Emerson just gave me a look. One that said that he saw right through me. That he knew that I had enjoyed the kiss.
“So you’re here about the noise,” Emerson finally said.
“Yes!” I told him, relieved that my real purpose for being here had actually sunk in.
“Well, we should be done with the construction after tonight,” he told me.
“Oh, thank God,” I sighed with relief.
“But.” Emerson held his hand up. “We will be opening next weekend.”
“Maybe I’ll drop by,” I said, feeling happier now. A hot guy and easy access to food right downstairs? I could live with that. “What kind of food will the restaurant serve?”
“Restaurant?” Emerson looked amused. “I never said anything about that. Rascals is a bar,” he added.
My heart sank.
Bar. Liquor license. Chicago crowds. My dreams of peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep straight up and walked out the door.
“But, that means . . .”
Emerson nodded. “We’ll be open until four in the morning every day except for Saturdays. Saturdays we’ll be open until five a.m.”
I sat down on the nearest bar stool. Hard.
Emerson flashed me a smile. “Welcome to the building, neighbor.”
4
Emerson
“ . . .inspector walk-through is tomorrow . . .”
I was only half paying attention to our unofficial partners meeting as we went down the seemingly endless list of things we had to do before the bar opened.
The problem was that my mind was somewhere else. Specifically, it was stuck replaying a brief yet amazing moment that I had shared with a near stranger in an ATM vestibule a few nights before. A stranger who had ditched me without exchanging numbers, haunted my dreams with the memory of her lush, full mouth, and then unexpectedly shown up on the doorstep of our soon-to-be-opened bar yesterday.
Fate was a tricky minx, and she was really fucking with me right now, it seemed.
Because the timing for all of this couldn’t have been worse.
I was all for the perusal of gorgeous women. And I had done my fair share of said perusal in the past. The same went for my friends, especially Chase, who sat across the table from me, most likely texting his latest hookup to arrange tonight’s plans.
But while Chase was all about the one-night stand, all about the casual hook-up, I was much more of the serial monogamy type. I wasn’t looking to settle down, but I did like to get to know a woman before jumping into bed with her. I also liked to get to know her afterwards. I wanted to know what she liked, what she didn’t, and I especially wanted to know what turned her on. I was a fan of finding the right buttons and knowing exactly in what order to push them.
But it was also the last thing in the world I had time for right now. The bar was the priority. It needed to be a success, not just because we were depending on it financially, but all of us had something to prove—myself especially.
Which is why I needed to focus my attention on my to-do list instead of imagining how hot it might have been to fuck Alex against the very wall across from me. Because from the way she had reacted to my kiss in the ATM vestibule the other night, I could tell that she would be very, very receptive.
Ahem.
I dragged my attention back to the list. “We should probably scout out the neighborhood watering holes,” I spoke up. “Knowing our competition will allow us to better see what needs aren’t being filled and how best we can fill them.”
My mind was definitely focused on needs being filled (as well as other things) but it had absolutely nothing to do with the bar.
“I don’t think we’re going to have any problems on the weekend,” our finance guy-slash-business strategist Liam spoke up. “We got lucky with this location—tons of businesses within walking distance, but we’re the closest bar by far. But weekdays are always where a bar can make it or break it. We need to be busy all week. That means finding creative ways to get people to come in after work. Happy hour is great, but we should see if we can up the ante. Do something unique.”
He paused and looked around the room. Chase was still texting. Sawyer, the resident contractor/architect, let out a yawn. Dante hadn’t even shown up. And me? My mind was still doing dirty things back in that ATM vestibule.
Liam sighed.
“Maybe we should just call it a night.”
“Sorry, man,” Sawyer apologized. “I think we’re all just a little distracted.”
“I’m working,” Chase argued, holding up a hand but not looking up from his phone. “This is work.”
Liam rolled his eyes. The two of them could not have been more different, but that’s what made us all work. Where Liam was the strong and silent type, Chase was impulsive and charming.
“Are we at least on schedule with the build-out?” I asked Sawyer. Construction was his domain. Well, anything with a tool-kit. He had a studio making hand-crafted furniture, the kind hipsters ate up.
He nodded. “The bar looks great, just a few finishing details.”
“We’ll have our first signature ale ready for the opening,” Chase chimed in, before frowning at his phone. “Once I can get the recipe right.”
This time I was the one who rolled my eyes. Chase was probably one of the most chill people I knew—except when it came to alcohol. Then he was a savant. An obsessive savant. An annoying, obsessive savant. He had been talking about this signature ale of his for months now, but none of us had seen the results of all his labor.
“The mysterious ale.” Liam’s comment echoed my thoughts. “I think often of that ale. And how it doesn’t exist.”
“But it will!” Chase insisted.
Liam shook his head. “I’m going to head out.”
“I left some paperwork on the desk,” I tell them all. “I need it signed by tomorrow.”
He nodded. All five of us—Chase, Sawyer, Liam, Dante and myself—had an equal share of the bar, but I was the one who would be managing it. That meant I’d probably be living in that office for the first few months the bar was open.
Still, nothing could dampen my enthusiasm. We had talked about making this place a reality for so many years, and even though we were so close to opening, I still couldn’t believe that it was happening. I wasn’t even sure I would truly believe it until we started pulling a profit. Until we were a success.
The others headed out, leaving me alone with Chase. And his phone.
“I’m going to go check on that paperwork.” I pushed back from the table.
“Want me to bring me the latest brew from the back?” Chase asked.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask if it’s the ale,” I joked.
“It’s an IPA.” Chase gave me a look. “You know the ale is special.”
“So you’ve told me,” I reminded him. “So you’ve told all of us. Yet, we’ve seen no proof that this ale is anything more than just a dream.”
“It’s a dream like the bar was a dream,” Chase countered.
“So the ale is going to take five years, several hundreds of thousands of dollars, and possibly put all of us into crippling debt?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Chase responded. “But it will be worth it.”
I walked around the table, headed for my office, but before I could leave the room, Chase’s arm shot out, stopping me. For such a laid-back guy, he had pretty damn good reflexes.
“So.” He leaned back in his chair casually, his napkin apparently forgotten. “How’d it go with our hot neighbor?”
I should have known that Chase would have noticed Alex’s aforementioned hotness. I felt an unusual twinge of jealousy. It wasn’t something I was used to. Chase was my friend, basically my brother. I would take a bullet for him. So why was I getting angry at the thought of him checking out Alex, a girl I barely knew?
I tried to play it cool.
“Our neighbor?” I asked casually.
“She lives upstairs, doesn’t she?”
“I guess so.” I shrugged. “She just wanted to complain about the noise.”
“Yeah, I got that much.” Chase laced his fingers over his chest and gave me a look. “What did you say?”
“That we were finishing construction soon, but we would be open late, so she might have to get used to a different kind of noise,” I told him.
Her face had definitely fallen when I had given her that information, which had given me a twinge of guilt. I felt bad that we might contribute to an unpleasant living situation, but there wasn’t much that I could do about it. The bar was our dream and I couldn’t let guilty feelings for a girl I barely knew get in the way of that.
She hadn’t stuck around long after I’d told her that. Not that I could blame her. The whole thing was a little awkward. Incredibly hot, but definitely awkward. It had been especially hard—hard being the word—to stand that close to her and not be able to touch her. Everything about her had been touchable.
Unlike the night in the vestibule, when she had been the literal definition of buttoned up, yesterday, she had been in jeans and a sweater, her gorgeous blonde hair down and silky around her shoulders. I remembered how it had felt in my hands, and my fingers itched to touch her again.
“You like her!” Chase’s proclamation startled me out of my daydream.
I blinked at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He scoffed. “Please. I had my suspicions, but the dopey dreamy look on your face right now totally gave it away.”
“You had your suspicions yesterday?” I demanded. “You weren’t even in the same room as us!”
“I was watching from the backroom,” Chase told me, looking entirely too pleased for someone who had basically just admitted to spying. “The tension was so thick that I was practically choking on it.”
“I barely know her,” I objected.
“But you know her enough,” Chase confirmed.