She ducked for a moment, disappearing behind the bar. When she shot up, she was grinning and holding the jug of distilled water. She plunked it down in front of him. "The scotch supplier was here today and we have a bunch of new bottles-they're still in back. I'm gonna go grab them." Before he could protest that anything was fine-he wasn't feeling picky-she was off, hips swaying in her black miniskirt.
He didn't realize how openly he was staring until he swung his attention back to the bar to find the teenager eyeing him with no less subtlety. In her jeans and too-tight T-shirt, she looked out of place in the dark bar, which was usually filled with stockbrokers and young beautiful people with money to burn.
"You Cassie's boyfriend?"
He shot her what he hoped was a quelling look. "No." Then he pulled up the March invoices. Jesus Christ, he was only to March. He'd hoped to have this sorted out before the Wexler deal got underway, but it didn't look like it was going to happen. He knocked his head momentarily against his fist, as if he could knock some goddamn sense into his head.
"Problem?" The girl was still looking at him.
"You could say that."
"Well, you're not the only one. Listen to this. Two ants are at a common point in time. The first ant starts crawling along a straight line at the rate of one meter per minute. Three minutes later, the second ant starts crawling in a direction perpendicular to that of the first, at a rate of one point three meters per minute. How fast is the distance between them changing when the first ant has traveled seven meters?"
His blank stare must have spoken for him because she pounded the bar and said, "Exactly. There's also the part where we're talking about ants! Ants! When, I ask you, am I ever going to need to calculate the rate of change of the distance between two ants?"
"I think it's safe to say probably never?"
"Never say never." Cassie had snuck up on them. She was carrying too much, hugging an armful of bottles. Carefully, slowly, she let them slide down her chest, until they thunked onto the polished cherrywood of the bar. He had a sudden vision of her doing the same thing naked. The bottles would compress her ample breasts, and as they slid down her body, those breasts would bounce back to their pertly rounded shape. Jesus. Stop it.
"The point is not the ants." Cassie spoke to the girl even as she lined up the half dozen bottles and began turning them so the labels faced him. "The point is not even the 'will I ever have to do this exact equation in real life?' question. It's about learning how to think mathematically. To problem solve."
She looked at him and then back at the girl. No one spoke.
"Oh, I'm sorry! Alana, meet Mr. ah … " She bit her lip.
"Winter," he supplied. "Jack Winter."
"Mr. Winter"-Cassie shot him a smile-"Meet Ms. Alana Jamieson."
"As in Edward Jamieson?" he asked, referencing the owner of the eponymous restaurant.
Alana's version of the universal eye roll of teenagers everywhere confirmed her paternity.
Just then one of the servers came by, the one he thought of as the least annoying. "Two glasses of merlot." Cassie nodded and pulled down two balloon glasses. "And, Cassie, nine bucks on a one hundred and seventy dollar check-what's that?"
"Just over five percent," said Cassie.
"Goddamn, what do these rich fuckers think? That I'm here for shits and giggles?" Then the server reached out and tousled Alana's hair. "Sorry, sugar. Getting stiffed makes me cranky."
Cassie gave a little cough and inclined her head ever so slightly toward Jack. The server's eyes followed Cassie's and landed on him. She obviously hadn't seen him sitting in the corner, but she didn't even bother disguising her eye roll. What was it about him today that was inspiring feminine eye rolls? "Present company excluded, of course," she drawled before grabbing her now-filled wine glasses and speeding off.
"Cassie!" said Alana, drawing out the final syllable. "The ants!"
"Hold on! Give me a sec to do the job I'm actually paid for, will you?" She turned to him. "You sure you don't want to flee to your usual spot? Sitting here in the loony bin, you're not exactly getting the fine dining experience Edward prides himself on."
"I'm good here," he said.
The smile she gave him did something to his throat.
"Well then." She spread her arms with a theatrical flourish, circling them over the bottles like Vanna White. "What will it be?"
"Surprise me."
"Really?" She clapped her hands. "Price range?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Well, if I were feeling flush, I would try this one." She tapped a bottle of Balvenie 30.
"Have you tried it?"
"God, no. Too rich for my blood. I'm a Red Label girl-by circumstance rather than by inclination, mind you. Edward's supplier sometimes sneaks me sips when he's wooing Edward with a new bottle, but I haven't had the pleasure with this one."
He tapped the bottle. "I'll have two glasses of this, then."
"You want a double?"
"No, I want two glasses."
"I'll never understand you rich people, either." The jibe was delivered with a smile as she pulled down a pair of tumblers.
After she'd poured two glasses, he reached for the water jug that was still sitting on the bar. "Allow me."
"By all means."
He eyeballed the glasses, filling each with a splash of water. Then he slid one toward Cassie.
Her eyes widened. "Oh, wow, thanks, but I really can't." She'd turned a little pink.
"Here's your chance," he said, looking around. "No one's paying attention, and I won't tell."
"It's not that." A lock of hair had escaped her bun, and she tucked it behind her ear. "I just … I have rules."
Her too? A woman with rules-interesting. "You have a rule against drinking the finest scotch the world has to offer?"
"No, I have a rule against drinking at work. Once you start doing that, you're a … "
"Lush?"
"No. A lifer."
"Excuse me?"
"A lifer. It means you're going to be working in restaurants your whole life. Not that I have anything against that," she said quickly, waving her hands energetically in front of her like she was fending off an attack. "But if you're here for life, you need coping mechanisms. Again-there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that I don't … "
"You don't want that to be you." Hmmm. The bartender had hidden depths. Ambition.
"Something like that." She pushed the glass back toward him. "So thanks anyway. I'll comp you this one."
He refrained from saying that he didn't think Edward would appreciate her comping him a forty dollar glass of scotch. "Well, it'll be here if you change your mind."
"You know what you want to eat?" she asked.
He looked down the bar at Alana, who was texting so fast her fingers were a blur. "Why don't you go do a shift on ant patrol, and I'll decide by the time you come back?"
When she returned, the bar was filling up, both with customers and with servers placing and fetching drink orders. Because Cassie was busy-and so was he, he reminded himself-he ordered quickly and tried to lose himself in his work.
She didn't interrupt him, just slid his dinner into an empty spot among his papers and smiled in response to his thanks. She appeared a moment later with a wine bottle. "May I recommend a medium-bodied Pinot with your meal? It's a limited edition."
"Thank you," he said, appreciating her ability to pour the perfect amount freestyle, just as she had yesterday with the water for his scotch. He glanced down to the other end of the bar, which Alana had long since vacated. "Ants all sorted out?"
"Yeah," she laughed. "She's the owner's daughter. I help her with math sometimes."
And then she was back to work. She looked like a dancer, executing each movement, whether it be opening a bottle of wine, wiping up a spill, or making an elaborate girlie drink with a dozen ingredients with efficiency and grace. Orders and requests came steadily at her, but she never lost track of what she was doing. It was a different view of the restaurant from here. There was a vibrancy, bordering on frenzy, at the bar that one didn't see in the dining room. And Cassie was the eye of the storm, pivoting, pouring, smiling.
The buzz had an oddly calming effect. Or maybe that was the scotch-it really had been superb. Either way, he found himself able to tackle the rows of numbers in front of him with a focus he usually lacked. Working steadily, he made it halfway through April-he thought. Well, only eight and a half more months to go. And, Jesus, that was just this year. When he thought of it like that, instead of breaking it down into finite tasks he needed to perform, he got that clawing panicky feeling. It started in his stomach, just like it always had. He could close his eyes and be back in third grade, clutching a piece of chalk and staring at a blackboard that might as well have been covered in Chinese for all the sense he could make of it.