“I … Sure.” She set two red wineglasses on the bar, then fixed a wine keeper on the bottle after he’d poured.
“Booth.” He gestured, walked over, and sat.
When she went over to join him, sat, she let out a sigh. “I do remember how to sit. It’s been awhile.”
“You’re entitled to breaks during an event.”
“Yeah, Tricia and I worked them out.” But it felt damn good to just sit. She sipped the wine, sighed again. “Do you do this a lot? Sit in an empty bar?”
“No. You?”
“Actually, yeah. Not drinking Cab, especially this label, but an empty bar has its own personality. This one’s quiet comfort with a touch of subtle elegance. It’s nice.”
He shouldn’t ask; he didn’t like small talk. But he asked anyway because he wanted to know.
“Why bartending?”
“Well, I get to hang out in bars—and stay sober. I like bars. I like people. You have to when you’re in hospitality.”
“I’m in hospitality. I don’t especially like people.”
She studied him as she drank. Those eyes, she thought, sure knew how to focus in when he wanted to. “That’s crazy. You have to work with people every day.”
“Point made.”
“Well, I like people. Working behind a bar’s a busy place, but it’s usually a cheerful one. People come in because they’re ready to unwind or celebrate. You’ve got your lonelies who just want someone to talk to. That’s what you’re there for. Why do you come in on Friday nights, especially Friday nights when the bar’s going to be crowded, if you don’t like people?”
“Come into a crowded bar for a drink and it’s not likely anyone’s going to try to talk to you. I can get some work done, unwind, and have a glass of wine. Come in when it’s not crowded? Somebody’s going to try to start a conversation. ‘Some weather we’re having,’ ‘How about those Cubs,’ something.”
Aha, she thought. Now she got it.
“You use your phone as a force field.”
He smiled a little. “I use it for work, and yeah, it doubles as a force field. What I wonder is how you got into tending bar, and, according to—was it Trevor?—have risen to the best bartender in the universe of bartenders.”
“Trevor was flying high,” she reminded him.
“I’ve seen you work, and I know why my mother and sister wanted you on that very demanding event tonight.”
“I waited tables in college. Jesus, that’s hard work.”
Whether it was the empty bar, the Cab, or the company, she felt absolutely relaxed.
“It can be rewarding, but the fact is there are types—and a lot of them for various and situational reasons—who’ll take out anything that doesn’t work for them with the meal on the server. I decided I didn’t want to waitress for a living or run a restaurant.”
She settled back, sipped again. “Profit margins in restaurants are wafer thin. You make the money at the bar. For strictly cynical reasons, I took a bartending class and I liked it. I liked it a lot. So when I hit twenty-one, I quit waitressing and started bartending, and I liked it even more.”
Feeling easy, she closed her eyes a moment. “The idea was to save up enough, get enough experience and save enough to open my own place. Nice little neighborhood bar. I had about three years to go, by my careful calculations. And then…”
She shrugged, sipped a little more.
“Yours is easy to figure,” she continued. “Third-generation hotelier, oldest male sibling in gen three. Ever think about doing something else?”
“Sure.”
“Like what?”
“Indiana Jones. My version of Indiana Jones, the lone adventurer/anthropologist.”
“Every kid who’s watched those movies wanted to be Indy.”
“This was last year.”
She laughed, shook her head. “You’d need the hat. Nobody could pull it off without the hat. But did you want this”—she gestured to encompass the resort—“and all the work that goes with it? Because your family puts in a lot of work.”
“Nothing else I thought about wanting stuck. Yeah, I wanted this. We put in a lot of work because we all want this.”
“It comes across. People who work here like the work and the conditions, so they’re good at it. That comes down from the top. My day job before was a family business. Smaller scale, sure, but it comes to the same. And the bar where I worked last, good management. The one where I worked my last year of college, I can’t say the same. But I learned, and that’s what counts.”