Still, I wasn’t thrilled about this bougie Wall Street type correcting a woman’s drink order.
Especially when that woman was Victoria Blackstone, a woman infamous for her exacting standards—and cutting remarks when people failed to meet them.
I crossed my arms. “And you expect me to override her request?”
“I understand if you’d prefer not to,” his gaze dipped to my chest to read my nametag, lingering on my cleavage for an admirably short millisecond, “Hannah. But for six years, I’ve managed every detail of her life.” He tipped the stylus of his rollerball pen at the newly delivered piano. “When she told me yesterday to procure a piano, I knew she’d want a Steinway but would settle for a Yamaha. I knew she’d want a grand piano for the sound quality, but since your bar has limited stage space, I talked her into an upright.” He wiped a speck of dust off the bar then put down a slate-gray notebook with corners softened by use. “And I know that she ordered a bourbon Manhattan, but she won’t finish it if you only use sweet vermouth.”
I bristled with annoyance… and something else it took a moment to pinpoint: jealousy. How would it feel to have somebody know my preferences that intimately, to take care of me without needing to be asked?
Then again, based on last month’sForbesarticle listing her net worth, Victoria probably paid him handsomely to know everything… and clean up her messes. Just like all the corporateexecutives I’d worked for who thought the rules didn’t apply to them.
I nodded at the notebook. “Does your checklist include ‘correct a woman’s request’?”
His cheeks flushed again, highlighting a constellation of freckles. He tugged the ribbon bookmark, allowing the notebook to lay flush against the bar, and spun it around so I could read. The extensive list was in impossibly neat handwriting: sourcing the piano, confirming delivery, booking a piano tuner. He tapped a checklist item:
? Order perfect bourbon Manhattan, Deadline: 4pm
I glanced at the clock: 3:48. “You’re early.”
“You weren't a part of my plan,” he said with a soft smile, reaching into his pocket. “Tell you what. Start a tab, make them both, I’ll drink what she doesn’t.”
He slid a matte black Amex across the bar. The partners in my old accounting firm waved this card around when courting clients to prove they could spend big… but instead of watching for my reaction, he turned his attention back to his notebook. Guess I wasn’t important enough to impress.
I ran a thumb over his name: Connor McNamara. Sounded familiar, but working at a bar named Donnelly’s, I’d run thousands of Irish-adjacent cards through the system, and the McCarthys and O’Connors and Sullivans all blended together.
When I hesitated, he passed over a California driver’s license. He was thirty-two, a few years younger than me. His photo had fewer worry lines, but his hair was still perfectly coiffed, his smile just as tightly wound.
I pulled down two coupe glasses and reached for the vermouth. “Going to micromanage my brand choices?”
“If I were micromanaging, I would have ordered it with Four Roses, stirred, up, with a Luxardo cherry,” he said as he watched me pour. “But you already expected all that, didn’t you?”
He snapped the notebook shut, slid the pen into the loop, and waved over his boss.
I strained the Manhattans and rubbed my palms on my black pants, drying the condensation from the shaker—because they definitely weren’t clammy because I was meeting one of my idols. Victoria Blackstone was a New York icon—the youngest woman ever to own a Fortune 100 company. Ice queen CEO, sharp as steel.
She approached wearing the resting bitch face I’d seen plastered on the cover ofForbesandBusiness Insider. Her silver eyes narrowed at me like a snake sighting a mouse, and I repressed a shiver down my spine. No kidding Connor’s checklist was so precise; I bet she demanded perfection.
Eyes blazing, she snapped, “What if the piano isn't tuned in time?”
Connor didn’t flinch. “Hovering won’t speed him up. Now sit. Relax.” He tapped the stool beside him. “You’ve been playing piano since you were three, you won’t forget in the next,” he glanced at his watch, which had more faces than Big Ben, “one hour, 48 minutes.”
I caught the moment when Victoria’s gaze landed on the two Manhattans. Her lip twitched, expression shifting from annoyed to amused. She perched on the barstool he’d indicated and rubbed her brow. “I forgot about the vermouth thing, didn’t I?”
“Hannah wanted to honor your request, so I asked her to make both. I hope she has time for a taste test before the bar opens,” Connor said with a conspiratorial wink.
I didn’t have time, actually. I should have been refilling the ice, restocking the mixers, preparing the garnishes. But I could hustle harder once the bar opened to make up for lost time. I was too intrigued watching this bitch whisperer work his magic.
“Here’s the classic Manhattan you requested,” I said as I slid it over, hoping she’d prefer that one just to prove him wrong. She took a sip with a tiny upnod. “And the perfect one he ordered.”
She sipped, then let out a relieved exhale. “Goddamn, this is excellent,” she lifted the glass to me, then turned to him. “Can we put her on payroll?”
“I’ll look into it,” he said, and I prepared myself for the ‘See, I was right’ gloating that came so naturally to men like him, but he just opened his notebook to playfully jot down her request.
Victoria placed the glass down on the bar, sloshing it slightly over the edge. “Oh shit,” she said, holding up a trembling hand as I grabbed a rag and quickly mopped it up. Whatever this event was, it had Victoria Blackstone shaking, and Connor managing her nerves with the precision of a surgeon.
When Connor reached for the classic Manhattan glass, Victoria protested, “Don't drink that, Connor. You don’t even like bourbon. Order what you want.”
His expression went blank before he glanced around the Irish pub’s predictable decor. “Guinness, I guess.”
