Page 34 of Tied Over

“She is.” Hayden smiled back at me. “And for that reason, my father employs her, and only he could ever make the decision to let her go even when she threw my friend Michael off the plane a year ago.”

“In her defense, he was drunk and tried to touch her,” Davis chimed in.

“You don’t need to defend her for that,” Bodhi chided him. “He deserved to be removed in whatever way she did it for being in her personal space without her express permission.”

“No, I agree,” Davis replied. “I just meant that—”

“I bet she makes more money than I do,” I told Bodhi, trying to lighten the mood.

When he turned to me, he was smirking. “But you’re a lousy bartender.”

“Mixologist,” I corrected him, bumping him gently with my good shoulder.

“That either,” he said, chuckling.

I scoffed.

She returned then with a tray, her face a mask of indifference as she passed Davis a napkin and then his drink. When she turned to me, she smiled, and I got first a bottle of Fiji water and then a plate with cheese and almonds and sliced apples.

“Thank you so much.” I smiled up at her.

“I suspect you have to take pain meds for that shoulder, and we don’t want to do that on an empty stomach now, do we?”

“No, ma’am,” I agreed, looking at her flawless complexion and her sparkling brandy-colored eyes and liking her face quite a bit.

She laughed softly and then turned to Hayden, her face instantly changed, back to business, like a statue, all her humanity gone.

“I’d like an old-fashioned with the rye whiskey,” he told her.

She regarded Bodhi next.

“Oh, he’ll have one too,” Hayden said. “He loves them as much as I do.”

I scoffed, and Hayden looked at me.

In that moment I thought, shit, I shouldn’t have contradicted him. The man was Bodhi’s fiancé, I shouldn’t come between them even in such a small way. In any way. Keeping my big mouth shut was the right, and smart, thing to do. But I just wasn’t that way. I never had been. There was no filter even when I tried. Scores of people had mentioned it to me and only one person never had. As usual, he was sitting beside me.

I turned to Bodhi and he gave me a shrug along with that look of his that said whatever it was didn’t matter now anyway.

“He doesn’t like bourbon or whiskey or any dark liquor,” I said, then looked back at Bodhi. “You’re wastin’ the man’s good booze if you’re just gonna let it sit and get watery from the ice.”

He narrowed his eyes, not saying anything.

“Ask this nice lady for a gin and tonic. I betcha she makes a kickass one.”

Her lip curled in the corner, and she put her hand on Bodhi’s shoulder. “It’s true. I do.”

He smiled up at her, and I saw her take a breath because really, Hayden was a very handsome man, and Davis was as well, but Bodhi with his long, thick gold lashes, chiseled features, the freckles splashed across his nose and cheeks and all his golden skin, was a sight to behold. Everyone I’d ever met responded to him viscerally. There was no way not to.

“Then I would love one, please.”

“Absolutely,” she agreed, then glanced at me. “And it’s Bridget.”

“Bridget,” I repeated. “I will remember.”

She gave me a playful, exaggerated nod and left us.

Hayden looked crestfallen. “You don’t like bourbon?”