One Night Charmer

“Of course I’ve never waited tables,” she said, belatedly realizing that that was just the sort of attitude he had an issue with. “Because I’ve never had the opportunity,” she added, trying to make the words perky.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said, resting his hands flat on the bar, flexing his fingers in a way that sent a strange sensation down her spine. “I know you don’t. You know you don’t. Let’s not play games.”

“I’ve looked for work everywhere else in town. I haven’t been able to find it. I’m not an idiot. I have a degree in business from the University of Oregon. I know that I worked for my father, but I did my job well. If you know anything about Nathan West, then you know he didn’t give me anything just because I was related to him.”

A fact that was driven home by the discovery that Jack was one of their siblings. Their father had given him nothing, less than nothing. A onetime payout to disappear. He certainly hadn’t been made a part of the family dynasty. Then there was Gage. Her oldest brother. She didn’t know all of the circumstances surrounding his leaving. She’d been too young to fully grasp the situation at the time. But she knew it wasn’t because her father was a loving, forgiving man. “I’m not useless. I’m competitive. I’ve done pretty well with my barrel racing, and you might not take something like that seriously, but it takes a lot of grit. A lot of work.”

“I know it does,” Ace said, a strange look in his eye. “I don’t run a charity, I run a business. I don’t like to hire people that don’t have experience. But if you really want a job, you’ve got one. On a trial basis. You have three weeks to prove to me you can do this. But if you mess up too many orders, or spit in anyone’s food because they make you mad, or mouth off to any of my customers, you’re done.”

She waited to feel some sense of triumph. Some sense of relief. Instead, she felt nothing more than a grim determination and a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Because now it was real. There was no going back. No crawling back to the West ranch with her tail between her legs, begging her father’s forgiveness, even though he’d been the one who was wrong.

“Sure.”

“That’s it?”

“Thank you?”

He chuckled, that same dark sound she’d first heard last night. There was something strange in his happy sounds, his happy expressions. An undertone that didn’t quite match. Of course, she didn’t have time to try to figure out why his expressions didn’t seem to match his deeper emotions. She could barely sort that crap out for herself. “You don’t have to sound so excited.”

“Sorry.” That was easier. “Excitement has been a little bit hard to come by these days.”

“Now that,” he said, “I do relate to.”

“What do you suggest for that?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Fake it ’til you make it? Drink it ’til you think it?”

“Great. I will...use my employee discount to help with that.”

“There’s no employee discount.”

“What?”

“No drinking on the job, either. Working at a bar isn’t actually any fun. Except the part where you’re sober while everyone else is drunk. That is actually pretty funny.”

“Is it?”

“Hilarious. In fact, last night, some little blonde girl got up on that mechanical bull and fell on her face.”

Sierra gritted her teeth. “Ha-ha.”

“You start tomorrow.”

“I do? What if I have plans?”

He shrugged. “Cancel them. Or quit now.”

She blinked. She couldn’t quite work out what was happening between herself and Ace. There was something. Something that wasn’t neutral. On her end, it was that weird moment where she suddenly thought his hands looked capable. Of all kinds of things. Like pushing a strand of hair out of her face or deadlifting a fallen tree. With him...who knew? It wasn’t really a friendly feeling she got from him.

“I’ll be here. Just name the time.”

“Be here at five. Be ready to work.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_85dae46d-4128-5503-af1a-3b2a427badd5)

SIERRA WEST WAS a problem. A bejeweled, bouncy problem.

She’d shown up to work on time, which had kind of pissed Ace off, because he’d been looking for an excuse to fire her out of the gate, and that had been taken from him. But she’d shown up wearing a pair of shorts that looked painted onto the skin they covered. And they didn’t cover much. Instead, they did a good job of displaying a lot of smooth, tanned leg. He wondered how the hell she had a tan.

This was the Oregon coast. In late February. It wasn’t all that sunny.

Maybe she went to one of those fake-and-bake tanning beds. His ex had been a big fan of those. It was how she kept her warm orange glow all year-round. Either that, or sucking the blood of virgins. He wouldn’t really put anything past her.

He studied Sierra, who was talking to a table full of men who were absolutely thrilled with his new hiring choice.

She didn’t look like the type to go lie in a tanning bed. He wasn’t sure why. She probably went and lay out back in the yard, in that private, gated ranch she and her family lived at. She probably lay out in a hot-pink bikini. She maybe even took the top off to avoid a suntan line.

He gritted his teeth and turned his focus to wiping down the counter. It was clean. But cleaning an already clean counter was better than thinking about Sierra West topless. He really needed to deal with these inconvenient fantasies. Get laid. With someone else.

He looked around the bar, and for some reason, didn’t see any appealing prospects. Not because there weren’t beautiful women here. There were. It was just, for some reason they didn’t really register to his body.

Funny, usually his body wasn’t all that picky. He didn’t do relationships. He did satisfying evenings. Which left his options pretty wide-open. His type was female. Thin, curvy, blonde, brunette, pale, dark... Didn’t much matter to him. Women were a glorious creation. One he preferred in his bed, and nowhere else in his home.

In fact, he had a bedroom up above the bar, so that he never actually had to have women in his home at all.

There was a time when his own behavior would’ve shocked him. Or it would’ve shocked the boy he’d been. But he could barely remember that time.

Now, the most shocking thing was that he wanted one woman specifically.

Yeah, Sierra West was a problem.

She turned away from the table, her walk particularly bouncy in those little cowgirl boots as she made her way back to the kitchen. Everything on her bounced. Her hair. Her ass.

Damn, some other woman needed to start looking good.

She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then reappeared a second later. “I think I got everyone for now,” she said.

She was looking at him expectantly, blue-eyed and far too innocent. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“I’m not going to hold your hand, little girl,” he said.

That was unnecessary, and he knew it. But he didn’t particularly care. With most employees, he would be happy to show them what to do next. He would even be happy that they’d asked what they could do. But he wasn’t happy about her asking, because it meant he had to interact with her, and he didn’t want to interact with her.

He supposed it wasn’t her fault that she was far too pretty for her own good. But he was going to hold it against her anyway. Because he was never going to hold her against him, and that was the source of a lot of problems.

The trouble was that he was out of practice with self-denial. He’d spent the past decade indulging himself whenever he wanted to.