Turning, I spot the large man sitting in the VIP section. The tables in that area are always reserved for people who go by acronyms. This dude does not look like JLo. From what I can tell through the heavy Thursday night crowd, he’s alone and dressed inappropriately for this place. He’s wearing a rumpled white button down and a weathered ball cap with the curved rim riding low over his eyes. My eyes slide down to the Duck Dynasty beard and an electric current zaps my spine, the feeling an unpleasant one.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph…
“Earth to Camilla…Cam?” Amber snaps her fingers annoyingly close to my face. I glare at her and she points to the tray. The bar is packed, three rows deep, and she’s right, she doesn’t have time for this crap.
With dread snaking up my throat and my heart staging a near riot inside my chest cavity, I slink toward the table to deliver the drink order with my eyes trained on Duck Dynasty. He looks completely out of place and painfully uncomfortable about it. I can’t get over the shock of seeing him here and what a strange coincidence this is. Then again, this is my life, a perfect shit storm. For whatever reason, I keep getting more than my fair share.
I place the drinks before the group of early twenties Manhattan professionals as slowly as I possibly can without looking like a completely incompetent moron. Across the room at table twelve, Sarah, one of the other cocktail waitresses, taps him on the shoulder and says something to him. As I breathe a sigh of relief, he shakes his head at her. Then Sarah’s head pops up and I watch her scan the crowd… until her eyes land on me. She waves me over.
Damn it. Who did I murder in a past life to deserve this?
Plastering a mask of cool indifference on my face that I’m not feeling, I wipe my now sweaty hands on my black jeans and walk slowly to table twelve. When Sarah sees the expression I’m wearing, her casual smile melts right off of her face. I treat her to a death glare, and she returns an awkward shrug. Then she pivots on her heels and scurries away. Frigging traitor.
He doesn’t look at me, the rim of the cap hiding his eyes, and I don’t say a word. It’s like showdown at high noon, time suspended by silence and a palpable tension. His massive shoulders are hunched, his elbows rest on his well-worn jeans, and his large hands are clasped in a single fist.
“This table is reserved,” I inform him, finally deciding to cut to the chase.
“For Titans players,” he counters without missing a beat. I feel my full lips thin in blatant annoyance. Gawd, I so strongly dislike this dude. He finally tips his head up and deigns to look at me. His cold, gray eyes scan my face for an amount of time that I deem inappropriate. And then they descend down the length of my cowish body.
Fucking cow…get that fucking cow.
My ears are suddenly on fire as those words play on a loop in my head. “What can I get you?” My eyes move off in a totally bored expression. I get nothing in return, not a frigging word. “Hello? This cow has things to do,” I say, jabbing a thumb at myself. “What. Can. I. Get. You?”
His eyes snap up to mine. He looks…startled? Okay, weird. Slowly, he stands, my eyes following his face until it’s looming over me. I have no idea what the heck to expect when his expression––that is what I can make of it from under the cap and beard––changes from indifferent to painfully uncomfortable. He stuffs his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and shrugs up his big shoulders.
“You,” he mumbles.
“What?” I practically shout. Clearly, I haven’t heard him correctly.
“I came for you.”
“He’s back,” Sarah says, nodding in the direction of the man sitting at table twelve. White button down and ball cap, again. I roll my eyes in exasperation. I’m really not in the mood for this. The Friday night crowd is always louder and more demanding than Thursday’s, so I’ve been running around for the past two hours. My feet are aching and my voice is hoarse from shouting over the racket. I decide to nip this in the bud immediately. Clearly, I wasn’t sufficiently rude last night because he didn’t get the message that nothing would ever entice me to work for a crude, entitled bastard such as himself.
This is how that melodrama played out.
Him: ‘I’m offering you the job.’
Me: ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
Him: ‘No? What do you mean no?’
Me: ‘No as in denial, refusal, an explicit rejection. If you’ve never heard the word before, let me be the one to introduce you.’