"How graceful," I said.
She scoffed.
I picked up the glass, sniffed it, held it close to my mouth, and paused.
She stood watching me without blinking, hands on her hips, brows raised.
I lowered the glass an inch. "Sabrina."
"Mmm…"
"You didn't spit in this, did you?"
She kept her hands on her hips. "Go ahead and find out."
We held eye contact. I'd been negotiating with grant officers, board members, and federal agencies for ten years. But I hadn't, in any of those rooms, encountered a stare like the one Sabrina was currently holding me with. There was no flinch in it, no apology, but—if I read it correctly—there was an invitation.
I pushed the glass away.
She raised one eyebrow. “Are you afraid of a little spit?”
“Not in my drink, no.”
She didn't blink. “Pervert.”
“Excuse me?” I raised a brow.
She smiled. It should've come with a warning label. “Nothing.”
I stared at her.
Nobody talked to me like that.
I don't mean that as the pampered observation of a man who couldn't take a hit. I mean it literally. In the room I'd been standing in for the last decade, every interaction was prefaced by money, by my father's name, or by something I might one day fund. I’d grown accustomed to it, stopped noticing it, and assumed it was simply the price of admission to whatever it was I had built.
Sabrina wasn't adjusting.
She was looking at me like she'd already decided I was nothing she needed to be careful about, and that decision was the most attractive thing anyone had handed me in a year.
She thinks I'm a pervert. God help me, I love it.
She picked up another glass and started wiping it.
"Come on," I said. "We were getting along."
"That was before."
"It can be after, too. There's no rule."
"I'd like to do my job, Mr. Cross. You can leave."
I leaned my elbow on the bar and considered, for half a second, telling her that I would personally hire her—that she was on the schedule because my event coordinator had told me Sabrina was the best bartender in the city, and I’d said, “Book her. Whatever it costs.” But then I considered the look on her face when I'd said my name,and I decided I would prefer to live.
"It's been a hell of a night," I said instead.
She didn't look up from the glass. "I have seen worse."
"I bet I've had worse."
