He felt bad about it, and took that as some consolation that he wasn’t an irredeemable jerk on the sliding scale of morality, but he just didn’t have time for that much trouble today. He’d been working toward this day for almost ten years, and if he wanted it to go smoothly, he didn’t have time to baby-sit.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he said gently, and waited to see her face fall into tears from the bold front she was putting on now. Maybe he could make it seem less personal. “You have to be over twenty-one to serve drinks in Chicago.”
To his complete surprise, she laughed. Out loud and with real humor, the laughs rolling up from her belly and out past her lips in a ringing music that made him wonder what it would take to see her laugh again.
“Thank you, darlin’,” she said, still smiling. And damned if he could stop himself from smiling back. “But if you’re trying to make my day better, I’d rather have the job than the compliment.”
“The compliment?” he asked.
“Tyler—you are Tyler, aren’t you?” At his nod, she continued, still grinning sassily. “Well, Tyler, I could hit thirty with a short stick. So if you were trying to be tender with my feminine sensibilities, don’t bother. I can’t afford ’em.”
It was as if she’d flipped a switch. Tyler wasn’t sure what had happened, but suddenly his runaway teenager had transformed herself into the image of the smart-aleck, funny, tough woman that was his favorite kind of waitress. When she’d walked in the door of the tavern as the Garcias walked out and told him that he was going to hire her because he needed her, she was rolling on bravado alone. He’d read it in bold print across her face.
But now the confidence was real, the humor was genuine. This blond angel was still just as easy to read, only now her face said, I’ve been there, done that, and you can’t even imagine what you’ll be missing if you let me get away from you now.
Still, maybe confidence that appeared so quickly would disappear just as fast. So he watched her, again, as he spoke.
“I was trying to find a nice way to tell you to get lost. I don’t have a job for you.”
“Nice try, buddy.” She retracted the arm she’d held out over the bar, waiting for a handshake, and shook out her muscles. Her eyes pierced him like a pin through a bug on a collector’s mat. “Since you’re being stubborn…you just let me know when you’re ready to shake on it.”
She pulled out one of the narrow-backed bar stools, turned it around and stepped up to straddle it in a move that had him choking on his tongue, so suddenly did the image flow into his head of her naked and swinging a leg over him in the same arrogant way.
Get a grip, Tyler, she’s looking for a job, not a bedmate, he thought. Then he watched her brace her elbows on the seatback, lace her fingers together and rest her chin on them. She licked her lips slowly, slowly enough that he could imagine what it would feel like to have her tongue gently tracing his own mouth before opening to him. The gleam in her eyes should have warned him.
“I want two bucks over minimum wage.”
“What?” The outrage was genuine enough to take his mind off of her mouth. “Waitstaff get two bucks less than minimum, with tips to make up the difference, and you’re crazy if you think you’re getting any different.”
“Yeah, well it looks to me like you got a problem here, Tyler. You got no staff, period. And since I’m the only one banging down your door looking for a job…”
She stared across the bar at him. He stared back. Somehow he’d gone from shooing her out the door to negotiating her hourly wage, and he hadn’t even said he’d hire her yet.
Damn, she was good.
“Look, it’s really a bargain, if you think about it. I’ll be playing host, waiter, busboy and most likely dishwasher, too. At least at first. You’re getting four employees for the price of one.”
“Sounds like I’m getting four employees for two bucks over minimum. That’s a lot higher than one measly server.”
“Like I said, darlin’—” She shook back her hair and sat up straight. “You need me. You want me. You know it and I know it.”
The trouble was, she was right. He did need her, and he did want her. And if he needed and wanted for two different reasons, then that was his problem. The boss sleeping with the help was the fastest way to lose good workers. And he’d already learned how quickly a woman tired of a man who spent more time with his business than he did with her. He wouldn’t be walking down that road again.
He listened to his own thoughts and gave up the battle. He’d already decided to hire her, assuming her references panned out. He didn’t really have much of a choice.
“Just give in to the inevitable, hmm?”
“You got it,” she said, and winked at him. And Tyler was sold. She was perfect.
“Where have you worked before here?”
The question was a casual one, meant more to be social than as a background check. Anyone who’d waited tables for a month or two would be able to handle his straightforward menu and small seating area. So he was a little curious when she paused before answering him.
“At a diner.” He watched her tug nervously on her hair again before shrugging at him from across the bar. “We were open twenty-four-seven. Heavy late-night and breakfast crowds. But you could do your nails and the New York Times’s crossword between noon and midnight.”
Something indefinable, something suddenly not quite right, kept him asking questions.
“What was the name of the place?”
Again the hesitation. And when she answered him, he knew he had her.
“Mel’s Diner.”
Grace saw Tyler’s eyes widen, in disbelief, she assumed, and cursed herself for a fool. She should never have walked in here without laying out her story beforehand. When he’d asked her that stupid question, her mind had blanked and she’d blurted out the first thing that had popped into her head.
If she didn’t think fast, she’d lose this job before she had a chance to tie on an apron.
“Mel’s Diner? Oh, darlin’, that’s rich.” For the first time since she walked in the door, he turned his back on her and went back to stocking glasses on the shelves behind the bar. “You had me believing you, too. But watching a bunch of wise-talking, butt-shaking waitresses on a 70’s TV sitcom does not make you one. Nice try, sweets, but no cigar.”
Grace rolled her eyes in frustration and tried to think fast, something that was definitely easier without his eyes on her. Did the man have to be gorgeous enough to make it difficult for her to think straight? She knew that in her old life she would have handled someone like Tyler without flinching, secure in her job, her family, her position in the world.
But now she had no job and no family to help her define herself. And she couldn’t very well tell the man that up until two weeks ago she’d been in charge of eleven of the top-grossing restaurants in Chicago. She was stuck with lying, and knowing she wasn’t very good at it made her nervous. Looking at Tyler made her even more nervous.
Get a grip, girl, she told herself. You have no backup here, no money and no choice. She’d managed to talk herself most of the way into a job by imagining what her grandmother would have said if she were stuck in this bizarre situation and pretending to be her. So she’d just keep doing that until she convinced this Tyler to hire her.
“You