Page 17 of The Player in New Zealand
This is a good idea, I thought, giving myself a pep talk.Tane’s a smart business guy, Nina’s on board. The worst he can do is say no. And even if he does, I’ll just try again.
“Hi. Uh, Tane.” Butterflies tickled my belly, but I tamped them down.
“Ah, right,” he said, stepping back from the taps. “Must ask permission before pouring a beer in my own bar.”
Butterflies combusted.
“That isnotwhat I was going to say! You can pour your own damn beer.”
He held an empty glass out to me, wiggling both it and his eyebrows. “Why would I when it’s your job?”
“The job your sister hired me to do,” I snapped back.
He raised one eyebrow now, infuriatingly calm. “Exactly.”
Argh. “It’s fine—you can pour your own drink.”
“No, no,” Tane said, a hint of teasing slipping into his voice. He strode off down the bar and around to the other side, plopping onto the seat in front of me. “We can do this proper-like. You can treat me like a customer.”
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t know you were the owner then.”
He waved the glass at me again and I took it with a huff. Tane’s lips quirked up before he suppressed his amusement, and I attempted to repress my smile too. Tilting the glass to the side, I pulled the lever on the draft to pour the locally brewed pale ale. I presented the glass with a flourish and the perfect amount of head on the beer.
“Your drink,sir.”
Tane smirked and accepted the pint from me. He sipped and carefully turned, walking toward his buddies in the back.
“Wait,” I called out. He paused and turned back, looking quizzically at me. “I have some ideas for the cocktail menu.”
He frowned. “What about the cocktail menu?”
“Well, it’s, like... gin and tonics and sidecars, and like... really classic cocktails. They’re fine, but you could do so much more with the menu.”
“What did you have in mind?” He tilted his head, curious, which I took as a good sign.
“I made this drink for Nina, a gin fizz with candied oranges, and she loved it. Let me make you one, and if you like it, we can incorporate it into the menu. With some other ideas I have, of course. You’ve got craft beers and local wines—why not craft cocktails?”
Tane shook his head before I was even finished. “It’s too much money and too much work to stock the complicated ingredients. I like the menu we have now.” He lifted his pint in a toast. “I like my beers.”
“Right, but you’ve got lots of bachelorette—I mean, hen dos—that come in. These cocktails would sell crazy well with them, and you can charge a lot more for that section of the menu.”
“But then you’d be leaving at the end of your six months, right? Who’s going to make the cocktails then?”
“They aren’t hard to make. It’s a bit trickier to come up with them in the first place. But if we create a seasonal menu that you can rotate out, you’ll be good for at least a year.”
He shook his head again. “Too much work, Claire. And there’s not enough market for it here.” Tane ended the conversation by walking away.
“Yes, there is,” I said under my breath. Sure, the clientele right now was Tane and a bunch of his rugby buddies. But ladies lunched during the week, tourists drank out back, and yeah, the weekends were full of all kinds of people.
Tane arrived at the back booth and his buddies made room for him. Each and every one of them had a beer—some craft, some popular imported brands. I chewed my lip, thinking about how I could convince a big, burly rugby player to pick up a bright pink cocktail and give it a try.
* * *
For the next week,Tane was only around when I was busy, but I made the decision to invest in myself. I took some of my hard-earned money and bought the ingredients I needed. I was sure that once he got a taste, it would be worth the investment. The supplies were shelf-stable, so I crossed my fingers that I would have some downtime with Tane around to mix the drinks.
I could have shrugged and given up. After all, it was Tane and Nina’s bar, and their decision to make. But I was right. IknewI was right, that these drinks would sell, and Nina deserved that. I didn’t want Tane and his beers to stand between more success for her.
Finally, on a Tuesday night, it was quiet. Well, quiet except for the rugby boys in the back, but the weather had been crappy all day, so there were no customers outside and the inside was unusually quiet.
