CHAPTER SEVEN
Raven
I slid the bolt across the front door and sagged against it with a sigh. Rosanne calling in sick at the very last minute had really fucked us over. It was Friday night, it was the start of summer, and the first night of food.
If she’d called me this morning, I could have had Vicky, the waitress, stay on for an extra hour or two to help us manage the crowd outside of the bar. Instead, I ended up having Parker stay for longer.
Worse: I opened my mouth about my deadly cocktail. The one I rarely made because of its potency, and the one I never freaking named because, well, it wasn’t the kind of thing you yelled about unless you were starring in a fucking porn movie.
Now, he knew about it, and the way he’d looked at me every time since that conversation made me realize that he isn’t going to stop unless he knows its name, too. I didn’t know if it was the way he side-eyed me or that amused yet determined glint that flashed every time I caught him blinking.
Right now, I was choosing to focus on the miracle that we hadn’t killed each other.
And a miracle it was. We’d successfully gotten through twenty-four hours of a legit work day and neither of us had hurt or maimed or even attempted to kill the other. Sure, it’d probably be a different story if we were working in the same room, but we kinda had been. As it was, it was just past midnight and although we’d shut down before I’d anticipated, it was still late.
After all, I’d been on my feet since seven this morning.
And I’d finally been able to check my phone and see that Yia-Yia and Company had touched down in the sunshine state and were now safely tucked into my parents’ spare bedrooms.
There was also a message from my brother asking if he could steal my spare room above the bar.
That was a big, fat no.
Penance for not working for your sister. I warned him, it was real. I just didn’t tell him I’d be the primary deliverer of it. Sibling prerogative, I figured. He deserved it. He knew I was looking for a chef before he got his job in Key West so his excuses were worthless.
As it was, I’d ended up with Parker, and as much as I might have hated that fact, I couldn’t deny the endless stream of compliments I’d gotten on the food tonight. Everyone who’d ordered had loved every mouthful they’d had, and I was equal parts happy and still terrified.
Happy because I knew that meant I was set for a while. Terrified because he’d still leave one day and then...Well.
“Tired?” Parker asked me, perched on a bar stool with a finger of whiskey in front of him.
I nodded twice and pushed off from the door. “I have to count the tips. Hold on.” I retrieved the mason jars with our names on from beneath the bar and set them on top of it.
“Want help?” Parker motioned to Sienna’s jar.
I nodded again. “Take twenty percent when you’re done. That’s for Vicky.”
“Vicky?”
Oh dear god. “The waitress. The person whose face you’ve seen fifty thousand times tonight.”
“Oh.” He took hold of the mason jar and tipped it upside down, scattering notes and coins across his immediate area of the bar. “I forgot her name. She became Food Girl after a while to us.”
It took every ounce of my strength not to roll my eyes. Fucking Food Girl was the most ridiculous thing I’d heard in ages. “How did Wes do? I didn’t get a chance to ask you earlier.” I stacked twenty dollars in ones to the side.
“He did good. I’m surprised, not gonna lie. I thought he’d be a fucking mess, but he did great. No complaints, no issues, nothing.”
“Good. Did he actually cook at all or did you monopolize that?”
“He took control of the calamari toward the end,” he said, pushing some ones to the side. “Something little, but he’s basically still in his workplace diapers. He took to it well. He makes a pretty mean batter.”
“I’ve made a mean batter since I was fifteen. What’s your point?”
“You were taught to cook by the same person I was. That’s my point.”
It was a relatively strong one, too. My mom was, hands down, the best cook in the world. She could cook any cuisine to perfection, and it wasn’t that she’d been trained, because she hadn’t. She’d recently discovered the brilliance of YouTube, and apparently, that was encouraging her to broaden her horizons.
I didn’t know how much further hers could broaden given that she was proficient in Greek, Mexican, Italian, French, and German cuisine, but whatever. It was her spare time, and as long as she still made me gyros when I asked for it, I was good with that.
“Fair enough, but Mom is crazy good in the kitchen. You can’t hold everyone to her standard,” I reasoned.
Parker caught my eye and said, “If she hadn’t held me to her standard of cooking when I was a teenager, I’d be flipping burgers in a taco truck.”
“Taco trucks don’t flip burgers. And they make mean tacos, so watch your mouth.”
“Isn’t that cultural cheating?”
“Do you want me to throw this quarter in your mouth and choke you?”
He burst out laughing. “I think I’ll pass, thanks. Here.” He slid me a pile of notes and change. “That’s twenty-percent of what Sienna took tonight.”
I hesitated. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, but... “Are you sure?”
One by one, Parker counted out the notes from Sienna’s pile, followed by the ones from Vicky’s percentage. He nailed it, as close as he could get, and I tucked that money into an envelope along with the money from my tips to give to her tomorrow.
“Thank you.” I sealed the envelope with a lick and scrawled her name on it. It went inside the register to keep it safe until I headed upstairs—then it’d come with me. I hated leaving any kind of money in the bar. Only one lock separated my apartment from the bar, but that one lock was just a little more safety in the path of anyone trying to do bad.
“Done.” Sienna bounded back into the bar, her reddy-brown hair bouncing around her shoulders since she’d freed it from her braid. “Is there anything else that needs doing, or am I good to head home?”
“You’re good to go. Thanks, See. Can you cover for Rosanne tomorrow? I’m gonna call her in the morning,” I added before she could answer. “She’s due to start at eight.”
I declined to mention that my family would be here.
“I can. Just let me know by twelve, okay? I have my niece until six, so I need to make sure my sister or my mom can get her on time.”
“No problem. I’ll call her at nine and give you plenty of time.” I smiled.
She returned it and glanced at Parker. She was almost shy as she tucked her hair behind her ear. “Are you leaving now?”
I leaned a little further forward and hit him with my gaze, too.
Yes, was he?
Was he leaving at the same time as Sienna?
Motherfucker—why did I even care? Aside from the fact I didn’t like workplace relationships, it was none of my business what he did in his spare time as long as he didn’t bring it into work.
But she was work.
Double motherfucker.
Parker held up his basically-untouched drink. “Soon as I’m done with this. You need me to walk you to your car?”
Sienna glanced at me. “It’s pretty dark out.”
No darker than fucking usual, is it?
I busied myself cleaning a glass and turned away. Not my circus or my monkeys or my elephants or my clowns. I didn’t care what happened there and nor should I. As long as it didn’t affect their work in any way, I couldn’t care any less if they dated.
But...Could I stop them? I mean, this was my business. Technically, I probably could.
Damn it, I still didn’t care. Why did I have even the barest reason to care? I loved Sienna and I loathed Parker.
Even if he was kinda really hot now.
Fuck it.
The door opened and closed and a stool scraped. “You’ve been cleaning that glass for five minutes.”
I jerked back to attention at the sound of Parker’s voice. “It was really dirty,” I said, barely glancing in his direction. “Awkward smudge.”
“Right. Your bargirl just asked me out.”
My throat burned with the harshness of my swallow. “Mhmm.”
“Well, she didn’t ask me out, per se.” He paused.
I gave in.
I turned around and met his dark gaze.
“She asked me what I thought you’d think about her asking me out,” he said slowly.
“Is this you asking me what I think about it?” I shot back, finally putting the glass down. “Because while, personally, I think she’d be better off dating a bag of rocks, professionally, I think it’s an even worse idea.”
Parker’s deep chuckled elicited goosebumps across my skin. “I’m not gonna go out with her, Raven. I don’t have to be Einstein to see how you feel about workplace relationships.”
I snapped my gaze to his. “Sienna doesn’t have relationships. She has short-term meetings.”
“In that case...”
I felt my gaze darken before I could stop it.
He laughed again. “Calm down, hotshot. I met enough of her in New York. I’m not looking for that while I’m here.”
“You weren’t looking for this job, either,” I pointed out.
“True.” He sipped his Makers. The glass clinked against the wooden bar when he set it down.
I swept it up and slipped a paper coaster with the logo on beneath it. His amusement was evident in the upturn of his lips, but he didn’t say anything as I wiped up the water mark from his glass.
“I don’t think you can compare a job and...something personal. This job pretty much fell into my lap.”
I raised my eyebrow at him. “I know Sienna, and if she falls in your lap, I hope your pants are on or that someone can perform the Heimlich on the girl.”
“That sounds like a back-handed compliment on the size of my dick.”
Of course it was. That’s exactly what he heard. Why wouldn’t it have been?
“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say.” I rolled my eyes and opened the glass washer door before its beeping drove me crazy. Given my current tired mood, it wasn’t going to be hard to annoy me.
Ignoring that I was already marginally annoyed for the dumbest reason—which just annoyed me further.
I was a mess.
“Still not interested in meaningless hook-ups.” Parker finished the whiskey and slid the glass across the bar to me, making sure it was on the coaster.
I snatched it up. “I don’t really care what you do. Where you put your cock is none of my business.” Yanking the tray out of the washer, I stared at him out of the corner of my eye. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with your job, shove it wherever you like.”
His lips tugged up, a hint of smugness breaking through the genuine half-smile. “Was that an offer?”
“So help me, Parker, get your ass the hell out of my bar before I hit you.”
He grabbed his stuff, laughing, and headed for the door. “See you tomorrow.”
“Unfortunately.” I yelled the word after him, and the second the door clicked shut, I scrambled from behind the bar to lock it.
One look around the quiet, empty bar, and I made an executive decision to grab the register and do the money upstairs tonight. It was late, I was tired, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, my stomach had twisted every single time Parker had mentioned his penis.
I wanted to throw up at the thought of him and Sienna together.
And I didn’t want to think about the ramifications of that at all.
***
Waking up after a dream about walking in on your gorgeous employee having sex with your brother’s best friend wasn’t something I’d advise.
Actually, I advise not having such a dream at all. It was disturbing and uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to address the hard-hitting anger I’d felt when I’d woken up from it.
Even now, an hour later, I was still annoyed. I didn’t know if it was a warning from my subconscious or some screwed-up dream designed to torture me and admit that I maybe had the slightest crush on Parker Hamilton.
As long as he kept his mouth shut and had a paper bag over his head.
It was unfair. My entire life I’d gotten by happily hating him, him happily hating me, and both of us co-existing in a state of basic avoidance, not even trying to ignore each other when forced together.
I liked that. It was easy. It had always been the status quo of our relationship—mainly, there wasn’t one.
Then, this curveball happened. Now, I’m forced into spending more time with him than I’m truly comfortable with, and every time he switches that dumb little smile onto me, I’m not gonna lie, I get...tingly.
I’m a woman. I have needs. I also have feels, and these feels are fucked up.
Add in Sienna’s obvious crush on the guy... I was between a rock and a hard place. Sadly, the rock wasn’t a wall and the hard place wasn’t Parker.
Wait.
What?
No. That’s not what I meant. I meant a guy. Any guy. Any guy except him.
Dear god, I had to get out more. Or I just needed a break. A day off, even.
Something had to give if I was thinking about that.
My phone rang on the bar. Mom’s name flashed on the screen, and my stomach sunk right through my feet and disappeared into the ground. It was earlier than I’d expected her to call.
“Hello?” I answered warily.
“Yia-Yia has decided she’s cooking breakfast at the bar,” came her response.
I choked on thin air. “She’s doing what?”
“She’s making everyone omelets at the bar.”
She was doing what? “Why can’t she do that in your kitchen? It’s huge. Tell her to leave mine alone.”
“No idea.”
“Have you even attempted to talk her out of this?”
There was a rambling in Greek in the background, and Mom’s next words were in Greek, too.
“Oh no,” I said, instantly understanding. “You did not just tell her that I’d love to have her here?”
“The Karras’ are in town. Every woman for herself.” She hung up.
I pinched the bridge of my nose before dialing back. She answered on the first ring, and before she could say a word, I said, “It’s not my kitchen! Technically, it’s Parker’s, and he’s not here for another hour, so she’s gonna have to wait.”
Mom coughed, but its suddenness hinted that she was hiding a laugh. “You know if I tell her that she’s going to march right next door, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Like you said, it’s every woman for herself.”
It was my turn to hang up.
I was probably going to pay for that later, but there was nothing Parker could do or say to me that outweighed the potential backlash from Yia-Yia if she thought I didn’t want her cooking omelets in my kitchen.
I didn’t want her cooking omelets in my kitchen, but that wasn’t the point. The woman was old, but that didn’t mean she’d slowed down any. She was like a tiny, five-foot-three hurricane that would take down a building if you didn’t give her what she wanted. Hence my mom’s placation and my diversion.
I wrote down what needed to be filled in the fridges and went to the cellar. By the time I’d picked the stock and carried it back through, my phone was flashing with a notification. One peek at it showed three missed calls from Parker and one text message.
Damn. My grandma was on fire.
I set the crate on the floor and picked up the phone to read his message.
Parker: I thought I hated you before, but this is a whole new level.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I replied.
Me: Good morning, sunshine.
He was going to kill me.
My phone rang again. This time, it was his name on the screen, and it took me two rings to debate on whether or not to answer it.
I had to, so I tucked my lady balls in and swiped toward the green circle. “Good morning,” I trilled.
“Good morning? What’s fucking good about this?” His voice was low...husky...sleepy. Sexy. Damn it. “Your grandmother just woke me up with fifteen fucking rings of the goddamn doorbell. I barely had time to throw on sweats before she thumped on the damn door and then, when I finally got my half-asleep ass down there to answer it, she stared at me for a full sixty seconds before launching into a tirade in Greek.”
“Was my mom there to translate?”
“No, she was not there to translate, and she didn’t need to be.” Something slammed. “When she was done in Greek, she started in English about how she didn’t care if I was your chef because she was going to cook her omelets in that kitchen whether I liked it or not. Then, she kissed me on the damn cheek, said it was good to see me, and hobbled off back to your mom’s!”
“At least she was nice at the end.”
“Omelets? I have no idea what she’s fucking talking about, Raven!”
“Ah, well, yes.” I paused. “She wants to cook omelets in the kitchen.”
“Pretty fucking clear on that part. Why did I need to know?”
“I might have informed my mother that it was technically your kitchen and that’s why I couldn’t give her permission.”
He didn’t reply.
“Parker?”
“Of course.” More silence for a second. “You threw me under the big fat Greek bus, didn’t you?”
“Survival of the fittest and all that.” A nervous giggle escaped me.
“When I get there, I’m going to tell her what you did.”
“And I’m going to tell her you’re lying because I’d never do that to her.”
“You don’t want her cooking at the bar.”
I fake-gasped. “How dare you suggest that?”
I was a dreadful person.
Parker chuckled, his ire seemingly relenting. “Ray, I can smell your bullshit from here. I’ll be there in half an hour to supervise her, okay?”
A very undignified snort escaped me. “You want to supervise my grandmother? Do you like your life?”
Nobody shadowed Yia-Yia in the kitchen unless you were under her instruction.
She was kind of a difficult person.
“Fine,” he continued. “I’ll hover.”
“You hover and she’s gonna remove your manhood,” I warned him. “You know what she’s like. Just get here before she does and make sure it’s clean before she loses her ever-loving mind. I’ll put the spare key under the mat outside the door so you can get in.”
“Why? Where are you going? Don’t fucking leave me with your batshit family.”
“To shower,” I said flatly. “I don’t feel like running naked through the bar to let you in in case you get here before I’m done.”
“I would be totally okay with that.”
“Parker. Fuck off.”
On that note, I hung up.