I raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that against the rules for a mixologist?"
She slid her finger across her phone screen, and the music quietened. "No. It's pretty much common knowledge that we don't mix drinks unless we have to. That, and this is really good wine, so I'm making excuses for it."
I laughed, closing the door behind me. "As long as you aren't singing anymore, you can drink whatever you want."
"You're only saying that to get into my pants."
"Trust me, even if I didn't want in your pants, I'd be saying it."
"Are you saying I'm a bad singer?"
"Actually, I'm trying not to say that."
She sighed and perched on the arm of the sofa. "I'm lucky I'm pretty."
"And oh-so-modest, may I say?"
Her blue eyes found mine, and her lips curved to one side. She raised her glass to her lips, but the act of drinking wasn't enough to hide that tiny smile of hers. "I try."
I laughed and sat on the sofa. My keys dug into my thigh, so I pulled them, my wallet, and my phone out of my pockets. Dumping them on the coffee table in front of me, I turned my attention to the dark-haired beauty a few feet away from me. "All right. Cocktails and meals. Shall we get started?"
"We can, but I was hoping for a few minutes silence before that."
"That works. I just had to convince Sienna there's nothing happening between us."
"Technically, you were lying. There is nothing happening right now." She slid down off the arm onto the cushion. "It's all semantics and specifics."
"That's how you got away with being grounded so much as a teen, isn't it?"
She rolled her eyes. "Look, if my parents left loopholes, I exploited them. That's normal teen behavior."
"That's politician behavior. You're in the wrong career, hotshot."
"Mom dropped me at the gas station and said 'be back at ten.' I was back there at ten. She didn't specify there or home."
The chuckle escaped before I could stop it. "How did such a hellion become so put together?"
Raven turned in the seat, swinging her feet up on the cushion between us. "I got it all out in my teen years. By the time I did mixology, I had no rebellion left in me."
"Lies. You have rebellion left in you. Someone as wild as you were doesn't lose that."
"I wasn't wild." She paused, hugging her glass to her chest. "Maybe I feel a little rebellious sometimes, but for the rest of it...I have a business to run, and my promise to my grandparents means I can't fail. And if I fail, it means all I did in school was for nothing. It's like you training for years to be a chef and then putting sandwiches together in Wal-Mart or something. Not that a job isn't a job, but it's a waste of your skills."
"Now remember the time you put a brick through your ex-boyfriend's windshield and tell me you weren't wild."
"That was a one-off."
I raised an eyebrow. "How about the time you ran into the football team's change room and stole all their pants? Underpants and otherwise?"
"That was a dare," she said slowly.
"When you broke into the head's office and stole your school report because you knew you'd bombed that semester?"
"That was an unfortunate incident."
"That was captured on tape."
"That's what I'm referring to." She paused. "So, I wasn't a model team. We weren't all quarterback and dating the head cheerleader's sister."
So stereotypical. "I can honestly tell you I never once dated Amelia Cross or her sister." I shook my head. "I'd have rather cut off my hand than dated her. She was a bitch of the highest level. I'm waiting for the day she steps into the promo of those Real Housewives shows."
Raven swilled the wine in her glass. "She hated me. Probably because I put hair removal cream into her shampoo and she slowly started to lose her hair."
"I can't help but feel that's a valid reason to hate you."
"I didn't say it wasn't. But, in my defense, she shouldn't have stolen my bra during gym class and hung it from the streetlight."
The memory of our high school flashed in my mind. "How did she get it up there?"
"Physics," she answered simply. "Something she quickly learned about when everyone looked at my boobs instead of hers."
"I feel like this conversation has veered highly off topic," I said. "Not only because I'm now looking at your tits, but because I feel like I just stepped into one of those dumb TV shows about revenge."