Читать книгу One Night Charmer - Maisey Yates - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

“JACK TALKED TO ACE about getting you a job.”

Sierra stared at the phone like it was a poisonous snake. Usually, she welcomed phone calls from friends. Particularly Kate. Right now, going through everything, Kate was her best bet for finding an emotional outlet for her pain.

The problem with her typical group of friends—beyond the fact that they had abandoned her at the bar last night—was that she felt obligated to protect her family secrets around them.

The other day, when she had overheard her father nearly bursting a blood vein screaming about Jack Monaghan going back on the deal they had struck years ago, she’d discovered that her entire existence was a carefully constructed facade.

Apparently Jack had confronted their father a few months ago, and now the secret was starting to leak out. In town, and now in their house.

The only reason she had spent many years thinking that her father was a decent person, a faithful husband, a loyal, giving human being, was that Jack had signed a gag order some seventeen years earlier.

In exchange, Jack had accepted a large sum of money. Jack had come and paid her father back, and had dissolved that bargain with that one simple action. There was no protection anymore. Jack could get a billboard and put it up in the center of town, proclaiming Nathan West to be the faithless scumbag he was. And then, it wouldn’t only be her mother, her sister and her brother dealing with the fallout in a contained environment.

If that came out, who knew what else would come out? That was what terrified her the most. If people in town saw one person speaking out against Nathan West, how many others would come forward and reveal wrongs he’d committed against them? How bad was he?

It wasn’t something she was ready to face. Whether or not that was fair, it was the truth.

But Kate knew. Because of her relationship with Jack she already knew the whole story, so while that made it difficult for her to deal with her friend in some ways, it also made it easier. She didn’t have to explain her behavior last night. Didn’t have to go through any awkward or dramatic confessions.

Of course, now she knew Kate’s fiancé was Sierra’s half-brother and it didn’t make her feel too eager to go have dinner at their place.

But phone calls were fine.

This one, though, was a little bit confusing.

“Jack did what?”

“He talked to Ace this morning. He met with him about an investment opportunity, and they ended up discussing you. And the fact that you need a job.”

Heat stung Sierra’s cheeks. She did need a job, and until this past week she had not appreciated how difficult one might be to come by. There weren’t a surplus of positions available for someone without a specific skill set. It was a small town, and most of the shops ran on a very small staff. People coming home from college for the summer had already secured positions at any place looking to hire extra employees to deal with the seasonal influx of tourists.

Sierra had always had a job. When she wanted one. All through school she’d known she would have a job waiting for her when she graduated. She’d been made office manager of the family ranch the moment she’d stepped off campus, because that was what her father had been grooming her for.

Colton had taken over West Construction, Maddy handled dressage lessons and horse training. Sierra had been slated for the business side of things.

Scheduling lessons, managing the horses that were boarded on the property, and the payments. Making sure feed was ordered, the farrier was scheduled to handle the horses’ shoe needs.

Sure, nepotism had gotten her there, but she was good at her job.

But apparently if you took nepotism out of the equation she was like any other sad college graduate who was realizing her degree was barely worth the paper it was printed on.

Hey, at least she didn’t have student loan debt.

“I can’t imagine that Ace wants to give me a job.”

“Why not?”

“Because. He gave me a ride home last night when I was drunk.”

There was a brief moment of silence on the other end of the phone. “That shouldn’t matter. He owns a bar. He understands how easy it is to overimbibe.”

“How charming was I last night, Kate? You talked to me.”

“Okay, you were kind of an ass.”

Sierra frowned. “What did I say to you?”

“You said, ‘Really, Kate? That hat with those boots?’”

“Did I?”

“Yes. It’s okay, though. I knew you were drunk. If you were sober you wouldn’t have said that to me in public.”

Sierra grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. And you were right.” There was another slight pause. “My boots did not match my hat.”

“You know that doesn’t matter.” Kate was one of the nicest people Sierra knew, and the idea of saying anything that might have hurt her made her heart crumble a little bit.

Okay, maybe she didn’t have illegitimate children littering the countryside, but she had to wonder if in some way she was more like her father than she would care to be.

“Please don’t feel guilty. Are you going to go talk to Ace about the job?”

She groaned. “He’s mad at me.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t exactly tell him his hat didn’t match his boots, but I wasn’t all that nice to him, either.” Not that he’d been Prince Charming himself.

“Well, that explains why he told Jack you had to come talk to him in person.”

“Ugh.”

“And why he said you had to apologize.”

Sierra covered her eyes. “Serious ugh.”

“I’m sorry, but you don’t have better options, do you?”

“No.”

“Then, much like my hat and boots, your resistance does not go with your situation.”

Her friend was right. Sierra hated it, but her friend was right. “Okay. When am I supposed to go talk to him and...apologize?”

“Anytime before things get busy.”

Sierra supposed she should go as soon as possible. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. The very idea of working at Ace’s filled her with a deep and abiding sense of nope. Everyone would think it was weird. There was no way around that. A West taking a job as a waitress in a bar was nothing if not conspicuous. But as Kate had reminded her, she was short on options. She couldn’t live with Colton forever. And not just because his future wife breathed fire and left scorched earth in her rather petite wake.

Well, mainly because of that.

“So I guess that means I need to drive over there.”

“Yes,” Kate said, uncompromising.

Kate was like that.

Sierra sort of wished they could meet up for coffee. But she was afraid that would force her to confront Jack, or interact with him in some way, and she really wasn’t ready to deal with him.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“I’ll check in with you.”

“I have no doubt you will.”

Sierra hung up the phone and looked up just as Colton walked into the room. “Something going on?” he asked.

“Just...still on the job hunt.”

“Honestly, Sierra, if we had a position available in the office at the construction firm I would give it to you. But I can’t justify the expense of adding an employee that we don’t need. If I’m going to give you charity, it just makes more sense to have you stay here rent-free.”

“I know. And I completely understand that. Anyway, I don’t feel like it should have to be charity for someone to give me a job. I’m not completely inept.”

“You’re not inept at all.” He opened the fridge and started rummaging for something, pulling out a pitcher of orange juice a moment later. “Where are you job hunting?”

“I’m going down to talk to Ace Thompson, actually.”

“Not about a job,” came a shrill voice from the next room.

“Yes,” Sierra said, “about a job.”

That was Natalie’s cue to walk in. Or rather slide in like an eel cutting through the water. Natalie was sleek, her blond hair ruthlessly tamed back into a bun, her figure ruthlessly trimmed by years of eating little more than salads.

Sierra had no patience for that kind of thing. You could try to make them cute by putting them in Mason jars, but they were still salads, and she still wanted a hamburger and french fries on the side.

“But how is that going to look?” Natalie asked.

It was on the tip of Sierra’s tongue to say that Natalie couldn’t have it both ways. She couldn’t have Sierra out of the house and able to support herself and worry about what kind of job she ended up with. But Colton had instructed her to be sensitive to Natalie, because she was stressed with the wedding getting so close. He assured Sierra that Natalie wasn’t usually so high-strung.

Sierra didn’t believe that. What she did believe was that her future sister-in-law was beautiful, and suitable by the standards the West family used to measure suitability. She had a feeling her older brother was thinking with his trust fund and his trouser brain.

She also hoped that he was making sure there was a prenup.

“I don’t know, Natalie, probably not as bad as if I end up taking a job at The Naughty Mermaid,” Sierra said, naming the strip club on the outskirts of town.

“That isn’t true,” Natalie countered, “because no one could say anything about it without admitting they were there and bringing flack back onto themselves. The same can’t be said for Ace’s.”

“Your concern is touching,” Sierra said.

“I am concerned,” Natalie said, gliding to the fridge and taking out some kind of preprepared breakfast smoothie. “Our wedding is only a few months away. Your family is on the verge of a meltdown. One of my bridesmaids has decided to run against my father for mayor. And everything just needs to calm down until after I say I do.”

“Natalie.” Colton’s tone was patient. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“You don’t know that,” Natalie said. “Because, I bet you also didn’t think your father had a secret bastard.”

Sierra gritted her teeth. “Don’t talk about him like that,” she said, not entirely sure why she felt protective of Jack.

“That’s enough,” Colton said. “Of course you should go ahead and apply for Ace’s. If you have an in there, take it. Making an honest living is hardly going to disgrace anyone or anything.”

“People are going to wonder about your family’s finances.” Natalie clearly wasn’t ready to let the subject drop.

“Who cares? They’re still going to come to the wedding. There’s a free steak dinner. I know, because I’m paying for it. They won’t care whether I paid with cash or credit. Everything will go off without a hitch. And I’m sure people will be so thankful to your father for hosting such a delightful event that they’ll vote for him without batting an eye. They won’t even read Lydia’s name on the ballot. Why would they? He’s been the mayor forever.”

Natalie seemed somewhat mollified by this. “You make it sound like it might not be so bad.”

“You’re marrying me. How bad could it be?”

Sierra noticed that Natalie seemed to deflect that. But she did turn her cheek and allow Colton to bend and give her a kiss. “All right,” she said, looking at Sierra. “I guess it’s okay.”

Again, Sierra had to grit her teeth and hold back her commentary. “Great. Well, I’ll let you know how it goes.” She was suddenly in a huge hurry to get down to Ace’s. Mainly because she really needed to get away from Natalie. And honestly, away from Colton when he was with her.

He wasn’t totally whipped or anything, but he spent way too much time placating her and managing her for Sierra’s tastes. She didn’t like to imagine that the entire rest of her brother’s life would be spent with a woman who was little more than a temperamental cat in human form. She was constantly needing to be scratched behind the ears and petted in all the right places or she would bite you on the hand.

“I’ll see you both later,” Sierra said, walking out of the kitchen into the front porch before realizing she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair in two braids, because she couldn’t be bothered to deal with the mess falling asleep on it loose had left it in last night.

She wasn’t exactly dressed for a job interview. But she supposed this was close enough to what she would be wearing if she actually worked in the bar.

Except she would probably have to show a little more cleavage.

She was pretty sure that’s how jobs like this worked.

She heard the door open behind her and turned to see Colton standing there, his arms crossed over his chest. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t know. But I kind of have to.” And if she felt a little spurred on by her future sister-in-law’s controlling attitude, well, that wasn’t so bad, she supposed. “Hopefully I’ll end up with a better job someday, but the reality is I need to do something.”

“You could go back home.”

She made a scoffing sound. “No, thanks.”

“He was your dad for twenty-five years, Sierra, and you were fine living there, and fine taking his money. The only thing that’s changed is that now you know.”

Sierra’s throat tightened. “I know. I’ve only known about Jack and all this other stuff for a couple of days. And you would think twenty-five years would be so much bigger than two days, Colton, you really would. But it’s not. Not for me. This is the biggest, ugliest two days I have ever lived through. I can’t ignore what I know. I can’t go back. Not now.”

“He’s our father.”

“Right. And you need his influence to keep your business running smoothly. And you need to not create a huge rift because you’re having a gigantic wedding and Natalie will completely melt down if you cut ties now, especially since she’s half marrying you for your last name.”

Colton’s expression turned stormy, his brows locking together. She looked at his eyes, that bright blue color so striking and unique with his dark hair. It struck her then, how similar his features were to Jack’s. It hit her so hard it took her breath away.

“You might want to retract the assertion that my fiancée is only marrying me for my name.”

“I said it was half of why,” Sierra said, not backing down.

“You’re a little butt-head, you know that?”

“Ouch. A butt-head? That cut deep, Colton. Right where it hurts most.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“I’m sure Natalie cares about you.” She wasn’t really. But, she didn’t want to hurt her brother. Even if she did think Natalie was a social-climbing weasel, desperately trying to sink her little claws into Colton so she could use him as a rung on her ascent to the top.

“It’s fine. I’m not an idiot, Sierra. I do understand that if I was a nobody she never would have pursued a relationship with me. Well, she wouldn’t be marrying me anyway. But that’s the way relationships work. It’s not all attraction, or mushy feelings. You pick the person that fits into your life the best. The person that supports your ambitions. I support hers, she supports mine. It’s not a bad thing.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that it would be a bad thing to meet an untimely death at the hands of his wife’s nasty weasel claws, should he ever disappoint her in any way, or should their family scandal grow any vaster.

“You’re not really selling me on the institution, Colton, I have to say.”

“Just wait until your quarter-life crisis is over. You’ll feel differently.”

He turned and walked back into the house, and Sierra made her way over to her truck. She opened the door and got inside, jamming the keys into the ignition, the engine roaring to life. She loved her truck. Cherry red and perfect, with feathers hanging off the rearview mirror and a hookup for her phone so she could play all of her favorite country music.

But it wasn’t really her truck. The thought struck her numb as she put the vehicle in Reverse and began to pull out of the driveway. Her phone wasn’t hers, either. Not really. Neither was the music on it.

That realization stopped the little moment of happy she’d experienced upon getting into the truck. And it weighed her down on the drive back into town, toward Ace’s.

It also reinforced what she was about to do.

Ask for a job. Apologize.

Another thought hit her as she pulled into the parking lot, putting her truck in Park and killing the engine. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever apologized to anyone before in her life. That couldn’t be right. Surely, she’d apologized at some point. To someone. For something.

But she couldn’t think of an example. She could remember fights with friends blowing over with some laughter and a whole lot of hand waving and such, but she couldn’t recall any of them apologizing to each other sincerely.

She blinked, shoving that uncomfortable thought to the side. She climbed out of the truck—not her truck—and made her way into the bar before she could think things through too deeply. She needed to just get this over with. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, she reminded herself.

Ripping off an Ace bandage.

She smiled faintly at her own joke as she ventured deeper into the empty dining area, looking around the space. It was clean, but that was about all she could say for it. She wasn’t a huge fan of the Western decor that clashed with the more nautical elements. There was half a fishing boat mounted to the wall with nets and those weird little glass balls that appeared all the time in oceanic themed decor. She had no idea what they were. Or what they were for.

Lately, Ace had certainly been upping the Western angle. The addition of the bull, and a new little bar seating area that had stools made out of barrels. Even though it wasn’t her personal taste, she realized that it was an accurate representation of the town. This was where the fishermen came to drink when they came in off the water, where the ranchers came to relax after they were finished with a hard day’s work.

It was a cross section of the community, right here in one location. And even if she wouldn’t put a fishing boat or bar stools in her bedroom, she could appreciate them here.

The door to the kitchen swung open and Ace walked through it, wiping his hands on a rag. Her eyes were drawn to the shifting of his forearm muscles, and then the rather firm grip he had as he chucked the rag onto the counter. She looked up, hoping to distract herself from her illicit hand-related thoughts. It didn’t really help. Because from there, she ended up with illicit thoughts about his square jawline, partly disguised, but not completely, by his dark stubble. And from there those thoughts went to his lips. She knew from experience that they smiled easily, that they were shaped nicely, and that when he looked at her, they seemed to get a little sterner.

His eyebrows also seemed to turn sterner when they focused in her direction. Strong, dark eyebrows that were attractive in a way that eyebrows had no right to be. For heaven’s sake.

Apparently, even sober, Ace had an effect on her. Strange, because she couldn’t recall him ever affecting her before last night.

She blamed the emotionally compromised landscape inside her. Severely shifted, rerouted and in general destroyed by all the revelations that had crashed through her like a flash flood recently.

“Hi,” she said, slowly approaching the counter.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. He smiled. Effortless. Friendly. As though he had not given her a ride home last night when she’d been drunk. As though they hadn’t said anything offensive to each other while he’d been giving her a ride home when she was drunk.

“I came to... Jack said—well, Kate called. Kate Garrett. And she said that you might have a job for me.”

“I have a server position available,” he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

She took another moment to check out his muscles. She hadn’t decided to check him out, so much as she’d been held captive by an involuntary urge. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. About any of this. Maybe it was all a displacement activity to offset how uncomfortable she was. Being here. About to ask for work. About to beg forgiveness.

“I thought... I thought that maybe...”

“Are you about to ask me if I can donate a kidney, or something?”

She blinked. “No. Why would I want your kidney?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know your life. I don’t know your medical history. But you’re acting like you have something serious to ask me when I was pretty sure you just came to find out about the server position. So maybe stop looking at me like you’d rather be anywhere—including the deepest pit of hell—other than here.”

She could feel her temper starting to warm up. This was hard. Coming here, humbling herself. Okay, she hadn’t exactly humbled herself yet. But she was about to. “I just... I need a place to work. Because I had a falling-out with my father, and I’m not living with my parents anymore. But that also means that not only do I need a place to stay, I need a new job, because my job as an office manager type person was at the ranch. The family ranch...” She was the opposite of eloquent right now, and she knew it. What was it about this guy that made her so tongue-tied? It wasn’t the guy. It was just the situation. Bolstered by that, she took a deep breath and pressed on. “Please.”

“I’m sorry about the situation with your dad,” he said, not sounding it at all. But he said sorry so easily. Maybe it would be easy for her, as well. “But I’m not really sure if you’d be a good fit for the bar.”

“What? My excellent mechanical bull riding skills didn’t convince you?”

“That’s about all you have going for you, from where I’m standing.”

“Ace,” she said, trying again. “I was...not myself last night.”

“Uppity, kinda snotty. Seems to me like it was probably you.”

She gritted her teeth, wanting so badly to tear a strip off him with a very sharp word. But that would run counter to her objective. “I was rude.”

“And?”

She looked up, curling her fingers into fists, digging her nails into her skin. “Drunk.”

“Anything else, little girl?”

He was going to make sure this killed her. Now, if it did kill her, she wouldn’t need a job. She would just need a house to haunt. Maybe she would haunt his ass. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words pulled from her as grudgingly as any words ever were.

“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Borderline impossible,” she said. “Can I have the job?”

“Have you ever waited tables?”

“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.”