"Well, I may have told him he started training tonight."
Faith picked up the heavy tray of glasses with the ease of someone who had been doing it several times a night for the better part of a decade. "You're impossible," she told her boss. "I'll forgive you if you tell me that Anthony is out for the night or something. Ugh," she growled as soon as she said it and Vin's head tipped to the side. "Of course he's going to be here, breathing down my neck."
"He doesn't get behind the bar," Vin reminded her, as he often did.
"Can I kick him in the nuts this time when he tries?" Faith asked, smiling at the idea. Fact of the matter was, she had wanted to do worse to him since the goddamn day she had the unfortunate privilege of meeting the sleaze bag he turned into when he was trashed.
"Play nice, Faith. And try not to scare the new guy off."
"Listen, Wednesdays are busy. If he can't handle it, or the very least stay out of my way, I am not going to pat him on the head, give him a gold star, and tell him he did a good job. If he sucks, he sucks. You wouldn't keep Marco on if he made a sub-par fettuccine or if Rodrigo left spots on the dishes, so why is the standard for the bar different?"
"Alright, alright," he said, holding up his hands, palms out. "The bar is your domain. You have the power to make the decisions about it."
"Including who gets fired and when from here on out," Faith demanded, brow raised, daring him to challenge her.
There weren't many men or women who could get away with making demands on a man like Vin D'Onofrio, but Faith could. And they both knew why.
"Yes, fine," Vin said. "Danny will be in at five," he said as he walked away.
"Danny?" she asked his retreating form. "He better not be some freaking college kid, Vin!"
She sighed as she stacked rocks, shots, and stem glasses. Then she tried to not be pissed off as she filled the juice mixes and collected the fresh fruit from the walk-in and piled them on the bar.
"Need some help with that?" a smooth, deep voice asked from in front of her, drawing her attention up for several reasons, not the least of them being that no one, no one was ever able to walk up on her. She never got surprised. She never got caught off-guard. She had more training than that.
But other than that, the place was still closed. No one should have been able to get in.
When her head lifted, she got another surprise because the man standing there was way too good looking for a Wednesday afternoon at a bar.
He was tall and fit with strong shoulders, a chiseled, masculine face, neat brown hair, slightly tan skin, and brown eyes. Those eyes were what stood out to her. Good looking men were a dime a dozen. Great abs and strong biceps and muscular asses said nothing about a person. But she was a firm believer in the eyes having it all. Even not knowing someone, their eyes gave away a lot.
But this guy's deep brown, pleasing, trustworthy brown eyes, yeah, they had her on edge. Why? She wasn't sure. But that was how she felt about them.
Which was a shame because she was a sucker for a brown-eyed guy and it had been far too long since she had a man.
"We're closed," she told him, voice clipped and dismissive. "And your game could use some work," she added for good measure. In her experience, shooting down a guy was best done clearly and brutally. Better they thought she was a cold-blooded bitch than someone who just needed more persuasion.
But he didn't seem phased by her words or her tone when he shrugged a shoulder and gave her a half-smile. "That wasn't my game, baby. If that was my game, your panties would be a puddle on the floor." She felt her brow raise at that, liking confidence perhaps more than any other trait. Nothing was worse than some lily-livered insecure beta who had to try to convince you he could be even passable in bed.
You could always tell a man who knew what he was doing in the sack by how he flirted. Compliments, trying too hard, and being too in-your-face were tell tale signs of small dicks or wholly unsatisfying machine-gun fucking- fast and hard and over way too quickly.
But a guy who was cooly, almost detachedly sure of himself, yeah, they didn't have to compliment you or try too hard or get in your face because they knew what they were capable of and didn't need to do any of that crap.
This guy, he knew what he was capable of.
That, paired with the fact that he was good looking, yeah, it had Faith's attention.
"And I believe this place is only closed to the public. I'm not the public."