23
“You look like you had a late night.”
Josie glanced at Lauren, her weeknight bartender, not even trying to hide her smile. “I did.”
“Girlfriend?” Lauren asked as she bent to unload the dishwasher, stacking clean glasses on the shelf behind the bar.
“More casual than that,” Josie said, knowing instinctively that Eve would balk at the term. Josie hadn’t been looking for a girlfriend either, not while she was so busy getting Dragonfly off the ground, but when she spent half her waking hours thinking and daydreaming about Eve, it was hard to imagine calling her anything else. This was certainly more than a casual hookup, no matter their original intention.
“Well, good for you,” Lauren said. “If she’s keeping you up late enough to cause those shadows under your eyes, it must be pretty hot.”
“Yeah, it is,” Josie admitted, feeling her cheeks heat at the admission.
“Okay, I’m jealous,” Lauren said. “Do I know her?”
“No,” Josie lied, because the whole staff had met Eve, and she’d been very clear that she didn’t want that fact getting around.
“Well, if she comes in here, point her out to me,” Lauren said with a conspiratorial grin. “I’d love to meet the woman who put such a smile on your face today.”
Josie laughed. “Will do.”
And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she pulled out her phone and composed a text.I can’t wait until next Monday to see you again.
Eve responded almost immediately.No?
No.
What do you propose we do about that?Eve asked.
By now, Josie was grinning like an idiot, and she didn’t even care.Come in for a drink?
It would have to be just that…a drink. I can’t hang around until the bar closes on a weeknight. My workday starts a lot earlier than yours.
I’m sorry, Josie replied. I hate our opposite schedules. I wish I knew how to fix it. But please, at least come in for a drink.
We’ll see, Eve responded.No promises.
It would have to do…for now. At the moment, even seeing Eve for a few minutes while she drank a beer sounded like time well spent. Josie enjoyed seeing her, talking to her, sleeping beside her, going places with her. Hell, she enjoyed just being in the same room with her. Girlfriend indeed.Shit.She was falling for Eve, hard and fast.
But was Eve feeling the same way?
As it turned out, she didn’t stop by for a drink after work. Josie didn’t see or hear from her again until she arrived on Wednesday afternoon for their scheduled marketing meeting, the last consultation covered under her contract withDo Over. They sat together in Josie’s office, going over numbers while Eve offered advice and suggestions.
“You’re ahead of my predicted profit margin for your second week in operation,” Eve said, bringing up a graph on her laptop.
Josie leaned closer, as much to see the numbers as to catch a whiff of Eve’s perfume. “That would be a first for me.”
Eve glanced at her with a small smile. “Well, hopefully you’re in for a lot of pleasant ‘firsts’ with Dragonfly. Our paid advertising will stop running on Friday, but your ads are performing well. And I expect you’ll see another jump in business after your episode airs, which is only a little over a month away.”
“Yeah. Wow.” She was going to be on national television. Her bar was going to be on national television. “My dad would have been so stoked. I mean, he never would have let Swanson’s become such a disaster that it qualified for your show, but he would have been absolutely beside himself to see his bar on TV. My whole family is going to freak out.”
“Your family?” Eve asked, a curiosity in her eyes that had nothing to do with her job and everything to do with her relationship with Josie.
“Aunts, uncles, cousins. They don’t live here in the city, so I don’t see them as often. Holidays and birthdays, mostly. You know how it is.” She glanced over at Eve and saw the stricken look on her face.Shit.“Don’t you keep in touch with anyone in your family?”
She looked away. “No.”
“Dammit, I’m sorry. Are they all just a bunch of homophobic assholes or what?”
