One Night Charmer. Maisey Yates

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СКАЧАТЬ Okay, she hadn’t exactly humbled herself yet. But she was about to. “I just... I need a place to work. Because I had a falling-out with my father, and I’m not living with my parents anymore. But that also means that not only do I need a place to stay, I need a new job, because my job as an office manager type person was at the ranch. The family ranch...” She was the opposite of eloquent right now, and she knew it. What was it about this guy that made her so tongue-tied? It wasn’t the guy. It was just the situation. Bolstered by that, she took a deep breath and pressed on. “Please.”

      “I’m sorry about the situation with your dad,” he said, not sounding it at all. But he said sorry so easily. Maybe it would be easy for her, as well. “But I’m not really sure if you’d be a good fit for the bar.”

      “What? My excellent mechanical bull riding skills didn’t convince you?”

      “That’s about all you have going for you, from where I’m standing.”

      “Ace,” she said, trying again. “I was...not myself last night.”

      “Uppity, kinda snotty. Seems to me like it was probably you.”

      She gritted her teeth, wanting so badly to tear a strip off him with a very sharp word. But that would run counter to her objective. “I was rude.”

      “And?”

      She looked up, curling her fingers into fists, digging her nails into her skin. “Drunk.”

      “Anything else, little girl?”

      He was going to make sure this killed her. Now, if it did kill her, she wouldn’t need a job. She would just need a house to haunt. Maybe she would haunt his ass. “I’m sorry,” she said, the words pulled from her as grudgingly as any words ever were.

      “Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

      “Borderline impossible,” she said. “Can I have the job?”

      “Have you ever waited tables?”

      “Of course I’ve never waited tables,” she said, belatedly realizing that that was just the sort of attitude he had an issue with. “Because I’ve never had the opportunity,” she added, trying to make the words perky.

      “You don’t want to do this,” he said, resting his hands flat on the bar, flexing his fingers in a way that sent a strange sensation down her spine. “I know you don’t. You know you don’t. Let’s not play games.”

      “I’ve looked for work everywhere else in town. I haven’t been able to find it. I’m not an idiot. I have a degree in business from the University of Oregon. I know that I worked for my father, but I did my job well. If you know anything about Nathan West, then you know he didn’t give me anything just because I was related to him.”

      A fact that was driven home by the discovery that Jack was one of their siblings. Their father had given him nothing, less than nothing. A onetime payout to disappear. He certainly hadn’t been made a part of the family dynasty. Then there was Gage. Her oldest brother. She didn’t know all of the circumstances surrounding his leaving. She’d been too young to fully grasp the situation at the time. But she knew it wasn’t because her father was a loving, forgiving man. “I’m not useless. I’m competitive. I’ve done pretty well with my barrel racing, and you might not take something like that seriously, but it takes a lot of grit. A lot of work.”

      “I know it does,” Ace said, a strange look in his eye. “I don’t run a charity, I run a business. I don’t like to hire people that don’t have experience. But if you really want a job, you’ve got one. On a trial basis. You have three weeks to prove to me you can do this. But if you mess up too many orders, or spit in anyone’s food because they make you mad, or mouth off to any of my customers, you’re done.”

      She waited to feel some sense of triumph. Some sense of relief. Instead, she felt nothing more than a grim determination and a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

      Because now it was real. There was no going back. No crawling back to the West ranch with her tail between her legs, begging her father’s forgiveness, even though he’d been the one who was wrong.

      “Sure.”

      “That’s it?”

      “Thank you?”

      He chuckled, that same dark sound she’d first heard last night. There was something strange in his happy sounds, his happy expressions. An undertone that didn’t quite match. Of course, she didn’t have time to try to figure out why his expressions didn’t seem to match his deeper emotions. She could barely sort that crap out for herself. “You don’t have to sound so excited.”

      “Sorry.” That was easier. “Excitement has been a little bit hard to come by these days.”

      “Now that,” he said, “I do relate to.”

      “What do you suggest for that?”

      He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Fake it ’til you make it? Drink it ’til you think it?”

      “Great. I will...use my employee discount to help with that.”

      “There’s no employee discount.”

      “What?”

      “No drinking on the job, either. Working at a bar isn’t actually any fun. Except the part where you’re sober while everyone else is drunk. That is actually pretty funny.”

      “Is it?”

      “Hilarious. In fact, last night, some little blonde girl got up on that mechanical bull and fell on her face.”

      Sierra gritted her teeth. “Ha-ha.”

      “You start tomorrow.”

      “I do? What if I have plans?”

      He shrugged. “Cancel them. Or quit now.”

      She blinked. She couldn’t quite work out what was happening between herself and Ace. There was something. Something that wasn’t neutral. On her end, it was that weird moment where she suddenly thought his hands looked capable. Of all kinds of things. Like pushing a strand of hair out of her face or deadlifting a fallen tree. With him...who knew? It wasn’t really a friendly feeling she got from him.

      “I’ll be here. Just name the time.”

      “Be here at five. Be ready to work.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      SIERRA WEST WAS a problem. A bejeweled, bouncy problem.

      She’d shown up to work on time, which had kind of pissed Ace off, because he’d been looking for an excuse to fire her out of the gate, and that had been taken from him. But she’d shown up wearing a pair of shorts that looked painted onto the skin they covered. And they didn’t cover much. Instead, they did a good job of displaying a lot of smooth, tanned leg. He wondered how the hell she had a tan.

      This СКАЧАТЬ