Taboo Boss - Natasha L. Black Page 0,74

opening a box of glasses and moving them toward the sink. “Mason said he thinks we could probably open next Friday or Saturday if we keep this pace up.”

I looked around the room, taking in the decorations that were already up and the way everything was coming together. It was surprising how much had been done in such a short time, and even the stuff that I had done didn’t seem all that impressive until I walked in and saw how it fit together with everything else. Friday was an awfully fast turnaround, but something about it didn’t feel right. I turned to lean against the bar and noticed Ava had already washed out one of the glasses and filled it with water for me. It wasn’t liquor, but at least it was something.

“Friday?” I asked.

“I was thinking we might even do the soft opening on that Thursday, and do the grand opening the next night,” she said. I swirled the water in the glass. They were nice glasses, better than the ones we had at the old bar, and I tried to envision the room full of people, shoulder to shoulder, and me downing a whiskey among them, undercover.

“Saturday might be better,” I said, my mind placing people in all areas of the bar. Younger people dancing in one area near the speakers, booths packed with friends and lovers, tables with platters of food. Amanda.

Crap.

“You think?” Ava said, snapping me out of the vision of Amanda, wearing the blue dress she wore so often that made me watch her when she walked away. It was my favorite dress of hers. The way it shaped her ass…

“Yes,” I said, shaking my head, trying to lodge that vision out. Amanda was gone. I had to get her out of my head. “All the other spots down here seem to be avoiding specials on Saturday, which means it’s a hot night and ripe for full-price everything. Plus, it was always our best night at the old spot.” I took a moment, trying to force the words back down my throat that I knew were coming, but it was to no avail. The question was going to get blurted out whether I forced that vision away or not. “Have you heard from Amanda recently?”

Ava stopped unpacking the glasses and looked up at me suspiciously, her eyebrow cocked.

“No, not recently,” she said, but there was something in her voice. Something I didn’t quite believe. “Why, have you heard something?”

She straightened up and turned her back to me, putting glasses away on a shelf. She knew something and was trying to find out what I knew about it. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to pry, and I wasn’t interested in playing a guessing game.

“No, nothing,” I said and gulped the rest of the water. “You said Mason is in the office?”

“Yeah,” she said, grunting with effort as she pushed one glass into another to move it further back on the shelf. “I’m sure he’d love to get your opinion on it.”

“I’ll go head back there now. Thanks, Ava,” I said and stood. She waved over her head as she continued to push the glasses onto the shelf. I noticed that she had a stepstool beside her, which would have made her job much easier, but she seemed to want to be facing away from me.

She knew something and didn’t want to let on. But whatever it was, it wasn’t my business anymore. Amanda wasn’t my business anymore. I had to get that through my head.

32

Amanda

I got off the plane with a knot already in my stomach and took as long as I possibly could to walk out into the airport. All around me, people were running and jumping into each other’s arms, cheerfully waving at each other, and performing all types of the ritual of coming back together. Then there was me. All alone and not meeting anyone.

I probably could have asked Ava to meet me at the airport. She would have done it without hesitation, but I didn’t. Partly because I had so little time to think about getting ready for the flight so I never made the call, and partly because I was thinking about everything else so much that I didn’t have the space in my brain to make a logical decision like that.

And a little sliver in there because I felt like I still needed to be alone. At least when I first got to Astoria. I wasn’t ready to