Читать книгу All A Man Can Be - Virginia Kantra - Страница 12

She was wacko.

“What are you talking about?” Mark demanded.

Nicole’s face turned fiery red. He could almost—almost—feel sorry for her.

“I’m not judging you,” she said painfully. “But it’s unwise to form a relationship with someone who isn’t free to commit to you fully.”

Mark lifted an eyebrow. She was so earnest it was funny. “You speaking from experience here?”

Her face got even redder. He wouldn’t have believed it.

“I’m not trying to get personal,” she said. “I’m simply saying it’s a mistake.”

He could go for the direct approach. Sometimes that worked. “He really did a number on you, huh? What was his name?”

“Ted,” she said, surprised into a reply. She looked down at her rings. “He had three children. Boys.”

Her lips pressed closed, as if she’d let something precious escape. Interesting.

“You got a problem with boys?”

She didn’t smile. “No. I liked them. I liked spending time with them. I never minded going over on the weekends so that he could meet with customers or go into the office. Only—” She broke off.

“Let me guess. It wasn’t only customers he was meeting.”

Her blue eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“I hear it all the time, babe. It happens all the time.”

“He wasn’t even divorced,” she said. “Only separated.”

He heard that, too. But it didn’t make sense. She was rich. Blond. A looker. “Why’d you put up with it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He shrugged. Her love life wasn’t his problem. “Okay.”

“And you don’t have any right to sound so superior.”

“Hey,” he said, genuinely startled. “You don’t need to get so defensive.”

But she went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “You can’t tell me you’ve never gotten involved with a married woman.”

“No. I can’t tell you that,” Mark said grimly. “But I can tell you that’s one mistake I don’t plan on repeating.”

Nicole sniffed. “Why did you agree to meet with her, then?”

“Meet who?”

“The woman on the phone.”

He almost goggled at her. The lawyer?

He turned to check the liquor levels in the bottles behind the bar. Not that anyone in Eden was likely to order a lunchtime grappa, but it bought him some time to figure out how to deal with her accusation.

“You shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” he said.

Nicole lowered her voice to a wickedly deep imitation of his. “‘Have you told him about me?’” She shook her head and said in her normal voice, “Big leap.”

He wanted to shake her. He wanted to laugh. She was funny and concerned and totally wrong.

Mark was getting pretty damn tired of being accused of things he hadn’t done.

“You don’t know the situation,” he said.

You don’t know me.

“So tell me.” Her voice was bright and sympathetic. So were her eyes.

“No.”

She stiffened. “I can’t let you have Thursday night off without some kind of explanation. Staffing is a problem.”

“Your problem,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

“Yes, I am. And since I am—” she took a deep breath and straightened on her bar stool “—I want you back by eleven that night to close the register.”

She was drawing her line in the sand.

He could do what he wanted. Let her call the shots. His business with the Gilbert woman would be over by five. Six, tops.

Or he could tell her to go to hell.

Yeah, and then he could explain to the guardian-ad-whatever, at their first meeting, that not only was he the kind of loser scum who lost track of a seventeen-year-old girl and their baby, he was an unemployed loser scum incapable of supporting said child.

Oh, yeah. That would go over well.

He looked at Nicole, sitting at the end of his bar in her don’t-touch-me blouse with her don’t-mess-with-me face, nervously twisting those pretty gold rings on her fingers. What would she do if he walked on her? She’d be screwed. They both knew it.

“Eleven?” he asked.

She tried hard to keep the hope from her expression, but it shone in those incredible blue eyes.

“In time to close,” she said.

“Fine. I can manage that.”

He didn’t know what he expected. Not gratitude, exactly, but… Well, okay, gratitude would have been nice.

Instead she nodded, like his capitulation was never in doubt, and started grilling him about the menu.

Okey-damn-dokey. He wasn’t trying to make points with her. From now on, he would just do his job and hope she didn’t interfere too much.

She was taking him line by line through the appetizer listing, with him explaining which items Louis prepared in the kitchen and what he purchased from their wholesaler in Chicago, when a horn blared in the parking lot.

Nicole jumped. “What’s that?”

Mark shrugged. “Beats me.”

The horn sounded again, a quick, impatient tattoo.

Nicole nibbled her lip. “Well, don’t you want to go see?”

“Nope. It’s probably some kid with a new car.”

Whoever it was decided hitting the horn wasn’t working and starting banging on the door instead. Nicole slid from her seat.

“Or a drunk,” Mark added, “who can’t wait for opening hour.” In which case he couldn’t very well let Blondie answer the door alone now, could he? He strolled from behind the bar. “Or it could be—”

Nicole threw the bolt and opened the door on a very attractive, very ticked-off brunette wearing gold jewelry and sunglasses.

His sister, Tess.

Oh, hell.

He had a tux fitting at ten-thirty which he had just totally blown off.

Of the two women, Tess looked more surprised. But she also recovered faster. Growing up with an alcoholic mother and an abusive father did that for you. Both DeLucca kids had plenty of practice in hiding their feelings and thinking fast on their feet.

His sister stuck out her hand. “You must be Nicole. I’m Tess. Is Mark here?”

Nicole froze like one of those ice sculptures they set on the buffet tables in the Algonquin Hotel dining room. “Yes, he is. Is he expecting you?”

“He should be,” Tess said. “The rat.” She looked over Nicole’s shoulder at Mark. “You are not getting out of this. I don’t care how uncomfortable it makes you or what you think of this marriage. If you hurry, they can still squeeze us in.”

Oh, yeah. Tess was one tough cookie, all right. Only he knew what a softie, what a sucker she was.

He owed her. Always had.

And maybe now was a good time to prove to his blond boss—hell, to prove to himself—that he could walk away at any time.

“Okay,” he said to his sister. “I’m gone,” he told Nicole.

“But—”

Looking into those wide blue eyes, he felt a very unfamiliar and totally unwelcome need to explain. To apologize. To reassure.

He squashed it.

Nicole Reed didn’t need him or his explanations.

Besides, Joe would be along in a few minutes to help her open.

“I work four until close,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you then.”

“It was nice meeting you,” Tess added.

He followed her out to her car.

Nicole folded back the grimy shutters, watching through the window as Mark drove off with the gorgeous brunette with red nails and attitude.

Things could be worse. At least this time she knew what kind of man he was before her heart got involved.

Mark DeLucca was not the type of guy who could make her happy. He was a player. Like Charles. Like Zack. Like every other guy who had ever strung her along and used her. Only this guy wasn’t even bothering to string her along. He had enough women on his line already. That Kathleen Turner wannabe on the phone. The exotic-looking brunette in the car.

Nicole couldn’t compete.

She shouldn’t want to compete.

Her relationship with Mark was strictly professional, employer to employee.

She slid into a booth, kneeling on the bench seat to unlatch the heavy shutters.

Employee. Right.

Only she hadn’t been in the kitchen flirting with Louis. She hadn’t quizzed Joe about his personal life or blurted out the pathetic story of married-Ted-the-insurance-sales-man-and-his-three-children to Deanna.

Oh, no. Nicole tugged at the dirty shutters. Because that wouldn’t be humiliating enough. No, she had to go and expose herself to Mark DeLucca instead.

Outside the windows, the sky was overcast. The lake reflected shards of light like an open drawer of tarnished flatware. Nicole closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the cool glass.

She was such a loser.

“Miss Reed? Nicole?” It was Joe, coming through the open front door. She’d forgotten to lock up. “Is Mark here?”

Strictly professional, Nicole reminded herself. She scrambled around on the seat.

“No, he, um, left.” Oh, that was smooth.

Joe’s cheerful, chubby face creased. “His car’s our front.”

“Yes. He got a ride.” She gritted her teeth. “From Tess somebody.”

“Oh, yeah?” Joe grinned. “Wonder if she roped him into helping with the wedding.”

Oh, God. It hurt. Nicole hadn’t expected it to hurt. Not this soon. Not this much. She barely knew the man. She didn’t even like him.

“I think so. Yes,” she said stiffly.

Joe moved behind the bar. “Hard to believe they’re getting married in just three weeks.”

“Very hard,” Nicole agreed.

Mark didn’t look like a soon-to-be-married man. He didn’t act like an engaged man.

All her instincts rejected the possibility that he belonged to another woman.

Of course, her instincts generally sucked.

“I’m sure they’ll be very happy together,” she said. “They seem very—” sexy, careless, confident, all the things she was not and never would be “—well suited.”

“You know Chief Denko?”

Nicole blinked. “Who?”

“Jarek Denko. The chief of police. Tess’s fiancé.”

“Wait. I thought—” she took a careful breath “—I thought Mark was her fiancé.”

Joe laughed. “Mark? Nah. Mark is Tess’s brother. She’s making him give her away at the wedding.”

Relief bloomed in Nicole’s chest. She was almost dizzy with it.

The brunette was Mark’s sister. Mark wasn’t engaged.

Maybe just this once her instincts weren’t entirely wrong.

Tess pulled into the lot beside Mark’s Jeep Cherokee. Her wiper blades shuddered and streaked against the windshield.

“Thanks,” she said. “I hope your boss isn’t going to be too upset with you for taking off.”

Mark grinned. “Maybe you should write me a note.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Tess said tartly. “When are you going to get married and let some other woman take care of you?”

His last experience with a married woman hadn’t left him feeling cared for at all. But Mark didn’t tell his sister that. He never talked to anybody about that.

He teased, instead. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

But she replied seriously, “I love you. That’s why I want you to be happy.”

“Uh-huh. And tying myself down to one woman is going to make me happy.”

“It would. If she were the right woman.”

This was what came of being disgustingly crazy in love. Tess was a bright girl. But her engagement to Jarek Denko had obviously shorted out a few brain cells.

“Yeah, well, the right woman isn’t going to want to have anything to do with me. Not if she’s in her right mind.”

Tess rolled her eyes. But he noticed she didn’t argue with him. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and told him to stay out of trouble.

Yeah, like that had ever worked.

He hunched his shoulders against the rain and stomped up the plank walk to the entrance, vaguely surprised to see Nicole’s gold-toned Lexus still in the parking lot. The new owner was putting in some long hours. Either she was really conscientious, or she’d decided to stick around long enough to bust his butt.

But when Mark opened the door, it wasn’t his butt that occupied his attention.

It was hers.

Nicole was leaning over a table in one of the booths, her knees on the seat and her khaki-covered behind in the air. And she had, without question, one of the finest female rear ends he had seen in his life. Lush. Heart-shaped. Hot.

It wiggled. She turned. And—oh, jeez—caught him staring.

Only she didn’t seem to notice.

At least, she didn’t seem to mind.

She smiled, her face all sunshine despite the gray day outside, and asked cheerfully, “Like it?”

Surprise almost made him laugh.

“Love it,” he told her solemnly.

“Good. I know you can’t see it too well now, but you’ll have a much better view tomorrow.”

Okay, he was confused. Or she was. Not that he would object or anything, but it didn’t seem real likely that she was inviting him to ogle her butt.

“Why tomorrow?” he asked.

“Well, obviously clean windows are more noticeable on a clear day.”

Windows. She was talking about windows. And now that he didn’t have her cute rear end burning into his eyeballs like the sun at noon, he could see that the glass behind her shone. Even the wooden shutters gleamed, free of their usual coat of crud. A pile of crumpled rags lay on the floor beside a bucket. Nicole’s sleeves were pushed back, water spotted her left breast, and a smudge decorated her forehead.

She looked damp and untidy and very pleased with herself.

“Looks…good,” Mark said.

She beamed. “Thank you. Do you want to move those chairs, and I’ll get the windows by the—”

He hated to snuff her enthusiasm. But—

“No,” he said.

Her shoulders squared. “Is this the part where you tell me you don’t do windows? Moving furniture is not in your job description?”

He had to admire her spunk, even if she was wrong. “No. This is when I tell you the eight-to-four shift just ended at the plant and the four-to-seven rush is starting here. You need me behind the bar pushing drinks right now. Not out front pushing tables.”

“All right. I can do it myself.”

“Bad idea.”

Her voice rose in frustration. “For heaven’s sake, why? I won’t be in the way. The tables don’t fill up that quickly.”

“Because, babe, the guys who stop in here for a beer after work don’t care about clean windows. They don’t want to be reminded that they have chores and wives waiting at home. They want to relax, not watch you rearrange the furniture.”

To his surprise she nodded. “Selling atmosphere.”

“What?”

“It’s in one of my books on restaurant management. We’re not simply providing drinks, we are selling a total ambiance.”

“You aren’t going to be selling much of anything if I don’t get behind the bar.”

She wiped her hands on a rag and folded it in precise quarters. “Well then, you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or go smack his head with a bottle.

He did neither. It wouldn’t be cool, and cool was something Mark had cultivated since he was a scabby six-year-old trying desperately to find his place in the first-grade pecking order. He’d never been smart like Tess. He wasn’t well dressed like the kids from the big houses across the lake. He didn’t have the kind of mother who baked cupcakes for the class on his birthday or the kind of home you invited friends to after school. But he was cool. Man, was he cool.

He got behind the bar and pulled a draft for one of the regulars. Jimmy Greene was just off his shift at the paper plant, looking for a beer to wash away the taste of wood pulp and his general dissatisfaction with his life.

Right there with you, Jimmy boy.

When Nicole bent over to pick up her bucket and rags, Mark let himself look. She was just a hot body with a snotty attitude, no different from any other blonde who’d done a hit-and-run on his life.

He didn’t want her to be any different, because then he would want her, and wanting her wouldn’t get him anywhere.

Jimmy nudged him. “Nice, huh?”

The son of a bitch was leering at Nicole’s butt.

“Watch it,” Mark warned. “That’s my boss.”

“Oh, I’m watching,” Jimmy said. “And I bet you’re doing more than that, you lucky bastard. She any good?”

“She’s my boss, Jimmy,” Mark said quietly. “So put your eyes in your head and your tongue in your mouth before I have to knock your teeth down your throat.”

Jimmy slumped on his bar stool and sulked in his beer. So much for selling atmosphere.

But over the next week, Mark was forced to watch as Nicole did her damnedest to create ambiance—whatever the hell that was—in his bar. She attacked dirt like it was her personal enemy, coming in, Joe had reported, before the bar opened and working sometimes through the quiet hours of early afternoon.

Her ideas weren’t bad. Not all bad, anyway. Mark had had some ideas himself, back when he’d thought he had a chance of buying the place. But…

“What are these? Handkerchiefs? Doilies?” Mark asked on Thursday, brandishing a little white square with a stylized cobalt moon rocking over a purple wave.

Nicole didn’t miss a beat. “New cocktail napkins. They match the new menus,” she explained, and went out to plant flowers in the tub outside the front door.

New menus?

Strange sandwiches appeared from the kitchen and on the chalkboard that listed the daily specials, grilled sandwiches with tasty ingredients and stupid names.

“What the hell is a Tuscany Twosome?” Mark grumbled to Louis.

Nicole overheard. “Capicolla and provolone with pesto aioli on focaccia,” she said. “And before you start getting negative, you might as well know I’m not adding them to the permanent menu. They haven’t sold very well.”

“There’s a surprise,” Mark said.

“When I want your opinion, DeLucca, I’ll ask for it,” Nicole snapped, but she didn’t sound so tough. Just tired.

And there was that sad baby droop to her lip when she thought no one was looking that made him long to…do something for her.

Mark rubbed his jaw. It was kind of too bad about the sandwiches. The one he’d wolfed down when he came to work today had actually tasted pretty good. And Louis seemed okay with the idea of occasionally cooking something besides chicken wings and loaded fries.

Maybe Mark didn’t know food. Dinner in the DeLucca household had mostly been a matter of Tess opening cans. And neither the chow at the mess or the MREs he’d bolted down in the field were exactly dining at the Algonquin.

But he did know the Blue Moon’s clientele.

“Try changing the name,” he suggested.

“Excuse me?”

“Call it Italian ham-and-cheese,” he said.

“Thank you. I’ll consider that,” she said stiffly.

Like she didn’t gave a rat’s ass for him or his opinions or anything. But then he walked into the kitchen at the end of the night and caught her packing the unused sandwiches into a big white box.

“What are you doing?”

Nicole blushed like he’d spotted her adding water to the vodka bottles over the bar. “I’m packing a carton for the interfaith food shuttle.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you giving food away?”

She tossed her blond hair over her shoulders. “Better than throwing it away.”

But he wasn’t fooled by her snippy attitude this time.

“Yeah,” he agreed slowly. “I guess you’re right.”

And when some of the guys wandered in after league night at the Thunder Bowl, he gave out a couple of the new sandwiches for them to try.

“We sold out of ham-and-cheese,” Nicole announced three nights later. “And it’s not even seven o’clock.”

Mark set up the drink order for table five—two Millers and a seven-and-seven—and slid it over the counter for Deanna.

“Congratulations.”

But Nicole didn’t look very happy. “Do you think Palermo’s is still open? Because I need to pick up more focaccia, and—”

“Hey,” he interrupted her. “Relax. This place isn’t going to close down because we ran out of one sandwich.”

“But—”

“Erase the specials board, and increase the bakery order for tomorrow.”

“Yes. All right.” She flushed. “I suppose you think I’m pretty silly, getting all worked up over a sandwich.”

“I think you’re—”

Sweet. Special. And trying too hard.

Uh-huh. Like he could say any of those things to his boss.

“—anxious to see things succeed.”

Nicole beamed at him as if he’d said something really deep. “I am.” She laid her slim hand gleaming with golden rings on his arm and squeezed gently. His tongue dried to the roof of his mouth. “I want you to know I realize it wouldn’t have happened without your support. I really need you here.”

He almost fell for it. Staring into her baby blues, feeling the warmth that stole through him at her words, he almost fell for her.

Was anything more seductive than those whispers?

Betsy, her eyes swimming with easy tears. I need you, Mark.

Hayley, her voice trembling with well-assumed anguish. Mark, I need you.

Was anything more painful than those memories?

Mark’s jaw clenched. He so did not need this. Not again. Not with her. Not ever.

And so he did the one thing guaranteed to end it, made the one move sure to drive her away. Or get him fired.

“Not here, babe.” He turned to set up the drinks for another ticket, checking to make sure no one was near enough to overhear. Grateful he wouldn’t have to watch her face as he said the words. “We’re kind of busy, you know? But after we close, maybe we can get naked.”