"They're scared. They're just hungry too."
He laughs. Declan's two stools down working his charm on a woman who isn't buying it. Renata flew in from Denver for the week and has appointed herself front of house, seating people with the confidence of a woman who has never once doubted herself.
Her text from this morning is still on my phone.
Mountain man. She's happy. Like sunlight happy. You did that. Don't let it go to your head (okay maybe let it go to your head a little).
I let it go to my head a little.
Six months ago I talked myself out of this woman over math. Now there's a drawer that's mine in a house we share down the hill, a side of the bed that smells like her, a dog who's decided she hung the moon. The quiet I used to hide in turned into quiet we keep together, which is a different animal entirely.
A guy at table nine has had two glasses too many and keeps catching Bianca's wrist when she does a pass through the dining room. Third time, his hand lands at her waist and lingers.
The bar goes very still around me. Bishop puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Easy, killer. She's got it."
She does. Bianca peels the hand off her with two fingers and a smile that could freeze the snow off the roof, says something low that drains the color out of the man's face, and keeps walking like he's furniture. Then she finds me across the room, raises one eyebrow, and mouthsdown, boy, because she knows exactly what I was about to do and exactly that she didn't need me to do it.
I sit back down. Bishop's still laughing when I order another whiskey.
The night winds down slow. Last table leaves near midnight, full and loud and promising to be back. Renata steers the staff out the door with hugs. Declan herds Bishop home. The lights drop to half, the snow keeps coming, and then it's her restaurant, gone quiet, smelling of garlic and woodsmoke, and the two of us.
She comes around the pass untying her apron, flushed from twelve hours on her feet, and walks straight into me.
"We did it," she says into my chest.
"You did it. I built furniture."
"You built the furniture, talked the bank into a woman with no credit history up here, and stood in my doorway every single night so I'd remember I wasn't doing it alone." She tips her head back to look at me. "Don't shortchange the furniture guy."
I kiss her. She tastes like the wine she snuck during service, and her hands fist in my shirt, and six months in she still pulls a sound out of me I don't make for anyone else.
"Lock's already turned," she murmurs against my mouth. "Renata flipped the sign."
"Did she now?"
I lift her onto the prep table she watched me sand last spring, and she's already pulling her chef whites over her head. I get the rest off her fast, snow light blue through the windows on her bare skin. My mouth finds her nipple, and her head drops back, and her thighs fall open for me with no hesitation left between us.
"Been watching you boss that whole room around all night," I say against her breast, dragging two fingers through her, finding her wet already. "Drove me out of my mind."
"You liked it."
"I loved it." I work her clit slow, then faster, while she rocks into my hand and grips the edge of the table. "Now you're gonna be quiet for me. Whole town just left. Don't need 'em coming back."
"Make me."
So I drop to my knees on her kitchen floor and put my mouth on her until she's biting down on her own fist to stay quiet, thighs locked around my head, coming on my tongue with a muffled cry that's worth every cold night I spent thinking I'd lost this. Then I'm on my feet, freeing my cock, dragging her to the edge of the table and sinking into her in one stroke.
She wraps her legs around me and holds on. I fuck her slow and deep against the table she'll plate a hundred dinners on tomorrow, one hand spread at the small of her back, the other cradling her jaw so she has to look at me. Her nails dig into my shoulders. The table creaks. Her whole body climbs toward it again, and I feel her start to clench, and I tip my forehead to hers.
"Mine," I tell her. Not a question. Never a question with me.
"Yours," she breathes back, and that's what sends her over.
She drags me with her, buried deep, my groan swallowed against her throat, both of us shaking in her dim quiet kitchen while the snow piles up on Birch Street.
After, she's draped over me in the one good chair, wrapped in my flannel, half asleep, while I rub the soreness out of her feet because she's been standing on them since dawn.
