Chapter 3
3
The monotonous beat vibrated through Jake’s chest as he entered and even he winced at the soullessness. Give him Bruce Springsteen screaming ‘Born in the USA’ any day.
God, he was tired.
He walked past his office and through the back area of the bar, stopping to snag another Corona from the fridge. He cracked the top and took a long drag, not caring how long he made the dissatisfied customer wait.
She could always go find somewhere else to drink.
He frowned as he rounded into the front area. The complaining woman’s raised voice was eerily familiar and his pulse kicked up a notch as he laid eyes on her. Two years since she’d swaggered into Trently and dragged him upstairs and yet the memory was as vivid for him as if it had happened yesterday.
She was different, of course, dressed more conservatively in a white blouse with her shoulder-length hair, the color of his on-tap stout, pulled back into a loose ponytail.
He’d always had a thing for ponytails.
“I mean, just how old are you?” she demanded of Pete. “Obviously not old enough to appreciate a classic. You ever heard of the Stones, the Eagles, Johnny goddamn Cash?”
Jake smiled at the imperious index finger pointing in Pete’s face. He was the picture of the-customer-is-always-right patience. Ella, on the other hand, somehow managed to make goddamn sound exactly the way it would coming from a high school teacher with a stick jammed up her ass.
He knew she lived in Inverboro – or had two years ago anyway. But in a city of over two million people, he’d never expected their paths to cross.
“The Chicks?” she asked in desperation. “You know, something with a lyric and more than one note?”
“Well, well, well,” Jake drawled as he strolled unhurriedly in their direction. “Looks like you can take the girl out of Trently, but you can’t take Trently out of the girl.”
She swiveled toward him so fast, he was unprepared for the impact of her gaze after all this time. “ Jake ?”
He took another slug of Mexican nectar. “Ella.”
They stared for a while. A long while. Then she glanced at Pete. “This is the boss?” Not waiting for an answer, she flicked her gaze back to him. “ You’re the boss? You own this place?”
The astonishment in her voice rankled. He raised his bottle to her. “Surprise.”
“I didn’t know you lived in Inverboro.”
“I moved back here almost two years ago.”
She was clearly blindsided. But even so, there was none of the anger, sadness or frustration from their last meeting. No, she looked as cool and detached as the Ella he had known as a kid and, for some reason – maybe it was her incredulity, maybe it was the beer, maybe it was that ponytail – it irritated the crap out of him.
“If you’re after a repeat of last time, I have to let you know that this establishment doesn’t have a room upstairs.”
Her hasty glance at Pete and the red flushing her cheeks didn’t give him the level of satisfaction he’d hoped.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Jake,” she said as Pete wisely moved away. “It wasn’t that good.”
He chuckled. There were two things Jake knew how to do. The first was how to block. The second was how to make a woman come to Jesus between his sheets. And Ella Lucas had definitely undergone a total religious conversion in his bed.
“Ella…” He tutted. “I wouldn’t mind betting that I’m the best you ever had.”
Her mouth tightened. “You’re mighty sure of yourself.”
“What can I say?” He took a swig of beer. “I’m gifted.”
Drawing herself up, she gave him that distant haughty look he’d seen often back home in Trently. “I faked it.”
Jake threw back his head and laughed. “All three times?”
Looking him directly in the eye, she nodded. “All three.”
“Well then, you deserve an Oscar. Meg Ryan could learn a thing or two from you.”
“What can I say?” she said, her smile saccharine sweet. “I’m gifted.”
“Lots of practice, huh?”
If looks could kill, her glare would have driven him six feet under. But he was damned if he was going to back down now as he drained his beer and slapped it down on the bar top.
She narrowed her gaze. “Are you drunk?”
Reaching into the fridge behind him, he grabbed another Corona, cracked the lid and took a deep swallow. “Not yet.”
“Drinking the profits, Jake?”
It was a low blow but he guessed he deserved it. “My father gambled the profits, Ella. He didn’t drink them.” Although his father’s top shelf habit definitely helped lubricate his gambling woes.
“Hey babe, a girl could die of thirst waiting for you.”
The intrusion dragged Jake’s attention from Ella to the woman at her elbow. Dark hair, eyebrow piercing, blood-red lips. She looked at him as she asked, “This the owner?”
“Jake,” he said, holding out his hand, not waiting for Ella to do the honors.
“Rosie.” Her grip was firm, her tone polite. Then she glanced at Ella, speculation in her eyes. “Jake? The Jake?”
“ The Jake?” He cocked an eyebrow at Ella.
“The Jake who made you come?—”
“Comes from Trently?” Ella interrupted quickly, her eyes bugging at her friend. “Yes, that’s right. The arrogant jock.”
Unperturbed, Jake chuckled. “Pleased to meet you, Rosie.”
“Likewise.” She grinned. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Well now, I’ll just bet you have. I was just explaining to Ella, I am gifted.”
“She was referring to your career,” Ella said acidly.
Jake didn’t believe that for a moment. Ella had never been a football groupie. In fact, when other girls had smiled and batted their eyelashes at him in his uniform, she’d always looked at him with disdain.
“Ah, well, I’m gifted there as well.”
“Hmm.” She glanced at Ella. “His ego’s healthy.”
“That’s one word for it,” she agreed.
“So Jake,” Rosie said, eyeing him frankly. “You’re going to be in the neighborhood a lot by the looks of it. You should drop by one day. We live just a few streets away.”
The hell no expression on Ella’s face was comical. Jake took a swig of his beer to hide his smile. “I may just do that, Miss Rosie.”
Rosie turned to Ella. “Have you asked him about this God-awful noise yet?”
She shook her head. “Haven’t gotten around to it.”
Rosie faced him. “I don’t know if this had escaped your attention but this music is utter crap.”
He laughed. “Yes, it is.”
“We can’t come to a place every Friday night to unwind from the week’s stresses and listen to synthesized whales on crack. You wouldn’t make us find somewhere else to ponder the meaning of life, would you?”
“No, ma’am. I’ll get a wider range of music put in first thing tomorrow. Will that be more to your liking, ladies?”
Rosie whooped and punched the air. “Damn straight.”
“Thank you, Jake,” Ella said politely. “Much appreciated.”
The words hit Jake like a sledgehammer. She’d said the same thing two years ago as she’d sauntered out of the apartment above The Rusty Nail.
Thank you, Jake, much appreciated .
Although they’d been said with a low, husky vibrato that day. Not cool and distant like now.
Had she remembered? Was her word choice deliberate?
“I aim to please,” he replied, just as he had back then.
Her eyes widened slightly before she turned away and Jake had his answer.
The following Friday, Ella arrived at Jake’s bar too late to grab the usual booth and with Rosie cooking dinner for Simon at home, it didn’t make sense to take up an entire table.
She just wanted a couple of quiet drinks and a chance to think before meeting the new man in her friend’s life. This place might not be the quiet, laid-back bolt hold of old and, she was running the risk of coming face-to-face with Jake again, but it was close to home and old habits died hard.
So, she’d chosen a bar stool and was consequently balancing precariously on an inadequate piece of chrome and plastic while her butt cheeks fought and lost the battle with gravity. She felt like an elephant sitting on a pogo stick.
How the hell she was going to get off was a total mystery.
She’d fought with Cam today. Again. He’d skipped school.
Again . How was she supposed to be the authority around Deluca High when she couldn’t even control her own brother?
And damn it all – why wouldn’t he let her in?
“Hi.”
Ella looked up from her wine to find a tall, nice-looking guy about her age standing next to her. He was wearing a suit, his tie pulled loose.
“Haven’t I seen you some place before?”
Ella groaned inwardly. Just what she needed right now – a pick-up line. She could see a group of guys watching them and nudging each other in her peripheral vision and had no desire to be part of some horrible dare.
“Yes,” she said unsmilingly. “That’s why I don’t go there anymore.”
The guy’s confident smile slipped and for a moment Ella felt a twinge of guilt but the loud guffawing in the background hardened her heart. She watched him slink back to his friends, who slapped him vigorously on the back.
Ella returned to her wine and realized Jake had appeared behind the bar. Topping up her almost empty wine glass, he murmured, “Are you torturing my customers?”
She spied the nearly empty beer bottle he held in his hand. Noticed his hands, period. Magic hands. Hands that knew their way around a woman’s body. She’d relived those three orgasms he’d given her obsessively this past week and her abdominal muscles contracted in primal recognition.
Which made her seriously cranky. She had more important things to think about than Jake’s freakish ability between the sheets.
“I try not to feed the animals.”
Jake gave a faux horrified gasp. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
The group of men broke into a chorus of loud cheers as they watched some football replay on the closest big-screen. They punched the air and grunted like a pack of gorillas.
She raised an eyebrow at Jake. “I rest my case.”
He grinned then downed the dregs of his Corona. “Now, now, Ella. They’ve been working hard all week. All they want is to sit around with their friends, watch the game and maybe even get laid if they’re lucky.”
Three giggling women came to the bar and called to Jake. They were blonde and big-boobed and impossibly young. Smiling at them, he said to her, “Don’t go anywhere,” before sauntering off.
His imperious command was irritating but not enough to shift Ella’s ass off the pogo stick. No way was she going to execute a move with such a degree of difficulty in front of the Barbie triplets who were currently presenting their forearms for Jake to sign.
Ella rolled her eyes as they giggled and waggled their fingers at him as they left. “Looks like you’re the only one getting laid around here tonight,” she said as he sauntered back.
Jake inserted a slice of lime into the neck of his next Corona. “They just wanted my autograph.”
“Oh please. I saw the way they were batting their eyelids at you. You could have had all three of them at once.”
He laughed. “Ménages aren’t as fun as they used to be.”
Ella’s mind went blank. Ménages? Plural? “Poor baby,” she said derisively.
He leaned forward on his elbows. “I prefer to devote all my energy to one woman at a time.”
Before she could lecture herself on not, under any circumstances, thinking about how good Jake was at devoting all his energy to one woman, Ella was already there.
Which made her super pissy. She was supposed to be thinking about Cam , goddamn it.
“Well, I’m sure they’d all take a number, Jake.”
Her deliberate insult slipped off him as he hooted with laughter. “Where’s Miss Rosie tonight?”
“She’s cooking her sure-thing curry for this guy she’s trying to woo.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Woo? How old fashioned.”
Ella shrugged. Maybe it was old fashioned but it sounded better than debauch .
“Sure thing because it works every time?”
She nodded, marveling anew at her bestie’s healthy libido. “ Every time.”
He narrowed his eyes. “We’re not talking about curry now, are we?”
“Nope.”
“Does she add some secret aphrodisiac potion to it?”
“No, she just makes it so hot they have to go lie down.”
Jake’s laughter was drowned out by another round of loud hooting erupting around the bar and Ella gritted her teeth.
“Who do you root for?” he asked, his eyes flicking to the nearest screen.
“Oh please.” She snorted. “I’d rather stick a red-hot poker in my eye.”
He laughed. “Not a fan?”
Not a fan ? Man, was that an understatement. Lifting her wine glass to him in salute, Ella said, “I hate it with a passion that consumes my entire being.”
“Whoa. What did football ever do to you?”
A familiar sense of impotence clawed at Ella’s throat. How could she say it took you away without sounding… ridiculous? How could he understand that although they’d rarely spoken she’d felt a desperate kind of affinity for him?
Jake’s mere existence had made things more bearable in Trently. Someone else in their dive of a town who truly understood what it felt like to be tolerated .
And then he’d left. To play football. And it was far easier to hate it than to hate him for taking his chance at getting the hell out of Dodge. Although tonight, after her day with Cam and her emotions in a complete tangle, she was more than happy to hate on him a little, too.
“Nothing. I just… hate the… slavish devotion we have in this country for a bunch of guys who just throw a dumb pointy ball around a stupid bit of grass.”
He laughed. “It’s not quite as easy as that.”
Yeah, maybe. But right now, Ella was too riled up to care about the intricacies of the game. She slapped her hand down on the bar. He was missing the point.
“It’s not rocket science, Jake. I mean the NFL’s not trying to find a cure for cancer. All they’re doing is taking a bunch of young guys fresh out of college, stuffing their pockets full of money, plying them with gifts, telling them their poop doesn’t stink all so they can make a shit ton of money.”
He nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Jesus, Jake, there are children all around the world and right here that live in poverty but we don’t have the money for that. We have kids in America who can’t read or write or add up but we don’t have the money for that. They’re trying to close my school down, for crying out loud. But never mind, there’s always money for football.”
Ella ran out of steam, slumping over her glass and staring morosely at the contents.
“Finished now?” he asked quietly.
She sighed. She wished she felt better for getting it all off her chest but she didn’t. They were still shutting her school down and her brother still hated her. “Finished.”
“Jake,” Pete interrupted as he entered the bar area, “your damn dog’s howling.”
“You have a dog?” Ella asked, straightening.
“Kind of.”
She blinked, wondering if she’d consumed more alcohol than she thought. “You kind of have a dog?”
“He’s a stray who’s been hanging around. I don’t suppose you know anyone in the neighborhood who could take him do you?”
As a matter of fact, she did. She lived at stray central. She opened her mouth to say as much then shut it again. She didn’t feel like doing him any favors tonight. Which was irritable and bitchy but she just didn’t care.
“Why don’t you take him home?”
“No pets allowed in my building.”
Of course not. She supposed he lived in some posh penthouse somewhere. A place where everything was marble and leather and designer pooches that fit in handbags were fine but dirty strays did not belong.
As if he knew she was prevaricating, he leaned in a little. “Come on, Ella.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You owe me one.”
She blinked as his meaning. Since when had their down and dirty liaison in The Rusty Nail been transactional?
Since he had a stray dog to offload, apparently.
“He’d be a great watch dog,” he cajoled. “Protect two vulnerable women living by themselves. He’s got a helluva bark and a menacing personality.”
Ella held his gaze for a moment, ready to make some quip about his assumptions but there was little point. Daisy and Iris would never forgive her if she didn’t volunteer to take the dog in so that was that.
Resigned, she drained her glass in two swallows and said, “Show me.”