LITMIR.BIZ

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nursing this one, sweetheart.” Charlie’s eyes twinkled. “You’re pretty as your wildcat mama, you know that?”

      Olivia shook her head. “You’re shameless as a hound dog, old man.”

      “You tell Rosa I’m still waiting for her,” Charlie advised before tipping his bottle back and gulping deep.

      Monica nudged Olivia with an elbow. “If that Freddie character comes on to me again, I’m gonna show him what it’s like to have a three-inch heel shoved up his ass.”

      Olivia eyed the gangly giant in question. “Oh, come on. He’s harmless. What’s he doing to harass you?”

      Monica rolled her eyes. “His lips are moving.”

      Olivia belted out a laugh. “When you first started working for me little over two years ago, you said he was pretty hot stuff.”

      Monica snorted. “That was before he went and married Elaine.”

      “You’re still sore about that?” Olivia chided, brow quirked. “It’s been eight months.”

      “Well, yeah, I’m sore! The few decent guys there are in this town get hung up in seconds...usually with the worst women.”

      “Ain’t that the truth?” Olivia said with a doubtful glance around the room. Fairhope was as peaceful as small Southern towns got. It might be the quintessential place to retire or raise kids, but like most small towns there was a deplorable lack of good, unattached men to go around. “Don’t sweat it. She’ll get bored with him, and you can be the first to lick his wounds.”

      “I don’t do seconds.” Monica brooded before chugging down the shot of Jack Daniel’s the wizened man across the bar had bought her. Her lips curved into a practiced simper. “Thanks, Pete.”

      “Hey, Liv!” someone called from the other side of the bar.

      Olivia laughed fondly at the baby face of Skeet Bisbee. “Hey, cutie. I haven’t seen you since you left for Tuscaloosa. What are you doing here?”

      Skeet grinned, radiating collegiate charm as he sat on the vacant stool next to Charlie. “I came to order a drink.”

      Olivia narrowed her eyes and angled her head in scrutiny. “Does your mama know you’re here?”

      Skeet beamed. “I mean it. I want a black jack.”

      “As pretty as that face is, I’m gonna have to say no,” Olivia told him.

      “All right, all right.” Skeet reached for his billfold and held it out to her. “Check this out. I turned legal just a few hours ago. I was lucky the DMV was open. You know, with the storm and all.”

      Olivia scanned the temporary license. “Hell, that ain’t even in plastic yet. That can’t be legal. What do you think, Monica?”

      Monica glanced at the ID, then up at the hopeful, handsome face before her. “Come on, Liv. Give the man a drink.” The waitress poured a jigger of Jack herself and sent it sailing across the bar with a wink. “On me.”

      Skeet blushed to the roots of his hair.

      Olivia cackled, grabbed Skeet’s face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. A chorus of catcalls went up around the tavern, and Skeet bloomed from pink to cherry-red.

      “Happy birthday, Skeeter baby,” Olivia said before raising her voice over the music. “Hey, everybody, it’s Skeet Bisbee’s birthday and I want you all to buy him a drink!”

      Obliging volunteers pushed their way toward the bar and the two tavern-keepers got busy quickly.

      Though Fairhope wasn’t as exciting as...say Vegas, the town and the tavern had been Olivia’s one and only home for twenty-nine years. It was practically her lifeblood. The minute her adventurous parents handed the reins of the business to her seven years ago to fulfill their cross-country traveling dreams, she’d found a deep sense of purpose in keeping the family trade alive and strong. Her mother and father had built it from the ground up. It was her job to nourish and sustain it. And that she had, even through the worst downturn of the local, small business economy.

      For seven years, her life had been a chorus line of late working nights. It’d take more than a hurricane to break that chain and her love of it.

      “Oh, my,” Olivia heard a stunned Monica say over the jukebox crank of Boston’s best. The waitress’s hands were frozen in midair and her eyes were locked on the tavern doors. “What have we here?”

      Olivia looked around, up over the heads of her patrons to the big, heavy, distressed-wood-panel doors. She took one look at the man who had just blown in from the windy outdoors, running a hand through his wet golden hair, his long wool jacket soaking wet, and her heart struck a drumbeat.

       No. It couldn’t be.

      His kind, intelligent eyes scanned the shiny wood carvings on the walls and the web-strewn lights overhead before settling on the long bar. They passed over the heads of her customers and snagged on her. That drumbeat inside her kicked into a cadence as he grinned wide, knowingly, his gaze warming on hers, and inclined his head.

      Monica gasped. “You know that piece of man candy?”

      Olivia opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. So few times in her life had she been truly speechless. But seeing Gerald Leighton walk into her tavern on the most unlikely night of the year might have been the shock of her lifetime. Shaking her head, she gawped like a fish as she and Monica both watched him walk the rest of the way to the bar and take up one of the few empty stools on the far end.

      “Liv?” Monica said, snapping her fingers to get Olivia’s attention. When Olivia blinked and focused on the waitress’s face, Monica narrowed her eyes. “Are you okay?”

      “Fine,” Olivia said, glancing back at Gerald, who had eyes only for her. “Just...handle the bar for a bit. I’ll be right back.”

      Monica looked from Olivia to Gerald and back. Then she shrugged. “All righty, then. I’d ask you to get me his name and number...but it seems he’s already taken.”

      Olivia opened her mouth to deny it, then decided not to when Monica quickly went back to work. Clearing her throat, Olivia took off the apron at her waist and left the bar, rounding it to meet Gerald on the other side.

      He smiled at her approach, those laugh lines digging in and charming her all over again. Three weeks. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him in three weeks. She’d counted on not laying eyes on him ever again. And here he was, having the same effect on her that he’d had the morning after in Vegas. As he stood up for her, she slowed her steps and licked her lips. “Gerald,” she said simply.

      “Olivia,” he said with a nod and a widening grin. Those green eyes washed over her like a head-to-toe caress. “You can’t know how relieved I am to see you.”

      “Yeah, about that.” Olivia cleared her throat and crossed her arms over her chest, shifting from one black-heeled boot to the other. “How did you find me exactly?”

      “I had to call in a few favors,” Gerald admitted. “In the end, it was my publicist who was able to nail down your current address. You’re not an easy woman to find, Olivia Lewis. Particularly in the middle of a hurricane.”

      She looked toward the glass doors leading onto the veranda. Nobody had dared to brave Mother Nature and sip their drinks outside this evening as they did most other nights at the tavern. Seeing the sturdy wooden chairs being whipped about by the wind and the soaking wet, weathered planks of the floor, she frowned at him. “You drove through this to get to me?”

      “Yes,” Gerald confirmed. And there was that hint of sheepishness crawling into his eyes. He blinked and interest filled them, chasing away the momentary embarrassment as he jerked his thumb toward the bay. “Is it always like this?”

      “Only occasionally,

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