knees on the seat and her khaki-covered behind in the air. And she had, without question, one of the finest female rear ends he had seen in his life. Lush. Heart-shaped. Hot.
It wiggled. She turned. And—oh, jeez—caught him staring.
Only she didn’t seem to notice.
At least, she didn’t seem to mind.
She smiled, her face all sunshine despite the gray day outside, and asked cheerfully, “Like it?”
Surprise almost made him laugh.
“Love it,” he told her solemnly.
“Good. I know you can’t see it too well now, but you’ll have a much better view tomorrow.”
Okay, he was confused. Or she was. Not that he would object or anything, but it didn’t seem real likely that she was inviting him to ogle her butt.
“Why tomorrow?” he asked.
“Well, obviously clean windows are more noticeable on a clear day.”
Windows. She was talking about windows. And now that he didn’t have her cute rear end burning into his eyeballs like the sun at noon, he could see that the glass behind her shone. Even the wooden shutters gleamed, free of their usual coat of crud. A pile of crumpled rags lay on the floor beside a bucket. Nicole’s sleeves were pushed back, water spotted her left breast, and a smudge decorated her forehead.
She looked damp and untidy and very pleased with herself.
“Looks…good,” Mark said.
She beamed. “Thank you. Do you want to move those chairs, and I’ll get the windows by the—”
He hated to snuff her enthusiasm. But—
“No,” he said.
Her shoulders squared. “Is this the part where you tell me you don’t do windows? Moving furniture is not in your job description?”
He had to admire her spunk, even if she was wrong. “No. This is when I tell you the eight-to-four shift just ended at the plant and the four-to-seven rush is starting here. You need me behind the bar pushing drinks right now. Not out front pushing tables.”
“All right. I can do it myself.”
“Bad idea.”
Her voice rose in frustration. “For heaven’s sake, why? I won’t be in the way. The tables don’t fill up that quickly.”
“Because, babe, the guys who stop in here for a beer after work don’t care about clean windows. They don’t want to be reminded that they have chores and wives waiting at home. They want to relax, not watch you rearrange the furniture.”
To his surprise she nodded. “Selling atmosphere.”
“What?”
“It’s in one of my books on restaurant management. We’re not simply providing drinks, we are selling a total ambiance.”
“You aren’t going to be selling much of anything if I don’t get behind the bar.”
She wiped her hands on a rag and folded it in precise quarters. “Well then, you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or go smack his head with a bottle.
He did neither. It wouldn’t be cool, and cool was something Mark had cultivated since he was a scabby six-year-old trying desperately to find his place in the first-grade pecking order. He’d never been smart like Tess. He wasn’t well dressed like the kids from the big houses across the lake. He didn’t have the kind of mother who baked cupcakes for the class on his birthday or the kind of home you invited friends to after school. But he was cool. Man, was he cool.
He