When two o’clock rolled around the next afternoon, Stella half expected Jace to rap on the door. The man was that kind of wild card. Mostly she appreciated it because Lord knew she had a distinct lack of things in her life that made her feel desirable. Jace Custer did that for her in a big way. She shouldn’t like it so much, especially not when it came from a man who flirted with anything that moved.

She liked it.

So much so that she got a little disappointed when he didn’t show up, perma-grin in place and a towel looped over his forearm. Oh hell no, she wouldn’t have gone to the beach. Not with Jace. Though the scenery would no doubt be spectacular. She might be ruining her eyesight by reading Jodi Picoult and Kristin Hannah until the wee hours of the morning instead of sleeping, but she wasn’t blind yet, and Jace was the kind of hot that could reduce a woman to a blubbering mess with nothing more than a flick of his ridiculously gorgeous eyelashes.

At two thirty, it was clear he’d actually taken the hint that she wasn’t interested. Good thing. Then he might figure out it was a big fat lie because she was interested all right, particularly in what Jace had covered up underneath all his slim-fitting T-shirts. In her defense, any breathing woman would. He didn’t hide the fact that he had biceps to spare spilling out of the sleeves of those shirts, and sometimes she gave him heavy stuff to lift up into the cubbyhole over the bar just so she could watch that little slice of his flat, bronzed stomach appear above the waistband of his cargo shorts.

There was no Saint Stella, and she didn’t plan on applying to be the first. No animals nor small children were harmed with her secret fantasies about what a man built like that could do with a woman who hadn’t had sex in… well too many months to bother counting, and she wasn’t about to start now. As long as he didn’t know she drooled over him, it was all good.

Well, it wasn’t good exactly. She really, really didn’t have any business thinking about her employee decked out on a beach towel big enough for two, lounging about on the sand with his particular brand of naughty smile that never failed to make her simultaneously feel like a pervy old woman and like she could give one of his college girls a run for her money after all.

Most days she tried not to feel anything. Until Jace came along, that had been a slam dunk. That was why she’d set up shop in Freeport for God’s sake—to hide. From herself, from her well-meaning friends and family, from everything. She could work until she dropped into bed and never think about Mike, never dwell on exactly how old Graham would be today if he’d lived—seven was the answer and yeah, she knew down to the day—and best of all, she was too tired to contemplate her neglected sex life.

And then Jace happened. With his enormous brown eyes and the way his lips formed her name. He could make her sweat sometimes simply by laughing at one of her jokes. If she’d had half a brain, she could exorcise that man easily by ordering a vibrator and naming it Jace. Instead, she pretended she could deal with it. For the past couple of months, she’d been constantly running into the wall of testosterone in her bar that had become increasingly harder to ignore.

Last night, she’d actually imagined herself saying yes to the beach, assuming it had actually been a legit invitation and not more of his absentminded flirting. What would it hurt? They could hang out for thirty minutes or however long enough it would take for Jace to get bored with her, and that would be that. He’d be done trying to seduce her into believing he was actually interested in a hollowed-out shell of a woman in her mid-thirties who wanted nothing more complicated in life than to sleep through the night one time without waking up in tears.

Yeah, Jace could flirt and act like he had a clue what to do with a woman like her, but he really, really didn’t. A guy like him? Life was all fun and games and rightly so. He should be burning the candle at both ends, having lots of sex with pretty coeds and doing exactly as he pleased. Whatever it took to keep his amazing smile plastered across his jaw for as long as he possibly could. He deserved that. He did not deserve to be dragged into the dark realities of human existence, and she’d gouge out her eyes before she’d do that to him.

Right now Jace Custer was her happy, hotter-than-hell, wholly untouched bartender, and she planned to keep him that way.

Every day, Stella passed the hours until it was time to open the bar with backbreaking work. The more she kept herself occupied, the less the hamster wheel in her brain had the opportunity to churn through the crap lurking there, just waiting for the slightest bit of downtime to whack her with grief and memories.

The Crow Bar was her salvation. She shoved her feet into flip-flops that were actually more comfortable than the tennis shoes she’d throw on later. Drunken tourists like to drop glassware, and her concrete floor liked to shatter it. Some of the patrons even apologized, but their chagrin and embarrassment didn’t change the fact that closed shoes were a must. She hoofed it down the flight of stairs that hugged the backside of the two-story building. The apartment above the bar had been a godsend, exactly what she’d been looking for when she’d fled St. Louis five years ago.

The rent was cheap, she didn’t have to share it with someone who constantly asked if she was okay, and she didn’t have to continually lie about the answer.

The glass wall stayed shut for now, which was a shame. The fresh air would be nice, but she made do with the natural light, humming as she cleaned the floors with a bleach-and-lemon combo that was probably overkill, considering that the stained concrete would be used as an ashtray and a spilled drink catcher soon enough. Didn’t matter. She’d cleaned it the same way every day and probably would until the day she died.

This was her life now. She’d been divorced longer than she and Mike had been married, which was its own kind of surreal. No one dreamed of being divorced when they were growing up, but then she’d never dreamed she’d own a bar in the Caribbean either. It was the one good thing that had come out of tragedy.

The mop handle slipped from her grip as it hit an area with enough sticky margarita mix to glue an elephant into place. That’s when she noticed someone peering into the bar through the glass wall, which was exactly the reason she didn’t roll it back until the bar opened; people liked to drink at all hours of the day while on vacation, and some of them weren’t too happy about being told she wasn’t serving yet. The baseball bat under the register wasn’t there so she could swat a few balls when she got bored.

The someone wasn’t leaving.

Stella slipped through the side door to see if the someone was lost or looking for trouble. Freeport in all its busy, vibrant glory burst through her, settling some of the messed-up stuff that had rolled through her when she’d started letting herself think about Jace. She did love it here. There was no other place on earth that could have lightened the blackness that had plagued her since they’d told her Graham was stillborn. The hours and hours of difficult labor hadn’t ended in a sweet baby she could nestle in her arms, and she and Mike didn’t get to bring Graham home to live in the nursery they’d lovingly furnished. Her fault. She’d known something was wrong but waited until Mike pulled into the driveway at 6:05 that evening before rushing out to instruct him to take her to the hospital.

No more of that. She’d finally pulled herself out of the depression that had been her reality for so long, and she was not doing that again.

The someone was a thirty-something hipster, who was still peering into her bar like a stalker.

“We don’t open until seven,” she called out. The sea breeze ruffled Stella’s ponytail, pulling long strands free to lace them through her lashes. “Can I help you?”

The man swung around to face her, skinny jeans and all. He had a man bun and a long, scraggly beard that he’d braided, then capped it with a bright yellow rubber band to hold it together. Hipster was an understatement, but she checked her eye-roll. He’d start out with gin and tonic because he’d read something that had come up in his newsfeed about what sophisticated people drank, but then he’d switch to hard lemonade because it was more hip and a girl had come in that he wanted to impress. She’d never quite worked out whether guys like him actually liked anything they drank or if it was all for show.

“Just checking out the competition,” he said easily with a wink that put her on edge. “Are you the owner? Stella Chase? I’m Irving Bond.”

He stuck out his hand, and warily she shook it. A man who’d gone to the trouble to find out her name before she’d had the benefit of knowing his purpose didn’t sit well. His firm, solid grip held hers a beat too long. I’m the man here, and don’t you forget it.

“Competition? There aren’t any other bars in this neighborhood.”

On purpose. She hadn’t plopped down her share of the equity from the house she’d bought with Mike and then sold during the divorce proceedings on a whim. She’d scoped out Freeport well before committing to this location. The Crow Bar wasn’t a success by accident. She catered to a local crowd during the week: resort staff, airline crews on layovers, other ex-pats who’d come to the Caribbean for reasons of their own but whose money was always good. On the weekends, the tourists drifted over, drawn by the less-kitschy atmosphere and less watered-down drinks. She’d learned to tell the difference between locals and tourists over the years. Usually.

Mr. Bond nodded with a smarmy smile. “Not yet. I’m opening one. Across the street.”

Stella followed his head jerk to the empty warehouse that had formerly held bananas and other produce as it came off the docks but had ultimately proved to be too far from the water to be efficient. It had been abandoned for a long time.

As she took Mr. Bond’s measure again, she liked him a whole lot less. This was her territory. She’d worked ninety-hour weeks to build up the reputation of the Crow Bar as a laid-back watering hole with zero pretension. Whatever this hipster’s agenda, he wasn’t her competition.

“That’s nice,” she said and let the frost come out to play in her tone. What was he looking for, her approval? “Seems a little odd to open a bar directly across from an already established one. And maybe a little confrontational.”

Why else would he come by and introduce himself? It was a throw down, a flat-out declaration of war. May the best bar win. And she intended to.

He shrugged. “Just business. It’s a marketing staple. You want to give people a choice, right?”

As long as they chose the Crow Bar, sure. “They have choices. Drink at the resort or at my place.”

But they might not choose either if they had a third option. The first wheel of panic spun through Stella’s stomach.

A lot of businesses could depend on customer loyalty, but when tourists made up a good portion of her clientele, she knew better than to assume the Crow Bar could take the competition. She couldn’t afford to be arrogant. If this new bar drew away even a quarter of her customers, it would cut into her bottom line, and that was not an option. She’d worked too hard to let an upstart take business from her.

The Crow Bar was her baby. The only one she’d ever have. She’d nurtured it into being, breathed life into it. Patched it up when someone got a little too rough. It was hers alone. Every time she was inside its walls, she felt the first stirrings of peace, something that she’d never been able to capture in St. Louis. No, she wasn’t fixed. Nothing could do that. But this was where she could function.

“Open a bar someplace else, Irving. This area is mine.”

She spun and strode away from Irving Bond before the ugly cry working its way to the surface broke loose. When frustrated, she cried. As curses went, it sucked, but there you go. If there was a way to make it stop, she would. No one needed to know what was going on inside her, and she hated that her stupid tear ducts couldn’t take a little bit of stress without welling over like a broken faucet.

At seven, she opened for business, tended the bar by herself because it was Jace’s day off, and pretended like her biggest objection to him not being around was because it was double the work. It shouldn’t feel like such a crime to notice how cold it was when his sunny smile wasn’t around to warm her up. He made her laugh at the dumbest things, mostly because she was already in a better mood whenever he was behind the bar.

That night, she achieved her goal of being so tired that her insomnia didn’t cause problems. She fell into bed and slept. Until nine a.m.

At that ungodly hour, Irving Bond made his presence known. Work trucks pulled up across the street beeping and rumbling their meaty engines in complete lack of consideration for the fact that she’d gone to sleep at four.

Blearily she watched the nightmare across the street unfold through the window that was supposed to have a view of the water, but she had to squint too hard to see it beyond the end of the street. Mr. Bond himself strolled around outside the warehouse like the lord of the manor, sticking his hipster face into the business of renovations as if he planned to direct every last workman himself.

She really didn’t like that guy. Something about him crawled across her last nerve.

Since she was up, she did some online spying of her new neighbor, who—she learned—owned a string of bars in Manhattan, the kind that had slick, new money oozing from the wall joists. She clicked on some of the pictures, and oh dear God, was that a girl dancing on top of the bar? More pictures of scantily clad women who were clearly hired for their spectacular cleavages did not improve her mood.

Neither did the task of setting up her own bar, normally her go-to method of coping. She mostly had her depression under control, and she didn’t like the status quo being upset. She refused to go back on medication, refused to even peer over the rim of the pit she’d fallen into after the divorce.

Jace strolled in at six, his big, beautiful body sucking all her attention away from the bar in zero point zero seconds. God, even the way he walked was sexy. His hips had this little sway that said he knew how to move them, and he backed that up with a wicked gleam that permanently flashed through his gaze as if he constantly had sex on the brain. He was so much of a player that it bled from his pores. It should be appalling. Not appealing. But that didn’t change the fact that Jace Custer had that look about him like he knew his way around a woman’s body.

Not that she’d ever find out how doubtlessly true that was.

“What are you doing here?” she called crossly and bobbled the jar of cherries in her hand as he got entirely too close, crowding into her space that was already full of a woman who didn’t need that much male heat confusing things.

He’d cut his hair, and it swept back from his forehead in a drool-worthy style that made her want to run her fingers through it. Of course, she always wanted to do that no matter how long it was.

“I work here,” he returned easily with one of his smiles that made her spine tingle as he plucked the cherry jar from her fingers, setting it on the counter behind her. “Or at least I did last time I checked.”

“You’re off today. Something about a birthday?” she reminded him.

Twenty-seven, as he’d informed her Saturday night. That’s how old she’d been when she’d gotten pregnant. At twenty-seven, she’d been married for two years. Why did he seem so much younger than she’d felt at his age?

Jace shrugged, his shoulders bunching under his shirt, and she hated that she couldn’t tear her gaze from the movement. What was wrong with her? He was just a man. A prime specimen of one, sure. But the Caribbean was full of them, his friends included. When the gaggle of former SEALs showed up, women tripped over themselves. Of course, the other five men didn’t darken her door as much as they used to now that Jace’s friends were mostly settled into relationships.

“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend my birthday with than you,” he said, his brown eyes latching onto hers with something spilling through them that shouldn’t be so affecting.

Gah, she was not a wide-eyed newbie. She did not fall for polished lines delivered by a smoother-than-silk man. Why was it so hard to remember that he was a flirt? This was nothing but a game, and he probably said stuff like that to every woman who threw herself into his path.

“Not even your buddies?” she countered. “Charlie’s your best friend, and I know Audra thinks of you as a surrogate brother.”

“All true statements.” He didn’t blink. “Still like you better as a big two-seven companion.”

“You don’t need to hang out here on your day off. I see more room keys slide your way than credit cards, so don’t act like you don’t have your choice of female companionship.” But when she went for the full sweep around him, giving his solid body a wide berth, he just stepped into her path, arms crossed over his delicious torso. Do not look up, do not look up.

“I have a bar to open, Jace.” She looked up. And cursed her weakness. Now she was stuck in his gaze as if she’d stepped in honey. It spilled all around her, thick and rich and so sweet.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly. “Something happened.”

Oh God. Surely he hadn’t picked up on the Irving Bond nightmare. “What? Nothing.”

Good. She could still lie to him after all. But then she nearly bit off her tongue as Jace’s hand unwound from his bicep and reached out to slide along her jaw, fingering a strand of hair from her face that had rebelled against the ponytail at her crown.

“You’re wound up. I can tell.” His hand dropped away so much sooner than she’d have said she was ready for his heat to vanish.

“Eh.” She shrugged, super keen to keep him from guessing how desperately fast she needed to get him out of here. He was in rare form, concerned, focused. Not flirting. It felt less like flirting, but what it felt more like, she had no interest in examining. None. He was not a shoulder to cry on, never mind that she could really, really use someone strong right about now.

Why, because she’d let the hipster upset her?

Screw that. Her spine stiffened. Men were good for opening jars and painting high places but when it came to heavy, emotional stuff? No. Just no. Not in a man’s repertoire and she was way over hoping to find one who didn’t fall apart when bad stuff happened. Jace was a good-time guy with a quick smile, who wasn’t even using his best feature because he’d clued in on her stupid angst over slick money parking in the warehouse across the street. Worry didn’t work for Jace—it ruined the lines of his face.

She smiled and gave herself a mental high five when it didn’t crack. “It’s nothing. I got a little bent out of shape over a visitor I had yesterday. I’m fine.”

“Tell me while I get the bar prepped.”

Rolling her eyes did no good as he’d already turned to stock the beer refrigerator. Usually her job. But he’d stolen it from her on purpose so she’d have nothing to distract her as she regaled him with the tale of Irving Bond. So she spilled. Why not? He’d find out eventually anyway. “A guy from the States is opening a new bar across the street.”

“Say what?” Jace glanced up from counting the bottles, instantly losing interest in his self-appointed task. “Right across the street? That’s why all the trucks are blocking traffic?”

She nodded. “Since nine a.m.”

The glass wall provided a nice window into the activity, framing the renovations in a way that was impossible to ignore. Workmen had carried piles of wood from the interior out into the sunshine, dumped their load into a metal bin, and did a return trip. For hours. The time she’d spent watching it would have been better spent doing something more productive like bashing her head against the concrete floor.

“Jackass,” Jace grumbled. “There are literally a thousand other places to open a bar in Freeport. He picked that spot on purpose.”

“Yeah, he pretty much told me that.”

Impressed that Jace had picked up on the nuances, she risked leaning on the back shelf that held open liquor bottles and crossed her arms, mostly to keep them off the boxes of beer bottles lying untouched at her feet. Jace knelt by the open refrigerator, oblivious to the fact that electricity wasn’t free and neither was Freon, but she gave him a pass for no other reason than because he’d properly assessed Bond’s ass-like qualities without benefit of having met the man.

“Oh, he did, huh.” Jace’s gaze narrowed. “Hope he likes being crushed to smithereens.”

“Well, that’s not a given—”

“The hell you say. This is war. You and me are gonna take him to the cleaners.”

That widened her smile. When was the last time someone was on her side just because? It was powerful. Far more than it should be. They weren’t a team, not really. Except he was her main bartender for as long as he chose to stick around, and no one else’s name was on the lease but hers.

“That would be… awesome.”

No point in pretending. It would make her year to hand Irving Bond his hipster ass and keep her bar afloat at the same time. She couldn’t go back to the States, and it had taken her a frightfully long time to navigate the Bahamian bureaucracy that required a resident own at least fifty percent of any new business. She’d had to give up her US citizenship just to open the Crow Bar. She was all in.

Jace flicked his fingers in the direction of the warehouse as if warding off a particularly bothersome mosquito. “Piece of cake.”

“I don’t know. His bars in the States are pretty high concept. The bartenders look like they were pressed out from a human Barbie mold.” Stella made a face that didn’t begin to express her distaste for the idea of competing against Bond’s bar with surgically enhanced dancing girls. “He calls his bars the Eye of the Storm, and he’s not above drawing a crowd with a well-placed bit of boobage. It could cut into my business significantly.”

Jace snorted. “Please. That’s the dumbest name on the planet. The eye is the boring part when nothing’s happening, and I’m not above making sure everyone in a five-mile radius gets that. We’ve got this locked.”

What was wrong with her that the sight of a man who looked like Jace kneeling at her feet was so thrilling? His confidence and cocky grin wasn’t hurting anything either. Both were hotter than hell on him, and the burn was starting to seep deeper into her core than she’d like to admit. “Keep talking.”

He flashed her a wicked grin. “Who’s your ace in the hole? Moi. How many times have you told me that I’ve increased your profits just by showing up? I’m only getting started. Sit back and watch me bring the rain, baby.”

She shouldn’t let him call her that. It hooked into a place inside and settled, like it was an endearment that he’d meant instead of a random flirty word that he attached to the end of a sentence because that was how he talked. But there was nothing she could do to deflect the warmth of solidarity.

Against all odds, he was turning her into a convert. The cult of Jace was a dangerous place, surely, but right at that moment, she couldn’t find a thing wrong with what he was saying.

But she couldn’t give in to the illusion he’d spun up out of thin air, like they could be a team, facing the nightmare unfolding across the street together.

“This is my fight, Jace. You don’t have to get into the middle of this.” That had come out so unconvincingly that even she could tell it was a token protest. Because in the middle of everything was exactly where she wanted him.

He did exactly as she’d anticipated and brushed that off. “Stop. This is not one of those times when you’re allowed to pretend you can do it all yourself. This is my fight every bit as much as it’s yours. I work here. If you get put out of business, how will I keep myself in beer and chicks?”

She did roll her eyes then. “I can’t even remember the last time you had a girl waiting on you after a shift.”

Suddenly he uncoiled from the floor, pushing the refrigerator closed with his foot. Finally. It had been open so long that the area where they were standing should feel like a meat locker, but there was nothing cold about the way his gaze branded her skin as he studied her.

“It’s been a while. I lost my taste for oversexed college kids.”

The obvious question about what kind of woman his taste ran to these days rolled along her tongue. Don’t ask. Don’t. Do not engage. “You should find it again.”

“That’s not what I want.”

The intensity dialed up a couple of notches as he cocked a hip against the counter not an inch from her fingers. She should move them. Her pulse beat in her throat, and for one wild second, she imagined stretching her fingers toward him instead of away. Muscles twitched, and she nearly did it, just to acquaint herself with the feel of that hard torso. One small brush of her fingertips would do it, and then she’d know. He’d welcome her touch. He’d been making that clear for weeks.

Insanity. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What if that’s what I want?”

His smile had way too much smirk laced through it, like he had her number and was a half second from calling it. “I’ve never pegged you for the type that would go for college girls, but if that’s how you lean, okay. The next room key I get my hands on is yours.”

God, she was a basket case if that made her laugh, but he managed to pull it out of her just the same. “This is a crappy way to spend your birthday, throwing yourself down on the altar of the Crow Bar like a sacrificial lamb. Though I appreciate it.”

“Sweetheart, the sooner you realize there are no lambs in this scenario, the better off we’ll both be. I’m every inch the big bad wolf, and you’re the only Little Red Riding Hood around here. Guess that means I better get started telling you exactly how much I want to eat you.”

Oh God. She shuddered at the carnal promise dripping from his words, refusing to acknowledge that he’d managed to dampen her panties with such a lame, unoriginal line. But it was all in the delivery and he knew how to bring it. Her active imagination got stuck in an endless loop as she pretended she had a clue what Jace’s mouth would feel like on her, when in reality, she’d never gotten a whole lot of excitement in the bedroom.

Ugh, she was terrible, letting him talk to her like that when she was his boss. This was way beyond flirting. Way beyond safe. How had they devolved so rapidly? “You can’t say things like that.”

“I’ll stop. If you tell me you don’t like it.”

He didn’t move, but his rich, masculine scent wrapped around her, binding her in place. Oh who was she kidding? She’d been frozen from the moment he’d climbed off the floor, loath to miss a moment of feeling something other than cold and dark.

When it came to bringing the elements, Jace was not rain but pure fire, and she knew better than to play with it. But there was a reason people had to be warned off from touching the pretty flames—they mesmerized you, drew you in, promised lovely, erotic things until you were so effectively seduced that you didn’t realize you’d already developed third-degree burns.

And that’s when people got hurt. She’d had enough of that for a lifetime, enough to know that she didn’t want to be responsible for sucking the joy out of Jace’s soul. He was beautiful and untouchable exactly the way he was, like a statue with a big rope around it. Look all you want, but this is as close as you’re allowed to get to perfection.

“I don’t like it. I’m too old for you.” Which wasn’t even the half of it, but it was the easiest excuse to protect them both.

He just grinned. “That’s a matter of opinion, and yours is going to change, though maybe not today. I’m not going anywhere, so let’s get the bar open and talk about our strategy.”

Stella was just beleaguered enough to nod.