Chapter TWO
JAKE HAD THE cab drop him at Kevin’s house since that was where he’d left the business card with the phone number for the garage he’d handed his truck over to the day before. He wanted the oil changed and a maintenance check done before he headed up to the northern part of the state.
He paused for a few seconds outside the gate of the white picket fence surrounding the pretty, maroon-shuttered Cape that had a blue minivan in the driveway, looking at his friend’s world. Kevin Kowalski was a pretty lucky guy.
A pretty lucky guy whose wife, Beth, pinned Jake with a hard look the second he let himself in through the side door into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table, drinking coffee, and judging from the silence, Lily wasn’t up yet. Their daughter was a great kid but, man, was she loud.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I should have called.”
“Did you at least leave her a note, whoever she is?”
“I kissed her goodbye this morning and promised to call her tomorrow. And I will.”
Beth looked surprised, as did Kevin, who appeared in the doorway from the living room wearing flannel pajama pants and a Bruins T-shirt. “Did you tell her you’re not sticking around?”
“I told her I was leaving town, but that I want to see her whenever I’m down here.”
“Which won’t be often,” Kevin said.
“Don’t kill my buzz, man. She’s pretty and fun and wicked smart and I like her.”
That raised both their eyebrows, but he ignored them and helped himself to the coffeepot before calling to check on his truck. It was ready, so once his cup was empty, he went to gather his things out of the guest room he’d spent the night before last in while Kevin got dressed. He would have liked to stay until Lily woke up so he could say goodbye, but he settled for kissing Beth on the cheek and climbing into the Jeep parked in the shadow of Beth’s mom-mobile.
“So, where did you meet this pretty, fun, wicked-smart woman?” Kevin asked when they were on the road.
“At a bar.”
“Which bar?”
“Not your bar.” He’d been to Jasper’s Bar & Grille a few times to talk about the new offshoot pub they were opening together, but always while they were closed. It was hard keeping Kevin’s attention when the place was busy. “They were hosting an event and I went to check it out. See if it’s an idea worth running with.”
“I want to start advertising the launch soon. You’re sure we’ll hit the February mark?”
“We’ll soft-launch the first and have all the kinks worked out by the big Valentine’s Day shebang.” He wasn’t sure what that shebang was going to be yet, other than an opportunity for the guys to convince their wives snowmobiling was a great way to spend the holiday because they could have a romantic evening together at Jasper’s Pub.
“I emailed you the logo design. Did you see it?”
“Not yet.” He’d been busy.
“I think it’s good. Close enough to the bar’s for branding purposes.”
Even though Jasper’s Bar & Grille was a sports bar, they’d decided to keep the name and branding because a lot of the guys who loved nothing more than kicking back with a beer and watching a game at Kevin’s place were the same guys who were going up north to sled. They were banking on familiarity and maybe even some customer loyalty before they even opened.
Kevin pulled into the garage’s parking lot and left the motor running. He’d be going to the bar while Jake would be hitting the highway. “I’ll give you a head start before I send somebody up to work on the menu development and hiring servers and that shit.”
“Not a problem.”
“Do me a favor, though. If it’s a woman, swear to me you’ll keep it professional.”
Jake recoiled as if Kevin had popped him one. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means hands off the help.”
“You think I don’t know that? I’ve managed to be professional a long time without you slapping my hand.”
“Sorry.” Kevin sighed and shoved his hand through his hair. “I’m just overworrying. I believe the pub’s going to be a hit, but sometimes I realize just how much I’ve got on the line and I start thinking about every little thing that could go wrong.”
“Scratch me screwing the help off the list.” He had a feeling he might be off the market soon. He hoped, anyway.
Almost three hours later, Jake was lost, his GPS was confused and he was bouncing down a dirt road he wasn’t sure was even on the map. And it was raining. Hard.
He was looking for a place to turn around when he saw the car. The rain must have softened the shoulder because the car had slid down into the ditch. And, as he got closer, he saw a flash of what looked like a pink sweater in the driver’s-side window. Of course, it had to be a woman.
Saying every curse word he knew, just to get it out of his system, Jake hit the button for his four-way flashers and put his truck in Park. He unclipped the useless phone with no service from his pocket and tossed it in the center console, then climbed out. By the time he reached the car, he was soaked through.
He had to knock on the window to get the woman’s attention away from the squabbling kids strapped in the backseat, but when she saw him, he could almost feel her relief. “I’m stuck.”
“I can see that. I don’t think you’re very stuck, though.”
“Can you pull me out?”
“I don’t have a tow strap with me. I’m guessing you don’t, either.” She shook her head. “I should be able to push you out. You’re not far off. Put it in Drive and when I say, ‘Let off the brake and give it some gas,’ don’t gun it. Just nice and steady.”
It wasn’t much of a ditch, but the rain runoff had built up steam and it washed over the tops of his boots as he took his place behind the little car. After a quick check of the wheel positions, he placed his hands a little right of center on the trunk and braced himself.
“Give it gas,” he yelled.
The first attempt, she was nervous and didn’t give it enough gas. The second, she overcompensated for the first and spun the tires. On the third, she got it right and he was able to push her back onto the road. Of course, once the car drove out from under his hands, he slid in the loose gravel and ended up laid out in the ditch, but he was already so wet and filthy he didn’t bother wasting a good expletive on the fall.
Once he’d accepted her thanks and refused her offer of a grocery bag to put over his truck seat, he asked her for directions to the building the old hardware and feed store had been in and got his truck turned around.
He pulled up to the future Jasper’s Pub, feeling like a muddy, wet rat, just in time to see a guy climbing into a truck that read Peterson Construction. Jake laid on the horn, getting his attention.
After getting out, he jogged over to the other truck and the guy, who had to be Derek Peterson, lowered the window. “I’m sorry I’m late. Got lost. Dirt road. Woman and kids in a car slid off into the ditch. If you can wait five minutes, we can go over the plans.”
“Not a problem,” Peterson said, which didn’t surprise Jake. The kind of work he and Kevin were having done was scarce in the northern part of the state, and Peterson wasn’t going to walk away from it because he was half an hour late.
Jake had to go back to his truck to get the ring of keys Kevin had given him and one of his duffels. Then he went up the stairs on the back of the building to his new home.
Kevin had said the apartment over the restaurant space was a little outdated. What he hadn’t mentioned was how damn brown it was. Really fake wood paneling on the walls. Brown rug. The furniture was big and bulky, with a lot of exposed wood and brown plaid cushions.
The lack of color made Jake think of Darcy. Her apartment was the kind of place that made a person feel better and...Darcy.
“Shit...shit...shit...” he muttered, shoving his hand into the front pocket of his muddy, wet jeans.
He pulled out a soggy ball of paper with a black blur where her name and phone number used to be. And he hadn’t given her his.
Well...shit.
Six weeks later
“DARCY, CAN I TALK TO YOU a minute in my office?”
“Uh, sure.” Her boss sounded serious, which made her stomach clench. Not that Kevin Kowalski wasn’t always serious about his business, but he was a friendly, laid-back kind of guy and she loved working at his busy sports bar.
She tried to brace herself for the worst, but she knew the tears would come if he let her go. The jerk she’d thought might actually be her Prince Charming had never called, and her best friend and trivia partner was in the process of moving to Rhode Island because her husband got a new job. Bad news came in threes, and she prayed getting fired wasn’t the icing on the bad luck cupcake.
“So you know I’m opening another restaurant up north,” he said when they were seated in his office, referring to the northern part of the state. She nodded, since she’d been around during many conversations Kevin had had with Paulie about his plans to open another bar in prime snowmobiling real estate. “J.P., my business partner, has been up there handling the renovations and refitting the kitchen and business crap. Generic restaurant business.”
She nodded again, since she knew that, too. Kevin went up occasionally to check on the progress, but because of Beth and Lily, he didn’t like to be away too much.
“We’ve reached a point where we need to start going beyond the generic and putting the Jasper’s stamp on it. Menus and policies and how to set things up for the best work flow and stuff. That’s not really J.P.’s thing. I don’t want to be away that long and I can’t really spare Paulie.”
Darcy wasn’t really sure what he was asking of her, but he didn’t seem to be giving her the boot. That was the important thing.
“I had planned to hire a consultant specializing in restaurants to work alongside him, but I want it to be more personal than that. I want the two places to really share a common feel, you know?”
She nodded again, starting to feel like a bobble-head.
“So.” He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. “I guess the question is whether or not you’d be willing to go stay up north for a few weeks or maybe more and help launch Jasper’s Pub.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he was crazy. She couldn’t just go away for a month. Sure, she didn’t have any pets and her neighbor could water the plants, but to just pack up and head almost to the Canadian border?
Then he told her how much he was willing to pay her, and the decision got a lot easier.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST TWO WEEKS before they’d trained a temp to take over her hours at Jasper’s Bar & Grille, and Darcy had taken care of everything that needed to be done in preparation for a month or more away from home. She even put new tires on her car in anticipation of more snow than she was used to driving in. Once she’d done Christmas and New Year’s Eve with her family, it was time to hit the road.
The building wasn’t hard to find, since the only other things around were a convenience store with gas pumps, an auto parts store, a hardware store, a very expensive-looking bed-and-breakfast and—just barely in view—a couple of long, one-story motels. It didn’t look like a mecca of any sort, but Kevin had assured her it was a major crossroads on the snowmobile system.
Darcy had her choice of spots in the massive parking lot, which was designed to accommodate vehicles and snowmobiles, including trucks pulling big sled trailers. Right now it was empty. She decided to return for her bags after she got the lay of the land, got out of the car and took a deep breath. This was going to be weird.
Apparently there was a two-bedroom apartment over the restaurant and she was going to be roommates with J. P. Holland. As if this job Kevin was trusting her with wasn’t enough stress, she was going to live with a man she didn’t know. Her boss had sworn J.P. would be nothing but professional, and if it really didn’t work out, he’d put her up in one of the motels for the duration, but her practical nature shied away from wasting the money. They were adults who’d be working together.
Besides, she wasn’t a big fan of men at the moment. Even though she’d tried to prepare herself for the probability, it had hurt when Jake didn’t call.
The back door to the restaurant was locked. So was the side entrance and the front door. And a quick glance at the “no service” on her cell phone killed any hope of calling the cell number Kevin had given her for J. P. Holland. Even if she drove over to the gas station and begged the use of their landline, he probably didn’t have a signal, either.
Even though it was probably an exercise in futility, Darcy returned to the back of the building and went up the exterior stairs to what she assumed was the apartment entrance. To her
surprise, the doorknob turned in her hand and she stepped inside, realizing belatedly she probably should have knocked.
She found herself in a very drab brown apartment improved drastically by the tan expanse of naked male back in the middle of the living room. The steam curling from the bathroom and the fact that he was scrubbing his head with a towel cued her in to the fact he was fresh out of the shower. That and the droplet of water she watched make its way from the back of his neck, down over the muscles of his back to the waistband of his jeans. And thank goodness for the jeans because that body wrapped in nothing but a towel might have made her drool.
“Excuse me,” she forced herself to say.
The man spun around, lowering the towel, and Darcy’s stomach dropped. Her brain couldn’t quite grasp what was going on, but her body certainly recognized him, and only shock kept her from running back the way she’d came.
Jake stared at her for a few seconds, probably as confused as she was. “Darcy?”
“What are you doing here?”
He stared at her, then frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“I asked you first.”
“I’m supposed to be here.”
“So am I.” Darcy’s stomach knotted as she started putting the pieces together. “Oh, God. Please tell me you’re not J.P.”
“Only to Kevin. Back in the day, he knew three Jakes, so he called us by our first and middle initials—J.P., J.D. and J.R.—and I guess it stuck. Not a fan, but he never cared.” After a short pause, he muttered a curse. “You work for Kevin.”
“I’ve worked at Jasper’s for years. Paulie and I were there before he bought it.” Her voice sounded surprisingly normal considering what she really wanted to do was plant her knee in his balls before making a grand exit.
“So you’re here to help me launch Jasper’s Pub.”
Really? That’s what he wanted to talk about? He’d held her hand and made love to her and kissed her goodbye with promises of a phone call and he wanted to talk about work. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
She was going to get back in her car and drive back to Concord. The three-hour trip would give her plenty of time to come up with an excuse to give Kevin about why she couldn’t do him this favor, after all. Maybe she could tell him she startled a Dumpster-diving bear and she was too traumatized by the encounter to stay in bear country.
Jake blew out a hard breath and tossed the towel onto the counter. “We can make this work.”
Darcy sighed. She was a nice person, really. People described her as cheerful and happy and a few of the regulars called her Sunshine. But under the sunny personality, she had a really low tolerance for bullshit. And she’d already had a shovelful from Jake Holland.
“I don’t think so.” She turned around and went back down the stairs.
* * *
JAKE SHOVED HIS BARE FEET into his boots before he went after Darcy, but he didn’t take the time to grab a shirt or coat. She was halfway across the parking lot before he caught up to her. “Darcy, wait. Please?”
He couldn’t let her go. After weeks of thinking about her and beating himself up for not putting her number in his phone right away, he couldn’t let her leave without trying to explain. Upstairs, his mind had been trying to work out the business implications of her arrival, but right now he was just a man trying to catch the woman who had slipped through his fingers once already.
“I’ll tell Kevin I’m afraid of bears,” she said in a flat voice, reaching for the door handle of her car. “He doesn’t need to know we’d met before.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”
That stopped her. “Whatever. We both knew you weren’t going to call.”
That pissed him off. He wasn’t that kind of guy, and maybe she didn’t have any way of knowing that, but a little benefit of the doubt wouldn’t hurt. “My jeans got wet and the ink ran.”
“Funny how often that happens to guys.”
“I swear, Darcy. I wanted to leave a message at the bar where we met, but I couldn’t remember the name of the place. I even called the car garage where I saw the trivia night flyer to get the name or number off it, but they’d thrown it away. I didn’t know how else to find you.”
“You haven’t been back in the city since then?”
“I’ve only managed to get down there once, since the contractors screwed up the HVAC plans and we had to scramble. I drove around a little, but a lot of those streets look the same and all the buildings look the same and I couldn’t find the bar.”
She wasn’t allowing herself to believe him. He could see it on her face. “Look, Jake, it doesn’t matter if you were going to call or not. We can’t work together.”
“Why not? If Kevin sent you, it means you’re damn good at what you do. I’m damn good at what I do. There’s no reason we can’t open Jasper’s Pub together by February.”
“I thought being roommates with a man I’d never met would be weird.” She shoved her hands in her coat pocket. “This is worse, I think.”
Jake wished he had a coat to shove his hands into. When it was cold enough to see your breath when you talked, shirtless wasn’t a great fashion choice. “I’m not going to lie to you. You being here feels like a second chance to me, but—”
She shook her head, but he pushed on, anyway. “But this restaurant and my partnership with Kevin are important to me. Important enough so I can set aside any personal stuff and keep it professional.”
“You look cold.”
“I was, but the numbness is setting in now, so it’s not so bad.”
“You should go inside.”
“Kevin wants you in his corner on this project, Darcy.”
“I know he does, and trust me, that matters.” She was wavering.
“Let’s try it for a couple of days and see how it goes. If you still want to leave, you can tell Kevin I’m an a*shole and I’ll take the heat for it.”
“I’m not here just because Kevin’s a good boss and he asked me. It’s an interesting opportunity and I was excited about it.”
“It’s still an interesting, exciting opportunity.”
When she sighed, blowing out a frosty cloud, relief seeped through his frozen veins. She was going to stay long enough for him to make things work professionally. Personally? That could come later. Especially since it would probably be at least a week before his body thawed enough to even think about misbehaving.
“I’ll stay. But if it’s too awkward, I’m going to move to the motel and waste your money. If it’s still awkward after that, I’m leaving.”
“We’ll be working too hard for awkwardness.”
“I’ll bring up my bags.”
Because he was raised right, Jake willed the impending hypothermia away and helped her carry up her luggage, but he threw on a thermal shirt and a flannel shirt and his coat before he went back down for the boxes and bags she had crammed in her trunk.
On his third trip up, he realized both bedroom doors were closed and she was hovering over the growing pile of her belongings as if she wasn’t sure what to do with them. “I was greedy and took the room with the queen bed, but we can switch if you want.”
“Are they both as brown as the living room?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it doesn’t matter.”
“Then that room’s yours,” he said, pointing to the door on the left. “At some point down the road we’ll redo this apartment, but right now all the time and money are going into the pub’s launch.”
She shrugged, picking up a suitcase to bring into her room. “Doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be here after the launch.”
“I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. It’s open-ended right now. After it opens, we might turn it over to a manager. But if I like it here, I might stay.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Connecticut. But I’m a Red Sox fan, not Yankees. Connecticut goes both ways, but I was born in Mass.”
It wasn’t until she turned and glared at him that he realized that while they’d been talking, he’d followed her into her bedroom. He took a couple of big steps backward, until he was on the living room side of the doorway.
“This space is mine and you absolutely are not allowed in here,” she said firmly. “I’m here to work, Jake. Nothing more.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.”
“Mistress?” Now, there was a word he liked. He let his gaze wander down the body his hands itched to touch again, dressing her up in his mind.
“Darcy’s fine, thank you very much.” She frowned at him. “Are you picturing me naked right now?”
“No.”
“Okay, good.”
“I’m picturing you in thigh-high, black leather boots, wearing one of those corset things that pushes your boobs up.”
She snorted. “That sort of thing turn you on?”
“Never did before, but being punished by Mistress Darcy wouldn’t hurt. Much.”
“I think you’re too bossy in bed to let a woman take charge.”
“I think we should stop talking about this while I can still walk.”
She slammed her bedroom door in his face, which was probably a good thing. One of them had to set boundaries because the last thing he wanted to do was tell Kevin their plan for Jasper’s Pub was screwed because he couldn’t keep his hands off the one woman he’d sworn he wouldn’t touch.