“Here’s your check, Selena. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.”
Connor stood, setting his jaw in an aggressive jut before stalking out of his office. Behind him, Selena’s mouth opened in astonishment.
Connor didn’t look back, couldn’t look back. He kept going straight past the walk-in freezer and the cases of liquor stacked to the ceiling. When he reached the bar, he opened the cash register and began to count.
Seconds later, Selena appeared and walked out the front door. She didn’t look back, either. Apparently, she understood his message all too clearly. Connor only wished it were half as clear to him.
“That was different.” Alex commented when the front door shut with a muffled thump.
“Don’t start.”
“Oh, I wasn’t going to.”
Connor grunted.
“But you’d have been a helluva lot more pleasant company if you’d have let off some steam in her pussy.”
“Not interested.”
“Since when?”
Connor didn’t miss a beat, “Since now.”
Alex remained silent for an entire five-minute span of time. “If you’d have given Selena a quick fuck, you’d be able to charm your way under Jessa’s skirt, Connor. With this attitude you’re going to have to use a caveman club to get between her thighs.”
“What makes you think I’m interested in the new waitress?” Connor deliberately avoided using her name.
“You can’t even say her name, mate.”
Connor shoved the fives back in the drawer and pulled out a huge wad of ones. He started to count. But he couldn’t even remember what number he was on. “Jessa. Her name’s Jessa. Happy now?”
“Sure, whatever.”
Connor threw the ones back in the drawer and slammed it shut so hard the machine gave a jarring ring. “Don’t use that tone with me,” he snapped.
“What tone?”
“The one that says you don’t believe a word I say!”
Alex stowed a bottle of Stolichnaya on the shelf and turned toward Connor. “Look, you’re the one with the rules. Me? I fuck whatever walks through that door and enjoy them all the same.”
Rules! His damn rules again. He’d lived by the rules for years and years, since prison and the hell-bitch that’d put him there. It was the reason he couldn’t look at Jessa. Couldn’t get attached, couldn’t give a shit what it was that tortured her on her off hours.
“Why the hell did you hire her, anyway?”
Alex looked miffed. “She’s a hottie in disguise, man. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her walk away when she said she was looking for a job. I figured she might be up for a quick fuck after hours. You know, the usual way we do things around here.”
“I don’t want you to fucking touch her,” Connor growled.
Alex lifted his hands in surrender, “Told you, man. You gotta keep your perspective. Go calm down. Get a grip on your temper and maybe you can find a way to get her out of your system before you have a breakdown or something.”
Connor didn’t comment on Alex’s ridiculous suggestion. But he left the bar before he said something he would really regret later on. No matter how badly Alex ran his mouth, he was still Connor’s oldest friend. In fact, he was probably Connor’s only friend. They’d known each other since grade school, long enough that Alex knew all Connor’s secrets, even the one he kept hidden from everyone.
His feet carried him back up the narrow staircase. He hadn’t eaten, but the kitchen wasn’t his destination. The clock on his bedside table said ten minutes until eleven. He’d told her to arrive around noon. Just a little over an hour and she’d be there again, in his bar, working for him.
What was it with her? The why of it completely escaped him. Connor had felt such intense attraction only once before in his life. It had brought him nothing but trouble and eventually led him to disaster. Since then he’d been cool, the definition of detached. He was known throughout the city as someone who knew how to show women a good time. He could make them so hot that they begged him on hands and knees to sink his cock deep inside their warm bodies. But the lust went one direction. They wanted him. Connor did not slip the leash on his self-control or his insatiable lust.
So what’s the deal with Jessa?
He strode to the narrow window and looked out. But a view of the cobbled downtown street wasn’t what he sought. Somewhere out there she was getting ready. Perhaps taking a shower and choosing her clothes while wearing nothing at all. The thought gave him a raging hard on that threatened to burst from his pants.