Melt For Me (Against All Odds Book 3) (6 page)

“What do you mean cut?” Tate finally asked, stepping away from the wall.

“Cut, as in…cut,” Kelly answered, glancing over Ella’s shoulder toward him. “The pipe and cables that run to the meter box on the side of the building are sliced. Like with a chainsaw, I’m guessing. Someone purposely cut the power to this building. I already called my father. He’s on his way over.”

Ella turned and looked toward Tate, and he saw the quick flash of fear in her eyes before she angled away from him. “Shit.”

“I know,” Kelly said softly. “You’re going to need to call the police.”

Ella nodded once, then moved for the stairs. With one hand on the railing, she stopped and glanced back. “Did they clear the highway?”

“Yes,” Faith answered. “Landslide’s clear, and the road’s open again.”

Ella shot a look at Tate. And before the words were even out of her mouth, he knew what she was going to say. “Good. Then I guess you won’t be late for your gig in Miami.”

She jogged up the steps and disappeared, and as soon as she did, Faith and Kelly both stared at him with wide eyes.

“What was that all about?” Faith asked.

“I’m guessing that means things did not go so well,” Kelly said with a sigh.

No, they’d gone better than he ever could have hoped. As Tate looked up the stairs after Ella, he couldn’t stop one side of his mouth from ticking up in a smile. Even if she was freaking out right now, she still wanted him. He’d felt it when she’d been in that vulnerable state between sleep and consciousness, straddling his hips and rubbing against him. A woman who wasn’t the least bit interested didn’t do that—awake or asleep.

His smile faded when he thought about someone sabotaging Ella’s pub, though. He looked back at the women. “What’s going on here? Who would want to cut the power to this place?”

“I don’t know,” Faith answered.

Kelly flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder. “Best guess is one of the buyers she keeps putting off.”
 

“She’s still going through with that?” Faith turned toward Kelly. “I thought she’d decided to stay.”

Kelly huffed. “She’s not staying. She just doesn’t have enough money to say yes yet. She’s stringing them along, hoping she’ll have what she needs in a few months.”

Ella was selling the bar? Tate looked between the women. “Where’s she planning to go?”

“The Keys,” Kelly answered. “She’s been wanting to sell since Kyle passed, but he left her with a lot of debt, and she couldn’t go until she could turn a profit on the bar for Gillian.”

“Her leaving is going to kill Gillian.” Faith sighed.

Tate was having trouble keeping up. “Who is Gillian?”

“Kyle’s mother.” Kelly crossed her arms over her chest. “She just loves Ella. Gillian was at her book club last night, which is the only reason you didn’t meet her. She’s at the bar most nights.”

It hadn’t occurred to Tate that Ella would have family around from the dead husband’s side, but this had been his bar, so it made sense. “Does she work here?”

“No,” Kelly answered. “She just likes to come over and mingle. I think it makes her feel closer to Kyle.”

“She won’t take any of Ella’s money.” Faith eyed her friend.

“I know.” Kelly frowned. “But you know how much Ella blames herself for the accident and taking Gillian’s only child away from her.”

“It was just that, though,” Faith said. “An accident.”

Tate wanted to ask more about the accident, but before he could, Faith added, “Why do you think one of the potential buyers would mess with the bar? They want a bar that works. Not one that has trouble.”

“They want her to sell,” Kelly answered. “I hate to think one of them could have done something like this, but she’s been stringing those buyers along for almost two years. I could totally see one of them getting antsy and trying to force her to sell.”

Faith frowned. “That would be pretty crappy, especially now. They have to know how tough this week is for her.”

Kelly pinned Faith with a hard look. “That’s
why
they would do it now. Everyone knows what a shitty week this is for Ella. If she ever had a reason to run, this week would be the reason.”

Tate’s confusion grew. “What do you mean about this week? And what happened in the accident for Ella to feel guilty?”

Faith glanced warily at Kelly. “He doesn’t know? I assumed if they were friends, he knew.”

“They’re not technically friends,” Kelly answered. “He’s
the guy
. You know, the one from before.”

Faith’s eyes grew wide with understanding as she looked back at Tate. “Oh!”

Tate took a step toward the women, his patience almost at the end of his grasp. “What about this week and the accident?”

“It happened this week,” Kelly said. “Kyle died on Christmas Eve.”

Crap.

“It was snowing that night.” Faith looked down at her hands. “The roads had been icy. We’d had a cocktail party here at the bar after it closed, to wish each other a merry Christmas. Ella didn’t live upstairs then. She and Kyle had a small house outside of town.” A sad expression slid across her face, and she shook her head.

“Ella was driving,” Kelly said quietly when Faith couldn’t finish. “Hit an icy patch and slammed into a tree. Kyle died at the scene. It was awful. Ella was hurt but walked away from the accident. Since her blood alcohol level wasn’t over the limit, she was never charged. But it’s weighed heavily on her ever since.”

Oh shit.

“Everyone said it was lucky they never had kids,” Faith said. “But I think that actually made it harder for both Ella and Gillian. Gillian couldn’t wait to be a grandmother, and Ella had just told me a week before the accident that she and Kyle were considering starting a family. It was all so sad.”

Tate looked up the empty stairs, things slowly starting to piece together in his mind. Ella’s coldness, the way she kept herself isolated from others, the way her mother had encouraged him to come to Holly. Images flashed behind his eyes—Ella with a family, Ella in that car on a snowy night, Ella alone in this bar.

“Kyle adored her,” Faith added. “And even though we all knew he wasn’t the love of her life, they were happy together. For a while. It’s really just so sad that she won’t take a second chance on love.”

Tate’s heart picked up speed, pumping faster with every passing second. He looked back at Faith, then to the stairs again. And in his head, he heard Ella’s voice from that long-ago summer they’d spent together, giggling as they’d rolled across the sheets in that motel room, telling him, “
You are the love of my life, music man.”

“Ella has walked through this town like a zombie for two years,” Kelly said behind him. “The first time I saw even a spark of life in her was last night, when she spotted you in her pub. And I saw it again just a few minutes ago when she ran out of this cellar. I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you, Kendrick, but whatever it is, don’t let it die out. Ella needs some sparks in her life. She needs to live again. And something tells me you might be the one to help her do that.”

Tate looked back at the bartender, his heart beating even faster. No way was he letting anything die out. Not when he now knew there was still something smoldering between them. Something hot. Something special. Something that hadn’t faded, even after nine years apart.

He just had to find a way to convince Ella of the very same thing.

E
lla signed the last of her payroll checks and clicked the end of her pen. It was almost time for the dinner crowd, and since Angela Smith had called in sick for her shift, Ella knew she needed to get down to the bar and help out. Though part of her just didn’t want to.

She’d been hiding in her office for the last hour, cutting accounts payable checks she didn’t need to do until the end of the month and balancing the accounts she’d just balanced last week, doing anything she could to stay out of the bar, because
Tate
was still down there. She knew it was childish, but she’d thought he’d leave as soon as the highway was clear. Instead, he’d stuck around, helped Kelly straighten up the stockroom after the police had come and gone, and was still hanging around even after the electric company had restored power and Ella had told him everything was fine and that he didn’t need to stay.

What was with the man? Why was he still here? Didn’t he have a life to get back to? People who actually
liked
him? It wasn’t as if she’d even been nice to him while he was here. All they’d done in that cellar was bicker.
And get all hot and heavy in the dark…

Mortification heated her cheeks, and she quickly pushed to her feet, then snapped her payroll book closed and shoved it and her laptop in the lower desk drawer. She wasn’t going to think about that. It hadn’t meant anything. It had been a moment of weakness. They’d both been half-asleep. After two years, she didn’t even know what sex was anymore anyway.

She locked the drawer, then drew a steadying breath and headed for the hallway. What she
needed
to be focused on was who had sabotaged her bar. Someone was clearly messing with her. She just didn’t want to believe it was one of the buyers she’d been stringing along, as Kelly thought. Both had been disappointed she’d put off making a final decision on the sale, but both had seemed to understand. With any luck, the sheriff would catch the juvenile delinquent who’d cut her power, and the mess would be over and done with by Christmas Day.

She pulled her apartment door open and stepped out into the hall. With any luck, Tate was also already gone. She needed to be done with him too. By now he had to have gotten the hint that she didn’t want him around. Right?

A whisper of disappointment rushed through her as she headed for the stairs and told herself his leaving was for the best. What did she think was going to happen? That they were going to fall madly in love again? That he was going to give up his groupies and celebrity friends for her? That would never happen.

As she moved down the curved stairs, heading toward the sounds of laughter and music and glasses clinking, she told herself she didn’t want it to happen. They led two totally different lives. She wasn’t even interested anymore. Besides—she pushed the swinging door open and stepped into the bar—she didn’t want a man, or love. The only thing she wanted was—

Tate…

Her heart bumped against her ribs when she spotted him standing near a table of four, an apron tied around his waist, laughing and chatting with the people in front of him. Twinkle lights around the top of the bar highlighted his thick hair and the slope of his nose, the carved angle of his shoulders in the loose gray sweater he was wearing, and the muscles in his arms and big hands as he jotted something on a piece of paper.

He looked so different from the tabloid photos she’d seen in the grocery store. She’d noticed last night but couldn’t help thinking of it now. His hair was shorter, still shaggy and sexy and brushing his nape, but not the wild, dark mop that had hung to his shoulders in those photos. His jaw was clean shaven, void of the soul patch he’d sported the last few years. And dressed in that ridiculous red apron, standing in the middle of her pub, taking orders, he didn’t look a thing like the rock god he was. Instead, he was simply an older, sexier version of the boy she remembered.

“Yo, Kendrick!” someone called from across the bar.

Tate looked up and waved.

“When are we gonna get you up on stage?”

Tate pointed at his apron, then held his hands out and shrugged. “Too busy tonight. Sorry.” He glanced back down at the table of four, nodded, smiled, then made another note on the pad of paper in his hand.

And as Ella watched—her heart racing the whole time—she realized what he was doing. She just didn’t know why.

In a daze, she crossed the room to where Kelly stood at the bar, mixing a trio of coffee drinks. “What is he doing? Did you give him that apron?”

“I sure did.” Kelly set the coffee drinks on the end of the bar, made eye contact with a server behind Ella, and reached for a glass.

“But we don’t need his help. I’m here now. I can wait tables.”

Kelly huffed and scooped ice into a glass. “Good. We could use you.” She nodded at someone behind Ella again, then said, “Order up.”

Bobby Fenton rushed over, all wide-eyed and frazzled as he bobbled his tray and reached for the coffee drinks Kelly had just made.