Chapter 3
GRADY
I carried a case of beer up front, carefully putting it on the floor in front of the fridge under the bar. The blue lights that lined the underside of the bar cast everything in a soft glow. It had been a slow summer but with classes starting up soon, The Library was about to get busy.
Felix Winters leaned against the bar, talking to one of our colleagues. They were talking about university politics. I did my best to avoid all that bullshit. Felix was a professor in the anthropology department. He was also my business partner and, sadly, probably one of my only friends.
I rarely stayed in one place long enough to really make deep connections. My focus was on my work. There was too much history out there to uncover for just one lifetime.
“Felix,” I said as I squatted in front of the fridge. “We need that IPA keg tapped.”
Felix turned and looked at me like I had spoken in one of those lost foreign languages he studied. “You want me to tap it?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m carrying the heavy shit.”
“Because you’re built for it.” Felix shrugged. “I’m the numbers guy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I think you just don’t know how to do it.”
“Reverse psychology?” He laughed. “Nice try.”
We had bought the bar two years ago when old man Brewer finally decided to retire and do something boring, like die on a boat in the Caribbean.
The man sold exactly three cocktails when he ran the place.
The classic rum and Coke, boring vodka soda, and old-lady gin and tonic.
Coming to the bar was a lot like going to the DMV.
But despite the dullness of the place, it had been a haven for guys like me.
When we heard he was retiring, the idea hit.
No one wanted the place to be turned into one of those loud nightclub type of deals.
Some of us really enjoyed drinking without screaming to have a conversation or bumping and grinding against sweaty bodies.
Especially if those bodies belonged to studies we’d be teaching.
When we bought the place, we decided to rename it The Library as a joke.
Students could tell their parents they’re at the library and technically not be lying.
And it wasn’t so loud you couldn’t read a book if you wanted.
Some people did that. Usually the grad students.
We didn’t get a lot of the kids trying to use fake IDs to get in the place.
We catered to the more mature college kids.
Not old guys like me, but the students that were more interested in having a drink than partying and fucking.
I remembered my college days. Yes, partying and fucking took up a lot of my time back in the day but it made studying difficult.
The Library gave the young people a place to do both.
A little kicking back. A little flirting.
And maybe a hookup with some like-minded people.
Every Friday night, while the rest of campus was ten shots deep and climbing fraternity fences, The Library welcomed those too tired for keg stands and too old for red Solo cups. Professors, grad students, postdocs. The occasional jaded TA hiding from freshmen all congregated here.
I finished stocking the fridge, shot Felix an annoyed look before going to tap the new keg.
Felix was everything I wasn’t. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing.
He was short, soft, and to be brutally honest, a nerd.
I was tall, hard, and most people thought I was a professional athlete instead of a professor.
He dressed like he was a professor at Oxford in England instead of in South Carolina.
In his three-piece tweed suit complete with elbow patches, he should have been dying in the southern heat, but he always seemed fine.
Felix didn’t give a shit about fashion or trying to look good.
He was who he was, and that level of confidence was something most people could only aspire to.
“Hey, did that new vodka come in?” Felix asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll check.”
“Everything okay?” Felix asked, following me to the storeroom.
“Peachy.”
He laughed softly. “That’s code for you’re pissed.”
“I’m not pissed.”
“Let me use my deductive powers of reasoning,” Felix said. He tapped a finger against his chin, pretending to be deep in thought. His wire-rimmed glasses reflected the light in the storeroom.
“Dean Carver is riding my ass again,” I said.
Felix gave me a dry look. “She’s not riding it. She’s sizing it up for demolition. Don’t fool yourself. I’ve never seen a woman so desperate to destroy a man. Are you sure you didn’t screw her over. What do the kids say? Was it a hit it and quit it ?”
I nearly vomited. “Felix, what the hell? I wouldn’t fuck that woman with your dick.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” he mused. “Maybe she wants a piece of the great Grady Stone. Give her what she wants and she’ll back off.”
“I’d rather take you to bed,” I retorted.
“You couldn’t handle me,” he teased.
I laughed at my friend. Felix looked like a strait-laced professor but the man could always make me laugh, even when I was in a sour mood.
“She’s got it out for me,” I said.
“She’s got it out for your job, Stone. There’s a difference. One is personal, the other’s professional. Though I’d wager in this case, it’s a bit of both. She doesn’t like you.”
I spotted the case of vodka and used my knife to quickly open it, then handed a bottle to Felix. “What did I ever do to her?”
Felix raised an eyebrow. “Turned her down. She wants a little piece of the hot professor.”
“Oh, come on. You think she’s that petty?”
“I think a woman like Carver doesn’t take rejection well. Especially not from someone who wears cargo pants to faculty meetings.”
Felix and I returned to stand behind the bar.
He made a big show of dusting the spot before placing the new bottle perfectly in place.
That was Felix. He was fastidious. Everything had to be perfect.
I was so not like that. When things got busy and I was the asshole behind the bar, it was like a warzone.
Bottles were in all the wrong places and the floor was sticky with all the overpours and the occasional broken glass.
I grunted. “I turn down women all the time and it’s no big deal. I’m always polite about it.”
Felix pushed up his glasses. “You do not turn down women all the time.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I turn down about ninety percent of the women that hit on me.”
“Maybe she just thinks you’re an asshole,” Felix said. “You are kind of a dick.”
“Thanks for the support.”
“I’m just saying,” Felix continued, adjusting his glasses again. “You have a talent for rubbing authority figures the wrong way.”
That was true. I had a problem with people in charge of me.
Not because they were in positions of authority.
I only had a problem with them when they tried to tell me what to do.
I couldn’t give a shit if they wanted to boss other people around.
But people that didn’t know shit about archeology or what I did had no business trying to tell me what to do. That was what Carver was.
“I need a benefactor,” I said with a sigh.
“A benefactor?”
“Someone that will fund my projects so I don’t have to fucking teach,” I said.
“I need to be out there. Do you know how much history is out there? Sitting in classrooms talking about it is important, but finding the stuff in the first place is more important. Every day we don’t find artifacts and ancient buildings is another day they’re slipping away from us. ”
It was a difficult balancing act, trying to get students excited about the field while also getting out into the world.
If only I could just spend my days in the jungle or diving on various shipwrecks.
I couldn’t decide what I liked best. I needed more time and getting called back into the classroom before I was ready seriously pissed me off.
Why couldn’t they just send the students out with me? They’d learn a hell of a lot more in a Guatemalan jungle than in a classroom.
I reached for a bottle of rum with a pirate on the label and poured myself a generous splash. “All I want to do is dig up cool stuff and share it with the world. That’s it.”
“Well, to do that, you need funding. And guess who holds the purse strings?”
I didn’t answer. Just downed the drink and let it burn.
“Unless you want to work here full time. We could use another dishwasher.”
I flipped him off. “If we could get this place to turn a bigger profit, I might be able to do less teaching.”
He chuckled. “If only college students weren’t so damn poor.”
I reached for the bottle that Felix had already returned to the shelf, turning it just so. He shot me a scowl when I poured another drink. It wasn’t going to get me drunk. I was going to need a lot more than a couple of shots for that. Felix snatched the bottle and put it back once again.
I turned to look at the scattered customers. The bar was a nice income stream, but it wasn’t going to make either of us rich. It wasn’t going to fund a dig in Guatemala. It did buy me some oxygen tanks and boat rentals when I wanted to dive, but I needed more.
My eyes scanned the few people sipping drinks and enjoying the cool AC in the bar. Most of them were either grad students or a few strays that wandered into the bar.
The door opened, a wave of heat and heavy air washed in.
And so did a woman. A real, full-fledged woman.
She looked around like she wasn’t sure if she belonged—but not in the way most people do.
No self-conscious tugging at her shirt, no glancing around for familiar faces.
She walked in like someone deep in thought and in desperate need of a drink.
She wasn’t here to chill with friends or any of that shit.
I sized her up in about ten seconds. Red hair, jeans, simple light pink shirt.
Not dressed up. Shit. If she dressed up, she’d look like a fucking siren from Greek mythology.
She had hips you could grab a hold of. A woman you could pin to a tree in the middle of a rainstorm and not worry about breaking.
She had that kind of presence. Solid. Real.
So fuckable. My cock jerked like someone had just tapped it on the shoulder and pointed.
Felix followed my gaze and snorted. “Oh god.”
“What? I’m not doing anything.”
Felix smiled and shook his head. “You’re staring like you’re in love.”
“I don’t fall in love. I fall in lust.”
“Equally inconvenient. Besides, that woman wants none of your bullshit. Look at her. She’s confident. Independent. Not your type.”
I frowned at him. “First of all, you can’t tell all of that from looking at her. And second, that is my type.”
He snorted and shook his head. “You want easy. Quick. No strings.”
I thought about it. Again, he wasn’t entirely wrong, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy a woman with a little spice.
Felix moved to take her order. “Cock block,” I murmured under my breath. He shot me a look telling me he heard me.
The woman ordered a beer then walked off to a corner table like she had no interest in being seen, only in thinking her thoughts and sipping her drink.
“I haven’t seen her around,” I said casually.
“Maybe she’s new,” Felix said, equally casual. “School is starting up again.”
“Not undergrad,” I said. “Too old. Not by much but enough. Maybe a new grad student.”
I couldn’t stop glancing her way. Not staring. Not obvious. Just very casually monitoring the room like a responsible co-owner should.
That was when I noticed them.
Three guys near the back. Loud enough to be noticed, but not loud enough to be kicked out. The kind of guys who wore baseball caps backwards and probably played some kind of concussion-inducing sport. Rugby. Not football. They’d clocked her too.
They were watching. One elbowed the other. A joke was made. I didn’t have to guess what was happening. It was the classic high school nonsense. They were daring each other. Making bets about who was going to get between those thick thighs.
A muscle in my jaw twitched.
“Problem?” Felix asked, following my line of sight.
“Just some dickheads trying to decide if they want to bother her.”
“You going to do the white knight thing?”
“I’m going to do the bartender thing. Make sure everyone feels safe.”