This should be interesting. In spite of her elegant appearance on Saturday night, she had not been comfortable in the strapless gown or the high-heeled shoes—especially not the dress—but he still had trouble picturing her running a blue-collar establishment, and that’s clearly what this was.
He opened the door and stepped inside the dimly lit space, realizing he’d forgotten to leave his sunglasses in the car. He shoved them up onto his head and waited for his eyes to adjust. The place smelled of beer and disinfectant with a hint of deep-fryer fat that was past its prime. Gradually he became aware that all eyes—those of two older men perched on stools that flanked one corner of the bar and the young brunette behind the bar—were on him.
Or…was that Jess?
It was. The lighting was deceptive and the brunette was actually a redhead. He approached the bar, taking in the unexpected transformation of the ill-at-ease woman in the strapless blue gown into this casual ponytailed barkeep in a man’s blue-and-white-pinstriped dress shirt worn jacket-style over a gray T-shirt. He had been oddly attracted to the initial version, but he was out-and-out intrigued by this one.
“This is a surprise,” she said.
He’d be willing to wager that he was more surprised than she was. Without taking her eyes off him, she finished pulling a glass of beer and slid it across the counter to one of the only two customers in the place.
Michael nodded a greeting to the two men and took a stool, leaving an empty one between them, and turned his attention back to Jess. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“Were you?” Her tone implied that she didn’t believe him. “What brings you down here?”
You, he was tempted to say, but that wasn’t entirely true and she’d never believe it anyway. “Real estate,” he said instead.
“I see. Buying or selling?”
“Buying.”
She was back to looking skeptical again. At the wedding she had mentioned that the mechanics who had been her grandfather’s old friends still frequented the place. Her two customers had to be them.
“What can I get you?” she asked.
He thought about asking for a glass of wine just to see what she’d give him, but he was pretty sure that would tick her off. Instead, he did a quick survey of what she had on tap. A small but impressive selection. “I’ll have a Guinness.”
She reached for a glass and while she filled it, he studied her face. At the wedding she’d worn her hair loose and her makeup had been flawless. Today he doubted she was wearing any, except maybe some mascara. With her coloring, the long, sweeping eyelashes seemed too dark to be natural. She looked young, probably much younger than she actually was, and the faded, slim-fitting jeans and black-and-white high-topped sneakers made her seem even more youthful.
She set the glass on a cardboard coaster in front of him. “What kind of real estate are you looking for?”
“A location for a new wine bar.”
“So you really do know something about wine.” Her grin took the edge off the dig.
“I do.”
“I sure don’t need any more competition, but a wine bar sounds like the kind of place the neighborhood newbies will go for.”
Unlike the two men seated at the bar. They were a couple of old-timers in every sense of the word. Michael took a quick look around the interior. “I don’t know. If you fix up this place, you’d attract a diff—” The two men had stopped talking and had tuned in to his conversation with Jess. “You’d bring in more business.”
She gave him a long, thoughtful look. “I’m working on it.”
If she had a plan, she apparently wasn’t going to share it with him. “Have you considered selling?” he asked instead.
She’d started to clean the counter with a damp cloth, but she paused in midswipe. He noticed that the pink nail polish she’d worn at the wedding was gone. “If that’s why you came in here, you should have saved yourself the trouble. The Whiskey Sour is not for sale.”
It had been an innocent enough question, but she was genuinely offended by it. “No problem. I just looked at a place on Folsom Street. It needs work, but it’s the best I’ve seen so far.” With the exception of this place. He wanted a building that had the feel of an old warehouse, in keeping with the neighborhood, and Jess’s bar had everything on his list—interior brick walls, exposed overhead ducts and wiring, and original plank floors that had, over the decades, been buffed into a natural patina. Didn’t she realize she was sitting on a gold mine? Then again, her business was none of his.
“Do you live around here?” Her voice sounded distant all of a sudden, and he could tell she was still suspicious about his motivation for being here. Damn. That’s not what he’d intended.
“I have an apartment on Nob Hill. What about you?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Not far from here.” She backed away and leaned on the counter behind the bar, arms folded, ankles crossed.
This was not going well.
He took the sunglasses off his head, folded them and set them on the bar. “So I was wondering, would you like to go out for dinner sometime?” She looked as surprised as he felt. He’d thought a lot about asking her out since he’d danced with her on Saturday night, but he usually had more finesse than this.
“Oh. Um…I work here most nights so…no. But thanks.”
The skinny man sitting closest to him shifted slightly on his stool. “She doesn’t work on Thursdays,” he said.
“Larry! No help from the peanut gallery.”
Both men were smiling broadly and nudging one another with their elbows. “When was the last time you went out on a date?” the heavyset man asked.
Jess’s face turned a revealing shade of red. “Bill, that goes for you, too. You guys are as bad as Granddad used to be.”
The man named Larry wasn’t finished. “She has another bartender who’s here every Thursday,” he said to Michael. “So tomorrow night would be good.”
Michael laughed. He felt a bit like a teenager asking a girl’s father for permission to take her out. “Thursdays. Good to know. Unfortunately, I have plans tomorrow. A family dinner,” he added quickly so she didn’t think it was a date. “It’s my brother’s birthday. Next Thursday would be good, though.” He hoped he was free that night, but if there was something on his calendar, it would be easy enough to change.
Jess stepped forward, planted both hands flat on the bartop and leaned toward him. “Hello? I said no.”
Ah, but did she mean it? He put his own hand down so it was almost touching hers. “I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on running a bar in this part of the city. It would just be a business dinner.”
“A free business dinner,” Larry said.
Bill, who’d been slowly nursing his beer, set his glass down. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Jess rolled her eyes and glared at them.
Michael was sure she was having second thoughts.
“Do you have a pen?” he asked.
She plucked one from a jar beside the cash register and handed it to him.
“Thanks.” He took a fresh coaster from a stack on the bar, flipped it over and wrote his number on the back. “This is my cell phone. I’ll pick you up here at six next Thursday, but if something