Chapter Three
Rory
Rory woke the next morning before his alarm clock sounded, and she was the first thing to cross his mind.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the American woman. She’d been forward, to say the least, and confident in a way that bordered on arrogance.
She’d also been alluring and undeniably beautiful.
He remembered her shoulder-length, straight, blonde hair. Her full, sweetheart lips. Her cute, button nose. Her slender neck, and the jumper that seemed to swallow her whole. He remembered what it felt like to have her mouth pressed against his, and the salty-gin taste of their kiss.
More than anything, he remembered her pale gray eyes. They’d been aimed in his direction often enough.
Rather than off-putting, her stare had been inviting.
Rather than desperate, her proposal had been open.
She’d claimed to have been drunk and jet-lagged, but she hadn’t been obnoxious.
Admittedly, he’d been tempted—but not tempted enough.
At forty-one years old, it would have been a lie to say the offer of a single night with an attractive woman, likely more than a decade younger than him, had been unappealing—but he had his boundaries. What he’d told her was true. He didn’t sleep with tourists. He also did his best to avoid drunk strangers. He preferred his women clear headed and fully cognizant.
Most of all, he didn’t take guests of his pub to bed—no matter how beautiful and alluring.
Nevertheless, as he played back the moment when she’d lifted out of her seat and brazenly touched her lips to his, he wondered if there was a part of him that regretted his rejection.
It had been months since he’d enjoyed a woman.
His alarm clock sounded, extracting him from his thoughts, and he was quick to sit up and silence his mobile. Whether or not he regretted his decision was irrelevant. Chances he’d see the woman again were all but non-existent. It was a new day. As was usually the case, this one came with its own set of problems.
Today in particular, Archie Blackstone was at the top of his list.
Rory opened their text thread and shot off a message, inquiring if they were still on for that morning. While it was debatable whether or not he regretted rejecting the blonde American, there was no doubt he regretted putting his trust in Archie—the entitled heir to the business next door.
He’d known the man nigh on twenty years, but he didn’t consider them friends. At best, they were acquaintances, given the frequency at which they interacted. He dropped into the pub from time to time, usually with his father. Mr. Blackstone, whom Rory hoped would rest in peace, had been close with his Uncle Henry.
They, too, had become acquainted due to proximity.
London was home to more than eight million people, and yet the corner of St. Andrew’s Hill had always made the city feel smaller. It was the illusion of the pub, and the patrons who frequented it, which made such an alternate reality so very real. The pub made friends of strangers and turned enemies into allies. In the case of his Uncle Henry and Mr. Blackstone, neighbors had become like brothers. Different though their pedigrees were, and in spite of the wealth gap between them, the neighboring proprietors got on well.
Rory could still recall the two men sitting across from one another, the light of sunset pouring through the pub’s front windows, presiding over their game of chess while they bantered and drank.
Long after Henry’s untimely death, Mr. Blackstone had been a regular patron of The King’s Steed, until his own unexpected passing. It wasn’t long after he’d heard the news that Archie approached Rory with an offer he’d never refuse.
Tattered Edges, the used bookstore, had been in the Blackstone family for the last forty-five years. As Rory understood it, the business began as a passion-project for Archie’s grandmother, who had married into the Blackstone wealth. Her friendship with Rory’s own grandfather had been the catalyst for Henry and Sawyer’s tight bond.
That was what made the pub so special. It was no respecter of people.
The old woman outlived her husband and moved into the flat above the bookstore where she resided until her dying day. While her husband left the family publishing business to both of their children, Sawyer Blackstone had been the sole heir of the bookstore. As it had been a passion project for his mother, so it became a pet project of his. He kept it going out of a sense of sentimental pride more than anything else; and the thought of selling it, even though it only ever made enough money to break even, had been out of the question.
But the struggling bookstore was a piece of prime real estate Rory had been pining over for years.
While Rory waited on Archie’s reply, he got out of bed and slowly made his way to the bathroom in order to relieve his bladder. He stretched his neck as he went, unwilling to acknowledge the tightness he felt in his shoulders. The older he got, the harder it became to deny the consequences of a busy night spent behind the bar.
He found himself at the gym a few times a week, which kept his endurance intact, but he preferred dead lifts over stretching any day—and he felt it. Yet, he wouldn’t complain. He hoped to be behind the bar for another forty years or more—just like his Grandpa Jack.
Much like Tattered Edges, The King’s Steed was a family-owned establishment. It had been part of the Taylor legacy for more than a century, passed down from one generation to the next, each presiding owner keeping the tradition of the third place alive; each one contributing to the evolution of the pub and its place in the community.
In a perfect world, Rory and his Uncle Henry would have run the pub together after Grandpa Jack was ready to move on. Unfortunately, the world was far from perfect.
While Rory didn’t possess the surname Taylor , his grandfather left the pub to his only grandson. Rory’s mother, brilliant as she was, never had any interest in the family business. Much to his father’s early chagrin, the pub had turned out to be the place Rory cherished more than any other in the world. He belonged behind the bar, carrying on the family tradition, and there was no mistaking that.
Years prior, it had been Rory who helped transform the menu, introducing a more sophisticated approach to cocktails. What started as an experiment bred from his desire to disrupt the norm soon became the beginning of a new era at The King’s Steed. Yet, it was Henry who thought of dividing the pub into the Parlour and the Tavern . His uncle never got to see the success of his idea, or experience how the pub’s evolving identity enlivened the business, but Rory accredited it all to him, just the same.
The argument could have been made that Rory already put his generational stamp on the pub. His grandfather had said as much, many times over, before he passed just two years ago. Except, Rory was far too ambitious to be satisfied with only the Parlour. He had other ideas. Grand ones. Ideas that had the potential to double the profit of The King’s Steed.
Trouble was, in order to make his idea a reality, he needed to expand the footprint of the establishment—and the only way to do that was to buy the bookstore, gut it, and make it his own.
Rory had just finished brushing his teeth when Archie returned his text with a confirmation the two were still on to meet that morning. The address he’d been given wasn’t far, located less than a block away from his alma mater, the London School of Economics and Political Science. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he’d been a student there; back when the future he thought laid ahead of him charted a much different course.
He planned to make the old, familiar twenty-minute journey on foot, and he hoped the trip would be worth his time. With Archie, one could never be sure.
Setting aside his phone, Rory started the water for a shower. When the temperature was right, he rid himself of his boxer trunks and ducked under the spray of water. He wouldn’t have time for coffee that morning, so a shower would have to suffice. Though, it was doubtful any amount of preparation would be enough to put him in the mood for the meeting.
Archie Blackstone was thirty years old and already in possession of a debilitating gambling problem. Horse betting was his vice. It was so bad, the trust fund he’d been granted access to only five years prior was already gone. The only wealth he could boast of now was tied up in businesses he didn’t have the right to sell.
At least that had been the case, until two and a half months ago.
Archie was the epitome of desperation. If Rory didn’t find him to be so pathetic, he might have felt bad for the man—but he’d squandered his inheritance like a child. Worse, his father hadn’t been buried a day before he approached Rory with the offer he thought would never come.
Much like Sawyer had inherited Tattered Edges, Archie was sure the same would be gifted to him. At worst, he anticipated the business would be left to him and his sister, Eloise. Convinced he could talk the woman into selling the place, he’d promised Rory first right of refusal.
There was a greater than likely chance, whatever profit he gained from selling Rory his property would be gambled away; but that wasn’t Rory’s concern. He didn’t consider it his moral obligation to save Archie from himself. They weren’t friends. He hoped their relationship would soon be strictly business.
Except, while the offer had been made in late October, it was now the beginning of a new year, and nothing had been put to paper. Archie claimed there was a bit of a complication with the will—a complication that was to be cleared up that very morning. As Rory got dressed, he did so with a sense of cautious optimism. He was itching to get his hands on the building’s blueprints. He already had an architect and contractor in mind to help him with the renovations. If all went well, the restaurant extension of The King’s Steed could open that summer.
He was dressed and ready to go at twenty to nine. The sky looked like rain, so Rory tucked his umbrella underneath his arm as he descended the stairs from his third story flat above the pub. After he locked up, he popped the collar of his wool coat, shielding his neck from the breeze, and set out toward his destination. He would be early, but he preferred it that way. The sooner he dealt with Archie, the better. He was tired of the lack of clarity.
Rory was nearly there when it began to rain. Having been instructed to meet Archie outside the building, he made use of his umbrella as he approached his destination. No sooner had he turned onto Kingsway than he saw her. He knit his eyebrows together as he did a double take, but she was inside before he could tell for sure.
He stared at the door behind which she’d disappeared.
He must have been imagining it.
There was no way that could have been her.
His mind was playing tricks on him.
Perhaps he regretted not bedding the American, after all.