Page 54 of Summer Affair
He looked at her bright blue top, the thin straps, and fitted jeans. He ran a finger down her bare arm, leaving chills in the process. “According to state law, I’m guaranteed a fifteen-minute break.”
“Do you think fifteen minutes will cut it?” she asked.
“Hell no.”
“Then I think I should get to work, and you should rest that knee.”
“I’m fine,” he said casually, but she could see in his eyes he wasn’t being honest.
“Genuine, right?” she said lowly, brushing the back of his hands with hers. “Humor me.”
“Fifteen minutes,” he agreed, but she could tell he wasn’t happy about it. Like if he allowed himself to take the break, it would be admitting that he was further behind in his therapy than he wanted to be.
“Thirty and we have a deal.” She ducked under his arm, grabbed the bottle of tequila, the shaker off the bar, and went about making the drink.
“What are you doing?”
“Like I said, saving your butt. Now shoo.” She waved him off.
He moved in behind her, leaving the bar at her front and him at her back, so close his heat surrounded her. He smelled like clean soap and a yummy, masculine scent. “You definitely have a thing for my butt.”
She looked over her shoulder. “I could say the same. Now, who is the owner of this fine drink?”
He looked blankly up and down the bar, then shrugged. “You got me.” He cupped his mouth and shouted over the crowd, “Anyone order a mango margarita?”
A hand went up at the opposite end of the bar. She was a beautiful brunette with curves in all the right places and sending Clay aMy hotel key is under the napkinlook. He didn’t seem to notice, delivering the drink and heading back to Jillian.
“Part of bartending is picking up the payment when they leave it for you,” she pointed out.
He looked down the bar at the stacks of bills and grimaced. “I’m usually on the receiving end of this transaction.”
“Which is why you should go into the office and elevate your knee and let the professionals handle things.”
“Professional, huh?”
With a wink, Jillian worked her way down the bar, collecting the cash, giving change, settling up tabs, and clearing the empty bottles and dirty glasses. She started at the end closest to Clay and began taking drink orders. She filled up a pitcher, grabbed five mugs, and handed it to the first man by the family section.
Clay was still there, hip leaned against the bar, watching her work. “Not bad.”
“Not bad?” she argued with no heat. “I will have you know that I tended bar through college and my first year of grad school. And this,” she waved a hand around the bar, “was a Tuesday night.”
“I didn’t know you went to grad school.”
“That’s what you got out of that? Not my mad skills?”
“Oh, I know all about your skills.” His voice was like tossed gravel. “I was more interested in you graduating from grad school.”
By the third order, Jillian began to wonder if her bartending skills were too rusty to catch up to the demand. “I was in my last year when I got pregnant with Sammy, and Dirk didn’t want me to work and go to night school.” She’d also been forced to pass on a promotion at work, ending her career as a project manager in the tech world. So, she’d focused on her classes.
Not wanting to talk about herself, she gave Clay a little shove. He didn’t budge—except to lift a brow. “Are you going to move?”
“What’s the magic word?”
She glanced at the refrigerator behind him, noting that the only way to access it would be to reach between his legs. With a shrug, she knelt down, her head stopping in a precarious place, then she reached between his legs to pull out a bottle of white wine. When she came up, she reached over his head, going chest to chest, then grabbed two stemmed.
“You’re playing with fire,” he said.
“You’re playing with a woman who once babysat ten toddlers for a living when I ran an in-home daycare. A big, burly man doesn’t scare me.”
