Monaghan?”
“I was hoping you’d give her a job.”
“So, no one else in town will give her a job because she has no work experience, I just saw her drunk off her ass last night, and you want me to hire her?”
“The chicks in your place serve hamburgers. That’s not exactly rocket science.”
“Watch it, Monaghan, that’s my livelihood.”
“I know. Sorry. I’m not trying to be a dick. But it does come naturally.”
“Sure. But I’m not sure I want a completely inexperienced cocktail waitress stumbling around the place messing up orders.”
That was total crap. He’d hired people with a lot less to go on. He’d hired a borderline drifter, Casey James, a few months ago just to help her get back on her feet. She’d ended up quitting when she’d fallen in love with Aiden Crawford, a local farmer. Working on her own land seemed to be more fulfilling than serving drinks. Which he understood, even if it had left him a little shorthanded.
But he wasn’t admitting any of that.
“I’m helping you out by investing in this place. I’m taking a chance, and I think it’s a good chance. Can you take a chance on her?”
He didn’t want to. That was the simple truth. He so violently didn’t want to that he didn’t want to explore the reasoning. Because it was weird that he should care at all. She was rich, she was a spoiled brat. She had said some ridiculous stuff to him last night about him having it easy. But that shouldn’t matter.
It wouldn’t, if she wasn’t such a pretty little thing.
He gritted his teeth, ignoring that internal voice. He didn’t care if she was pretty. Pretty covered a lot of sins, but Jack had learned that early on. He spread his favors around fairly freely with women, he had no problem admitting that. But there was one type he always avoided.
Sierra West’s type.
He also never screwed around with his staff.
If she was staff, that would put her in a double no-go zone. So, whether or not she was pretty should mean nothing. What she’d said to him last night shouldn’t mean anything, either.
Still didn’t want to hire her. She reminded him too much of another time in his life. Of another woman in his past. Women like her were poison in a good glass of wine.
You could drink the whole thing down before you realized you were already dead.
“I’m not running a charity. I don’t give out first summer jobs to grown women who play like they’re high school girls. If she wants a job, she needs to come and ask me for one.”
Jack frowned. “Do you have something against her?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as that. But I gave her a ride home last night, and she was in fine form. Like I said, I’m used to that kind of thing, but it doesn’t mean I need to give that kind of thing a job. If she wants to come by the bar and apologize for her behavior and ask me directly for a job, then I’ll consider it because you mentioned it.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said.
Eli had been silent through the whole exchange, and Ace took a moment to study the other man’s expression. It was unreadable. Unhelpful.
“Is there anything else I should know?” Ace figured he should just go ahead and ask.
“Nope,” Jack answered, shaking his head.
“Okay, then. Have her come down during the slow time. I’m assuming you’re going to tell her she has a job interview.”
Jack rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Kate probably will.”
“However you want to work it out.”
“Thanks. I do appreciate it, for what it’s worth. From what... From what Kate has told me, Sierra’s had a harder time than you might think.”
“If she can deliver french fries to the appropriate table it doesn’t much matter to me.”
“Well, that part will be up to you. In the meantime, keep us posted on everything happening here.”
“Sure,” Ace said. “Did you want to help me pick out curtains?”
Eli broke his silence with a laugh. “I don’t even want to pick out curtains for my own house.”
“I suppose I’ll have to hire someone. That’s the problem with trying to open a place that sits a few notches higher on the restaurant scale than a dive bar. It means I have to cultivate tastes that rise above dive bar.”
“If nothing else,” Jack said, “there will be beer. Beyond that, I’m not sure you can really go wrong.”
“True enough.”
After that, Eli and Jack turned to go. And Ace tried not to think about all the ways this could absolutely go wrong. Sure things, in his experience, were never really sure things. Life had a way of going wrong in spectacular and unforeseen ways.
That was his only defense really. Expect an attack to come from somewhere, even if he couldn’t figure out where it might come from.
At least he would have Sierra West’s attempt at a job interview and humility to entertain him. Or she wouldn’t show up at all.
Either way, he couldn’t lose.
“JACK TALKED TO ACE about getting you a job.”
Sierra stared at the phone like it was a poisonous snake. Usually, she welcomed phone calls from friends. Particularly Kate. Right now, going through everything, Kate was her best bet for finding an emotional outlet for her pain.
The problem with her typical group of friends—beyond the fact that they had abandoned her at the bar last night—was that she felt obligated to protect her family secrets around them.
The other day, when she had overheard her father nearly bursting a blood vein screaming about Jack Monaghan going back on the deal they had struck years ago, she’d discovered that her entire existence was a carefully constructed facade.
Apparently Jack had confronted their father a few months ago, and now the secret was starting to leak out. In town, and now in their house.
The only reason she had spent many years thinking that her father was a decent person, a faithful husband, a loyal, giving human being, was that Jack had signed a gag order some seventeen years earlier.
In exchange, Jack had accepted a large sum of money. Jack had come and paid her father back, and had dissolved that bargain with that one simple action. There was no protection anymore. Jack could get a billboard and put it up in the center of town, proclaiming Nathan West to be the faithless scumbag he was. And then, it wouldn’t only be her mother,
