I shrugged. “Sure. That’s no problem. I’ll sit here and eat, and whenever you get a chance, you can come say hi. You’re the bartender. It’s kind of like your job to talk to your customers, right?”
Logan cringed as he nodded.
“Is talking to me that bad?”
His gray, almost metallic, eyes widened. As he spoke, he handed me a menu and silverware. “Oh, you’re easy. It’s all the others.” He motioned vaguely to the seats around the bartop. “It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I work day shift,” he said softly.
Mentally, I gave myself one point. I guaranteed if he thought about what he’d just said later, he’d be mortified, but it was nice to know that pushing him to go for coffee the other night had made him somewhat comfortable with me.
Pushing the menu back across the bar surface, I pointed at him. “I want you to pick for me. Yes,” I said firmly when he started to shake his head. “You work here, so you know what’s good, and I trust you. And I assumed you worked days because of your nephew.”
“Partly, but I’ve always preferred days. It wasn’t really a hard shift to get, either. Most of the other bartenders want to work nights for the tips, which would be nice, but as you know, I’m not the best with people. And do you want a sandwich or a burger or something more like a chicken dinner?”
“Some kind of cold sandwich would hit the spot. And I think you’re great with people.”
He was already staring at two women in office attire as they approached the bar, he knocked on the bartop right in front of me. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched him as he worked. He wore another polo shirt with the restaurant logo on it, only in green. It looked nice paired with his khakis, but I really wondered how those long legs looked dressed casually in a pair of jeans. Everything about Logan was broad; his shoulders, his chest, his biceps, and thighs so thick that I bet I couldn’t even wrap my larger-sized hands around one. And those tattoos and that beard had starred in my dreams since Saturday night. I wasn’t into hiking, that being more my older brother’s thing, but picturing Logan out in the wild, breaking us a path with a chop of his hands…hot.
He handed the women who’d sat down two menus, then while he made their drinks, he mouthed down to ask me what I wanted. After he dropped theirs in front of them, he answered a question for another customer, went to the register, then brought me a water bottle. “Here you go. I put in an order for a club sandwich with extra bacon for you, too. It’s delicious.”
“Oh, bacon. The way to my heart.” Logan blinked, so I rushed on, “Can I have a cup with extra ice and some lemon for my water, too?”
“You sure can.” He grabbed what I needed, set them in front of me with a hesitant grin, then walked briskly back to the other end of the bar to help another customer.
Lunch persisted in the same vein. Logan popped over to check on me whenever he had a second and we’d chat for a few minutes until he was needed somewhere else. “How was your sandwich?” he asked as I laid my napkin on the plate in front of me.
“Perfect.” I patted my belly. “This food baby I’m carrying back to work with me was one hundred percent worth it.”
Logan’s lips twitched. “You’re ridiculous. Your stomach is perfect.”
His eyes widened, and since I wasn’t ready to examine why I’d been so impatient to see him again, I asked, “Did you and Jakey have a nice day yesterday?”
Immediately he went into his Uncle Logan headspace. “Yeah, we did. The kid’s comical. He played trains all afternoon and kept running his favorite off the track and over my feet. For some reason, it cracked him up.”
I peeked over the counter, checking out Logan’s feet. “No offense, my friend, but your feet are about the size of a small train track.”
“Gee, how did I guess you were going to say that? Oh, I know, because my mom said the same thing when I told her when I dropped Jakey off at her house this morning.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I say? If it’s the truth…”
Logan muttered, “I’ll be back with your check,” and took off to the computer. He still had a puss on his face when he slammed the small piece of paper down in front of me, but the discount at the bottom spoke volumes.
As the week went on, I’d seat myself at the end of the bar in the same seat at roughly one pm each day. I’d told Logan I’d be back as soon as I had a chance, but instead, I’d been back the very next day. The second day Logan’s eyes had widened in shock. The third day he’d gazed at me warily. The fourth day his face had remained impassive as he watched me stroll across the restaurant to my seat. But the fifth day, I struck gold. Unlike Monday when he’d schooled his features quickly to hide his smile, he let his pleasure at seeing me show with a bright flash of teeth. He finished speaking to the customer he was with, stopped at the computer, and then walked over with my water, pouring it into a full glass of ice with lemon as he came.
“Hello.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said, winking.
“Mhm. You’re having today’s special for lunch. It’s a short rib grilled cheese with onion jam. It’s one of my favorite things on the menu.”
“Oh, I kinda wanted that club sandwich again today.” I totally didn’t. Part of the appeal of coming in each day and letting Logan order my lunch was finding out what he liked and what his food preferences were. My mom always said you could tell a lot about a person by what they consumed, and so far, I’d learned that Logan needed a lot of calories to fuel his body. By Wednesday morning, I’d added on an extra thirty minutes of cardio and cut my meal at dinner in half.
“Seriously?” he asked, sounding a little growly—which, hello hotness. “Every day you tell me to order for you, and the one day I finally do it without you telling me to, you know what you want? Nope. This grilled cheese is too good to miss, and I already ordered it, so you’re going to eat it and be happy about it.” Then he stomped away to the other side of the bar and started chatting with a customer. I was too stunned by my reaction to the low timbre of his rumble to even try to tease him as he went.
“Excuse me,” a sharp, feminine voice to my right said.
I turned to find a black woman in her mid-forties with intricate black braids swept back into a clip, nice black slacks, and a red blouse. By her appearance, she resembled any of the career women I’d seen dine here for lunch throughout the last week, but the stern expression on her face and her rigid stance indicated that she was a manager. “Hello.”
“How did you do that?” she asked, sounding perplexed.
My gaze darted around, then back to her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She stepped closer, but not in my personal bubble or anything, and whispered, “How did you get Logan to have a temper tantrum?”
I snorted. “I wouldn’t exactly call that a tantrum.”
“For Logan it was,” she said, nodding. Crap! I didn’t mean to get him in trouble. “That was marvelous.” She chuckled, her whole countenance changing from slightly scary to friendly in the blink of an eye.