A shivery feeling took hold in me. I found myself edging closer without thinking.
I hadn’t felt like this in a while. Not since—
A stab of anxiety wrenched through me.
The bartender set my drink down. I broke our gaze and took a hasty sip. Connor scooted his stool closer.
“If you don’t come to bars too often, you should watch how much you're drinking,” he said.
“I can hold my own,” I said. The anxiety receded as quickly as it had appeared.
“Good to know.” He took a sip of his beer and eyed me over the rim before lowering the bottle and leaning in further. “I’d feel guilty if I got you sick.”
There was a buzz in my head and all throughout my body, but it had nothing to do with the alcohol, and everything to do with Connor’s proximity.
“I notice you’re not here with your friends,” he said. “Won’t your boyfriend get jealous if you’re chatting up strange men in bars?”
I tensed up, lungs squeezing in my chest. My hand trembled, the liquid sloshing around in my glass.
“Fishing for info? How subtle.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. I put my drink down before I could spill it again.
He noticed a change. He tilted his head, examining me.
“Connor!” A voice called out from the long hallway. “You out there?”
His lips firmed into a frown, but he hopped off the stool.
“Sorry, gorgeous,” he said. “Gotta take off.”
A twinge of regret jumbled together with the apprehension swirling inside me. He took a pen from the bar and jotted down something on a cocktail napkin. He slid it toward me, his eyes oddly serious.
“You still owe me a round, remember?” he said with a parting wave as he strode off toward the hallway.
He’d written down his phone number. I stared at it, contemplating.
I balled the napkin in my fist and left it sitting on the counter as I stood from my stool and left the bar.
Two
If I’d thoughtthe bar was dingy last week, it was nothing compared to the exterior in the light of day. In the evening twilight, it had been possible to look past the graffiti covering the brick facade, the cracks in windows like spiderwebs spreading out from the center of the pane, and the overall run down feeling. In daylight, those flaws were glaringly obvious.
No wonder the new owner wanted to renovate. This building, and the few next to it, were eyesores in a neighborhood with cupcake shops and stationary stores popping up every day.
I knocked on the front door and waited. When it opened, a fresh-faced young woman greeted me with a sunny smile on her face.
“Hi! You must be Quinn Browning?” She stuck out her hand. I shook it firmly. “I’m Jessie. We spoke before. I’m the one from the management team who’s arranging all this. Come in, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
I hadn’t been able to guess her age over the phone but she was younger than I’d thought, maybe early twenties, around my age. She couldn’t have been the new owner, unless she had wealthy parents willing to buy her property as an investment. Her outfit was a plain pair of jeans and a blouse, nothing expensive or brand name as far as I could tell.
I scanned the place with a discerning eye. The bar was much the same as it had been the previous week, albeit less dim with sunshine streaming through the cracked windows.
“I wanted to thank you again for this opportunity,” I said. “I know I’m one of the more junior consultants at my firm, so I appreciate you taking a chance on me.”
“I don’t know if you’ll be thanking me later,” she replied. “This won’t be an easy job.”
“You want to renovate the place, right?” That was what she had said over the phone. “You need a business consultant with an interior design background familiar with customer-facing establishments.”
“Sounds simple, right?” She pursed her lips. “But we’ve been through half a dozen consultants and none of them have worked out.”
