Dirty (Dive Bar 1)

One side of his mouth curved upward, eyes set on me. Like, really focused solely on me. I checked my front teeth with my tongue. Nothing there that I could feel. Maybe there was a mark on my face or he'd just realized I was outside my healthy weight range or something.

"What?"

"You look looser now," he said. "You've lost the bullshit plastic smile."

"Have I?"

"Yeah." He linked his fingers, exhaled. "All good, babe?"

"All good." I was so happy he was there with me, I honestly didn't even mind that he'd used the b-word.

"Don't need me to hit anyone?"

"Nuh. I got this."

"Okay." He turned to his sister. "Nell, look after this woman, feed her."

"On it." Once more, his sister grabbed my hand. She towed me toward the kitchen, located beyond a low partition, apart from the gossip pit. Nirvana. Good food. Peace and relative quiet. And all of this with a view of Vaughan, my favorite combo of friend and man-candy, busting his moves at the bar. Awesome. Saved yet again by my tattooed redheaded hero in blue jeans.

Now if I could just figure out a way to return the favor.

CHAPTER NINE

Nell could cook.

She could also bark orders at her assistant (a harried older guy named Boyd), pump me for information about her brother (not that I had any), and still find time to bitch intermittently about Pat. The woman multitasked like a master.

"Is it always this busy?" I asked, hanging to the side, trying to keep out of the way. Every table was taken and there were a couple of people standing around, socializing by the bar.

"Summer's hard to judge. When the bars downtown fill up, we seem to get some of the spillover, along with our usuals." Nell wiped the edges of a dish clear, then deposited it under the heating lamp to be collected. "Long as they keep coming and paying, I'm happy."

Joe and Vaughan were keeping busy. A second waitress, Stella, had finally arrived to work alongside Rosie, considerably lightening the load. Where Rosie seemed friendly, Stella kept her distance. Though with the less-than-warm looks Nell was shooting her way, I would too. She was early twenties at a guess with short jet black hair and a nose ring. Very cool.

The night only seemed to get busier. For every table cleared, another party would enter. I'd offered to go catch a cab home, to let Nell work in peace. She'd ordered me to stay put. So I taste-tested dishes as directed, chatted with her, and slowly sipped iced water in the impressively shiny kitchen.

"He's watching again; quick, look happy," said Nell.

I turned my head, gave Vaughan a finger wave. "Does he usually worry this much?"

"Not in my experience. But then, it's been years since he's been around."

With a lethal-looking knife, she made short work of dicing onions. Not a single tear was shed. Next she moved onto testing a boiling pot of pasta. "Went and visited him on the Coast a few times. Things were always crazy busy. They'd be in the middle of recording or on their way to a gig. It's not like we really got time to talk."

"That's too bad."

"Then once we opened this place, my life revolved around it. I'm here working or I'm at home catching up on sleep."

"I bet." I'd never run my own business, but I could imagine.

"Since our parents passed, Vaughan's been even harder to get ahold of. I don't know, I guess most families grow apart, right?"

"I'm probably the wrong person to ask. Mine was never close to begin with."

"Yeah?"

"I was an accident. Reproduction never featured on my parents list of things to do. They were always working, trying to make things better. Have the money to buy a big shiny house with the latest everything." I shrugged. "It just never quite worked out that way."

Nell frowned. "Dad worked a lot, but Mom was usually home."

"I don't mean to be nosy. But do you mind if I ask how your parents died?"

"Car accident," she said, the volume dropping on her voice. "Happened at night. It'd just started raining and there was oil on the road. Dad lost control and they hit a tree. Mom died on impact but Dad lasted longer. They'd managed to cut him out of the vehicle and were on their way to the hospital. Luckily he never regained consciousness after the accident. He never knew Mom was gone."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah." She shook herself. "Anyway, Vaughan and I were tight through high school. Pretty much part of the same crowd. It was weird when he left, I was so used to having him around."

She stopped to pass me a small dish of feta and olives.

"That's how I met my ex, Patrick. He was a friend of Vaughan's. I stole him. Probably why he's so worried about trusting me with you." She winked. "He's worried I've changed teams," she said sarcastically.

"Mm, sorry. I'm going to have to decline." I popped a black olive into my mouth. Delicious. "You've got a hot bod, but you're too complicated. I'm currently avoiding any and all complications of the romantic kind."

"Ha. I guess we'll have to be just friends."

"I'd like that."

She smiled and checked on the progress of some gourmet pizzas, then plated them up with precision. Halloumi, pumpkin, spinach, and pine nuts. It looked divine and smelled even better. "Me too."

"This place is a lot nicer than most dive bars I've been in." To be honest, it was more along the lines of some hipster restaurant/bar with a small stage set up in a corner. "It's much brighter and the floor isn't sticky."

"We inherited that name," explained Nell. "Andre Bird, the guy that owns the building, his dad opened the Dive Bar here back in the seventies. He died behind that bar six years ago. Heart attack. One minute he was pouring beer, the next minute, gone."

"Huh."

"Pat swears he saw the old guy's ghost late one night when he was locking up. But I think he's full of it." A shadow of a smile lingered on her lips. Then she shook it off. "You know Stage Dive did their first public gig on that tiny stage over there."

"No." My eyes bulged.

"Yep. I was here. They were absolutely awful." She laughed. "Took them a few years to get to the point where they were actually worth listening to."

I stared at the stage, mind officially blown. Then I quickly checked out how Vaughan was doing. He was busy restocking the beer fridge. Seemed all good.

"We get diehard fans coming in to get their pictures taken on the stage pretty regularly." She plated up some sort of stuffed chicken breast, spinach and soft cheese oozing out of the middle. "Some are a bit wacked, kissing and stroking it. Eric and Joe had to throw one guy out for trying to hump it. We're pretty sure he was high as a kite. Still, can you imagine the splinters he would have gotten? Ouch."

I snorted. "Ouch, all right. That's amazing that you saw Stage Dive so early."

"Vaughan was in school the same year as a couple of the guys. Had some classes with them. Ask him about it sometime." Nell paused, grimaced. "Maybe don't, since his band's broken up and they're bigger than ever."

"Think I'll keep my mouth shut. Can't be easy, being a musician and coming from the same town as them."

A

couple of women in tight-fitting dresses were at the bar, flirting with Vaughan. Not that someone flirting with him was any of my business. Mostly. The amount of alcohol-fueled sex offers bartenders must get ... though those guys had a lot going for them no matter the situation. Tattoos, muscles, general coolness. Us normal folk never stood a chance.

Why would they settle down when they could live the free and easy lifestyle forever?

"It's great that this place has such a rich history," I said, making myself look away from him. Maybe I should tape my head to the wall. Use a staple gun, perhaps.

Again, Nell made that short sharp almost startling sound of joy and/or amusement. It was hard to say if she was laughing or yipping or what. "Oh, there was history. You should have seen the amount of mirror tiles and velvet wallpaper and shit we had to pull down to get it back to the original brick and wood. Right, Boyd?"

Nothing from Boyd.

Nell didn't even seem to notice. "I wanted to rename it, but Pat and Eric outvoted me. Probably for the best. The whole town knows it as the Dive Bar."

"You might have gotten haunted by the old man."

"Yeah. Andre Senior would not have been impressed."

On the other side of the room, I watched Vaughan mix a couple of bourbon and Cokes, passing them to Rosie. (Hey, I'd avoided looking at him for a solid thirty, forty seconds.) Joe tapped him on the arm, telling him something. Then, with a nod, Vaughan moved on to the next job. His lean angular face seemed fierce, determined. I felt for him. Learning a new trade was never easy--especially on such a busy night.

"Jesus, you've got it bad," said Nell.

I snapped to attention, spluttering, "What?"

"You keep watching him."

"I do not."

"Oh god, yes, you do," said Nell. "Tell her, Boyd. It's kind of nauseating."

Boyd didn't even bother looking up from the pot he was stirring.

"He saved my big butt yesterday. He's my friend and this is his first night on a new job," I said, trying my best to be nonchalant, noncrazy. "I want him to do well, that's all."

The redheaded woman raised a single brow.

"Fine." I took a deep breath. "Nell, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this. But your brother is hot. Like smokin' hot. Honestly, it's kind of impossible to have a vagina and not look."