Today officially sucked.

My bartender quit. Again. He was the third one in six months. At first, I thought it was because they kept finding places that paid more, but something about the way Stefan sounded when he called in to tell me he was leaving made me think that something else was going on. I asked if he could give me two weeks, but like the others, he said no. When I threatened the first two with withholding a reference letter, they hadn’t said anything other than goodbye. Stefan, however, had said something about it not being worth waiting.

I didn’t like to think it, but a part of me wondered if it was possible that Mr. Jones from earlier had also paid visits to some of my employees, giving them an ‘incentive’ to leave. Gilly hadn’t mentioned that as a possibility, but I wasn’t sure that meant anything. Not that I worried about her quitting. If she hadn’t left yet, I doubted anything short of a natural disaster would make her go somewhere else. I didn’t know, however, if she would feel like she needed to protect me from the knowledge that someone was trying to buy my employees out from under me.

Then again, maybe it was nothing. After all, if someone really was going after my waitresses, I supposed Ariene would have quit already, and she hadn’t done that.

She’d just called in sick.

As I climbed into the shower, I reminded myself that I told my employees to call off if they were sick because I didn’t want them spreading anything around. It was a good thing that Ariene had.

I probably could’ve convinced myself of that if I hadn’t had Gilly’s voice buzzing in my ear most of the night. As I shampooed my hair, the worst of it came parading through my mind, no better the second time through.

* * *

“I’m just saying, Syll, it’s suspicious.”

I glared at Gilly across the bar. “You think everything Billy does is suspicious. If he’d canceled his plans and Ariene had come in to work, you’d think he was fucking Stefan.”

She tilted her head like she was considering the possibilities. “If I thought there was any chance that your boyfriend was gay, sure, I’d think that was a possibility, but he doesn’t have enough fashion sense to be gay.”

“You do realize that’s offensive on about ten levels, right?”

She grinned at me as she whirled off with a tray of glasses. Considering she was the only one waiting on customers tonight, she was in a damn good mood. It was one of the first times I’d ever been glad that we were half-empty. Then again, Gilly would get to keep all of tonight’s tips, so maybe she did have a reason to smile after all.

As she came back for her next round, she picked up like she’d never left.

“All I’m saying is that it seems strange that Billy’s mom has a raccoon in her attic in January. Don’t those things hibernate? I mean, okay, maybe it was hibernating in her attic, but then it should be sleeping, right?”

I gave her a look. “Do I look like I know anything about the wintering habits of raccoons?”

She shrugged and danced away again.

If I hadn’t been the only person manning the bar and the cash register, I might’ve gotten on my phone to check, no matter how much I tried to tell myself that she was only riling me up to keep my mind off how shitty things were going tonight.

“Come on, Gilly,” I spoke first this time. “You know as well as I do that Billy’s mom is fucking nuts. She could be hearing a mouse and think it’s a raccoon. Hell, she could be imagining the whole thing, or even flat-out lying about it. We both know she can’t stand me.”

“True,” Gilly admitted. She’d been my sounding board more than once when Billy’s mom had pulled this sort of thing before. “But this isn’t the first time he’s canceled plans.”

“Everyone cancels plans,” I countered. “Look, Billy and I have been together for a long time. I’m not going to mess up a good thing by accusing him of cheating on me just because he happened to cancel plans when one of my waitresses called in sick.”

She leaned across the bar and put her hand on my arm, her expression sobering. “Syll, I love you, but you’re smarter than this. You know that this isn’t the only time you’ve had questions, and don’t tell me that you don’t have them now. I can see them on your face.”

“Gilly.”

“What about a few weeks ago, when he came over, and you smelled another woman’s perfume?”

“He accidentally grabbed women’s shampoo at the store,” I said. “And before you tell me that’s lame, he brought me the bottle.”

“Two days later.”

I sighed. “We have work to do and only two of us to do it. Why don’t we table you tearing down my boyfriend for another time? We both know this won’t be the last time you’ll find something wrong with what Billy does.”

* * *

I muttered curses under my breath as I toweled off. I’d hoped that a hot shower would clear my head, but it hadn’t. I was exhausted, but I had a bad feeling I wasn’t going to be getting to sleep anytime soon.

Two hours later, as I stared up at the ceiling, I cursed the fact that I was right and started thinking of ways to get back at Gilly for filling my head with so much shit. At some point, I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, that damn alarm clock was going off again.

I had the strangest sense of déjà vu as I went through my usual morning routine, but that wasn’t really anything new. In fact, feeling déjà vu was part of what made me feel like I was repeating things. The idea alone was enough to give me a headache, but after how badly I slept last night, I already had one.

Since yesterday had been so sparse, and I’d already set out everyone’s paychecks – I had one less now, which was a sort of upside to being left in the lurch, I guessed – I didn’t really need to balance my books. Just the thought of looking at numbers made my head hurt worse, but I knew I needed to get the work done. I’d been doing this long enough that I knew where I could slack off and where I couldn’t. Bookkeeping was definitely a no slacking zone.

It took me twice as long as usual to get through everything, but since there was less of it, I finished in about the same time. With less to clean up, I was able to take my time and still get done with minutes to spare. Not that I had anyone rushing to get inside. This wasn’t the sort of place where people lined up, eager to be first in line. Yesterday’s knock at the door had been a fluke.

Except there was someone knocking at my door again.

I grabbed my broom as I crossed the room. Mr. Jones was going to get something a hell of a lot less polite than a no to take back to his employer. One time, I wouldn’t shoot the messenger, but guys who didn’t take no for an answer were destined to get a broomstick up their–

Everything I was going to say fell right out of my head as soon as I yanked the door open and saw who was standing there.

Sandy brown hair that’d probably never seen anything less than a two-hundred-dollar haircut. Intelligent pale blue eyes. Long legs, a trim waist with a muscled enough torso to make him lean rather than skinny. A strong jaw and features rugged enough to completely eliminate any possibility of him being called a pretty boy.

Well, damn.

“Hello.” He gave me a charming smile that showed off teeth so straight and white that they must’ve paid for a dentist’s new car. “My name is Jax Hunter.”

I knew that name but couldn’t figure out why. My brain didn’t seem to be working at the moment. Shaking his hand just made it worse. I could feel the strength in his grip, but he didn’t try to crush my hand like he had a point to prove, and I suddenly wondered what it would be like to have those hands touching other parts of me.

It was that thought that finally got my brain working again. I had a boyfriend. I couldn’t think like that. Not even if I had Gilly’s voice in the back of my head telling me that Billy checked out other women all the time.

I couldn’t even argue with that point because I’d seen it myself.

Rather than trying to confront my wayward thoughts, I turned all my attention to getting Jax Hunter out of my bar as quickly as possible.

“Why are you here, Mr. Hunter?” While probably better than a what do you want question, that wasn’t exactly the politest way to start a conversation. Still, it was the best he was going to get at this moment.

“I’m interested in buying this bar.”

My grip tightened on my broom.

Was he fucking kidding me?