Every Little Thing (Hart's Boardwalk 2)

“I’ll take you out,” Ollie, one of Cooper’s bar staff, called down the bar from where he was pouring a draft beer. He threw me a flirty smile, surprising the heck out of me. He’d worked for Cooper for a little over a year now and not once did he give the impression he found me attractive. Of course I was, more often than not, accompanied by Tom when I was in the bar.

“Excuse me?” I thought I’d misheard. Dahlia and Jess laughed beside me.

“You heard me.” He grinned and winked at me. “I know how to show a girl a good time, Bailey.”

If rumors were true then he wasn’t lying. But I wasn’t Dahlia looking for dinner and good sex. I was searching for the man I’d marry. “I have no doubt.” I grinned because as much as I didn’t want to have sex with Ollie, I was flattered he wanted to have sex with me. “However, I’m a woman, not a girl, and I’m looking for more than a tussle in the sheets. But thank you.”

“Oh,” he groaned, “that ‘I’m a woman, not a girl’ line just makes me want you more.”

We laughed as Cooper rolled his eyes at his employee. “Then you’ll just need to keep wanting,” he called down to him and then nodded at a waiting customer. “Stick to pouring drinks for now, Casanova.”

Ollie just laughed, winked at me, and returned to work.

I was smiling, my mood lifted by his flirtation, when I caught sight of Vaughn just a few stools down from us at the end of the bar. He was staring, expressionless, at Ollie. As if he felt my gaze, he flicked his to me.

It was a shock to see him in the bar. As far as I was aware he only ever went into Cooper’s before opening.

“How long have you been sitting there?” I drew Jess and Dahlia’s attention to him, too.

“Too long.” He spoke to Cooper. “The usual, please.”

“Surprised to see you here when the bar is actually open.” Coop poured expensive scotch into a tumbler with ice. “Everything okay?”

I studied the two men, wondering how a friendship had developed between people who were so vastly different.

“It’s been a long day.”

Vaughn looked worn out and I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

“Coop, you going to let him sit in Old Archie’s stool?” Hug, one of the regulars, shouted from across the bar.

I tensed, as did my friends.

Old Archie had been a regular at Cooper’s for a long time. He was the most functional alcoholic I’d ever heard of, let alone met, but an alcoholic he was.

Until his partner, Anita, was diagnosed last year with cancer. Old Archie had pulled himself together to take care of her, and that included staying sober. Everyone was proud of him, and sorry for the hard journey he and Anita were currently sharing, and in reverence to that no one had sat in his stool since.

However, Vaughn, being unfamiliar with the tale of the stool, didn’t know that.

Cooper glowered over at Hug. “My customers can sit wherever they please.”

Vaughn looked over at Hug, too, saw the hostility in the big man’s face, and calmly got up to sit one stool down, and closer to us. “Better?” he asked flatly.

“Whatever,” Hug said.

Cooper continued to glare at the man, while he spoke to Vaughn. “You didn’t have to move.”

“I just want to drink in peace.” Vaughn waved him off. “Not worth the hassle.”

Cooper leaned into him and said something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was it made Vaughn smile. A real, honest-to-goodness smile. Not a smirk or a sneer. A smile. And it was boyish and mischievous, and it caused a great big flip low in my belly. A sensation that almost knocked me off my stool.

“He’s a handsome son of a bitch, isn’t he?” Dahlia murmured.

“Who? Cooper? Yes, Jess is a very lucky woman.”

Jessica tutted. “Oh, you know who Dahlia meant.”