True that . . .
Finally, Velma pulled a pair of serious gloves from her purse, tossed them to Harper, then crouched low and carefully scattered some of the kitty litter around the rear tires. “Pull out slowly, you’ll be fine now. And for the record, Bodie could’ve gotten you out of this with or without the kitty litter.” With that, Velma stood up, dusted a nonexistent speck of dirt from her skirt, and walked away.
Harper got into the car but first had to nudge Ham out of the driver seat. “Fingers crossed,” she said, but the kitty litter indeed gave her traction, and she pulled away from the bush and parked several spots over.
“Let’s try this again,” she said to Ham, and they got out. Now that her panic and adrenaline rush had receded, she took a moment and looked around. She’d checked out a lot of places when she’d been online shopping for a place to lease. The four buildings in front of her had stuck out. In the pics, they’d been lit up like a postcard for holidays at the North Pole. The second building had been available, and she’d immediately signed the lease without a single ounce of doubt.
That had come later. In buckets.
The pictures hadn’t done it justice. The cottage-style buildings were connected by a cobblestone walkway that wrapped around pine trees, each of them lit with twinkle lights, looking like she’d just stepped into some long-ago Swiss Alps village, complete with pitched roofs with front gables and wide eaves and exposed rafter tails. There were faux balconies and balustrades as well, the walls stone with wood accents, all of it welcoming and warm and . . . perfect.
The first building had a wooden sign that read olde tahoe tap and it was busy, even this late. The next one, hers, was dark, no sign. The next two were also dark, but their signs read mountain trails art gallery and the book spot, clearly the bookstore Velma had mentioned.
“Guess what, Ham? We’re home.” It hadn’t come cheap, but she’d been the beneficiary of her mom’s life insurance, and she’d not spent a single penny of it until now. She was a woman with a savings and a business plan—which was to open within a few weeks and be in the black by the end of the year.
The first floor was eleven hundred square feet—the perfect size for a small bakery—and even better, there was a small apartment on the second floor.
Compared to some of the places she’d called home, it felt like a huge luxury.
She and Ham walked up to the front door to peer in the windows, but she couldn’t see anything. Her lease didn’t formally start for a week, but she’d asked to get in early. The plans had been for her landlord to meet her here with the keys, but when she knew she was going to be held up by traffic and weather, she’d called and he’d promised to leave a note on how to get in.
She knew there were three access points to the building: the front door, the back door—which led directly to the bakery kitchen—and there was also a set of exterior back stairs that led up to her apartment. Maybe the note would be on one of the back doors? Turning on the flashlight on her phone, she walked Ham down the narrow alley, grateful to not find a boogeyman or spider, her two biggest fears.
Okay, not true. Her biggest fear was being used, played, then shoved aside, unwanted and unneeded.
Halfway down the alley, Ham stopped. Then hunched, tail up.
“Oh, for the love of—” Harper broke off when two bikes came barreling down the path. It was two boys, the smaller one yelling to the bigger one, “Don’t crash into the old lady! Watch out for the old lady!”
“Hey, I’m twenty-nine!” she yelled back, stepping off the path in the nick of time. Okay, so she lied by one year, sue her.
The boys on the bikes were long gone by the time she realized . . . they’d run over the steaming mountain of poop Ham had left.
He smiled up at her with pride, and she had to laugh as she pulled out a doggy bag. After she made use of the dumpster at the end of the alley, she used her phone flashlight to look around.
She had a stoop! And there was indeed a sticky note on the back door of her bakery. It made her giddy. She had a bakery! She felt accomplished, and also, for the first time in a long time, like she had her shit together. Possibly an illusion, but she was going to go with it.
The note was short and to the point: keys at the bar.
Hmm. Not exactly chatty. But what had she expected, a welcoming committee? She led Ham back through the alley and then to the front of the bar. Going inside was the absolute last thing she wanted to do. She was tired, and thanks to the weather, her naturally curly light brown hair had turned into a Chia Pet. Plus, at some point during the day, she’d smeared chocolate on her right boob. Yep, she most definitely had her shit together.
She put a leash on Ham, and he shot her a soulful, insulted gaze from his warm chocolate brown eyes.
“I know,” she murmured, squatting to give him a hug. “You’re an angel. But you’re an angel who likes to shove your nose into strangers’ crotches and also sometimes jumps on those same people to demand love. So the leash stays. We want friends, not irritated neighbors, okay?”
Guilty, he sighed and set his big head on her shoulder, nearly knocking her to her ass on the icy cobblestones. With a sigh, she hugged him again, then rose. “I hear Tahoe’s super dog friendly. Hopefully you can come into the bar with me.”
The extrovert of the two of them, he panted his happiness about that plan. He didn’t care that it was 10:00 p.m. and she was freezing cold and exhausted, or that her old friends Panic and Anxiety were brewing behind her eyes in the form of a tension headache. But she’d started this, and she would finish it. She liked to think she was doggedly determined, but it’d been suggested to her that she didn’t know when to walk away and cut her losses.
The bar was busy. There were a bunch of cars and trucks in front of it, and delicious scents slid through the night. Just outside the double wooden doors sat a huge bowl of water on a mat. Next to the bowl was another bowl with doggy cookies. Relief made her knees weak. “I think you’re welcome here,” she said to Ham.
He smiled up at her like, Duh, who wouldn’t want me?
With a snort, she led him inside and was immediately enveloped in warmth from the huge stone fireplace against the far wall, the waft of burgers and fries, and the sounds of music, laughter, and talking.
The place was packed, and for a beat she felt self-conscious about walking in alone. But this wasn’t about being single in a bar. This was about the first day of the rest of her life, and all she needed was one little key. She looked around. There were two bartenders, one at each end, both multitasking: making drinks, taking orders. Both doing so effortless with ease, one smiling and engaged, the other not smiling, giving nothing of himself away.
The latter was the guy from the parking lot, all six feet of hard muscles, thick, unruly sun-kissed brown hair, and questionable attitude . . . and his sharp, see-all gaze had her in its grip.
She told herself to head to the other bartender. The friendly one. But her feet had other ideas, taking her on a collision course with the other one.
Nice Ass, aka Bodie.
Chapter 2
Bodie Campbell watched as Ms. I’ve Got This stepped inside his bar. She was wet, her hair had rioted about her face and shoulders, and she looked uneasy as she hesitated just inside. It didn’t surprise him when their gazes met across the tavern. After all, he stood behind the bar. He expected her to move toward him and order a drink.