More Than Rum (The Maple Leaf Series Book 3) (6 page)

“Okay. Go get ’em, boy.” Jake
gave him a slap on the shoulder then went out to the front.

Taking a minute to center
himself, Adam drew in a breath and sifted it out slowly as he’d been taught to
do. He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck to the left then to the
right. He could do this. In fact, he was looking forward to staying up with a
purpose instead of going to bed only to get no sleep.

There was also seeing Hope to
look forward to. As long as he could act like a functional adult, things would
be wonderful.

With another inhale and exhale,
he came out and got behind the bar. The other bartender, Chris, came over to
shake hands.

“Welcome. If you need anything
let me know,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Nodding, Chris went back to the
crowd of women he’d been impressing with his bottle twirling tricks. Younger
than Adam by a few years, Chris still had a boyish quality that charmed women, and
they flocked to him like magnets.

Good. That allowed Adam to ease
into it with a few orders of beer to a group of guys playing pool. He poured
wine for a couple celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary. He made six
frozen mudslides for a girls’ night crew. He served two fingers of whiskey to
Henry, the retired police chief, who pretty much lived on the last stool at the
end of the bar.

The night hummed along, and
Adam kept up with the orders as if it was second nature for him to be mixing
drinks. He was two ingredients into a margarita and facing away from the main
room when something changed. He couldn’t put words to it, but he knew another
patron had come in, and he knew it was her.

Turning around slowly, he saw
her weaving her way through the other customers, making her way toward him. Her
big brown gaze darted around the room, and he slapped a hand to his forehead.

I am such a dummy.

How could he have been so
insensitive to invite her to the place she’d been attacked only yesterday? What
kind of a jerk was he? The stupid kind apparently.

When she reached the bar
though, a smile graced those amazing lips and a healthy pink tinged her cheeks.
She didn’t look afraid now. She looked… magnificent.

“Hey,” she said, climbing onto
a free stool.

“Hey.” He looked past her for a
minute. “Did you come here alone?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t
do it… which ticks me off, by the way.” She shrugged. “Rick and Lily came with
me, but they claimed a pool table back there, making bets as to who was going
to win and what the loser would have to do.” She rolled her eyes.

Adam opened his mouth to say he
was glad she didn’t come alone, but a redhead leading a giggling group of women
approached the bar.

“Excuse me,” she said in a low
voice, attempting seduction. “My friends and I have a friendly wager going on.
We wondered if you might be able to help us.”

Hope swiveled on her stool, and
Adam rather liked the expression on her face. It appeared to be one that said,
I
don’t like your intrusion, Carrot Top.

“What’s your wager?” Adam
asked, careful not to agree to anything yet.

“They don’t think I can get you
to give me a birthday kiss.” Carrot Top leaned on the bar now so her ample
boobs squished together and taxed the limits of her already too-tight sweater.
“You wouldn’t deny a gal on her birthday, now would you, handsome?”

Hope’s gaze slid to him, one
blonde eyebrow raised. She’d removed her jacket and the sheer black blouse she
had on over a sparkly black tank top made Adam’s throat go completely dry. He
wanted to slide his hands underneath that wispy fabric and explore her curves.

And he most definitely didn’t
want to kiss Carrot Top even if it was her birthday.

“I wouldn’t deny a gal a kiss
on her birthday,” Adam said.

Hope frowned, and Jesus, he
wanted to leap across the bar and plant a kiss on her.

Instead, he turned away from
Carrot Top and her entourage. He mixed a shot using vodka, crème de cacao, and
orange juice. When he presented the small glass to the birthday girl, he placed
a handful of Hershey Kisses at the base of it.

“Your kisses, and a Happy
Birthday shot.”

Carrot Top narrowed her eyes at
him, but smirked. “Clever, New Guy. Very clever.” She tossed back the shot,
licking her lips and grabbed the kisses. She passed them out to her friends and
said, “Mmm. Good. Can we have more of those shots? That was great.”

“Coming right up.”

She winked at him and made her
way to a table, arguing with her friends that technically she
had
gotten
him to give her a kiss, and they should pay up.

“Quick thinking,” Hope said.

“I’m not as dumb as I look.” He
mixed up more shots and gave them to a waitress on a tray to take to the
birthday table.

“Who said you look dumb?” Hope
gestured back to Carrot Top. “If they want kisses, you must have been
physically acceptable.”

“Or they’ve already had too
much to drink and would have asked Jake for kisses if he were behind the bar.”

“Hey, Jake is sexy in his own
old guy, mountain man way.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep. He’s not my type of
course.” She tapped her fingers on a red napkin with the Black Wolf Tavern logo
on it in front of her.

“No. Jake has too much hair.
You like buzz cuts.”

Her cheeks got pinker as she
chewed on her bottom lip—a lip Adam desperately wanted to taste.

“I do,” she said quietly.

“Blond ones in particular,
right?” He ran a hand over his own blond buzz cut.

She nodded as she met his gaze,
and heat whooshed through him. “Thanks for fixing my tire and getting me a new
spare. Rick drove my car to my house, and I was all prepared to thank him, but
he said it wasn’t him.”

“I had some time today. No big
deal.” He grabbed a shot glass and poured some Captain Morgan into it.

Hope accepted the glass when he
slid it toward her. “It was a big deal to me. Now I don’t have to worry about
it. How much do I owe you?”

Adam shook his head, but Hope
held up her hand. “Do not say I don’t owe you anything, Adam. You went out of
your way to do that for me, and I want to pay you back. You’re either going to
let me do it with money or… some other way.”

“Some other way?” He’d already
decided he wanted some other way. “What did you have in mind?” His heart was
beating overtime now, but not in the usual panic attack way. This was more like
anticipation. Good anticipation.

Hope called him closer with a
single finger, so he rested his hands on the bar and leaned toward her. She
stood and put her lips right near his good ear. He loved everything about
having her there.

“Let me come over after your
shift, and I’ll show you what I had in mind.” She eased back down onto her
stool and looked at him.

His head nodded without him
consciously telling it to do so. He just hoped he could handle what she had in
mind.

She had absolutely no idea what
she was doing, but the time for action had come. No more beating around the
buzz cut. Hope wanted Adam. She’d tried to forget him and had been somewhat
successful when he’d been gone for months. As soon as he’d turned up again,
however, it was like having an open package of cookies sitting on the counter
and trying not to eat one… or ten. It couldn’t be done, and she was sick of
trying to be not interested in him.

A short guy sidled up next to
her and waved money at Adam. “Can I get two Long Trails and a sangria?”

Adam’s eyes were still zeroed
in on Hope, and it was as if he hadn’t noticed the customer.

Hope cleared her throat and
angled her head toward the waiting man, who was now looking from Adam to Hope,
Hope to Adam.

Still, Adam didn’t move.

“Adam?” Hope gently touched his
hand clamped tightly to the edge of the bar. Was the notion of her going home
with him scrambling his brain?

He blinked a few times and
frowned. Rubbing his left ear, he focused on the man now. He took a step away
from the bar and asked, “What can I get you?”

The man looked at Hope again as
if to say,
What’s wrong with this guy?

She’d pay big bucks to know so
maybe she could fix him.

“Two Long Trails and a
sangria.” The man said it slowly as if perhaps English was a new language to
Adam.

“Right.” Adam filled two tall
pilsners with the beer and a large, globe-like glass with sangria, chunks of
fresh fruit mingling with ice. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” The man paid and took
his beverages, carrying them with a grace Hope hadn’t expected.

“I should probably go find Rick
and Lily,” she said. “You know, so you can concentrate on your work.” She
grinned, hoping she pulled off a coy look. It’d been a while since she’d
attempted coy. An out-of-practice coy was the worst.

Hers must have not been so out-of-practice,
because Adam balled up a napkin and tossed it at her. “Yeah. The farther away
the better. You’re too distracting.” He motioned with his hand for her to back
way up.

Laughing, she ordered a rum
swizzle and took off toward the pool tables, but not without looking over her
shoulder once. Yep. He was watching her walk away. Her coy definitely wasn’t
rusty.

When she reached Rick and Lily,
one striped ball and one solid ball remained on the pool table along with the
eight ball. Lily was lining up her shot on the solid ball.

“I’m going to enjoy breakfast
in bed for the next five mornings,” she said.

“You’re going to be so
disappointed when you lose, gorgeous.” Rick sat on a tall stool by the pool
table.

Lily chuckled as if Rick had no
chance of winning. “I’ll have bacon and eggs tomorrow, French toast the day
after that…”

“Keep dreaming.” Rick poked
Lily with his pool cue, leaving a circle of blue chalk on her ass.

“You’ve created a nice target
there,” Hope said.

Lily wiped the blue spot off
and hissed like a cat at Rick.

“Let’s go, kitty. Take your
shot.” He pointed to the pool table.

Lily slid her pool cue along
her index finger and thumb a few times, lining up her shot again, then sank her
solid ball in the corner pocket. She blew on the tip of her cue and winked at
Rick.

“You still have to get the
eight ball in, lady.”

“No sweat.” Lily pretended to
do some complicated geometry to figure the best way to shoot.

Hope laughed when Lily mumbled
something about the Pythagorean Theorem and Newton’s Laws.

Rick finally spun his wife
around and grabbed her by the shoulders. He kissed her as if it were just the
two of them in the bar. Hope didn’t know where to look and had to remind
herself not to glance in Adam’s direction, because he’d certainly be able to
tell she wanted that kind of kiss from him.

Maybe I’ll get one tonight.

That was part of her master
plan. The master plan that only became the master plan about five minutes ago
when she’d invited herself to Adam’s place.

Yikes! What am I doing?

Something. She was doing
something. And it was about damn time.

Hope focused back on Lily who
seemed off kilter after Rick’s kiss. “He doesn’t play fair.”

“No,” Lily said a little
breathlessly. “No, he does not.”

“We never established playing
fair as a rule,” Rick said. “Anything goes.”

Puffing out a breath and
squinting as she aimed, Lily fired off her shot and the eight ball disappeared
into the pocket.

Lily took the pool cue and put
her hands on either end of it as she did a quick tap dance of victory. “I like
my coffee piping hot, baby, and the orange juice better be fresh-squeezed.”

Rick grabbed her pool cue in
the middle and dragged her over to him. “Double or nothing. What do you say?”

“Nope.” Lily let go of her cue.
“I know when to quit. Five mornings of breakfast in bed will be enough.”

“Ricky can be a sore loser,”
Hope said.

“Don’t call me that,” Rick
growled.

“Sore loser, sore loser, sore
loser.”

“You know I meant Ricky.”

“Why does that bother you so
much?” Lily asked.

“I was Ricky up until I was
about thirteen. Then I politely asked Aunt Joy and the Annoying Twins to stop
calling me that. Aunt Joy stopped, but Hope and Sage still like to piss me off.”

“Is Ricky not manly enough for
you?” Lily teased.

“He’s lucky we don’t call him
Dick, right
Richard
?” Hope knew she was jabbing the beast now by using
his full name. Only Aunt Joy could get away with calling him Richard, and she
only did so when she was yelling at him.

“Do you want me to stop
speaking to you, cousin?” Rick asked through clenched teeth.

“Now there’s a question.” Hope
pretended to consider it.

“Wow,” Lily said. “You have a
little Sage in you tonight, Hope.”

“You’re right. I’m channeling
my inner Sage.” She put her hands out to her sides as if meditating.

“Let’s hope you don’t channel
too much,” Rick said. “Our family can’t handle two Sages. One is more than
enough.”

Lily looked over Hope’s
shoulder toward the bar. “Wait a minute. Are you on a mission, dear Hope?”

“Mission?” Hope’s voice
crackled a little. She reached for her rum and took a long drink. Not long
enough to come up with anything good to say. “Mission?”

“You said you wanted to face
your fears about coming back here. Gave a mighty fine speech about not letting
some perv limit you and blah, blah, blah, but I see the way Mr. Military keeps
glancing over here. I also noted how you went right over to him instead of over
here with us. Add the fact that you’re channeling Sage, and this is all
starting to sound like an old-fashioned seduction.”

“I thought you were done with
Adam.” Rick put down both cue sticks and stood in front of Hope. “You said he
had too many secrets. Ones even I couldn’t find out. And I tried.”

The protective waves flowed off
Rick, nearly drowning Hope. “Easy, Rick. I know what I’m doing. I think.”

“Does Adam know what you’re
doing?” Lily asked.

“I’m not sure yet, but I have
to see if there’s something between us before I move on. Not that there’s many
options for moving on.” Hope gestured to the rest of the bar where it was
either groups of women, couples already paired off, or old guys who were
friends with Jake.

“Just be careful,” Rick said.
“You might end up marrying someone who beats you at pool and expects breakfast
in bed.”

“I won fair and square, buddy.”
Lily hugged Rick. “Besides, you know what breakfast in bed makes me?” She
looked up at him.

“What?” He played with the ends
of her strawberry blonde curls.

“Horny.”

“You know what? You played so
well, you probably earned
six
mornings of breakfast in bed.” Rick
dropped a kiss on Lily’s nose.

“Aren’t you generous?”

“Extremely.”

They indulged in another round
of socially inappropriate public kissing, so Hope grabbed her drink and
cornered Jake. “I worked out some basic templates for the tavern’s website
today. You still coming by tomorrow?”

“Yep.” Jake waved to one of his
buddies who’d walked in. “Is your… will Joy… is your mother goin’ to be home?”

“I told you she would be.”

“Darlin’, I don’t know if I can
make a move, you know?” The guy ran a shaky hand over his full beard.

“Trust me. I know.” She risked
a glance toward Adam who was talking with two guys at the bar as he poured them
beer from the tap.

“It’s a sure thing,” Jake said.

“What is?”

“You and Adam.” He folded his
arms across his Black Wolf Tavern T-shirt as if he were certain.

“How do you know?” Hope wasn’t
certain. She was pretty sure Adam wasn’t certain either.

“A man doesn’t chase down a
woman’s attacker and get a busted lip for the fun of it. Nor does he change her
flat tire because he happens to have some time to kill. Furthermore, don’t you
feel the energy between the two of you? Christ, I feel it from way over here.”
Jake motioned to his feet and his position about forty feet from Adam and the
bar.

“Yeah, I feel it, but we were
talking about you and my mom, weren’t we?” Hope poked Jake in the bicep. “Wear
your best flannel and a pair of jeans without any stains tomorrow. I’ll help
you out with the rest.”

“Okay, but we need a code
word.”

“For what?”

“If I need to abort the
mission. If I change my mind. If I feel your mom ain’t interested.”

“She’s interested, Jake.”

“Still, I want a code word.”

“Fine. What’s the code word?”

“Banana split.”

“That’s two words.” Hope held
up two fingers. “And how do you think you’ll be able to work that into a
conversation smoothly?”

“It’ll work. See you tomorrow.”
He squeezed her shoulder and flitted among tables schmoozing with patrons, most
of them friends of his in some way or another. Jake would be perfect for her
mom with his friendly demeanor—one that matched Joy’s.

Hope checked the time on her
phone. Almost eleven. Black Wolf Tavern closed at midnight during the week.
About an hour to go before Adam’s shift was over.

About an hour to go before she
went home with him.

****

Rick and Lily had left about
fifteen minutes ago, and Hope had taken a seat with Diana and Kevin who’d come
in for a drink after their shift at the station. She’d laughed with them, a
light sparkling in her eyes that made her look more than human. That sheer blouse
still called to Adam, beckoning his hands, and the knee-high black boots she
wore tightened things low in his body.

She’s coming home with me.

That was scary. He didn’t know
what to expect. From her. From him. From them. He knew something had to change
between them, because they were both dancing around each other, neither one
making the inevitable advance.

But she made it tonight.

Was it because he’d caught her
attacker? Was it because he’d fixed her flat tire? Or was it because she was
sick of waiting for him? Most women would have given up by now, but not Hope.
She saw something in him. Something she wanted. The challenge would be to hide
everything she didn’t want. And there was a lot she wouldn’t want.

Maybe if he could keep her
laughing as she had with Rick and Lily and Diana and Kevin he’d be okay. She
appeared to like to laugh. She was dazzling when she did. Humor was always a
good cover for what a man lacked. It was the best plan he had for now, and he
was going with it.

Jake came behind the bar and
cuffed Adam on the back of the neck. “Not bad for your first night, kid. I
think I did a good thing hiring your sorry ass.”

“Thanks. I had fun.” That was
the truth too. The time had gone by quickly, and he’d felt productive.

“And there’ll be a nice shiny
paycheck at the end of two weeks,” Jake said. “Maybe you can take Hope out to
dinner somewhere much fancier than this old dive.”

“Hope?”

“Here we go again.” Jake rolled
his eyes. “Why can’t you kids ever realize Jake sees
everything
? I may
be older than you folks, but I ain’t senile yet. In fact, I’d venture to say
I’m sharper than you and her combined.”

“Ouch.” Adam rubbed his jaw as
if he’d been punched. Again.

“Sorry. It’s just when you get
to be my age, you realize there were opportunities you let slip through your
fingers. I’d hate to see you miss out on somethin’, because you didn’t act on
it.”

“And some would say you’re
never too old to act on it, Jake,” Hope said as she neared the bar.

“I’m actin’, I’m actin’. Get
off my back or I’m firin’ you. I don’t really need a website, you know.” He
shook his head at Hope.

“Yes, you do. All the smart
businessmen have websites,” Hope said. “And you wouldn’t fire me.”

“Don’t be so sure.” He turned
to Adam. “You can head out. Chris and I can clean up. See you on Wednesday.”
Jake collected glasses and put them in a bin to take to the dishwasher in the
back.

A moment of silence hung
between Hope and Adam now that they were alone. Adam had no idea how to fill
the silence or even if he should. Just being this close to Hope was nice. Was
conversation really necessary?

Jake came back out and handed
Adam his jacket. “I said go. Now.” He tugged Adam out from behind the bar and
pushed him toward Hope. “He’s all yours.”

With a smile, Hope slid on her
own jacket then proceeded to gather the sides of Adam’s jacket and zip it up
for him.

“It’s cold out,” she said.

He had a feeling it was going
to be very
un-
cold as soon as he got in his truck with her. Riding with
her earlier today had made his body feel a bit tropical. Knowing he was taking
her to his place might push it over to the volcanic heat level.