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Was it really that easy? They fought like cats and dogs most of the time, which was why Jamie was keeping his ideas secret until he had them fully fleshed out. If he didn’t have everything in perfect order, Eric would shoot the plan down before the first words left Jamie’s mouth. In fact, he’d already shot this particular plan down once, but Jamie wasn’t giving up.
“Anything going on today?” he asked Eric.
“Wallace finally got in that Mexican chocolate he was waiting for. He’s going to try another round of the spicy chocolate stout.”
“Great.”
“He wants to call it Devil’s Cock.”
Jamie’s eyebrows flew up. “Devil’s Cock?”
“Yeah. With a rooster on the label.”
“And what did you say to that?”
Eric smirked. “I told him I’d think about it. After that Santa Fe show, I decided we could dare a bit more edginess. There’s not a lot of subtlety out there right now.”
“Well, consider me surprised. I think it could be a fantastic label. Maybe you could have it mocked up before you decide.”
“Huh. That’s actually a good idea. Maybe I will.”
Jamie ground his teeth at the shock in Eric’s voice.
“And the new menus are in.” Eric handed him a pristine laminated copy of the midsummer bar menu.
“Wow, this is a nice layout.”
“The new marketing company,” Eric said. “I guess it’s working out.”
“Where’s Tessa?” Jamie asked. His sister was a much more relaxed presence and Jamie would rather get his daily update from her, but she was off today, it seemed. That explained Eric’s mood. Tessa simultaneously calmed her brothers down and cheered them up.
“So.” Jamie checked the time. “Are you clocking out soon?”
Apparently, he was less than subtle. Eric actually threw back his head and laughed. “I’ll leave you alone. Chester prepped the bar. It’s all ready for you. Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, and Tessa said something about a special.”
Jamie groaned as Eric brushed past him. “Wait, what kind of special?”
His brother’s laughter was the only answer. It faded as he walked into the back and the doors swung closed behind him.
“Jesus.” Now Jamie was the one muttering. As much as he loved Tessa, she was driving him crazy with her Twitter mischief. She was in charge of social networking for the brewery. Unfortunately, Jamie knew nothing about the internet beyond Google and email. Even more unfortunately, Tessa used Twitter under Jamie’s name, and she enjoyed putting him in awkward positions. Two weeks ago, she’d organized a “Where’s Jamie?” campaign, wherein customers took a picture with him whenever they spotted him. That had been fine at the brewery, though it had slowed down his service. It had been less comfortable when he’d been at the grocery store or out for a bike ride.
He’d tried to go with the flow, but now he was feeling paranoid. He stuck his head in back. “Chester!”
he called to the part-time bartender. “Can you check Twitter on your phone? When you’re finished with the washer, see what Tessa is up to tonight.”
“Got it!” Chester called.
Jamie hurried back to ready the front room before the post-workday rush. Sure, Chester had already prepped, but no one else had quite the standards that Jamie did. He started with the tables so they’d be ready for the customers. He wiped down the tabletops, the chair seats and backs, and even the menus. He swept the whole room, then moved to the bar itself to get it ready.
“Hey,” Chester finally popped in to say. “Tessa offered half-price pints from five to six for anyone who tells you a joke. Doesn’t have to be funny.”
Jamie smiled as he polished the bar to a shine. He could handle a few jokes. Or so he thought. By six o’clock, his throat hurt from laughing. It also hurt from groaning in horror. He hadn’t thought so many bad jokes existed in the world, much less that he could hear them all in one hour. But he had to give it to Tessa, it had been a pretty great hour. He blazed through the whole evening in a good mood until he finally started shutting down at 8:45. At nine o’clock, he saw the last customer out with a friendly wave, locked the door and immediately pulled out his phone to call Olivia.
“Hello, Ms. Bishop.”
“Jamie?” She sounded sleepy. And soft.
“I’m sorry, were you sleeping?” He glanced at the clock in confusion. Did people go to sleep at nine?
“No, not yet. I’m reading in bed.”
“I was hoping you might come over for a game of pool.”
“Right now?” She laughed as if he were being outrageous.
“Maybe?”
“I’m already in bed in my pajamas!”
“Oh, yeah?” He dropped into a chair and propped his feet on a table. “What kind of pajamas?” She laughed again as if he were joking. Fine. Jamie decided to imagine her in a little silk button-down shirt and her black glasses. Hot.
“How was your night?” she asked.
“Well, you made me late.”
“You made yourself late.”
“No,” he corrected, “that hand up my shirt was definitely yours.” Jamie decided right then and there that he’d never get tired of hearing her laugh. He especially liked the crack in her voice when she got embarrassed.
“I’m sorry. I’m not normally so forward. Especially not in the parking lot of a coffee place.”
“You were overcome,” he said. “It happens to all of us. I promise not to report you to the dean.”
“Stop!” Her laughter was getting sleepier.
“What are you reading?” he asked, trying to keep her on the phone. She named a book he’d never heard of. Something that sounded dire and difficult. “My mom used to read a lot. She didn’t really pass that love on to me,” he admitted.
“Used to? She passed away?”
“She did. A long time ago.” Jamie didn’t like to talk about it. He really didn’t like to talk about. So he kept his mouth shut and made it clear that he had nothing more to say. Olivia didn’t take the hint.
“How long ago?”
“Thirteen years.”
“Oh, my God. You were just a teenager.”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and tried to tell himself to be glad she hadn’t asked about his dad, because then he’d have to give the whole tragic story. Leaving out the details of his own involvement.
“Were you close to her?” she asked quietly.
“I was.” They’d all been close back then. His siblings and his mom and dad. He and his brother and sister were each distinct personalities, but they’d all been loved equally. It turned out that Jamie had been the one who didn’t deserve it. Big shock.
“I’m not close to my mom,” Olivia admitted. He heard the click of a light on her end and imagined her settling more deeply into bed. “She’s cold. Exacting. And … no fun.”
He smiled at the wry irony in her voice. “You’re not cold,” he said.
“No?”
“No. You’re lying in bed in your very short pajamas, having an inappropriate conversation with one of your students, right?”
Her laughter chased his sadness away. “You don’t know anything about my pajamas.”
“Shh.”
“And there’s nothing inappropriate about this conversation.”
“There could be,” he insisted, “if you stopped trying to correct me.”
“Jamie …” She sighed. “You’re … really amazing. You know that?”
“I love it when you whisper that in bed.” But her voice was getting quieter, so Jamie gallantly offered to let her go. He thought of his schedule tomorrow and winced. He had a full day in the office plus the bar at night, and on Fridays they were open until ten. Thank God it was only a tasting room, and not a regular bar open until the wee hours. “If you can stay up an hour later, I’ll tuck you in tomorrow, too.”
“I’d like that,” she whispered, and Jamie could practically feel her fingers drag down his neck.
“I’d like that, too.” What a strange affair this was. No sex. Plenty of pillow talk. And damned if he didn’t love it.
CHAPTER SIX
“WHY AREN’T YOU RETURNING my texts?”
Olivia couldn’t believe she’d answered the phone. She’d avoided talking to Victor all week, but getting out of the shower, she hadn’t been able to see the phone display, and now here she was with his disapproval in her ear.
“Victor, one of the reasons I divorced you was so I wouldn’t have to return your texts or phone calls or emails unless I wanted to. And I don’t.”
“Come on, O. What’s gotten into you lately?”
She wrapped her towel tighter around her. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re acting strange.”
Strange. Like dating-a-younger-man strange. For three nights in a row, Jamie had talked her to sleep. She could no longer deny, even to herself, that she was getting involved with him. Talking to a man for hours while in bed was apparently an effective tool for breaking down resistance.
“Olivia?” Victor’s voice sang with irritation.
“Yes?”
“Who was that guy?”
Well, the curiosity must have been eating him alive if he’d just blurted it out like that. Victor normally liked to weave in and out of difficult topics until she was too confused to remember her point. Olivia smiled. “What guy?”
“Damn it. If you want to play games—”
“Victor,” she interrupted. “I’m not playing any games. My life has nothing to do with you now. Everything’s final. It’s done. Utterly and completely over.”
“That’s not true. We’re still friends.”
“We most certainly are not! Where do you get this stuff?”
“O, just listen—”
“No. I have to go. We’ll talk another time. Or not. It really doesn’t matter. Goodbye.”
For the first time in months, she wasn’t the least bit stressed after a phone call with Victor. She simply, honestly, didn’t care. She had other things to worry about. Bigger things, hopefully.
Jamie had invited her to his place for brunch. Brunch, the most innocent-sounding of all the meals, but surely this brunch was just code for sex. They could just as easily go out to brunch, after all, but she was going to his place, alone, for an intimate meal.
She was terrified, yet one hundred percent ready. At least in theory.
Something had changed for her in the past few days. Dating Jamie was still dangerous and irresponsible and it would never lead anywhere. But screw it. She’d only been divorced for a year. Now was not the time for a long-term relationship. Now was the time for a sizzling-hot affair with a younger man who made her toes curl with the just the sound of his voice.
She’d been up for hours already, thinking about it. With Jamie’s job, he wasn’t exactly a morning person. He’d invited her over at noon, explaining that it would have to be brunch because breakfast was the only meal he could cook well. She’d occupied herself with running and showering and drying her hair. But now she was faced with the impossible task of picking an outfit. Standing in her closet, she stared helplessly at her clothes.
She would know what to wear if they were going out. A cute sleeveless dress, no question about it. But what if he lived in a dorm-style dump? What if he had a roommate?
Brunch sounded a little elegant, but was it possible that he considered breakfast foods to be nothing more than Toaster Strudels and Slim Jims? She imagined herself sitting at a tiny table in a dress, eating powdered donuts out of a box.
“No,” she scolded herself. He was twenty-nine, not nineteen. He had a real apartment with a real table and maybe even a stove he knew how to use. So she picked out a pretty yellow dress and laid it out on the bed, then turned to her dresser to face the more difficult task of choosing undergarments.
Boy, she was regretting that generously padded bra now. False advertising and potential daylight nudity did not mix. She looked down at the towel that lay flat against her chest, then back to the drawer full of pretty, delicate, unnecessary bras. Then Olivia sat down hard on her bed and faced a problem she’d been ignoring. A problem she’d tried hard to forget.
She wasn’t just inexperienced at irresponsible fun. She was inexperienced, period.
Victor was the only lover she’d ever had. Ever. If she slept with Jamie, he’d be her second. Not that she would ever, ever let him know.
She was, after all, a modern, educated woman. A divorced thirty-five-year-old with no moral objections to a healthy love life. As a young woman, she hadn’t been specifically saving herself for love or marriage or a soul mate. She’d just been a skinny girl in glasses who was too shy to willingly look beyond her books. And like so many quiet girls before her, she’d been struck with an awful crush on the smart teacher who’d tried to draw her out. He’d seemed so interested. In her, of all things. She hadn’t stood a chance.
That was all well and good. She’d been inexperienced. Victor had liked that. But being inexperienced with Jamie was a whole different issue. She’d just have to fake it. Which shouldn’t be too hard, really. She’d been having sex for over a decade now. One man couldn’t be so radically different from another. Same parts. Same process. And she had the same body. Which was her current worry.
When she’d asked, Victor had said he didn’t mind her small breasts. He didn’t mind them. But it had been impossible to miss the way he’d looked at other women’s cleavage. And of the three women she knew about, all of them had been fairly impressive in the size department.
But she was silly to worry. They were just breasts. Only one small part of what Jamie was interested in, hopefully. As for the other … she might be inexperienced, but he’d never know. She’d fake her way through it.
As pep talks went, it was lacking in enthusiasm, but Olivia had always been a logical kind of girl. She felt better as she made herself pick out her favorite bra. It was pretty lilac cotton edged in white lace. She pulled on matching underwear and tied on the bright yellow wrap dress, then put in her contacts and did her makeup.
