Caught Up in You (6 page)

I got a job at Hank’s the next week. It was the only place that would hire me. Apparently the owner of Union Bistro had a big mouth and word of my indiscretions on
his had gotten around.

The irony of my situation was certainly not lost on me. Hank’s had royally fucked with my life…twice…and now it was my last hope.

In a way I almost felt like I deserved it. I had played with fire. Smart girl fire. And now I was nursing my burn wounds back at ground zero.

Fortunately, Lia didn’t come back to Hank’s. At least not when I was working. I’m not sure I could have dealt with her. I’m pretty sure I would have hid in the bathroom like a little bitch.

Then a week later, on a whim, I decided to drive by La Bella Vita on my way home. The parking lot was empty and the lights were off, even though it was only eight o’clock. I slowed to a stop and stared at the vacant building. That’s when I noticed the “Sold” sign in the window. And just below that, a 3D rendering of a strip mall with the words “Coming Soon” in big bold letters.

My heart sank just a little.

Poor Lia. She had taken over this restaurant when her mother left and now it was no more. I knew it hadn’t been doing well. They’d barely broken $500 in sales in months.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

I had to call her. Ask her if she was okay. If there was anything I could do. I located Lia’s name in my contacts and hovered my finger over the Call button.

I had to tell her I was sorry.

For more than just the restaurant.

But the thought of hearing her voice on the other end—her sweet, innocent voice—was too much.

What would I say?

What would
she
say?

And what if she knew about Alex?

What if she yelled at me for fucking her sister?

What if she couldn’t forgive me?

Too much.

I tossed my phone into the passenger seat, threw my car into drive and peeled off down the street.

Eleven

“Didn’t you used to work here?” Vee, one of the waitresses at Hank’s slid a newspaper insert across the bar toward me and spun it around.

I set down a freshly-poured beer in front of her and traded it for the newspaper. She took the beer and disappeared to deliver it while I pulled over the paper and read the open page.

My chest tightened when I saw what it was.

An advertisement for a restaurant auction. Tomorrow morning.

La Bella Vita was selling off all their equipment piece by piece.

The whole idea of the place being torn apart like that was sad. Too sad to look at. I crumpled the paper and tossed it in the trash.

“Um, I was kind of reading that,” Vee complained, returning to the bar.

“Oh, sorry.” I made a move toward the trash but she waved me off.

“Just leave it.”

“You’re the only person under the age of thirty who actually still
reads
the newspaper.”

She shrugged and slid into one of the bar stools, resting her chin in her hand. “It doesn’t feel like news when it’s on a screen.”

Hank’s was dead today. Although to be fair, it was only eleven in the morning. But still. Our alcoholic morning drinkers were very loyal. Apparently they had all decided to drink at home today. Or turn sober.

I decided to wash bar glasses. Vee watched me for a moment before finally sighing and coming around the bar to stand next to me. “Here,” she said, grabbing a towel and holding out her hand for the wet glass.

I laughed. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“You may as well have. You look so helpless back there.”

I balked at this. “Me? Helpless? Please! I was born to wash dishes.”

She smiled and grabbed the wet wine glass from my hand, her fingers sliding against mine and lingering for just a moment too long.

And then I understood.

Wow, Alex and Lia must have
really
fucked me up good if I couldn’t even tell when a girl was flirting with me. Vee flashed me a smile as she dried the wine glass and hung it in the rack above our heads. I noticed how she stood on her tiptoes to reach and pressed herself toward me in an effort to slide the glass all the way down the half-empty row.

Her tiny black tank top hugged her breasts perfectly, allowing for just the slightest hint of cleavage to peek out of the top.

Her eyes caught mine as her hand came down. And she smiled.

I blinked and turned my attention back to the sink.

“So,” she said, as I handed her another clean glass. “
Did
you used to work there? At that place they’re auctioning off.”

“Yeah.”

She must have seen the tension in my jaw or my hands or my biceps because she immediately followed up her question with, “Whoa. Sore spot?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Kinda sad the way it’s being torn to pieces. I wonder what happened.”

I shrugged and plunged my hands back in the water. “I don’t really care, actually.”

She chuckled. “Okay,
definitely
a sore spot.” She threw the towel down on the counter and leaned back against the bar. “Spill.”

I eyed the abandoned towel. “I thought you were helping me.”

“I am.”

I laughed at her attempt to offer me therapy and started scrubbing another wine glass.

Vee waited. She even made an impatient gesture, wheeling her hand around in a circle.

I sighed. “There’s nothing to tell. I used to work there. It didn’t pan out. End of story.”

Suddenly the sound of breaking glass startled me and I looked down to see I had scrubbed the wine glass so hard, I’d shattered it. 

Fortunately it hadn’t cut me. It was just a mess in the sink.

“Uh uh,” Vee said, pushing off of the bar, and walking back around to check on her table.

“Shit,” I swore, and started picking up the large pieces and dropping them into the trash.

“You know,” Vee said, tapping on the bar top with her knuckles to get my attention. “When you make a mess of something like that, you should probably clean it up.”

“I
am
cleaning it up,” I started to protest but her wry smile as she strutted away told me she wasn’t referring to the wine glass.

“
I
didn’t make the mess!” I shouted after her.

“I’m just saying,” she called back over her shoulder.

Twelve

Later that afternoon, I found myself reluctantly parking behind what used to be La Bella Vita and what would soon be some kind of high-end retail center.

I knew Lia was here because I saw her car in the lot. She was probably packing up and preparing for the auction tomorrow.

What are you doing?
 I asked myself as I cut the engine and stared at the back door.

I’m cleaning up my mess
, I replied.

But it wasn’t
my
mess. I didn’t start any of this.

I shook my head and kicked the car door open with my foot.

Whatever. Just get it over with.

The back door beeped when I slid inside the building. Lia looked up from a giant brown packing box in the middle of the kitchen. I froze in place and stuffed my hands in my pockets.

I hadn’t seen her in weeks.

I’d
almost
forgotten how beautiful she was.

Forgotten how adorable she looked when she was mad. Which she clearly was now. Although it wasn’t a full-on rage. It was more of a playful irritation.

“Well, well,” she said, “if it isn’t the infamous Casanova. I haven’t seen you around here since you ditched the bar to hook up with my sister.”

My eyes widened. “Alex told you?”

I certainly hadn’t expected that. Although I did admit it made my purpose here a bit easier.

“No. You were caught in the act.” Lia pointed to another girl in the kitchen with her. I recognized her as Lia’s friend Danika. The one who completely cock-blocked me that first night I took Lia out for drinks.

I sighed. “It wasn’t my fault.”

I could tell from the look she shared with her friend that Lia didn’t buy this for a second. “Oh yeah. I’m sure she held a gun to your head.”

“No,” I tried to explain. “I mean, she called
me.
It was after Grayson went back to the city. I invited her over to my place and she whined about how he had lost interest in her. He didn’t like her body anymore. Some shit like that. I assured her she had a great body and then all of the sudden she was kissing me. I swear, she was the one who started it, I just…”

Lia rolled her eyes and turned away. “Yeah, yeah, we know. Same old story. Alex is impossible to resist.”

“Yeah, but then she stayed around,” I went on. “Gave some bogus excuse to Grayson about a business trip and she got, like,
way
too bossy. I did
not
sign up for that shit. I told her to just go back to the city.”

I swore I saw Lia crack the tiniest of smiles. But it was gone before I could confirm.

God, she’s cute.

I wanted to punch myself in the face for even thinking it.

And yet I wanted to run to her, scoop her tiny body into my arms, and kiss her. And not in the way I’d kissed Alex. Not in the way I’d kissed
anybody.
But in the way that girls like Lia deserve to be kissed.

I wanted to ask her how she was. What she planned to do now that the restaurant was closed. How she was handling it. But mostly, I wanted to ask h
er about Grayson.

I was so terribly desperate to find out if she had moved on. 

If she would
ever
move on.

But I couldn’t say any of those things. Because Blake Thomas doesn’t say shit like that.

So I just grinned, opened my arms wide, and announced in my most confident, flirtatious tone, “Which means, I’m available ladies.”

Now I wanted to punch myself in the face for
that
.

Lia snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, I think I’ll pass.”

It felt like a stab in the heart. And yet, I had no right to hope for any other reaction from her. Not after what I’d done.

I quickly turned to Danika and waggled my eyebrows suggestively in her direction. It was the only thing I could think to do to cover the numbness in my legs.

She shook her head. “Uh no.”

I lowered my arms, pretending to appear completely dismayed. “Well, at least let me help you pack everything up. That’s why I came by.”

It was a lie.

It wasn’t why I came by.

But I hadn’t even been sure myself why I was here until the moment I saw her.

I came by to check.

To
double
check.

To see if there was even a smidgen of a chance Lia might see me as something else than what I’d always been.

But it was clear that there wasn’t.

To Lia Smart I would never be more than just a flirty, playboy bartender.

“Okay,” she replied. “You can start wrapping the bar glasses. There are boxes for them out in the dining room.”

I practically ran out of the room, desperate for a change of scenery, a change of everything. “I’m on it.”

Thirteen

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Grayson Walker’s face at the front door ten minutes later. I also shouldn’t have been surprised to see Lia go white as a sheet when I told her he was there.

She walked slowly out of the kitchen, like she was counting the number of steps it took her to get there.

Then she let him in.

I took note of her stance. How stiffly she held herself. Even though she allowed him through the door, her face and body and emotions were completely shut down. No entry there.

I knew I should have disappeared into the kitchen, given them some privacy but part of me didn’t want to miss this. Part of me had already been so sucked into the Alex/Lia/Grayson drama, I had to find out what happened next.

And when I saw Danika lower herself into a chair in the dining room, like she was getting ready to watch a particularly juice reality show, I figured why can’t I stay too?

“Um, can we talk?” Grayson asked Lia, casting a glance at Danika and then me. “In private?”

You did not have to be a detective to figure out that these two had slept together. Call it bartender intuition, but it was written all over their faces. And judging from their equally awkward body language, it had not ended well.

Welcome to the Smart Girl Club, buddy.

“No,” came Lia’s flat reply.

I almost gave her an encouraging fist pump.

“Okay,” Grayson agreed and then proceeded to ramble for a good five minutes about mistakes and choices and apologies and a whole bunch of goopy romantic shit that honestly I’ve completely blocked out of my brain, because who really has room for that?

I wasn’t sure if Lia was going to buy it. Part of me really wanted to see her kick him in the crotch. But unfortunately that didn’t happen.

Instead, Alex burst in the door.

And she had clearly been crying.

Fuck,
I thought to myself.
Not this shit again!

Why can’t this girl just leave me the fuck alone already?

But to my surprise, she didn’t even look at me. Her gaze was entirely focused on Grayson and Lia. “Thank God,” she whimpered. “Did you talk to him? Were you able to change his mind?”

I had no idea what was going on at this point. Clearly a
lot
had happened on the Alex and Lia show.

Damn, you miss one episode and you’re totally behind.

But it was pretty clear from the conversation that followed that Grayson was
not
choosing Alex. 

That Grayson was choosing Lia.

Holy shit.

I barely had time to react myself before Alex was launching herself at her sister, eyes crazed, arms outstretched like she actually meant to claw her to death.

I leapt into action, running over to hold her back. Grayson and I reached her at the same time, each grabbing onto one arm. We shared a nod over Alex’s thrashing form. It was all that was needed to convey what had to be conveyed.