Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,87
someone or other, like it was no big deal.
Oh, that corset.
It was messing with him. Her costume was some kind of old-fashioned-lady outfit. It was surely more specific than that, but to him she looked like a fancy version of his idea of a serving wench. She was wearing a long, flowing blue skirt and one of those puffy blouses he associated with Shakespearean plays. Nothing about her outfit could reasonably be called risqué. It covered her from midcalf to neck—at least when she didn’t have the blouse gaping to make way for his mouth. But that brown leather corset over the whole thing, cinching in at her waist—God help him. Here he’d had the idea that corsets went under clothes.
He tried to act normal, to pull pints and mix drinks. He kept his eye on her glass of wine and topped it up once, but she wasn’t drinking very much, he supposed because she was taking her own advice to Holden about the need to stay sharp for the show tomorrow.
Sawyer, who Law thought had left when Eve had a while ago, startled him by sidling up to the bar. He turned. Jake was there, too. Uh-oh. Was it bromance intervention time? He’d been on the other side of these kinds of “chats” enough that he could recognize the signs. The two of them without Eve and Nora, huddled at the corner of the bar, looking at him all intensely, like they were all-seeing, endlessly patient Jedi masters and he was an untested, ignorant kid.
“Well, that was interesting,” Sawyer said.
“What was interesting?” Law tried, though he knew it was probably futile.
Jake raised his eyebrows, and Sawyer said, “You throwing Holden Hampshire out on his ass.”
Law had to tamp down a smile. “I’d do it again. That guy is an ass.”
“I don’t disagree,” Sawyer said, “but people were taking bets on whether you and Maya were going to come to physical blows or make out.”
“Well, neither,” he lied, “but if I had to pick one, it’d be come to blows.” And that was the critical difference between this intervention attempt and the ones he’d been on the other side of. Sawyer and Jake had been sleeping with their respective ladies but insisting it was just sex, that there was nothing actually happening, blah, blah. Meanwhile, it had been obvious to anyone with a pair of eyeballs that they were head over heels and needed to get out of their own way.
“So you dragged Maya away for ten minutes so you guys could have a fistfight?” Sawyer asked.
“No, no. God, give me some credit. We just went to the kitchen to…argue.”
With our tongues in each other’s mouth.
“You sure about that?”
“Are you kidding? She is not going to say a civil word to me until the grant competition is over. And when I win it, she will never speak to me again.” He tried to smirk. “I look forward to it.”
Sawyer stared at him like he was trying to administer a lie detector test by ESP. “Well, you might have to watch your back when it comes to the grant. That play was great.”
“It was, wasn’t it?” Law said before he could think better of it. Sawyer narrowed his eyes.
Law picked up a spoon and clinked it against a glass. “Last call!” he hollered. Finally. It was only one fifteen, and a little earlier than he usually did last call, but whatever. He was done with this day and this conversation.
Last call triggered a line at the bar that had Carter and him working steadily for the next fifteen minutes—and got Sawyer and Jake off his back.
As things started to slow down, Maya appeared. She set her empty glass down. “I’ll take my bill, please.”
He printed it and slid it to her as he took a couple more orders.
By the time he had circled back to take her payment, she’d settled on a stool. “You only charged me for one glass.”
“First round was on me, remember?”
“Yeah, but you always top up my glass before it’s empty, and you only ever charge me for one glass.”
He shrugged. Busted. He was surprised she hadn’t called him on it earlier. Like, years earlier.
“Why do you do that?”
He didn’t know what to say. Lately the answer was that he realized how stressed she was financially. A glass of wine here and there made no difference to him. But that was a new realization, so how did he explain the long-standing preferential treatment?