* *
Of course, Marco wasn’t the type to turn down a challenge.
He went back to O’Reilly’s on Wednesday and again on Thursday, but he stayed away over the weekend. His absence was for both strategic and practical reasons. Strategically, he wanted her to have some time to think about him and, hopefully, to look forward to seeing him again. Practically, he had his own responsibilities at Valentino’s and he knew that the pub would be too busy for them to talk.
Monday night, he left his family’s restaurant after the dinner rush, arriving at the pub just before nine o’clock. Jordyn looked up when he walked in, and her eyes met his from across the room. When she smiled, he knew that she was happy to see him—even if she wasn’t willing to admit it aloud.
“Smithwick’s?” she asked as he settled onto a stool at the bar.
“Sure.”
He watched her pour his beer, admiring the dark green vest with the O’Reilly’s logo above her left breast worn over a simple white T-shirt tucked into slim-fitting jeans. He wasn’t sure if it was a uniform, but it was her standard attire for working behind the bar.
“If you want food tonight, you should let me get your order in before the Brew Crew shows up.”
He’d forgotten that the baseball team played on Monday nights, after which the players would head to O’Reilly’s for food and drinks.
“It gets pretty busy then?” he guessed.
“It gets crazy,” she admitted.
Half an hour later, he saw that she wasn’t kidding.
There were two waitresses working the floor tonight, and they pushed together several tables to accommodate the group that arrived. It wasn’t just the ballplayers—some of the men had their wives or girlfriends with them, and a few had even brought their kids. The ones who were single flirted with the waitresses—or stopped by the bar to order their drinks directly from Jordyn and flirt with her instead.
Since it was a little crowded around the bar, he took his beer and joined his sister and brother-in-law at their table, listening to their recap of the game—an exciting, come-from-behind victory over the Badge(r)s, a team primarily made up of local law enforcement.
For the better part of two hours, they ate and drank and chatted. Pitchers of beer were emptied, platters of finger foods devoured. He was pleased to see Renata out with her husband, enjoying a break while their mother watched over her granddaughters. When they finally left, he made his way back to the bar.
Jordyn was shelving a tray of clean glasses when he returned to the stool he’d vacated earlier.
“I thought you left when Craig and Renata did.”
“No, but I did switch from beer to coffee about an hour ago,” he said, putting his empty mug on the bar.
She picked up the carafe from the heating element and refilled his cup. “Four.”
“The fourth time I’ve stopped in here to see you,” he noted.
“It is that,” she agreed. “It’s also one of the digits of my phone number.”
He grinned. “Progress.”
“I guess that’s a matter of interpretation.”
“Which digit?” he wondered. “The first? The last?”
She shook her head. “One of the five in between.”
“It’s a start,” he said.
And possibly, Jordyn realized as she moved away, a mistake.
What was she doing? Why had she given him the number? Was she actually flirting with him? Encouraging his attention?
Apparently she was. Even more surprising was that she actually looked forward to seeing him. He didn’t come into the bar every night—and she didn’t work every night. But every night that she did, she found herself wondering if he would walk through the doors, and just the possibility caused butterflies to flutter around in her tummy.
Saturday afternoon—twelve days and four more visits to the pub later—she’d given Marco five random numbers of the seven that comprised her phone number.
“After two more nights, I’ll have your complete phone number,” he noted, keying the eight into the memo pad on his smartphone.
“If you can figure out the order of the digits,” she agreed.
“You’re having fun toying with me, aren’t you?”
“I told you I wasn’t going to go out with you,” she reminded him. “But if you can figure out my telephone number from the random single digits I’ve been giving you, I might change my mind.”
“That’s probably the most encouraging thing you’ve ever said to me,” he told her.
She shrugged, uneasy with the truth of his statement, because she knew that she shouldn’t be encouraging him at all. No good could come of continuing to play this game with him, and yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“As for figuring out your number, it won’t be too hard,” he told her. “From seven digits, assuming no duplicate numbers, there are five thousand and forty possibilities.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Did you just pull that number out of thin air?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s a simple matter of permutations and combinations—”
She held up a hand. “I always hated math.”
“Then you’ll have to trust that my calculations are accurate.”
“If they are, that’s a lot of dialing,” she warned.
“As you pointed out a few weeks back—I’m persistent.”
“That was your word,” she reminded him. “I said relentless.”
“I can be—when I want something badly enough.”
And for some reason, he’d decided that he wanted her, and she was finally beginning to accept that she wanted him, too. Or at least wanted to satisfy the yearning that stirred inside her whenever he was near.
“You might want to consider,” he continued, “that you’ve finally met your match.”
Shivers of excited anticipation danced along her spine as she acknowledged his words might possibly be true.
Twenty years earlier, the Northbrook area had been considered one of the more “undesirable” parts of Charisma, but over the past decade, concentrated efforts to renew the neighborhood had been enormously successful. The storefronts that had long been dormant and boarded up now housed an appealing assortment of offices,
