LITMIR.BIZ

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on the job feels right to you?” She took a step closer. “It seems to me that’s what got you this bar in the first place.” She pulled the apron in her hands over her head and reached behind her back to tie it, causing her breasts to push against the soft material of her light pink T-shirt.

      Scott sucked in a breath. Hell, the T-shirt wasn’t even formfitting and its conservative crew-neck collar practically covered half her throat. Misty was wearing a low-cut, skintight number that barely held in her ample chest. But it hadn’t had any effect on him. Unlike Lexi’s buttoned-up outfit.

      He walked around the edge of the bar and took her arm, spinning her away from him.

      “What are you doing?” she said with a gasp.

      “Helping you,” he answered and tied her apron strings together. “It seems to me the reason I’m in this mess is because of you and your contract.”

      “You wanted to buy the bar,” she argued.

      “I wanted to pick a fight with Luke,” he countered, resting his hands on her hips, unable to resist circling his thumbs against the place where her shirt hem met the fabric of her black dress slacks. Attorney clothes, clearly made of expensive material. Not the sort of pants someone wore to serve drinks.

      Which reminded him that Lexi wasn’t the sort of woman who should be waitressing in a bar. “If it wasn’t for your ever-helpful legal skills, we would have exchanged some big talk and called it a night. Now I’ve got a business I don’t want in a town I don’t want to live in.”

      She went perfectly still, whether because of his words or his touch, Scott didn’t know. But her voice was breathless when she spoke. “Maybe you should have stopped to think before you agreed to anything. Maybe if your ego wasn’t so big you would have left when he told you to go.”

      Ouch. Scott didn’t want to admit how close to home that hit. The phrase if you’d stopped to think could have saved him so many different times in his life.

      “I never do,” he said quietly. “Stop. Or think.”

      Because then he might remember how lonely he always felt, how afraid he was of needing someone and being left alone, the way both his parents had done when he was a kid.

      “You should try it sometime,” she said, her voice just a whisper.

      “What’s done is done.” He pulled her closer to him and whispered against her ear, “It’s easier to do what people expected of me—which isn’t much.”

      * * *

      Lexi felt her heart squeeze tight. It was so quiet in the bar at the moment. She was surrounded by Scott, the warmth of his chest against her back and his spicy, soapy scent mingling with the tangy smell of liquor on his breath.

      That was what did it, brought her back to her right mind. The alcohol was the only explanation for why he seemed to want to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched by him.

      She drove her elbow back, surprised at how quickly he moved to block the shot. “You’re messing with me—”

      She stopped when the front door opened and half a dozen men walked through. One called out, “There’s an under-new-management sign in the window. What’s that about?”

      Another gave a long whistle. “Hey, there’s a flat screen now. Is that new?”

      “I’ll be watching you tonight,” Scott whispered to her. “Just remember that.”

      Her mouth went dry as he turned away.

      “Put it up today, boys,” he answered. “Got cable set up, too. Have a seat and we’ll find a game to watch.”

      A round of cheers went up and the men came over to shake Scott’s hand. They moved toward a table, but he pointed to the other side of the room. “You’re going to have a better view over there, fellows.”

      He’d moved them from her section to Misty’s, but only smiled as Lexi glared at him.

      She spilled one glass the entire night, a huge improvement from her first shift. She didn’t have the natural gift of gab that Misty did, flirting and making small talk with the customers. But Lexi did her best to keep up, making sure she got every order right and moving as quickly as her legs could carry her.

      She was getting used to the noise and the smell of the bar, the customers who got more boisterous as the night wore on. Lexi didn’t have a lot of experience with boisterous. Her father’s idea of out of control was playing opera music instead of something mellower during dinner. Even in college, Lexi had stayed away from bars, worried there was something in her, some sort of predisposition for addiction, like her biological mother had had.

      Her dad had told her in great detail about how she would have to overcome the deficiencies in her gene pool throughout her life. He’d made her believe that if she got too close to the wild life that had killed her mother, she might end up down that same dark path. She had only a few snippets of memory of her birth mom. The scent of her musky perfume and being left alone in their small apartment for long periods of time. But she was curious about “the other side of life,” as her dad called it.

      Being in Riley’s Bar, serving customers, was a revelation to Lexi. She didn’t really have a desire to drink, but the energy from the people around her made her feel more alive than she ever had.

      Scott took a shot with another customer. She didn’t know how much he’d had tonight and it wasn’t any of her business. He didn’t seem wasted, although he hadn’t last night, either. She still knew he was trouble. He tempted her to be different than the person she’d worked so hard to become. The way he made her feel could be dangerous to her very soul. She wanted an adventure, but how far was she willing to go to get a real one?

      The bar emptied soon after the football game was over, which she figured was normal. She took off her apron and hung it in the back hall, counting the money from the front pocket. She’d made twenty dollars in tips. Not a lot, but the cash meant more to her than any paycheck she’d ever received from her father’s firm.

      “You did better tonight.”

      She turned to see Jon Riley in the doorway that led to the unused kitchen. “I practiced carrying drinks around all day,” she said with a grin.

      “It worked.” He returned her smile. “You’re not a natural but you’ll get there.”

      “My mom was a waitress her whole life,” Lexi said, then wondered why she’d shared that.

      “There’s worse ways to make a living.”

      She thought about her father and the underhanded legal deals he’d gotten into the habit of arranging to keep his firm on top. Maybe that was a type of addiction in its own right. She’d never made a connection between her adoptive father and her biological mother, and the thought made her skin crawl the tiniest bit.

      “She was an alcoholic,” Lexi blurted. “Lost custody of me when I was six. Working in bars killed her.”

      Jon shook his head. “The booze killed her. You’re not like that.”

      “How do you know?” Lexi asked, suddenly needing reassurance from this virtual stranger.

      “I’ve been down that road,” he said simply. “I can recognize a person battling demons. Sometimes it’s easier to drown yourself than work on what’s really wrong.”

      She heard Misty’s laughter ring out from the front of the bar, followed by the deep tone of Scott’s voice.

      Jon jerked his head toward the sound. “That boy has a war waging inside him. He’s got a good heart but he’s going to have to do some digging to find it again.”

      “Can someone like him be helped?”

      The man shrugged. “Maybe. But they’ve got to want it. And you’ve got to risk that if they don’t, you’re gonna be real hurt trying for ’em.”

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