Chapter 3
THREE
TRAVIS
Casey still had ten minutes before he was late today.
It was just a coincidence that I was up at the front of the bar wiping things down instead of doing paperwork in my office.
It definitely wasn’t that I was waiting for him to get here.
The skies had been dark all afternoon and the threatened rain seemed to be getting closer and closer.
If he didn’t get here soon, he would be soaked to the bone by the time he arrived.
Truth was, I kept drifting up front without meaning to, like my body went looking for him before my brain caught up.
It wasn’t any of my business what he did outside of work, but I couldn’t help wondering about it anyway. He’d mentioned last shift that he usually got off around two or three, so what was he doing now, with the clock creeping toward six?
Caring this much this early made no sense, but trying to stop it felt impossible.
“Hey, Travis,” Casey called as he walked through the door. I refused to examine the instant release of tension in my shoulders at the sound of his sweet, friendly, imminently sexy voice. He was in track pants that were slung low on his hips and a T-shirt that clung to his broad chest.
The way he walked in like he owned the place but still seemed a little unsure hit that instinct in me I kept trying to ignore.
Good. Fucking. Night. Casey was trying to give me a heart attack. How in the hell was I supposed to concentrate on work when he looked like that? This was not in the Bar Management 101 book on my nightstand.
“Hey, good to see you, Casey. I was getting worried you’d already ditched us,” I said with the best non-forced laugh I could muster.
Abandonment was a stupid fear for a grown man, but it still lived under my ribs.
“What? Am I late?” Casey asked.
His panicked tone and expression made me want to kick my own ass. He frantically looked around the room for a clock before remembering he had a phone in his pocket. He hurriedly pulled it out.
“No, not at all. Sorry, I was just…thinking out loud,” I answered lamely. “You’re definitely not late. There’s no problem, and it’s all my fault for phrasing it weird.”
“Oh, whew. I thought I was about to get fired on only my second day.” He paused and then added with what I swore was a fucking wink, “I’m a third-date kind of guy.”
He tossed out that joke so easy, unaware how fast it lodged under my skin.
“Date? Sounds interesting.” Flirting with the boss? That was an HR violation I could get behind.
“Ha! No, day. I said day.”
“Yeah, yeah. That makes more sense,” I said with the fakest laugh imaginable.
Get your shit together, Travis. Gee, buddy, the reason you can’t find a boy of your own is likely because no boy wants a tongue-tied fool for a Daddy. After insulting myself, since there was no one else around to do it, I returned to the pointless work of wiping down an already immaculate bar.
Thank god, the customers weren’t paying attention to my exchange with Casey. Or, if they did, they were polite enough not to laugh at my obvious bullshit. If I could get through this evening without making an absolute ass of myself, it would be some kind of Christmas miracle.
At six on Thanksgiving, it was too early for the people I knew would be coming. In another hour or so, the place would be packed with people who needed a break from overbearing relatives and noisy kids.
When I bought the neighborhood dive, I figured I’d lean into the sports bar vibe, but I was also determined not to hide the fact that queer people were happily welcomed here.
After we’d shifted it up, we’d landed somewhere in the triangle of a sports-themed gay bar with a big local presence. I wasn’t mad about it in the least.
“Where do you need me first?”
I swallowed my wholly inappropriate answer and pointed to the ice instead. “If you wouldn’t mind getting the ice buckets handled, that would be great, thanks.”
Casey flashed a smile before heading to the back and getting started.
What I noticed was that Casey happily did anything asked of him, but always sought permission first. Once he’d been cleared, he worked the task to perfection.
In time, I imagined he’d feel rested enough not to need step-by-step instructions, but for the second day on the job, he was doing great.
“Hey, Trav, Gerry just called in,” Myla, my evening bartender, said as she hung up the phone on the side of the bar.
“What?”
“Yeah, again. Said he’s sick.”
“Sick, my fucking ass. He’s either hungover or too drunk.”
“My vote is drunk.”
“Yeah, I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him not to bother coming in at all anymore.
” Before I lost my temper in public, I headed to the back of the house.
My frustration got the better of me, and I slammed a fist against my office door on my way to figuring out how the fuck I was going to handle our kitchen this evening.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” My shouts were to no one in particular, but Casey popped a concerned head around the corner anyway.
“You okay?” Casey asked hesitantly. “I, uh, heard you yelling.”
I scrubbed a hand across my prickly jaw, then plopped down in my office chair before answering. “Yeah, sorry about the yelling. Just frustrated.”
“So long as you don’t check me into the boards, we’re good.”
“I would fucking never.”
Yeah, I had a temper, but did he really think it was that bad? Shit, maybe my yelling was worse than I thought. The idea that he thought I would take it out on anyone horrified me more than a little.
“Whoa, whoa, I was joking. We don’t even have boards up.” Casey tried to defuse what I now saw was my overreaction to his obvious joke.
“Sorry, of course you were.” I waved him inside and gestured to the sofa in the corner. “We’re just fucked tonight.”
“Why?” Casey bounced a couple of times on the couch after he sat down. “Dang, you weren’t lying about how comfy this thing is.” It was sheer force of will that allowed me to bite back all the unboss-like quips ready to roll off my tongue.
“Gerry is our weekend cook. He’s not great, but he’s ours, and now he’s called in again, just like last weekend, so no snacks for another weekend.”
I slouched back in my chair while I thought about how to salvage tonight’s sales. Gerry had been inherited from the previous management, and it had been a struggle since day one. The problem wasn’t him getting fired so much as the timing of it tonight.
“If you want, I could take a look?” Casey offered in a halting tone. He cleared his throat a few times and looked anywhere but at me.
“You know how to cook?”
“Well, it depends on what’s in the kitchen and what I can prep fast.”
“Got it, if it’s not slop, you’re already miles ahead.
When I took over, I said we weren’t doing store-bought, deep-fried, or microwaved anything.
Gerry bitches about it, but there should be some usable stuff in there.
” I popped out of my chair and came to stand next to him.
Before he could change his mind, I offered my hand to pull him up.
The moment his skin slid against mine, I knew touching him was a mistake.
His hands had calluses, but there was a smoothness to them too.
They weren’t pampered, but I knew lotion when I felt it, and when the faint waft of vanilla and lavender hit, I knew where I’d smelled the lotion before—in the littles’ room at the club.
The universe clearly thought I was a joke.
“Anything usable in there?” I asked as I watched Casey rummage around the walk-in refrigerator.
It was hard to tell if the trip was successful.
He grumbled about improper labels while shoving food into a trash can that he’d dragged into the corner.
Every time a package hit the bin, I saw dollar signs pop up.
Still, whatever it cost me to throw that stuff away, it was a hell of a lot less than food poisoning in my bar.
“Yeah, there’s stuff I can use, but I’m not risking anything that’s not sealed or labeled properly.” The way he said it, I could tell he expected me to argue. Nope. I wasn’t risking food poisoning, but Gerry’s job was done as of right now.
“You’re absolutely right. But is there enough to salvage something for tonight?”
Casey seemed to be waiting for me to snap, and I hated that he expected it.
“How much time do I have before things need to hit the tables?”
“If you prepped for an hour or so, would that give you a head start?”
“Could you spare someone to help me?”
“What about me? I’m sure Myla won’t mind if I’m not in her way.”
“Sorry, I should’ve clarified. I need someone with a food handler’s license. I’m not trying to get your place shut down.”
“Tonight’s your lucky night,” I said. “I’ve got mine. I knew there was always a chance I’d end up in the kitchen, so I got it as a precaution. And tonight, I’m damn grateful I did.”
Casey’s face broke into an ear-splitting grin.
“Ready to take some orders, boss?”
“Yes, Chef,” I answered with a laugh. Casey rolled his eyes but handed me an apron and nodded toward the sink.
Letting him lead felt strangely natural, like stepping into a role I didn’t know I’d been missing.
“Get washed up. We’ll figure out what we can do. I think we can pull a menu together, but it won’t be a full one. Not enough prep time.”
Casey bit his lip like he thought I’d yell, but given he was saving my ass, I’d be happy if a single dish came out of the kitchen.
He didn’t even see how remarkable he was, and it made me want to hold that truth up for him until he believed it.
“Casey, whatever you put out is going to be great because the alternative is nothing. So you tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. End of story. In this kitchen, you’re the boss.”
Color touched his cheeks, but he didn’t stop moving. Soon, he had a small mountain of ingredients piled up. When I came back from the sink with washed hands, he shoved cheese blocks at me.
“Start grating. All of it.”