Colleen pushed her whiskey glass to the side to make room for the food. The liquor sloshed, splashing her a little. She used a napkin to wipe her fingers and looked up to see Jesse staring at her.
“You okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
Jesse didn’t leave, though there were people waiting to be served. He studied her in silence for a few seconds longer than seemed necessary. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Nope.” Colleen gave him a small smile as she lifted an onion ring toward him. “This should do it.”
“Did he bother you?”
Surprised, she lowered the onion ring without biting it. “I can handle myself. It’s okay.”
At the sound of raucous laughter, Jesse looked down the bar. The businessman was now taking a picture with the two girls. Jesse looked back at Colleen with a frown. “I know you can. I’ve seen you. I just wanted to be sure.”
“You’ve seen me, huh?” She sipped some seltzer and dipped a ring into the horseradish sauce, but didn’t bite.
“You come in here every Thursday night,” Jesse pointed out. “I’m not saying we get a bunch of jackasses in here or anything, but there are some nights it feels like I’m Pinocchio on Pleasure Island.”
Colleen laughed. The giggle slipped out of her, unbidden and certainly unexpected. It turned the head of the businessman at the end of the bar, who glared at both of them before turning back to his new friends. Colleen didn’t let it get under her skin. She’d dealt with much worse.
“Bonus points for that reference,” she said to Jesse.
“Been watching a lot of Disney movies, what can I say?” Jesse shrugged, leaned on the bar and grinned. Over his shoulder, he said to John, the other bartender, “Can you take care of that guy over there? Yeah, the one giving me the death stare.”
John nodded and moved to handle the other customer. Colleen bit into her onion ring and gave Jesse the side-eye. It didn’t seem to bother him, and his widening grin didn’t seem to bother her.
“You’re too old for Disney movies,” Colleen said.
“Never too old for Disney.”
“Too young for Pinocchio, then. You’re more the Hercules and Aladdin era, aren’t you?”
“I have all the classics,” Jesse said. “My kid loves them.”
She couldn’t conceal her surprise. Jesse had been working on Thursdays for at least six months, but this was the first time she’d heard him mention a child. Of course, there’d never been reason for her to ask him if he had kids. Or anything else about him, really. They’d never had more than the most casual conversations, which had never seemed rude until just now.
Jesse laughed at her expression. She blushed, the flush creeping up her throat and all over her face, impossible to hide. Rosy cheeks always gave away her emotions.
“I...I didn’t know. I mean, I...I didn’t think,” she stammered.
Jesse pushed upward with his hands, straightened and knocked on the bar again, rat-a-tat tat like a drumbeat. “Her name’s Laila, and she’s eleven. She claims she’s getting a little too old for Disney movies, but I’ve convinced her that her old man needs an excuse to keep watching them.”
“You don’t look old enough to have an eleven-year-old,” Colleen said. He couldn’t be more than what, twenty-three? Maybe twenty-four, tops. A decade younger than her, at least.
Jesse stepped out of the way so John could get to some of the bottles on the top shelf behind him. He gave John a nod to acknowledge that it was time for him to get back to work. Still, Jesse took the time to give Colleen another slow smile that she supposed melted the panties off lots of ladies. She countered with another dip of onion ring.
“I’ll be forty,” he told her.
“What? Wait. No way!” she called after him. Patrons’ heads turned for the second time that night.
“Eventually, if I’m lucky!” Jesse said over his shoulder and started taking orders at the bar’s far end.
Colleen shook her head and caught John’s eye. “Guess he showed me.”
John, who’d been working at The Fallen Angel for as long as Colleen had been coming there, and probably for almost as long as the bar had been open, rolled his eyes. “He’s a smart-ass and he’s twenty-eight. You need something, hon? Another drink?”
“Another seltzer when you get a chance.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin and emptied her glass to wash away the burn of horseradish.
John took the glass and filled it, then nodded at the untouched whiskey. “Freshen that for you?”
“No, thanks.”
“Just let me know if you need something, hon.” With that, John moved off to attend to another customer.
There was a reason why Colleen came to this place every week instead of visiting different bars. Or simply staying home, which was really where she wanted to be. She came to The Fallen Angel because they knew her here. Nobody ever made her feel as though she had to “pay rent” by buying more than her single drink. And they left her alone, mostly.
Except for Jesse.
He wasn’t a bother. The opposite, as a matter of fact. He was...attentive wasn’t quite the word Colleen was thinking of, though he was. It was more than that. He was considerate. Accommodating. Solicitous. As with the onion rings, he seemed to know what she wanted before she’d thought of it. Unlike John, Jesse didn’t bother to ask her if she wanted her whiskey refreshed, though he filled her glass of seltzer once more without waiting to be told. The attention was just enough, and not too much.
At the end of the night, right before she pulled out her wallet to pay her check, he brought her a small dessert cup of chocolate mousse topped with a swirl of heavy whipped cream.
“On the house,” Jesse said before she could protest. “Eat it. Trust me, you’ll like it.”
It was the second time that night he’d made an assumption about what she’d like. It wasn’t a question of whether she would like it. It was that he seemed so sure of what she wanted that it became difficult for Colleen herself to be sure. She pushed the mousse away with her fingertips the way she’d earlier pushed the glass of whiskey.
“No, thanks.” She handed him a twenty. “Keep the change.”
Jesse caught up to her at the doorway. He came around the bar and tugged her by the sleeve. She yanked her arm free of his grip, which wasn’t tight or hurtful yet still forced her heart to thump-thump-thump and her throat to close.
“Sorry,” Jesse said. Colleen didn’t say a word. He let go of her immediately and took a step back. “I just wanted to say...I’m sorry. I thought you’d like the dessert. I mean, who doesn’t like chocolate? Unless...you’re not allergic are you? Shit. I’m sorry, Colleen. I didn’t think about that.”
She could’ve been out the door already, into the dark street and heading for home. She cast a wary glance around the bar, but it was getting late, and on a Thursday the crowd was thinner than it would be on the weekend. Nobody was paying attention to them. Even the businessman had long gone.
“I’m not allergic.”
“Oh. Okay.” He smiled, gaze holding hers. “You don’t like chocolate?”
“I like chocolate a lot. Who doesn’t?” Colleen drew in a small breath to keep her voice steady. “I just don’t like it when someone thinks he knows better than I do about what I want.”
It was the wrong thing to say, or maybe the right one, because at her words, Jesse’s gaze shuttered at once. His mouth