“Is that what’s going on here?” He shakes his head. “I was thinking it was some kind of Valentine’s Day joke I wasn’t in on.”
“Oh, please. Don’t act like you’re Tarzan and this is your first time in civilization. You know exactly what you look like.”
“Pray tell.”
“Like you’re a teen heartthrob playing a cowboy in a hit TV show.”
In the moonlight, his eyes gleam with amusement. “Ouch. Well, at least you have me in a hit show, not a flop.”
All right, so he’s got a sense of humor. It’s normal for that fact to make him even more attractive. Normal for that to make me like him just a little.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything about it.
The tip of his cowboy boot scuffs the snow-dusted ground beneath it. He says, “I noticed you haven’t given your candy hearts to anyone.”
He’s been watching me that closely?
“I don’t just give away my candy hearts anymore,” I tell him. “A man wants it, he has to earn it.”
From the corner of my eye, I feel him studying me.
“And how might a man do that?” he asks.
“Put in the work. Take it slow. Mean what he says, and say what he means. And actually follow up on those words with actions that match.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“You’d think. But apparently it’s like asking for someone to lasso the moon.”
Damn it. I don’t want to sound bitter. Somewhere alongthe way I went from being a hopeless romantic to being a cynic, and I don’t like it.
“Anyway,” I say, “Hope you like that red velvet cake. No doubt it’s all yours.”
As I go back inside, I don’t wait for his reply.
While I close up the bar for the night, Luke comes over.
“You got another rag and spray bottle down there?” he asks.
I groan, steeling myself for a nasty clean-up job. “Ugh. Is it puke or blood?”
He blinks at me. “Neither. Just looking to wipe down the tables.”
I look at him through narrowed eyes. “You ever been a bouncer before?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “No.”
“Yeah. I figured. Because cleaning up tabletops isn’t part of the job description. Then again, neither is turning a territorial bar fight into a happy threesome, but you managed that somehow. Nice diplomatic skills.”
He shrugs. “An ounce of de-escalation is worth a pound of force.”
De-escalation. Fancy ass word. What the hell is this guy doing working as a bouncer in a dive bar?
“They teach you that at the United Nations?” I ask, wiping down the bar top.
“Figured it out for myself somewhere along the way.” He gently pulls the rag and spray bottle from my hands. “I got this.”
I shake my head. “You’ve never worked at a place like this, have you?” The subtext being:you fool.People here do theirjob, and their job only, and they get the fuck out as soon as their job is done.
