He gestured to the fruit boxes stacked neatly to her left and the filled tubs waiting to be distributed along the bar. “Thought you might need a hand with prep.”
“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.