LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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