In hindsight, arguing with a woman about whether taking her to a housewarming party counted as a date probably hadn’t been the brightest plan. Not when Jace had been slaving for weeks to get Stella to take him seriously. He leaned on the gleaming mahogany bar and watched Stella stock longnecks in the beer refrigerator under the liquor counter, her dark red hair swept up in a sleek ponytail that begged to be undone by a man’s hands. They’d left the party and come straight to the Crow Bar, the watering hole Stella owned in Freeport, where Jace tended bar while trying to figure out how to get her to see he wasn’t the player she thought he was.

Jace had walked away from the US Navy alongside the remnants of his former SEAL team in search of a place to call home. He hadn’t found it as a co-owner of Aqueous Adventures, the excursion company the six of them had started in the Bahamas. Everything about the Crow Bar, however, fit the bill. Including Stella. With her, he felt like a part of something bigger than himself, and she held the keys to his future. Or rather, she would just as soon as he presented the idea that his bartending position wasn’t as temporary as they’d both thought.

In his defense, just being in the same room with Stella put his brain through the blender, and at the same time, she energized him, lighting a fire in his belly to seek new ways to get drinks into the hands of customers. She was a force to be reckoned with, canny about her bottom line, and hands down the sexiest woman he’d ever met.

Yeah, he had a huge crush on her. And her business acumen.

The bad case of Stella-itis he’d developed wasn’t getting any better, and his intense awareness of her complicated everything. They worked together. She was his boss. And if he had his way, she’d see him as more than just a bartender soon. Which meant he shouldn’t cross any lines with her, especially not the one that would have turned a housewarming party into a date.

Shouldn’t. Which didn’t necessarily mean the same as couldn’t.

Stella glanced up as she shut the refrigerator door. “You gonna keep standing there looking pretty or what?”

He grinned because he couldn’t help himself when he was around her. She made him smile just by virtue of being in the room even though she hadn’t meant her comment to be flirty. He’d learned that the hard way. “It’s a gift. You’re welcome.”

She rolled her eyes, fighting a smile of her own. “You can save that for the ladies.”

“I always have plenty left over for you.” He winked. This was the game they played. The pseudo flirting was all about the bottom line for Stella, but then what wasn’t? “Whenever you decide you’re ready to find out what all the fuss is about, I’m ready, willing, and eager to indoctrinate you to the cult of Jace.”

Except it wasn’t a game to him. He was serious. Mostly. The paradox killed him on an hour-by-hour basis that he had to pretend it was all meaningless flirting.

“I’ll keep that in mind, sweetie.” She patted his cheek absently, the way she would a cute kid who’d shown up begging for candy, and then she turned to go do something else superhuman and amazing to get her bar ready to rumble on a Saturday night during the height of tourist season.

God, she was like your favorite song come to life. He watched her move for another long moment, painfully aware she scarcely noticed his ogling because, well… she was pretty good at tuning him out. It was as fascinating as it was ego crushing.

“It was too a date,” he called out. What was wrong with him? His Flirty McFlirt routine wasn’t going to get him closer to a permanent spot in the Crow Bar. Only bringing his A game would do that.

She didn’t even pause as she sailed into full speed, sliding stemware into the overhead hanger with one hand and replenishing the supply of kitschy umbrellas by the well with the other. “It was a housewarming party, Jace. Only. A date starts with flowers and ends with something other than a backbreaking shift tossing alcohol at oversexed college kids who come to the Caribbean on Daddy’s money.”

Jace filed that away for some nebulous point in the future when he might actually need info about what counted as a date in Stella’s world. There was a florist right around the corner from the Crow Bar that he’d passed a hundred times on his way from the marina. He could easily duck inside as he came to pick up Stella for this fictional date.

“Why don’t you take the night off?” he suggested, despite knowing good and well she’d rather chew her own arm off than miss a shift. But this was the first time he’d ever heard her say something negative about the bar she loved. He couldn’t help but pick up that thread. “I can handle the register.”

She flashed him a distracted smile. “And do what? Sit at home and stare at the ceiling?”

He shrugged as the conversation veered into no-man’s-land. How would he know what she liked to do for fun? He’d had about as much success pulling personal information out of her as he would asking the ocean why it always rushed up onto the sand only to recede back into the depths. It was a slippery slope; he had a keen curiosity about her as a woman and an even keener need to play his cards right if he hoped to sway her into thinking of him as responsible and trustworthy enough to play a bigger role at the bar.

“Maybe you just need to relax for once. You never take time off.”

“I hate time off. The Crow Bar is mine.”

She said things like that all the time, as if someone had tried to take the bar away from her and she’d clutched it to her chest with both hands, hissing at the interloper. That’s why he hadn’t broached the subject of potential future employment opportunities. Yet. “I know that. But sometimes it’s nice to have help. You can’t do this all by yourself.”

Which was why he was here. She needed him whether she realized it or not. He intended to help her realize it. The more indispensable he made himself, the sooner she’d see him as more of a partner of sorts instead of a cute kid. If she’d give him five minutes and drop her assumptions about him, she might find out there was more to Jace Custer than met the eye. He wasn’t showing up for his own dose of backbreaking shifts behind Stella’s bar because he liked oversexed college kids. Granted, he’d appreciated his share of blondes and brunettes in skimpy halter tops and even skimpier skirts in his day, but that was just a bonus.

He’d come looking for a job in Freeport originally because he’d desperately needed the money while Aqueous got off the ground. He’d stayed because running a bar appealed to him.

And yeah, the owner intrigued the hell out of him. Sometimes it was hard to separate the two.

“Speak for yourself,” she suggested sweetly with raised eyebrows. “I can do everything I need to by myself.”

A slow smile spilled onto his face as she handed him an opening he could not refuse. “No doubt. You’re the most capable woman I have ever met, and I don’t mind telling you how unbelievably sexy that is. But right this minute, I’m sensing you need a demonstration of some things that are better with two people.”

Her own smile widened appreciably as she picked up on his innuendo. “I’ve been solo for a long time, thanks. I know exactly how to handle things by myself.”

“That’s satisfaction, not pleasure,” he countered, grabbing her gaze with his and letting all the nuances of the phrases tumble between them. The sudden intensity ratcheted up a notch. “When was the last time you let a man take care of you?”

Coolly she surveyed him, her eyes shifting to trail down his torso and beyond, cloaking him in awareness of her particular brand of heat. It tore through his gut. Did she have a clue how much she turned him on? She couldn’t possibly. Stella probably didn’t even know how to spell the word tease.

“So this is you volunteering out of the goodness of your heart?” she asked with a fair bit of amusement that colored her rich voice, as if she couldn’t decide which was more adorable: that Jace thought he had a chance with her or that there was a chance she didn’t see through him.

“Maybe.” He eyed her, trying to gauge whether this was one of those times when his fierce attraction to her was about to butt up against his need to change her view of him. “Is it so hard to imagine that I might stand in that line?”

“There’s no line,” she said. “And if there were, you’d be the first one kicked out.”

“Aw, why’d you have to go and make it personal?” He jerked his chin, flipping hair out of his face at the same time. Charlie was always making cracks about how Jace’s longish hair made him look like a spastic parrot. He should cut it. Then would she take him seriously? “You still think I’m too young for you.”

Just like she thought he was too young to manage this bar alongside her. This wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. Nor was it the first time he’d failed to figure out how to move the needle.

She fluttered her lashes at him as she counted bills into the register. “I’ll give you points for not saying I’m too old for you. But the fact does remain that you’re twenty-six and I’m… not.”

“So happens that I’ll be twenty-seven on Monday,” he said, and the naughty grin that stole across his face really couldn’t be helped. She acted like she was ninety years his senior when he knew for a fact that she was thirty-four because he’d rifled through her wallet without an ounce of shame. “I can think of a few ways you could help me celebrate.”

“I’ll just bet you can.” She closed the register with a sharp click and checked the receipt holder twice because she was OCD about anything that had to do with money. Also a fascinating aspect of Stella Chase worth diving into. “Sweetie, I have to open the bar in ten minutes. As nice of a fantasy as Jace and Stella might be, it’s not a thing. The age gap is only part of it. I don’t date.”

“Yet you went on a date with me earlier today. Hmm.” He crossed his arms and adopted a thoughtful stance even as he had to push back on the sharp thrill that raced along his skin. She’d name checked him in the same sentence with her fantasies, and she couldn’t take that back. “I guess that means you make exceptions when it really counts. Noted.”

She laughed, and that did it for him in so many ways, digging into his muscles, priming them to reach for her—which he did not do. He was a lot of things but not that guy.

Stella turned away to roll back the glass that served as the front wall of the bar. The wheels squeaked as they traveled along the worn track and then stuck all at once at about the halfway point. She swore and pushed on it, but the heavy glass and steel contraption refused to budge. Without hesitation, Jace flung up the pass-thru and jetted to her side.

“Let me.”

He didn’t wait for the denial that she’d surely spit out. Stella didn’t like it when she couldn’t do something, but geez, she couldn’t be more than five four. He could throw her over his shoulder with one arm and scarcely notice the extra weight, not that he’d imagined doing exactly that a quadrillion times or anything.

She didn’t move from her position, even when he slid a hand up the metal casing to brush past hers. Her ramrod-straight back couldn’t be more than an inch or two from his chest, and it would be effortless to settle his other hand at her waist, draw her against him, and inhale the scent of her hair.

She’d fit very nicely against him, oh yes she would. His chin would just clear the top of her head, putting her gorgeous rack within easy reach. And if she’d ease back against him like that, she’d find out exactly how hard he was when the wood in his pants hit her dead center.

“Let me,” he murmured again, and hell no, he wasn’t just talking about the wall.

They’d be good together. At the bar. In her bed. All ways. But she chose that inopportune moment to whirl away from the almost-intimate contact that would have proven his point if she’d relaxed that rigid spine of hers.

With nothing else to do but push, Jace put his back into it, and the rolling wall squeaked in protest but in the end, was no match for brute strength built by the US Navy, honed in Iraq, and continually enhanced by regular trips to the gym. His T-shirt sleeves bunched against his biceps as he wheeled the wall into the recessed area built to house it when the weather called for the open-air atmosphere. Which was most of the time in Freeport, thank God.

The oversexed college crowd trickled in along with middle-aged tourists as the sun began to set. The Crow Bar wasn’t on the beach, but it had a pretty good view of the water if you stood right at the entrance by the long table that seated twenty. Jace didn’t have time to stand near the entrance as fun seekers poured in all night long, but the Saturday night crush wasn’t nearly enough to cool the ache in his groin at having been that close to Stella with zero permission to touch her.

Margarita, mai tai, beer, beer, beer, Jägermeister—God, that stuff was vile—more beer. The patrons in the touristy area of Freeport had little imagination, but that was okay. Made the job easy and he loved every minute of it. Funny how his knack for bringing the party to whatever he was doing had segued so easily into his current bartending gig. Who knew the copious amounts of alcohol and flirting he’d indulged in over the years would make him good at this job?

Stella emerged from the back storeroom, carrying a box of napkins that she pulled open with one hand as she walked. Even that was sexy. She never slowed down, never hesitated, never left a task half-done. Never relaxed, never seemed to do anything fun. Granted, she insisted that owning a bar was fun, but for crying out loud. They were in the Bahamas, one of the most beautiful places on earth, and the woman didn’t go to the beach. It was criminal.

Maybe his problem was that he’d gone overboard pretending there was no significance to the sparks between them. He’d always played off his attraction with a good dose of lighthearted banter, largely as a cover. But if she couldn’t take him seriously as a lover, of course she’d never let him touch her business. Somehow he’d missed that point in the midst of all the ego crushing.

“Duchess Island has a stellar stretch of sand where there are no tourists,” he told her as she waltzed by him with enough of a swish that her little T-shirt rode up on her torso to reveal a tiny slice of stomach that made him instantly hard. “Let me pick you up tomorrow. Come hang out at the beach with me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That’s a long trip for you. Isn’t it like thirty minutes each way?”

Forty-five but who was counting? “That’s not a no. If distance is your only objection, I’ll be here at two.”

Stella lived above the bar in an apartment that he’d never seen. Sure it was a long way there and back to the island he called home, where he shared a bungalow with Charlie St. Croix, his former XO, and Audra Reed, Charlie’s fiancée. But he did a round-trip trek between the Grand Island and Duchess Island when he had a shift at the bar already. What was one more, especially if he got to spend it with Stella in a bikini?

Mouth curving up in an amused smile, she shook her head and nodded at the crush beyond the mahogany bar strewn with elbows, half-finished drinks, and cell phones. “Hard pass. There are probably ten girls eyeing you right now, sweetie. Ask one of them.”

“Ask one of them if you should go to the beach with me tomorrow?” He feigned confusion and lifted his hands in mock surrender. “All right. If you insist. Though you should be aware I’m going to keep asking until I find one who says yes. And then you’re stuck with me.”

Stella laughed, and God, no he could not get enough of that rich sound. She laughed like a woman who knew the value of humor, who didn’t fake a blessed thing. Jace had heard enough giggling from chicks he’d picked up over the years to last a lifetime. What was wrong with being attracted to a full-blown woman who knew what she wanted, when she wanted it, how to get it, and made no apologies about any of it?

If he ever did get under, over, or through her firm boundaries, he couldn’t imagine ever letting her go. That alone made the idea of getting involved with her a terrible plan. As cold, hard truths went, it was a doozy of a reminder what was at stake here.

“Jace, if you want my undying love,” she countered, her eyes dancing with amusement. “You’ll focus your attention on that group of customers at the end of the bar who are looking thirsty and determined to rack up a very large credit card bill.”

He saluted with a grin and loped off to take care of Stella in the way she liked best—bar tabs. He wasn’t a dummy. Her profits had increased exponentially since he’d started working here, which he knew because she told him that on a daily basis. He’d always known a healthy bottom line was the key to her heart.

But as he poured jiggers of tequila into shot glasses, he couldn’t help but replay that point through his mind. What if it was the other way around? If he was sleeping with her, would she suddenly start seeing him as someone she could rely on? A solid guy she could imagine sticking around permanently? He’d been trying like hell to separate his feelings for her and the bar. What if moving the needle was as simple as combining the two?

Maybe that had been his problem all along. He hadn’t pushed on his attraction to her—not really or he’d be in much deeper with her by now—because he was afraid it would interfere with his business agenda. What if they were one and the same? It couldn’t hurt to switch up his tactics, and besides, something needed to change because he was tired of not fully belonging anywhere. Tired of not being taken seriously by anyone.

Of course, throwing him in a Party Boy box and refusing to let him climb out was a common practice lately. Even his friends and adventure company co-owners, the team of former SEALs who were supposed to have his back, kept picking up the same brush to sling the same old paint on him without bothering to notice that Jace had been trying to change the canvas.

He’d come to the Bahamas to start Aqueous Adventures, but it had never really spoken to him the way the bar did. If he could carve out his place here with Stella, he was convinced that would make him feel like he finally fit into his own life.