CHAPTER FOUR
Jovana
“So don’t freak out ...” Sloane said the moment I rushed into the bar.
Tonight was another shift I hadn’t been scheduled for, but when she called me in a panic, I’d stopped filming content for next week’s social media posts and thrown on my bar attire and come right in.
I clocked in on the computer, turning to her as I sang, “Okaaay ...”
“Grayson’s here.”
My eyes widened so large, they were on the verge of bulging out of my head. “Wait. What?”
“He walked through the door literally two minutes before you and sat at a table with his two business partners and two other women. I didn’t even have time to call you and warn you, it happened so fast.” Her expression was full of sympathy. “And babe, whatever you do, don’t turn around. You’re in his direct line of sight.”
All I wanted to do was turn around. “Oh God.”
“I know. Trust me, I know.”
“Two other women?” I groaned. “He’s the absolute worst.” I held the apron that I’d grabbed from behind the bar in my hands, debating whether I should tie it around my waist or make a mad dash out of here. “How much would you hate me if I bailed?”
She faced me, holding a bottle in each hand. “Something tells me they’re his employees or this is a business meeting because they all look kinda miserable and like they don’t want to be here.” She paused. “Does that make it better?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Definitely not.”
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t bail on me.” She turned toward the row of shot glasses that lined the bar and began filling them with the two bottles. “I don’t have another server coming in for two more hours.”
My chest began to tighten as I realized exactly what she was saying. “So you’re telling I’m responsible for every occupied table in this bar, along with Grayson’s?”
“Pretty much.” Her nose scrunched, emphasizing the silver loop that ran across the bottom of her nostril. “I owe you.”
My hands went to my hips. “Like covering my half of the rent this month—we’re at that level of owing.”
She dropped the bottles in their holder, setting the shot glasses on a tray. “How about dinner? Followed by a night of complete debauchery?”
“Sloane, I don’t know whether to cry or throw up at the thought of seeing him.” I placed my back against the sink and looked at the wall of liquor bottles, ensuring I wouldn’t turn toward Grayson. “I know it was only one night, more like a couple of hours, but I’m old-fashioned when it comes to this kind of stuff. I don’t just sleep with anyone; you know this. I don’t do one-night stands; you know this too. I would never join his app—it’s not my thing.” I gazed down at my feet, my arms wrapped across my stomach. “What happened between us ... I know it meant nothing to him, but it meant something to me.”
In fact, I could still feel the strength of his hands on my body.
The power in his lips when he kissed me.
His gaze devouring mine and the way it penetrated my chest, causing a storm of emotions.
“That’s because your parents have the best marriage ever and you want the same thing.”
Her statement caused me to look up. “You’re right. I couldn’t have better role models of love than them.”
“And what they have, that’s what you deserve.”
When I’d decided to go home with him, it wasn’t that I thought Grayson and I were going to instantly fall in love. That in the morning, I would wake to him on one knee, proposing. That would be ridiculous to even consider. I just hadn’t expected things to end the way they did—or for them to end at all. For him to show me such a lack of respect.
For me to mean absolutely nothing to him.
“Yes,” I whispered. “You’re right.”
She poured three different liquors into a metal mixer and began to shake it. “My advice, go march your hot ass over to his table and show him what he lost.” She nodded toward the tray. “And please bring those to table four before you do. They’ve been waiting over fifteen minutes for that round of shots.”
“That’s the best advice you’ve got?”
“Listen, girl, men want what they can’t have. I’m not saying you gave in easily, but you kinda gave in easily.” A thin smile tugged at her lips. “If you want Grayson to regret being a giant asshole, then show him what he can’t have. Show him you’re unaffected by his presence. That he means nothing to you.”
“Because I’m so good at that. My face will be a dead giveaway. I’m Miss Obvious, you know that about me.”
She poured the mixed liquor into a martini glass and set her hands on my shoulders. “You film for hours a day where you’re all smiley and upbeat, where you’re acting and endorsing a product you most definitely don’t believe in, but they’re paying you, so you need to sound convincing. This’ll be no different. Your uninterest in Grayson is the product and table twelve is the camera.” She squeezed before she released me. “Now, go kick ass.”
As she began to pour wine into a glass, I opened the apron and tied it around my waist, stealing a pen from Sloane’s collection and a pad of paper. “I say this with all the love in my heart, but I want to murder you right now.”
She winked. “But you couldn’t live without me.”
“That’s debatable.”
While I took the tray to table four, I kept my profile pointed toward Grayson, preventing myself from staring at him. It was safest to do that because if I happened to look at him, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to glance away. This way, he didn’t get a second of my attention.
He didn’t deserve it.
But my body felt fiery as I delivered the shots. My skin was getting hot and—I was sure—red. My stomach jittery, my hands sweaty. I had to really focus on what I was doing so I wouldn’t trip or spill, and the moment the last shot was on the table, I turned toward Grayson.
I expected to be able to walk the short distance to his table without having his eyes on me, giving me the chance to check him out while he was deep in conversation.
That wasn’t the case.
Because his eyes were fixed on mine.
His stare looking right through me.
Like I was an animal he was hunting.
Like I was a taste that he wanted more of.
“This”—he traced the air between us—“will end in the morning. One night, that’s it, nothing more.”
That scene, those words—it all replayed in my head as I walked toward him.
With each step, I remembered what his mouth had felt like.
The sensation in my body when he’d caressed me.
How I felt when his arms were around me.
And I took in his face, how incredibly sexy it looked with a beard that was even thicker than before, skin that was tan, a smugness that dragged across his lips, reinforcing how cocky and confident he was.
I hate him.
That was what I told myself when the jitters began to shoot up my chest, when I found it difficult to breathe, when it was almost impossible to look away from his gaze.
I despise him.
The result of that night was a rideshare that I had to take alone, back to the apartment I rented with Sloane, in the middle of a heavy downpour.
The weather symbolic of how miserable I’d felt.
I resent him.
And that memory was painful enough that I shifted my focus to the women at the table and halted behind the two of them. One sat directly next to Grayson, a pair of bright-red glasses perched high on her nose, with an aura that screamed business. The other had her hair in a high, tight bun with a smear of freckles across her nose.
“Welcome to Olives,” I said to the group. “My name is Jovana, what can I get you to drink?”
The ladies placed their orders first. I was too worked up to reach into my apron and grab the pen and pad, so I recited their wine preferences in my head before moving on to Grayson’s partners. Their drinks were easy to remember; they were identical.
There was one person left.
One person I absolutely didn’t want to look at.
That was a lie.
Shit.
I filled my lungs and gradually turned my gaze, my breath hitching as we locked eyes, my throat contracting, my arm feeling weak even though it was holding only the weight of the tray. “And Mr. Wicked, what can I get you?”
My eyes narrowed, my lips smiling.
This was how I’d look at the camera if I were recording content, a way to be flirty but not overly sexy. A way to make the audience feel like I was giving them all of me.
Even if I wasn’t.
The salutation earned me a chuckle.
A sound that, when I’d previously heard it at his table and in the hallway outside the restrooms and during the walk to his condo and inside his place, I’d found so alluring.
Now, it almost stung.
Because it slapped those memories back into my head, reinforcing just how evil this man was.
“Vodka—”
“May I chime in,” the woman in red glasses said, cutting Grayson off before she looked at me. She didn’t receive an answer from either of us before she said, “Do the two of you know each other?”
I glanced from her to Grayson. “Somewhat ... yes.”
“What does Mr. Wicked stand for?” she asked.
An odd question,I thought.
Why hadn’t she just asked Grayson, who was sitting next to her? Why had she directed the question at me?
My smile shifted to one that was a bit more polite than the flirty one I’d been aiming at him. “I’ll let Grayson tell you that.” And then I turned my focus to him and said, “Vodka on the rocks, like last time?”
The moment he nodded, I left the table, feeling his gaze bore through my back as I rushed toward the bar.
But it didn’t just stay on my back.
I felt it on my ass.
My thighs.
Even my neck.
“How’d it go?” Sloane asked as I typed their orders into the computer. “He’s ugly, right? And not worth a second of your time? And you’re questioning why you ever went home with him? And we’re going to practice how to shrink your heart to save yourself the heartache?”
I gripped the bar top with both hands. “Yep. Yep. Yep. And yeeep.”
I’m not going to look at him.
I’m absolutely not going to look at him.
I’m most definitely not going to look at him.
But I lost the battle.
And as soon as I glanced in his direction, our eyes locked again.
The hunger in his stare had doubled.
The passion exploded.
The need was beyond overwhelming.
So much so that I forced myself to look at Sloane, practically panting as I said, “I hate him.”
What was it about Grayson Tanner that I couldn’t get enough of?
That made me disregard the way he’d treated me?
That made me still want him so badly?
The answer to that was easy.
No man’s gaze had ever made me feel the way his did.
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “You’re right. You’re Miss Fucking Obvious.”