All To Myself (3 page)

“I still don’t want everyone thinking it.”

“Who cares if they do? God, if you’re going to be so worried about what people think you might as well stay here for the rest of your life, work at the bar, and wring your hands.” He chuckled and leaned forward. “Can you stop arguing with me? I’m getting a headache. Let me drive you to work and I promise I won’t come and flirt with you while you’re working tonight.”

She frowned. “You weren’t going to do that, were you?”

“Hell yeah, I was. You’re cute as a button, and you’ve got great tits.”

Speechless and burning once more, Rory watched the devilish smile take over his whole face and thought to herself, so this is how he does it
.

His laughter took over. He raised a brow as if he wanted to say something more, but shook it away. “Come on. The faster we get there, the faster I can ruin your reputation.”

She managed to stay on her feet as they went back to his car, arguing that she’d have to get used to it once she got to The White Tip. She hunkered down as they drove back into the park, and she gave some thought to covering her face as he parked next to the employee entrance at the rear.

Oh God. Fiona.

A waitress she’d known since grade school was smoking next to the dumpster. She gawked as Noah Hyland hopped out of the car and strolled around to the passenger side where Rory waited, mortified.

“You know what I said about not coming into the bar tonight?” he asked as he helped her out.

“You lied.”

“No, I’ll stay away … for tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on your knee. If there’s no improvement, I’m personally taking you to the hospital. If you need a ride home tonight, send a message down to my chalet and I’ll take you.” He grinned at her as he jumped back into the car. “I’ll go back for your bike and leave it under your porch.”

She cast a glance at Fiona, who lifted her shoulders and mouthed
what the fuck?

“Just leave the bike out front.”

“Someone will steal it. Besides, you probably won’t be able to drive it tomorrow.” He got behind the wheel and draped his arm around the back of the passenger seat. She wondered if Fiona thought the gesture as sexy as she did. “See you tomorrow, Rory.”

“Bye, and thanks.”

She didn’t turn around, not until he had steered round to the front of the property, and she heard him gun the engine as he hit the road leading down to the chalets. Then she braced herself and turned.

“Don’t ask.”

“The fuck I won’t.” Fiona poked her cigarette into the sand-filled bucket next to the door. “You just rolled up in here in Noah Hyland’s kick-ass ride. I’m not letting you go anywhere until you tell me where you let him put his dick.”

“I didn’t let him put his dick anywhere. I was riding to work and he knocked me down with the car. He dropped me home so I could get patched up.”

Fiona looked down Rory’s body to the bruising knee. “That’s nasty. You should sue him after he’s done fucking you.”

“I’m not suing him, and there is no fucking.”

“There’s going to be fucking. Trust me. No man looks at a woman like that unless he’s dying to get in her panties.”

Rory hiked her bag up her shoulder and yanked open the door leading into the service corridor, but before she could retort she smacked face-first into Francie.

Not for the first time in her life Rory wondered what exactly was the point in plucking out all the hair on one’s face only to pencil it back in.

As usual, her sister was a cardboard cut-out of a fully functioning human being who happened to share the same dirty blonde hair and brown eyes as Rory. Uniform pressed and spotless. Short hair gelled against her scalp. Lips lined perfectly. Stick perpendicular up her arse.

Francie began working at the hotel the year after their mother died, beginning as a waitress and ending with this grand finale of becoming the food and beverage manager--though, in Rory`s opinion, Francie carried herself like she was running a five star restaurant that was booked a year out.

“Where have you been? We’ve been serving dinner for the last half hour and you’re just strolling in?”

Every interaction with Francie was the same: she bitched, and Rory held her tongue. Rory stepped back, nudging Fiona aside as she swept her arm down to her knee. “I was in an accident on the way here.”

Francie rolled her eyes. “Get your uniform on. Mike is ready to leave.”

“Oh, I’m
fine
, Francie, thank you for asking.”

Rory pushed past her sister, and part of her wished she had just let Noah take her to the hospital where someone would actually give a damn whether she had broken something. Another part of her, the poor part, hobbled towards the employee dressing room.

As soon as Francie had gone back to the dining room, Rory turned to Fiona. “Can I get a ride tonight before you hit the beach? I’ll give you gas money.”

“I should say no, since I know you got a better offer.”

“Fiona--”

Fiona tittered as she went to the sink. “Fine, I’ll drive you home, but don’t blame me when you’re alone and flicking the bean over what Noah Hyland could be doing with that magic dick of his.”

Chewing on her irritation, Rory changed into her white polo and black pants. Her knee throbbed when she bent to stuff her backpack into her locker, and the memory of Noah kissing her there zipped through her.

She turned her focus back to the pain and headed out into the dining room.

Chapter Two

Rory loved working at Garden View. She didn’t resent working at the cafe the way she often did at The White Tip, but a lot of her ill feelings had to do with Francie’s power trip. Plus, The White Tip had an exclusive clientele. The lounge was open to anyone, but no one from the area just popped in for a beer. The White Tip patrons were mostly honeymooners or tourists with lots of money. Most were polite and friendly, but she never felt right mingling with those sort of people. If she could go work at one of the seafood joints in the area and was able to pull in the kind of tips she did at The White Tip, she’d be gone in a shot.

The Garden View had a different sort of atmosphere. Bus tours scheduled lunches there. Retirees came in for a cup of tea and an ice cream sundae. Local book clubs and artist groups had their luncheons in the garden.

And working for Dawna Peters was nothing like working for Francie. Dawna had come to the island in the sixties from Florida with her draft-dodging husband and opened a dairy bar by the beach. After her husband passed away, Dawna sold the dairy bar, bought the farmhouse on the river and turned it into a cafe.

Rory’s duties weren’t limited to drinks. Garden View didn’t do spirits or cocktails, only local wine and beer, and so she greeted customers at the beginning of their meal to take their drink orders, and met them again at the end of their meal to serve them dessert.

Sunday was her best day of the week. Sunday was the day her favorite customer came in for seafood chowder, a slice of Red Velvet cake, and a cup of tea. Sunday was the day her grandfather drove up from town and had his feed, then had his tea with her while she took her lunch.

Cecil Coady had raised Rory from the time she was five years old. He took care of her mother after she got sick, and when Mary died, he raised Rory.  

He never visited Francie at The White Tip. In fact, he never visited Francie at all. He’d let her bring the kids by his house once a month and he loved her, but he didn’t care for her company. Rory was the one he was going to miss when she moved to the mainland.

Besides, Francie would insist he meet her at The White Tip so she could show off and brag. Having worked at The White Tip as a maintenance man for forty years, Cecil wasn’t about to waltz in and take a seat at the bar.

After her grandfather had finished flirting with Dawna, Rory took her seat with him and dug into a butterscotch sundae. Cecil got right to the point. “Why are you limping?”

“I fell off my bike going to work the other day.”

“You been to the doctor?”

“It’s not as bad as it was. I woke up yesterday and my knee was the size of a grapefruit. The swelling is down now. I’ll show you when you go to the truck.”

“You should have taken the weekend off.”

“I need to get paid.”

His bushy silver brows came together. It was his
I have money
look.

Cecil had worked hard all his life and paid for everything out of pocket. He never carried any debts save for his mortgage, and now that he was retired he lived well below his means on three pensions and a widower’s allowance. Francie claimed he had close to a million dollars in the bank and was always whining about how he wouldn’t spend a nickel, but as far as Rory was concerned it was his money to do what he wanted with it.

She suspected part of the reason he tried to spend it on her was because she wouldn’t take it half the time. Rory was his stubborn match. When she refused to let him pay for her prom dress, he had looked so hurt that she’d given in. The picture of the two of them standing in his front yard before the dance--Rory in her burgundy mermaid dress and immaculate makeup, and Cecil in his denims, hunting jacket and ball cap--was proudly displayed on his mantle.

Another storm brewed when he tried to pay for her schooling. She struck a bargain with him: half her tuition and her books, and she would work for the rest. He agreed on the condition she didn’t borrow a cent in student loans, and then slyly went out and bought her a new computer to take to school with her.

“It’s fine, and stop looking at me like that,” she said as she dug into the bottom of her bowl for the butterscotch. “I remember when you broke your finger. You put duct tape on it, and now you can’t flip the bird at your buddies down at the Legion hall. My leg is fine.”

“You got a boyfriend now?”

Rory shook her head and stuffed a spoonful of ice cream and butterscotch in her mouth. She almost lost feeling in her body, it was that good. Like most everything else at Garden View, both the ice cream and the butterscotch was homemade.

“Nope. Not since I gave Sinclair the boot.”

“Who has the green car that was up at your place the other night?”

Arrgh!

“What green car?”

“I took Owl out for a drive,” he explained. Owl was his black lab and constant companion, currently tied to a post on the riverbank while he snoozed. “A guy was up there with your bike. I thought he was stealing it, so I pulled up and got his business. He said you asked him to bring it back. He said he was your friend, but he turned red as a tomato when he said it.”

“Probably because some angry guy in striped suspenders was barking at him,” she teased. “He works with me. Kind of. His dad owns The White Tip now.”

“Christ.” The word came out of Cecil like a loogie from the back of his throat.

The Hylands weren’t exactly newcomers to the island. Noah’s grandfather, Gregory Hyland had been general manager of The White Tip when it had been the Queen Anne Hotel and it had been for Gregory that Cecil began his long history with the hotel. In his later years, Cecil had worked for Noah’s father. He had a begrudging respect for the Hylands in the decade he had called senior and junior Hylands his boss, but he still called him an asshole.

“He’s the one who drove me home after my accident. He’s a nice guy.”

That’s all she was going to say about Noah Hyland. She hadn’t worked the previous night. It was one of only two Saturdays in the summer she got off, and so she hadn’t had a chance to find out whether he’d actually visit her at the bar. When she’d gotten home on Friday night her bike was tucked under the porch, and there it stayed all Saturday while she sprawled on the sofa and alternated hot and cold compresses on her knee.

“Nice looking,” her grandfather said.

She raised a brow at him. “Yeah.”

“Nice car.”

“Uh huh.”

“Lots of money.”

“I know where this is going, and you can stop right there,” she said. “I told you, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s barely my friend.”

“I’m just checking. You won’t take my money, and I want to make sure you’re not letting him spend it on you.”

“Drink your wine, you old fart.”

After she’d packed him up a rhubarb pie and given Owl a good rub behind the ears, she waved him off and returned to work. As she served up pots of tea and slices of pie, she smiled to herself as she thought of the exchange between her grandfather and Noah. She would have loved to have been there, to see the
what the fuck
look face as this sixty five year-old man with a beer gut interrogated him.

At the end of her shift, she biked back home for a quick shower and a bite to eat before heading to The White Tip. Weekly bookings ran Sunday-to-Sunday, so she expected a busy dinner service with newcomers who just wanted to relax after a long drive. She didn’t mind, since Francie took weekends off and wouldn’t be hovering around looking for an ass to kiss or to be a pain in.

She took her break and stood outside with her co-workers while they smoked cigarettes and chugged cold sodas. A plan was made to hit the beach afterward. Upon returning to the bar, she discovered Noah waiting for her.

Sitting with his chin propped on his hand and his eyes on the muted television above the bar, he didn’t notice her approach. She got a chance to check him out without the agony of a bleeding leg or his playful scrutiny, and it struck her how good looking he really was when he wasn’t trying.

It also struck her how grown-up he came off now compared to previous years. At twenty-three, he seemed to have shed all of his boyishness and was all man. He sat with confidence, not swagger. He looked like any other man who was at the end of a long work day, not a teenager who was getting ready to burn off with booze, drugs, and sex.

He greeted her with a relieved smile when she slipped behind the bar.

“Here you are. I was waiting for you.”

“I was just outside for a minute. What can I get for you?”

He studied the taps in front of him. “A glass of ….. Red Cliff, and a midnight drive with you when you finish your shift.”