The Playboy Prince's Baby - Ana Sparks Page 0,1
And we just… let you be.”
I snorted—or came as close to snorting as I could manage with the state of my dry mouth. And as I did that, and considered the exit that she was now leading me toward, I started to have flashes of memory from last night.
That door. The way it jangled when you opened it. Coming in here. Yeah, I remembered it now. I’d come in…
“To use the bathroom,” I muttered. “I only came in to use the bathroom.”
The bartender shrugged. “And then I guess you decided to stay. Though I don’t think the guy you had with you agreed with that particular idea.”
“Roger,” I told her firmly. “No, Roger thought it was a terrible idea. Because Roger is my brother’s man, and he thought we should just get back to the hotel and go to sleep. So I fired him.”
She gave me a look that was all arched brows and wide eyes. “Oh. Obviously. That’s what I do to all the people I have disagreements with. I fire them. Loudly. With lots of shouting. And more than a couple broken glasses.”
Now it was my turn to cringe, because I remembered that, too. There had been a lot of broken glass over the situation.
Mostly because Roger worked for my brother instead of me. Which meant that Roger always thought he knew best—and always reported back to my brother. Which was exactly why I’d had to fire him.
I mean, when your brother’s the king of a small nation and you’re the no-good princeling who gets into so much trouble that your brother only lets you out of the house with a keeper, what else are you going to do but fire that keeper at the first possible opportunity?
Not that I was going to say any of that to the hot bartender currently hustling me toward the exit. Because that whole princeling thing—hell, the royalty aspect in general—wasn’t something I normally told people. It tended to give them funny ideas about who I was and what I was supposed to be like. It almost inevitably made them immediately want to be my friend and see what they could get out of me. And it had gotten me into a world of trouble with certain women in the past.
Not bartenders. I didn’t normally hang out with bartenders. But I didn’t think they would be any different when it came to finding out they were talking to a prince.
Still. Call me crazy, but this particular bartender had let me sleep all night in her bar, instead of throwing me out like I was sure she was supposed to at closing time. And instead of tossing me out on my ass this morning, half-asleep and still in an alcohol daze, she’d woken me up first. I mean yeah, she’d done it with music so loud that it was hammering against my skull like an actual jackhammer, even now, but my point stood.
She’d woken me up first.
Maybe that meant there was a good soul under all those curves and the mane of brown hair.
“Say,” I said, giving her my best sideways glance and half-smile. “Before I go, I don’t suppose you’d mix me a drink, would you? Something to get me back on my feet?”
She gave me an equally sideways glance, the corner of her mouth turning up. “That, good sir, is against bar regulations.”
I leaned a bit closer to her and dropped my voice, going for the gravelly, charming tone I liked to use on people I was trying to, well, charm. “You, good lady, don’t seem like the kind of person who follows those sorts of rules too closely.”
Her grin got a little bit bigger at that, and she looked at me for a moment, then tipped her head side to side a couple of times. “I mean, I try to follow the rules. And I succeed. Most of the time. But I’m also supposed to be the bartender here. So… drinks are my job.”
“And what kind of bartender would you be if you refused a patron a drink when he specifically asked for one?” I asked, my tone serious, as if we were having a real conversation rather than one that included her trying to escort me out of the bar where I’d fallen asleep.
And now her grin grew to full strength. She nodded once, then turned away from the door and headed for the bar itself.
“Right you are,” she said, equally serious. “What sort of bartender would I be