Darcy had been trying to sleep with me for months. She was a perky twenty-five-year-old blonde with a banging body. But she also had a big brain and cared too much about people. Not the kind of girl you had a one-night stand with, so I avoided her advances at all costs. Ya know, I was a gentleman like that.
“Shit, really?” Was I finally going to be rid of this shithole? I looked up at theWayne’s Placesign. The failing family business I’d been saddled with five years ago was falling apart, in every way.
Thanks, Dad.
Darcy handed me the cup of coffee and I thanked her. Just because I hated my life didn’t mean I had to be rude to a nice young woman.
“It’s lower than we wanted.” She chewed on her plump bottom lip and I got distracted for a second.
Using my key, I opened the bar and held the door for her. “How low?”
Darcy stepped inside and took one of the chairs down from where it was turned upside down on the tabletop. I stepped in after her and then joined her. She sat, spreading out some papers for me to look at. “Half of asking.”
“Half!” I screamed, pulling up a chair next to her. “No way.”
Darcy nodded, her slick blonde ponytail bopping as she did. “It’s a laundromat, so they have no use for the bar. They plan to gut it.”
I sighed. Maybe that was best. Gut the memories from this shithole and I could move on with my life.
“You want a drink?” I asked her and stood.
She shifted uncomfortably. “It’s two in the afternoon, Ashton.”
Darcy went to church every Sunday and dreamed about dating bad boys like me, but in reality I wasn’t what she wanted.
I winked. “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Sometimes I went a few days without drinking just to prove I could. Just to prove I wasn’t like my dad.
When I returned to the table with a whiskey on the rocks, I looked down at the papers. “Half my asking?”
She nodded. “But you get to keep the apartments above. They’ll do a property split. Half asking for the bar andyoukeep the apartments.”
That was decent. At least Mrs. Pennyweather in 1B wouldn’t be out on her ass and I’d still have somewhere to live. And once I finally rented out Jenna’s apartment across the hall from mine, maybe I could break even on the mortgage. But half asking … I did the quick math in my head. After paying the bank, personal loan from Gran and the second … no. I couldn’t.
“I can’t do that, Darc. Ask for more, okay?”
She frowned. “Ashton, it’s been on the market a while, and … if I ask for more, they might walk.”
“It’shalfmy asking,” I reminded her, reaching out to tap the offer.
She eyed my tattooed arm with a hooded gaze.
She nodded. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do, but just think about the offer, okay?” She stood just as I poured my whiskey into the Starbucks coffee she’d brought me.
Her eyes fell to my chest and the tip of the scar that peeked out of the top of my t-shirt. It was a hard scar to hide, especially in summer, and I knew she was dying to ask about it.
“You know some friends and I are going out tonight … if you want to close early and meet up?” She smiled and it only made her more beautiful, more tempting.
Darcy Becker was pure and I wouldn’t taint her.
“Nah, you go on and have fun.”
She chewed at her lip again and I started to rethink my plan. Why the fuck was I passing up a night with Darcy Becker on account of attempting to be a gentlemen?
“Keep your cell on! I’m selling this place!” she called out behind her before I could change my mind and ask her up to my apartment.
It wasn’t good to mix business and pleasure anyway. But her ambition was almost as sexy as she was. Shaking Darcy and her bottom lip from my mind, I started to go through the motions of opening the bar, all the while thinking about the offer.
