Ward
“Oh, this is starting to look like one of my parties,” I said as I looked around the lobby at the people.
Several were my age or younger, a good chunk of them dressed in very little due to the warm weather, others looking like they were prepared to go out for a night of dancing, drugs, and God knew what other kinds of trouble they could find.
“Summer holiday always brings in the people here,” Arlo said calmly beside me as we made our way through the crowd. “The past few years have seen an influx of the younger crowd. Especially after the Elijah and Milo fiasco.”
“Fiasco?”
“I’ll explain where there aren’t ears.”
“Ah, of course.”
“Hi, Arlo,” the girl behind the desk said, grinning when she saw him.
“Hi, Rebecca,” he said, looking around. “Is Moira around? I spoke to her earlier.”
“Ah, right, she had to go...deal with something,” she said, her eyes flicking toward me almost imperceptibly.
“Oh,” I said with a low chuckle. “You don’t have to worry about me in the slightest. I can assure you that nothing that could have happened here would scandalize me in the slightest.”
“Uh,” Rebecca said, looking even more uncertain since I had caught her holding back because I was there.
Arlo sighed. “He’s had a hard day, if it’s something particularly...ugh, scandalous, it might give him some brightness.”
“Never thought I’d see you spending time around someone like that,” Rebecca said, leaning forward and dropping her voice.
“Turns out, one of the groups here got into a bit of a fight. I guess someone’s boyfriend slept with someone else’s boyfriend and someone else’s wife.
..at the same time. There was a huge brawl on the third floor, and Moira’s been up there for the past hour with the cops sorting the whole thing out.
A couple of times, you could hear someone screaming from the stairs, the cops already took a couple of people out, and from the looks of one of their noses, someone started swinging. ”
“Ah,” I said, beaming at Arlo. “You know me so well, nothing quite like the dramatics of other people’s lives to make you feel better about your own.”
“We do not share that sentiment,” Arlo assured her almost sternly...but then I felt him bump me with his arm and I knew he was amused. “We can wait. Please don’t call her.”
“Absolutely not, let the woman do her job and deal with us later,” I said with a wave. “But I do see there’s a bar over there.”
“As good a time as any to have a drink,” Arlo said with a chuckle and then hesitated. “Uh...is Roger at the bar today?”
Rebecca cocked her head. “No. I guess Mason owed Moira a favor, and he’s working it until Lena comes in at eleven.”
Arlo sighed. “I suppose there’s no getting away from it. And here I thought I could hold off on this one.”
“I am forced to wonder what is so bad about either myself or your brother that you’re so concerned about us meeting,” I said, turning to find Will standing behind us. “Are you coming or are you planning on staring at our asses while we walk off?”
“I can do both,” Will said. “But I’ll catch up.”
I could see the way the woman behind the desk glanced at him and snorted. “You know my number.”
Arlo sighed beside me. “Tell me the truth, did you hire him because he’s good-looking and as horny as you?”
I let out a laugh. “No, my mother originally hired him because he had a long list of previous clients who had recommended him and showed perfect professionalism. Within one conversation, I could see he was anything but professional and well-behaved, and I wanted him on my payroll immediately. Not just because of his...naughtiness, but because he fooled the living shit out of my mother.”
“Of course, that was your reason,” Arlo said fondly as he led me to the bar. It was pretty busy for the middle of the afternoon, but most of the customers were at the tables rather than the bar itself.
“Oh,” I said when I spotted the man behind the bar.
He was...quite big, not as big as Dom, but his size drew attention easily.
His dark looks didn’t hurt either, or the easy smile, or the wicked glint in his eyes.
Well, the muscles and good features were also going to draw attention. “That’s your brother?”
Arlo gave me a look. “Really?”
“Sorry,” I said with a laugh, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and squeezing. “Is your entire family good-looking?”
Arlo sighed. “Mason!”
Mason looked up and smiled. “Well, well, what brings you in, Arlo? Definitely not a drink, I don’t think I’ve seen you have a drink before…somewhere around eight.”
“I could use one, and so could Ward,” he said as he sat at the bar. “Bourbon, rocks, you know the drill. Work your magic on him.”
“On him?” Mason asked, eyes sweeping over me. There was interest, but I noticed his eyes didn’t linger on any one part of my body for too long as he grunted. “I’ve got just the thing.”
“Curious,” I said slowly as I sat next to Arlo. “So, what’s this about?”
“You’ll see,” Arlo said with a secretive smile.
Raising a brow, I settled back into my seat and decided to see.
Arlo clearly knew what was going on, and it was the first time he had been vague with me in a playful sense rather than because of something that felt more serious.
So I waited, watching Mason behind the bar, but I ignored what he was doing; it was supposed to be a surprise, why spoil it by peeking?
A glass with amber liquid around a spherical chunk of ice slid in front of Arlo, and a tall martini glass was dropped in front of me.
I leaned forward, letting the scent waft into my nose before I took a drink.
It was...well, I suppose it counted as a dirty martini; there was definitely the briny taste of olive, along with the slightly floral gin that leaked through.
But something else shot through everything and lit up my mouth before mellowing to let the other flavors come into play.
“I will absolutely require this recipe before I leave,” I said with a grunt. “My God, that is good. You didn’t tell me your brother was a damn fine mixologist.”
“Bartender,” Mason corrected with a smirk. “Calling me something as fancy as a mixologist will get you a glass of vermouth and water for the rest of the night.”
“Duly noted,” I said with a laugh. “Now, is that an absence of, or an insistence on being seen as humble?”
“There is not one damn thing about me that’s humble, so you can forget that.
But I’ll be damned before I get lumped in with a bunch of people who think that studying drinks somehow makes them better than someone slinging drinks at a dive bar,” Mason said with a wag of his finger.
“I’m good at this because I’ve drunk more than your average alcoholic. ”
“It’s his gift,” Arlo said with a shrug. “He can look at someone and know the perfect drink for them.”
“Most of the time,” Mason corrected. “I’m not going to have expectations so high that I’m doomed to fail.”
“Most of the time,” Arlo amended. “There are some people he hasn’t quite figured out yet, like me.
He wants so badly to find a special mixed drink for me, but so far, bourbon is enough.
It drives him crazy because he can do it with people he just met, you, for example, and yet he struggles to find something for someone he’s spent a good chunk of his childhood with. ”
“I hate to admit he’s right, and I won’t do it in front of anyone else but...he’s right, it does get to me,” Mason said with a wistful, regret-filled sigh. “I don’t know what it is about him. I just can’t figure it out. But I will, one day.”
I glanced at Arlo and thought about it. “You know—”
Arlo’s brow rose. “Don’t tell me you’re going to succeed where Mason has failed repeatedly...for years.”
Mason huffed. “You’re never going to stop rubbing my nose in it, are you?”
“Even your mother says we shouldn’t let you off easy,” Arlo said with a chuckle.
Mason rolled his eyes. “Alright, mysterious man who totally isn’t sleeping with my brother, come back here and give it a go.”
“Mason,” Arlo complained softly. “You couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
I laughed. “Challenge accepted.”
“By all means,” Mason said, opening up the divider at the end of the bar with a flourish. “Come on, give it a whirl.”
Patting Arlo’s side, I followed Mason behind the bar.
I looked at the selection, impressed. In fact, the entire hotel was rather impressive.
The impression I got from Arlo was that he had grown up in a step up from a motel on the side of the highway.
But this place? No, the place was nice, with several floors, clean and friendly staff, and personally, you could always judge the quality of a hotel based on its liquor supply, which was particularly nice.
“Ah,” I said as I caught sight of bottles of flavored syrup. I shifted them around until I found the flavor I hoped they had.
“That one?” Mason asked, not doubtfully, but purely curious. “And—”
From there, it was a case of finding a nice gin, pouring in the proper measure, along with the lavender syrup. I squeezed a couple of lemon quarters into the mix, going by eye rather than any real measurement, and looked around until... “Ah, uh...may I?”
“Someone will order enough of it by the end of the night so it won’t go to waste, and if it does, Moira is fond of it,” Mason said with a shrug, and I took the bottle of sparkling wine and opened it with a faint pop, pouring in some.
The last was a sprinkle of finely ground chili pepper, practically dust, thrown in before giving it a shake, pouring it over ice, and sliding it to Arlo.
“Dare I even ask?” he asked as he looked at the faintly purple drink. “I see you didn’t go for bourbon.”
“Too easy,” I admitted. “Though I’m sure I could do a variation with bourbon if you’re really that stuck on it.”