Saving the CEO (49th Floor #1)(2)

This was all Cassie's internal monologue, though. Ebenezer didn't betray  a single thought. His eyes lingered, yes, but once they fell to her  waist, which was the end of the line because the bar blocked the rest of  her, they came back up to her eyes with no hint of anything. No  approval, no disgust. Just emptiness.

"You're a connoisseur then?" A hint of a raised eyebrow made its way  onto his otherwise inscrutable face. She might have been imagining it.

She shrugged to hide her nervousness. Surely none of the others had ever  had even this much of a conversation with Mr. Scrooge. "I am." She  tipped the bottle to fill his glass, pausing when she'd poured the  standard amount, and then poured a little more-keep the customer  satisfied. After all, this one glass was probably going to cost him more  than a hundred bucks, and since he was eating at the bar, she didn't  have to share her fifty percent tip with anyone. "But I haven't tried  this." She set the bottle down a little more vehemently than she'd  intended, but he didn't flinch. "This is a little too rich for my  blood." She winked-fake it till you make it. "Wait!" She suddenly  remembered. "I stock distilled water for you." She squatted down to grab  the jug she kept under the bar.                       
       
           



       

It was true. She did keep it here with him in mind, once she'd realized  they had a regular customer who knew how to take his scotch. She shot  him a grin as she stood and twisted the cap off the plastic gallon  container. "Mind you, normally you're not sitting here, so you don't see  me pour it from this ugly-ass jug into this"-she reached above her head  for a small crystal pitcher-"fancy deal."

His hand shot out to stop her, coming to rest on her arm. Sweet Lord  above, was he a shaman, conducting electricity through his fingers?  Forcing herself not to jerk away as if from a hot stove, she cleared her  throat. "Something wrong?"

"What is this?"

She twisted the jug toward him. "Target brand distilled water. Only the best for you."

"You keep this in stock for me?"

"Well, you can't drink 1955 Glenfarclas with tap water." She  shuddered-the impulse was real, but she exaggerated the effect. "Toronto  water is terrible. It comes from the lake, for heaven's sake."

He nodded, still no discernable expression on his face.

She hesitated. "Do you want it in the pitcher?"

"That's not necessary. You can just pour it for me."

Great. Now she'd set herself up to pour the perfect amount of water from  a gallon jug directly into a glass of scotch that cost as much as one  of her textbooks-all under his signature brand of unsettling and intense  scrutiny. Probably all the other staff members were watching, too. Her  hands shook just thinking about it. Once more, with feeling. Fake it  till you make it, girl.

"There you go." She poured-pretty well, if she did say so herself-and  without making eye contact with him, recapped the bottle and pivoted  away. "Your dinner is coming right up."

 …

Well, hot damn. A person went to the same restaurant three nights a week  for two years, and a person thought he knew everything there was to  know about that restaurant. Jack knew all the Camilles and Kellies and  Kristins, even if he couldn't tell them apart, with their blond  ponytails, their thin, glossy lips, and their studied casualness. Knew  the cocktail list by heart. Could even guess at the specials-the chef  liked to do poultry on Wednesdays and some kind of affected house-cured  bullshit on Fridays that was never as good as it promised.

But then one day a person would do something so radical as come in on a  Tuesday-what the hell else was a person supposed to do when one's usual  Tuesday night dinner companion was royally fucking one over?-and  suddenly here was something new.

Yes, if a person wasn't careful, before he knew it, a brunette with  killer curves would be practically writhing on a stool in front of a  person, reaching for a bottle of scotch that she would then proceed to  mix with water from a plastic bottle from Target-and it would make  complete sense for her to do so.

And if a person wasn't careful, the same scorching brunette would plunk a  plate in front of a person and lift her chin just slightly before  announcing, "Pork loin with cranberries, goat cheese, and fresh dill. I  took the liberty of having the preserved lemon served on the side."

No "I'm sorry, sir, I misspoke-we would never serve pork with lemons at a  fine establishment such as this. I must have betrayed my working class  ignorance there for a moment." No, she just brought it on the side.  Fuck. Had to admire the balls of a girl like that.

Well, metaphorical balls. Because this one, she was all girl.

Too bad, because if Carl really was screwing him the way Jack suspected,  losing himself in a little female company tonight might be just what  the doctor ordered.

But he had rules. And Jack hadn't gotten as far as he had without  following his self-imposed rules. The relevant one here was that he was  never the pursuer. Well, at least not until a woman got him into her  bed. Then all bets were off. But, in general, he thought it fairer to  let women come to him, given that he was never going to see any of them  more than once. Pursuing a specific woman risked raising her  expectations.

As he ate his pork loin-preserved lemon on the side-he gave up on the  rows and rows of numbers, which were forever eluding him anyway, and  contemplated the hot bartender. Why had he never noticed her before? The  world was always throwing women at him-hence no need to be the pursuer.  Daughters of vendors-Jesus, wives of vendors. Flight attendants. Women  hitting on him in bars. At Edward's, and at most downtown Toronto  high-end spots, they were almost all of a type, looking like they were  on hiatus from the National Ballet to do their MBAs. They were all  slippery shiny surface, nothing a man could hold on to, figuratively,  or … well, this bartender, damn. He could just imagine pinning down those  gorgeous full hips and-                       
       
           



       

"Will there be anything else tonight, sir?"

"Pardon me?" The object of his absurd little fantasy stepped into his  line of vision, which put his eyeballs right in line with the second  button of her white shirt-it had looked like it was about to pop off all  evening.

"I'm cashing out-got to be up early tomorrow. So if you need anything  else, more preserved lemon, maybe,"-one corner of her plump pink mouth  turned up-"Edward will help you, okay?" She gestured to the older man at  the other corner of the bar, whom he knew to be the owner.

He was not the pursuer. And, God, a bartender? Not exactly his type. "Thank you," he said flatly, keeping his face neutral.

With a dip of her head, she disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes  later the door swung back open, and she stepped through transformed. A  pink pea coat had been thrown over her shirt and her hair had come down.  Freed from its prim bun, it fell well past her shoulders. When it was  up, he'd thought of it as merely dark brown. But he saw now that it was a  shiny mahogany subtly streaked with auburn and copper.

And she'd lost the tie. He shifted in his seat. The top two buttons of  her shirt were undone; that heroic button had been taken off active  duty, no longer straining to cover her up. He could see just the barest  bit of cleavage, a mere hint of what he suspected lay beneath.

He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the rest.

Well, if fucking Carl was going to take down Winter Enterprises, at  least Miss Lemon on the Side had given him something else to think about  tonight.





Chapter Two

When Jack arrived at the bar the next night, the bartender was deep in  conversation with a … teenager? She was huddled with a girl who couldn't  have been more than fourteen or fifteen, their attention both drawn by  something on the bar.

"Ants, Cassie! Ants! Are they trying to alienate me?"

Cassie-that must be her name-waved a bar towel dismissively. "Ants,  trains, whatever, it's all the same. You just have to think about it the  same way you always do."

The scrape of his stool drew her attention. A flash of surprise flitted  across her face, but it was quickly replaced by a grin. When she smiled  she crunched up her nose, which, lightly sprinkled with freckles as it  was, made for a seriously adorable picture. "Hey! You're back!" She  glanced out at the restaurant proper, toward the far corner where he  usually sat.

"Yeah, it's easier to spread out here at the bar, I found. And I've got a  crapload of work to get done." It was not untrue. His head swam when he  thought of it. The reality, though, was that he was going to need a bar  the size of his boardroom table to sort everything out. But he couldn't  do this work in the office. He huffed a disgusted laugh. Hell, he  probably couldn't do this work at all-that was the terrible irony.