Under the Surface (4 page)

“Prep isn't part of your job description.” As the owner, however, no detail of Eye Candy's nightly operation was too small for her. Doing prep herself ensured her product met her rigorous standards and helped her gauge what drinks were selling each night, enabling her to adjust inventory accordingly.

A pointed glance at his watch, then back at the boxes. “You've got nothing better to do?”

Balancing her accounts, liquor inventory, plus another run through the social networking sites, but she also needed to keep her payroll costs down. “I like your initiative but I can't pay you, and I won't take advantage of you,” she said before she thought about how it sounded.

His gaze went heavy-lidded, more green than hazel as he opened his hands. “I'm here.”

The invitation simmered under his words, and a slow smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “All yours,” she said.

He came around the end of the bar, but rather than stepping back as she emerged, he turned sideways and brushed against her, chest to chest. From the firm set of his lips to the hard planes of his torso, there wasn't a hint of give to him.

The heat of his body, tangible in the cool, dimly lit space, must have softened her voice. “I'll be upstairs,” she said, far more throatily than she intended.

“Your office up there?” he asked as he pulled out tubs and familiarized himself with the setup.

“Yes.” And behind her office was her apartment, with another set of stairs leading down into the alley behind the bar. When he picked up a knife and said nothing else, she headed for the staircase.

Inside her office she collapsed into her desk chair, brought her laptop out of sleep mode, and pulled up her accounting software and a browser window. In between balancing the books, she accepted and left personal messages to friend requests. The local paper's Arts and Culture section had profiled Eye Candy a week earlier and the number of online connections quadrupled in that time, but online friends didn't necessarily translate into a line out the door.

Ten minutes later the front door slammed, then heavy boots clomped across the dance floor and up the stairs. The thud of boot sole against wrought iron punctuated off-key singing to 'NSync, audible clues that her best friend of twenty years and front manager, Natalie Gray, had arrived for work.

“Who's downstairs?” Natalie asked when she appeared in the doorway. Tugging white earbuds from one ear, then the other, she grimaced when she accidentally yanked on a section of her layered blonde hair. She wore black knee-high biker boots, a denim microskirt, and a white stretchy tank top with the Eye Candy logo straining across her chest, the outfit completed by thick mascara and baby blue eye shadow.

Eve got to her feet and closed the door on Natalie's piercing voice. “Chad Henderson. I got about a dozen emails in response to the online ad, but he was the only one who took the initiative to call for an interview. If he works out tonight, he's got the job.”

Natalie slumped into one of the office chairs and gave Eve a shrewd look as she wound the earbud cord around her iPod. “He interviewed okay? We've been superbusy, with the warm weather.”

“He mixed me a nice cosmo and doesn't seem likely to hook up with a customer. After what happened with Brent that was enough for me.”

Nat pursed her lips and nodded. “I'm sure he'll be more than enough for you,” she said slyly.

Eve ignored her. “Hand me my makeup bag, would you?”

Nat snagged the clear plastic bag from Eve's desk and held it over her shoulder. Eve uncapped her mascara to touch up the tips of her lashes. Just a hint of foundation, blush on her cheekbones, and smudged eye makeup in shades of cream and brown brought out her green eyes. The finishing touch was lipstick one shade of rose darker than her lips. The overall look said, “I'm hard to get but worth the effort” and needed minimal retouching, important when she wouldn't sit down between six and close.

She jabbed the mascara wand at the tube but missed, leaving a black smear on the back of her hand.

“You okay?” Natalie asked.

She'd told Natalie about Lyle's initial call, setting up a “dinner date” to “catch up.” Once she heard what Lyle wanted from her, she'd gone straight to the cops. Lieutenant Hawthorn, who she knew as “Ian” from when they were in high school, had suggested putting in officers to keep an eye on things, but Eve turned him down. Lyle was volatile, and violent. Trading on their history, she could manage Lyle if he thought she was loyal to him, but if word got back that she had cops hanging out in her bar, he was capable of anything if he thought his honor was damaged. The whole situation was dangerous enough without throwing a bunch of cops into the combustible mix that was Eye Candy, and there was no way she'd get Natalie involved in something so dangerous.

“I'm fine,” Eve said. “Hand me a tissue?”

Natalie plucked one from the box on Eve's desk and handed it to her. “You haven't heard from Lyle again, have you?”

Her friend knew her far too well. “No,” Eve said as she wiped off the mascara.

“He wasn't a bad person when we were growing up,” Natalie said. “He just wasn't a good one either, you know? He had ambition. He hustled up a nice little business in high school selling steroids to football players and wrestlers.”

“I know,” Eve said.

Natalie tucked the iPod into her green tote. “Did you tell Caleb about Lyle?”

She gave Natalie a disbelieving snort, and Nat laughed. She knew the last thing Eve needed was her confrontational, brilliant older brother going head-to-head with Lyle. “Caleb hates all things Murphy. What he doesn't know won't hurt him.”

“What did our favorite lawyer say about the building across the alley?”

Eye Candy backed to an abandoned building that faced a street with a front-row view on the empty warehouse district the city wanted to tear down to build the Riverside Business Park. The city was auctioning off the building in the hopes that someone would leap on the redevelopment opportunity and renovate it for shops or small businesses.

“Caleb's checking into it for me. Did you see yesterday's Business section?” When Natalie shook her head, Eve pulled the paper from under a stack of receipts and unfolded it on top of her desk. “The city planning commission reworked the plans for the East Side business park. It used to stop at Eighth Street, but in exchange for a big tax break they got Mobile Media to commit to building their regional operations center in the business park, which now expands to the opposite side of Twelfth Street.”

“They're hiring nine hundred people?” Natalie exclaimed, leaning over her shoulder to skim the article.

“This location will do app development and cloud technology, plus all the back office work for regional ops, which means nine hundred young professionals freed from their dull, gray cubicle jobs every night, across the street from Eye Candy,” Eve said. “I've got plans for that property … knock it down, pave over the lot, and put up a wrought iron fence that matches the decorative scrollwork along the park. I can think of a dozen uses for a space like that. Catered business lunches during the day, dancing at night. Put up fairy lights and greenery for private outdoor parties or wedding rentals when it's warm. Live music by local artists, maybe even get regional touring acts. I could even put up a tent and bring in heaters to do a winter wonderland ball thing like the Met used to do for Valentine's Day.”

Thinking about the future helped take her mind off the danger in the present. She loved the thrill of pulling off a major event, of searching for that right combination of music and atmosphere so everyone had a good time, and she was good at it. Unfortunately, it wasn't the kind of thing she was supposed to be good at. Church suppers and backyard barbecues, fine. Parties for two hundred, complete with ice sculptures, a rock band, dancing, drinks, and a bachelor auction, not so much.

Nat switched topics with her usual neck-snapping speed. “He's not really the bar's type,” she said as she joined Eve at the full-length mirror hanging from her office door.

“Who, Lyle? You know how his mother felt about appearances. At dinner he wore a suit, tie, same cordovan wingtips Caleb wears, and he ordered a really nice Cabernet,” Eve said as she checked her teeth for lipstick.

“You'll have to tell Caleb about the shoes.” Eve laughed, and Natalie continued. “I meant Chad. You usually hire Tom Cruise in
Cocktail
. Gelled hair, perfect shave, lady-killer smile.”

Eve considered this. “Which got me a bartender who treated the customers like his own private stock. There's something about Chad. He's different. Quiet. We could do with a little less hooking up and a little more Mr. Mysterious behind the bar.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” Natalie crowed. “He's not the bar's type, but he's definitely
your
type.”

Eve tossed her makeup bag back in her desk. “How did you go from ‘Can you mix a cosmo?' to ‘Do you have a condom?' I just met him. Maybe he's married.”

“Was he wearing a ring?”

His battered hands, the knuckles abraded, the tracery of veins on the backs, the collection of nicks and scars flashed into her memory. Those hands told a story she got the sense he'd never put into words, and he wasn't wearing a ring.

She cleared her throat and walked over to the full-length mirrored windows that overlooked the bar and dance floor, one story below. “No ring. Okay, engaged. Dating someone. Maybe he's not attracted to me at all.”

Natalie gave an unlady-like snort. “So he's gay.”

“Definitely not gay,” she said, remembering the physical sizzle crackling along her nerves each time they got close. She thought about the way he didn't step back to give her room to walk out from behind the bar, instead holding his space and making her back up or brush against him, not to mention those sidelong glances that seemed to see everything about her, including the way she lit up when he talked.

But a look wasn't a proposition.

“You weren't going to date until the bar was open and running smoothly. We're two months in. No more excuses. Besides, it's fun to be the one closing the deal.”

This was true. She liked the hunt as much as she liked being the prey.

Impulse drove her onto the small landing; Chad looked up at the movement. She beckoned him up the stairs. When he appeared in the doorway Eve introduced him to Natalie. He shook her hand while looking at her face, no mean feat given the D-cup breasts straining at Nat's ribbed tank top. Whether he knew it or not, this was the second round of the interview. If he couldn't handle casual banter with her and Natalie, she'd send him on his way before the first customer walked in the door.

“As Natalie's so capably demonstrating, my staff wears logo shirts,” Eve said.

“I didn't notice,” he deadpanned.

Natalie gave him a little finger wave. “What's your size, handsome?”

He shot her a narrow-eyed look, then spoke to Eve. “Large.”

Eve turned to the battered credenza lining the short wall of her office. She selected a formfitting white T-shirt ringed with bands of black around the neck and arms, size medium, and tossed it at him across her desk. “Tighter's better, or so I hear,” she said with a bright smile.

He checked the tag, gave her a look, then without a word he unbuttoned two more buttons on his shirt, pulled the tail free from his jeans and over his head with one swift movement, then dropped it. The action wiped the grin off Natalie's face, and Eve felt her mouth go dry.

Chad Henderson was cut, ripped, whatever the current slang was for not an ounce of fat visible from his collarbone to the low-slung waist of his jeans. Muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bone were sleekly delineated but without bodybuilder bulk. His was an endurance runner's body, a distance swimmer's body, leashed strength and power hidden under a bland button-down shirt.

Shoulders, knuckles, abdominals, shuttered eyes. Men were no more a sum of their physical parts than women, but in that moment Chad's sheer physical presence ignited deep in her belly.

A hint of color stained his cheekbones as he pushed his arms into the sleeves of the T-shirt and drew it over his head. The super-washed white cotton strained over his torso as the Eye Candy logo came to rest on his left pec and his hands went to his hips.

“Oh, the customers are so going to
love
him,” Natalie breathed.

“I'm standing right here,” he said, a hint of steel wrapped up in the velvet voice.

“I'm sorry,” Nat said, her tone implying she was anything but. “The customers are so going to love
you
.”

He opened his mouth, then looked like he'd thought the better of going toe to toe with Natalie and turned to Eve. “As long as my boss approves,” he said silkily.

“Most definitely,” she said, not bothering to hide her appreciation. “Doors open in ten.”

“That's my cue,” Natalie said as she ducked behind Chad to dump her tote in the corner then thundered down the stairs.

Chad picked up his discarded shirt. “Where should I leave this?”

“In here,” she said with a wink. “You can get it after close.”

He draped it over the back of a chair and crossed his arms over the soft cotton straining across his chest. “I'm not into games,” he said.

“What just happened is pretty mild compared to what you'll hear from a woman with three mojitos in her. Nat's just playing with you,” Eve said.

“I'm fine with what's coming from customers. And Nat may be playing, but you're not.”

Her breath halted in her throat at the same time her pulse accelerated, leaving her light-headed. Suddenly he seemed bigger, broader, legs braced, arms across his chest, with that same challenge on his face.

“I work by your rules, but we play by mine. Don't start something you're not gonna finish.”