Chapter One
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Fox and Poem are perfectly normal names, thank you for asking.
Poem
“It’s not that I think you’re unintelligent,” Fox Blackwood, world’s biggest jerk, declares. “It’s that I think you’re incompetent.”
My eyes narrow as my head swivels under the bar sink, where I lie working on a leak Fox caused when Fox lost his temper and kicked the pipes because Fox thought he needed to jump over the counter to physically assault someone because Fox couldn’t handle one dumb drunk guy saying something stupid in his bar.
Responsibly dealing with dumb drunks being one of the most basic parts of his job, as owner of Blackwood Brew.
But sure. I’m the incompetent one. That makes sense.
“If I’m incompetent, then you’re unintelligent,” I retort. Should I be talking to the man who signs my checks this way? Probably not. Am I going to anyway? Yep, I sure am.
“Can you get out of there so I can fix the sink? You’re making things worse,” he snaps.
My eyes roll. “I know I’m making things worse. I’m doing it on purpose. The thing was barely leaking. How are you going to learn a lesson from a tiny little drip?” I shake my head. “You’re not, that’s how. You need a bigger problem to teach you to stop letting drunks rile you up.”
Thick brows furrow over sky-blue eyes as his mouth pulls down in a scowl.
“It’s almost ready for you,” I inform him with a grin, turning back to my work. Just one more turn of this wrench and we’ll have a proper lesson-teaching mess.
Large, strong hands wrap around my waist and lift, dragging me backward.
“Fox!” I yelp, flailing my arms and dropping the wrench while he hoists me up, up, up, before depositing me on the ground several feet away from the now marvelously leaky sink.
“Go do inventory,” he orders, nudging me toward the stockroom door. “And try not to screw it up too bad. I only have three hours this weekend to clean up your messes. Amia’s got a birthday party.”
I sniff. “I’m not a manager. I shouldn’t be doing inventory. My job description begins and ends at serving drinks and food to the patrons. Which we don’t have anymore, because you decided to go all Rocky Balboa on the clientele.”
“Just find something to do,” he grunts, dropping to his knees by the sink. “And don’t break anything.”
“I could just go home,” I suggest, glancing around the empty bar. “It’s not exactly booming in here.” It turns out that when the bar’s owner attacks a patron, people don’t like that too much. Shocking.
“Your shift ends in fifty-two minutes,” he grumbles. “You can go home then.”
I pout at his broad shoulders as they scrunch, squeezing in under the sink.
The sleeve of his black long-sleeve T-shirt snags on the edge of the cabinet, then lifts as he reaches in, revealing the tip of a tattooed feather.
The feather, I know, belongs to a whole set of them, some finished, some not, that work together to create a gorgeous set of wings.
They flow from the center of his back, wrapping around his shoulders and down his arms to stop on his forearms, not quite reaching his wrists.
His twin brother, our local tattoo artist, has been working on them on and off for the past year.
The last time I saw them, the outline was done, and they’d moved on to shading in the feathers one by one.
I’m dismayed to see that the shading has taken an already attractive tattoo and made it a thousand times more attractive. Pity me, please, for this information is devastating.
It’s some sort of cosmic joke that despite his… sparkling personality, Fox manages to be supremely hot. A hot jerk. With a hot tattoo.
Very inconvenient, that tattoo.
And more inconvenient the number of times I’ve borne witness to it—enough to have the soft, feathered lines practically branded into my brain. Sadly for me, it’s just not something you can scrub from your mind once you’ve seen it—the tattoo or Fox shirtless, showing it off.
You’d think a thirty-four-year-old bar owner would be a little more skeezy. A little more beer belly-y. A little less… bicepy. Apparently, you’d be wrong.
Fox spends his free time playing in a recreation softball league, running around playgrounds with his niece, and hiking.
All he does is move his body, and it shows.
I once asked him how he even has the energy for all of that exercise.
He told me, “The exercise gives the energy.” Whatever that means. I’ll not be testing it out.
My exercise comes more in the form of curling a chip from the bag to my mouth while I watch Teen Wolf for the five-hundredth time.
Needless to say, I am more squish than muscle.
And thank all for that. It probably feels like cuddling with a rock when he manages to con some poor sucker into a snuggle.
Cuddling with me is like laying with your favorite, cutest stuffed animal—soft, comfortable, and warm.
I think we all know what the superior option is.
And it is not, ever, Fox.
All the more reason to relieve myself of his presence, methinks.
“Fifty-two minutes of you paying me to stand around seems pretty dumb to me,” I point out the very obvious for my poor, lacking-in-brains boss, “when I could go home and work on Amia’s cake.”
“Are you using my niece to manipulate me into letting you out of work?” he grumbles from the floor, peeking his head out far enough to locate the wrench I dropped when he was dragging me around.
“Yes,” I answer, rocking back on my heels. “Is it working?”
He disappears under the sink again. “Not really. I like the idea of you losing sleep to finish the cake on time. The bags under your eyes tomorrow will add to my enjoyment of the party at least tenfold.”
I stick my tongue out at him. “This is dumb. You know that, right? Really dumb.”
“If you’re not going to do inventory, fine. But whatever you do, go do it,” he grunts, “and stop hovering over me. It’s giving obsessed.”
“It’s giving I don’t have anything to do and my boss is being a tyrant,” I counter, crossing my arms over my artfully tattered Blackwood Brew[1] T-shirt.
“You’re not going home, kit,” he snaps. “Get over it.”
I just barely resist the urge to stomp my foot. I am not a child. I will not act like one.
“You have a bald spot, by the way,” I tell him.
He curses, hitting his head in his haste to back out of the small space and pat at the top of it. Finding only thick, lush hair, he glares at me.
I smirk. “You’re such a sucker.”
He lets loose another four-letter word before dipping back under the sink.
I sigh, glancing around the empty space and taking in the abandoned-because-the-owner-is-off-his-rocker small-town bar of it all.
Framed pictures of regulars line the walls, split up by a Wall of Shame for banned once-patrons.
In the corner, a jukebox that’s probably older than I am plays some rock song from the 80s, just begging for a hair flipping air guitar battle, something the Blackwood Brew has seen much of in her day.
Bar tables covered in sticky… something litter the floor, halting my perusal of my work space.
Ugh.
I should probably clean those.
Or, you know, not. Fox can do it, and I can go home.
“If you don’t do something,” Fox’s voice calls up from the depths of the sink cabinet, “I’m going to fire you.”
I snort. Yeah, right. “Sure you will. And then you’ll have to explain to your parents why you fired me. I figure I’ll be rehired in… what? Two hours?”
Gilbert and Belinda Blackwood love me. They’re the reason I have this job in the first place. They’d never let their stinky son fire me.
Under the sink, he grunts a response.
“What was that? I couldn’t hear you over the sound of me being your parents’ favorite,” I taunt, digging into my favorite of his sore spots.
Am I actually their favorite? Mmm… debatable.
Fox doesn’t seem to know that, though, which is all that matters, because it makes it just that much easier for me to poke at the insecurities he created his own freaking self by leaving home for years in a fit of irresponsible twenty-something man logic.
Now he’s back, convinced that everyone hates him, and further convinced that I have somehow taken his spot as the once-favored son.
I know. And I promise it’s just as ridiculous, stupid, boys-are-morons as it sounds.
“I said,” he clips in his stupid boy way, pulling out of the cabinet and tossing the wrench on the ground, “that they can’t rehire you if I throttle you first.”
Mmhm. Sure. “If you were going to throttle me, you would’ve done it by now.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he grumbles, standing up and wiping non-existent dirt off his jeans. He was down there for four seconds tightening a nut, not getting down and dirty with the plumbing lines. What a drama queen.
I open my mouth to make fun of him for being a germaphobe, but his phone blasting “Sweet Child O’ Mine” from his pocket interrupts me.
Speaking of Gilbert and Belinda…
“It wasn’t my fault,” Fox answers the phone. “It was Poem.”
“Excuse me!” I object. “I didn’t do anything!”
A muffled female voice speaks in his ear, and he winces.
“I–” he starts, then stops, pulling the phone away from his face and shoving it in his pocket. “Change of plans,” he says. “We’re closing.”
What, now that things are getting good? I don’t think so.
“I need to wipe down the tables,” I tell him, making no move to get a rag. “And my boss asked me to do inventory, so closing doesn’t really work for me just yet.”
“Poem,” he snarls my name like a curse, moving forward to loom over me, hands on his hips. “We’re closing.”
I tsk, standing my ground. “I don’t think so. That inventory sounded really important.”
He glares. “You just want to see me get yelled at by my parents.”
Uh, duh.
“Belinda and Gilbert are coming?” I widen my eyes, all shock. “Wow! It will be so nice to see them!”
A vein in his forehead pops. “You can see them tomorrow. Right now, we’re leaving.”
Heh. He’s so cute when he’s delusional. “I’m staying.
And, wow, I don’t have a key! How sad. Maybe you should’ve given me that promotion I asked for last year, then I would’ve been able to close up for you.
As it is…” I trail off, shrugging helplessly.
Oh no, so sad, I can’t close up. Guess he has to stay until I’m ready to go.
“You’re promoted,” he says, fishing in his pocket. “Here’s a key.” He pulls out a key ring and starts removing his extra copy of the bar key from it.
“No, thank you,” I respond, taking a hefty step away from the proffered key. “Seems like a lot of responsibility. Yuck.”
His jaw clenches. “You’d seriously turn down a promotion, which comes with a raise, just to see me get scolded?”
“I seriously would.” Would the raise be nice? Sure, of course. But I don’t trust him not to demote me the minute he gets what he wants, especially when I don’t see a fancy—and legally-binding—contract around to assure job security should I accept his offer.
I’m blonde, not stupid.
“You’re infuriating,” he bites out, turning to pick up the wrench and close the sink cabinet.
I am, also, that. “I know.” I beam. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Just wonderful.”