tanning beds. His ex had been a big fan of those. It was how she kept her warm orange glow all year-round. Either that, or sucking the blood of virgins. He wouldn’t really put anything past her.
He studied Sierra, who was talking to a table full of men who were absolutely thrilled with his new hiring choice.
She didn’t look like the type to go lie in a tanning bed. He wasn’t sure why. She probably went and lay out back in the yard, in that private, gated ranch she and her family lived at. She probably lay out in a hot-pink bikini. She maybe even took the top off to avoid a suntan line.
He gritted his teeth and turned his focus to wiping down the counter. It was clean. But cleaning an already clean counter was better than thinking about Sierra West topless. He really needed to deal with these inconvenient fantasies. Get laid. With someone else.
He looked around the bar, and for some reason, didn’t see any appealing prospects. Not because there weren’t beautiful women here. There were. It was just, for some reason they didn’t really register to his body.
Funny, usually his body wasn’t all that picky. He didn’t do relationships. He did satisfying evenings. Which left his options pretty wide-open. His type was female. Thin, curvy, blonde, brunette, pale, dark... Didn’t much matter to him. Women were a glorious creation. One he preferred in his bed, and nowhere else in his home.
In fact, he had a bedroom up above the bar, so that he never actually had to have women in his home at all.
There was a time when his own behavior would’ve shocked him. Or it would’ve shocked the boy he’d been. But he could barely remember that time.
Now, the most shocking thing was that he wanted one woman specifically.
Yeah, Sierra West was a problem.
She turned away from the table, her walk particularly bouncy in those little cowgirl boots as she made her way back to the kitchen. Everything on her bounced. Her hair. Her ass.
Damn, some other woman needed to start looking good.
She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then reappeared a second later. “I think I got everyone for now,” she said.
She was looking at him expectantly, blue-eyed and far too innocent. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“I’m not going to hold your hand, little girl,” he said.
That was unnecessary, and he knew it. But he didn’t particularly care. With most employees, he would be happy to show them what to do next. He would even be happy that they’d asked what they could do. But he wasn’t happy about her asking, because it meant he had to interact with her, and he didn’t want to interact with her.
He supposed it wasn’t her fault that she was far too pretty for her own good. But he was going to hold it against her anyway. Because he was never going to hold her against him, and that was the source of a lot of problems.
The trouble was that he was out of practice with self-denial. He’d spent the past decade indulging himself whenever he wanted to.
When he’d turned away from the teachings of his father, he’d turned away hard. Then life had gone and kicked him in the balls, and made him question every damn thing he’d ever done. Every decision he’d ever made. It had made him question why he’d ever practiced restraint of any kind. Why he’d so firmly believed that self-denial, the greater good, morality and a host of other things would lead him down a smooth path in life.
No. He’d spent a lot of years doing the right thing. Being a good man. The better man.
It hadn’t gotten him anywhere in the end. So when he’d broken free of his marriage, when he’d finally left it all behind, left it all as dust and rubble in his past, he’d set his foot on the road to hell, and figured he’d better make the journey there pretty spectacular.
And he had.
When he’d decided to go for a life of debauchery and sin, he hadn’t gone halfway.
That made it difficult when he actually wanted to employ a little bit of abstinence. He didn’t know how.
These days, he only knew how to do three things really well.
He knew how to make drinks, he knew how to drink drinks and he knew how to screw. He did all those things as often as he could, and whenever he felt like it.
He hadn’t anticipated the effect trying to resist a woman he was attracted to might have on him. He’d figured it wouldn’t have an effect at all. But then, he didn’t typically try to resist women he was attracted to. Because he wasn’t usually attracted to spoiled little rich girls who also happened to work for him.
“You need to keep an eye on everyone, and make sure they don’t need anything else,” he said finally.
“Right.”
But she looked surprised by the directive. “You’ve been to restaurants before, right? I know you have. You come here.”
“Yes.”
“What does a server do? They make sure you have french fries, all the drinks that you need, and they do a little tap dance if you require it. So make sure no one needs french fries. Or a tap dance.”
“No one here has ever done a tap dance for me.”
“Have you ever asked them to?”
“Why would I ask someone to tap dance for me?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully, for your sake, no one wants you to tap dance tonight.”
She rolled her eyes and tossed her hair, the blond curls bouncing again, the glittery shadow on her lids twinkling beneath the light. She was a human glitter bomb. Which, in his opinion, had no place outside of a strip club. Or the rodeo arena.
She definitely looked like a rodeo queen. That thought did a little bit to quench the heat that had settled in the pit of his stomach. He’d made the mistake of getting involved with a rodeo queen once before. He knew how that ended.
“So then should I just hover around the tables like a fly, waiting for french fry shortages or demands of dancing?”
“You could fold bar towels.”
“There,” she said, planting her hand on her hip and cocking it out to the side. He might have noticed the dramatic curve of her waist down to that very sassy hip, only because he was human. “Now, Ace, was that so difficult?”
“You seem to be having a hard time remembering that I’m your boss, little girl.”
“Do you call all your employees little girl?”
“Only when they act like one.”
“I’m going to go fold bar towels.” She turned on her heel and started to saunter back into the kitchen, then paused and turned back around. “Where are the bar towels?”
He smiled, as slow and lazy as possible, because he knew it would make her mad. “Under the bar.”
Her
