Dylan (Bachelors of the Ridge #1) (4 page)

Cases of liquor lined the walls toward the office, which was for the three managers and Bill when he was there. The two other managers that I’d be working with would be in the next day. I excused myself to go get a glass of water, and made my way back upstairs, going through the kitchen instead.

It was quiet and immaculate, with long stretches of stainless steel. The guy who would manage the back was doing some inventory stopped to thump me on the back in greeting. We were making small talk about where I’d lived in Michigan when I heard Kat start laughing out in the bar, which I could see through the kitchen window.

I nodded my farewell and walked through the galley doors back into the bar area, taking in the massive space with no small sense of awe. The bar itself was almost an oval shape, dominating the center of the room, placed in a way that no matter where someone would take their seat, they’d have a perfect view of any one of the ten giant screens braced on all four walls. High top tables, large booths set in each corner, and square tables took up the rest of the space. The same metal light fixtures hung above the booths and the high tops, keeping the room looking warm and oddly intimate, despite its massive size.

Feeling the responsibility of my new job, I blew out a long breath. This job was definitely a bigger one than the one I’d left at the Bombay, seeing as the Bombay was roughly half the size of this place. Kat was talking to a young-looking guy in thick-framed black glasses, who weighed about as much as she did, and they were both polishing glasses and straightening liquor bottles.

She stopped and aimed a remote toward what must have been the sound system, and as soon as she waved it with a flourish, the speakers started pounding with
Who Run the World (Girls)
.

Now, some guys might have been loathe to admit that they knew every word of that song. But not me. I had a younger sister and had worked at bars for the last ten years, so I knew my way around Beyoncé. What was new though was the jerky, uncoordinated dancing that Kat started doing to the beat, a tequila bottle in each hand.

Then she started spinning, whipping her head to the side and I caught a peek of some neon pink and blue chunks of hair underneath the blonde. The kid was looking at her with unabashed adoration and I had to swipe a hand over my mouth not to laugh. She started doing some interpretation of the running man, and her slightly off-key singing brought a chuckle from behind me.

Bill stared at Kat with something akin to fatherly affection and I just shook my head.

“Who run this motherfuc-” she yelled out when Bill cleared his throat. Loudly. Kat froze in place, the bottle of Patron hovering just in front of her face, like she was using it as a mic.

She turned in place to face us, her cheeks flushing bright red when she spotted me. The music cut off when the kid hit a button on the remote.

“Sorry, Bill,” she said in a meek voice.

“Just keep it down a bit next time, Kat.”

He went back toward the office and I made my way over to the bar, trying very hard to keep my face even. She gave me a small smile while placing the bottle in its place on one of the higher shelves.

“Can I get you anything, boss?”

“Just Dylan, please.”

The kid cleared his throat and sent me an awkward wave. “I’m Brian. I’m the bar-back.”

“Nice to meet you, Brian.” Kat was still busying herself with the bottles, which were immaculate, and she definitely wouldn’t look my direction. “So, you guys like working for Bill?”

Then she flicked a dark-eyed glance at me, but only for a second, before grabbing an empty glass and filling it with the gun. “Yeah, Bill is the best. He’s fair and doesn’t lose his temper. Flexible with the staff, and always asks our input on stuff before he makes changes.”

“That’s good to know,” I said after taking a sip from the glass she handed me. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

I held up the glass.

“Sure, no prob. Umm, I better go see if Bill needs help with anything.” She was almost clear of the bar when she made a quick pivot towards me. “Oh. Welcome to Colorado, boss. I hope you like it here.”

“Dylan,” I repeated, pointing at my chest. Even when she wasn’t smiling, her lips were wide and covered more area on her face than seemed natural. But when they curved up on the side, it lifted her cheeks. When she did that, I wanted to amend my earlier statement. Kat didn’t look like a doe. She looked like a fairy.

Then she was gone, Brian in her wake, and I shook my head again.

“Thanks,” I said to absolutely no one. “I think I will.”

“
H
oly shit
, man,” Garrett said from the door to my room, where I lay on the bed with my laptop, “I was starting to think I’d imagined you moving here, but then I’d see the shit you leave everywhere and I knew it actually happened.”

I laughed, but he was right. We’d hardly seen each other in the last week and I did have a bad habit of leaving my stuff everywhere.

It probably should have scared me, how quickly the last eight days had gone by. But it was so supremely awesome that I couldn’t even be stressed out. The opening weekend of the bar was smooth and insane in how busy it was, like nothing I’d ever experienced. But Bill had good staff, and the other two managers were helpful and friendly, not that any of us had too much time to make small talk.

Since Bill had shoved me home at one point when I’d tried to stay longer, I’d only put in about sixty hours that first week. So for the first day since I’d gotten to Garrett’s, I’d been off. Completely and totally off, sleeping for about eleven hours the night before and finally catching up with my mom and Casey on the phone that morning while Garrett was at the office, doing whatever busy work his dad gave him at the financial firm he owned.

“I know,” I said, closing the browser of the house search I was doing. “But I’m off tomorrow too.”

“Good,” Garrett said and clapped his hands. “Then you can drink with the guys tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I invited them over to meet you, if that’s okay.”

After plugging my computer in and setting it on the nightstand, I stood and popped my back with a groan. “Who’s coming over?”

“Cole is already here, Tristan and Michael will be here soon. They live across the street.”

I followed him out into the living room, where a guy had his back to us and had a phone up to his ear. And he was tall. Like holy hell tall.

He hung up and turned with a smile on his face. I took his hand and tried not to gape.

“Cole, this is Dylan. Dylan, Cole.”

“Nice to meet you, man.” I peered up at him. “How tall are you exactly?”

Garrett choked on a laugh, and Cole gripped my hand tighter, staring down at me in a way that kinda made me want to piss myself.

“Maybe I hate being asked that more than anything.”

I swallowed, very much not wanting to feel like a dick for asking, but I pushed a smile on my face and tried to extricate my hand, but he just clamped down with his massive giant hands.

Then he burst out laughing and let go of my hand. “I’m just kidding. I’m six-seven.”

I shoved at Garrett’s shoulder when he doubled over in laughter. “Not funny, dude.”

Cole clapped me on the shoulder and walked into the kitchen. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Can I grab you a beer?”

“Yeah,” I said, flexing my hand. “Man. Six-seven. I’m six-two and don’t know that I’ve ever felt so short.”

“And you know what’s crazy?” Garrett asked, picking up his pint glass from the granite island behind him. “The amount of women that hit on him, despite his giant status.”

Cole sighed and handed me an India Pale Ale from a local brewery that we also had on tap at The Divide.

“No, I’m serious,” Garrett continued. “Short women, tall women, sisters, married women—”

“That happened once,” Cole interjected at the mention of married women.

“—
including
married women whose husbands are in the next room when they hit on him.”

I choked on my beer and Cole rolled his eyes. The front door opened and two guys who looked a whole helluva lot alike walked in—only one had longer hair—both with the same eyes and strong noses.

“Dylan, meet the brothers Whitfield, Tristan and Michael.”

Michael, the one with short hair, nodded and Tristan, with the man bun, reached out to shake my hand.

“Did we miss anything good?” Michael asked.

Garrett shook his head. “Came just in time. I was explaining Cole’s issues with women to Dylan.”

The brothers Whitfield just nodded and went about getting their beers, so this was clearly a normal occurrence. Cole had taken a seat at the table and covered his face with his hands, elbows braced on the mahogany.

“It’s okay,” I said to Garrett. “Maybe I don’t need to know.”

“Yes you do,” the brothers said in unison.

Okay then.

I took a seat next to Cole and he just shook his head, still not looking at any of us.

“Now, with what I just told you, you’d think that since he’s drowning in pu—”

“Don’t say it,” Tristan growled at Garrett.

Garrett held up his hands in concession. “Tristan hates it when I use the ‘p’ word. Fine. You’d think that since he was drowning in
women
, he’d have someone, right?”

“Uh…”

“But he’s doesn’t,” Garrett continued. “And I’d ask if you wanted to guess. But you won’t be able to.” Cole sighed again, finally lifting his head and giving Garrett a level look that was thoroughly ignored. “It’s because he’s in love with his ex-wife.”

I scratched the side of my face. “Okay.”

“The reason I tell you this,” Garrett continued like he didn’t sound like a crazy person, “is because we’re going to need to know where you fit in this little group that we have. Each one of us plays a role, you see.”

The long drink of beer I took was nowhere enough, even though I’d just about drained half the bottle. Michael and Tristan took the seats opposite of me, their actions so identical that I wondered if they were twins.

“I’m the happy bachelor. Don’t need a girlfriend, but I don’t sleep around either. Michael is the player.” After Garrett said it, I looked at Michael, who grinned unrepentantly. “I’ve just told you that Cole pines after the woman he can’t have. Tristan is the vault. We don’t know nothin’ about nothin’ with him, because he only speaks about four hundred words a day.” Tristan raised his brows in concession, taking a drink from his bottle. Garrett took the seat at the head of the table, finally gesturing to me. “Which just leaves you.”

“You are worse than a pack of girls, Garrett, I swear.”

“Are you gay?”

“No,” I said firmly. “I am very much straight. I just … don’t really have time for relationships.”

“The workaholic,” Michael said, nodding slowly. “I can see that.”

“Dude. I met you like eight seconds ago.”

He shrugged and smiled. “I live across the street. Your truck hasn’t exactly been here much in the last week.”

“I’ve barely put in sixty hours this week. That’s
nothing
.” I turned to Cole, who finally looked happy again. “I feel like I should apologize for not stopping this train once it got started.”

“Hey,” Cole said with raised hands, “I don’t care now that he’s done talking about me. He’s made all of us have this conversation at one point.”

“You are so strange,” I said to Garrett. “And I cannot wait to move out of here, honestly.”

“I can help with that,” Cole said, then pointed at himself. “Realtor.”

“Can we go look at something now? Immediate possession maybe?” I asked.

“So no serious relationships?” Garrett continued, undeterred.

My head fell back onto the chair behind me and I thunked it on the hard wood a few times.

“Might as well answer,” Cole said. “That way we can play cards.”

“Fine,” I said on a sigh. “I work too much to try and make something work, and it’s been a long time since I’ve met someone interesting enough to make me think it was worth attempting since most women can’t handle how much I invest into my job. And I have no problem being single. There. Happy?”

“Yup,” Garrett said, popping the ‘p’. “Now can we quit talking about women and play some fricken cards already? Geez.”

* * *

T
he idea
of two days off had been nice in theory, but by mid-day the next day, I found myself driving to work anyway. The roads felt familiar by now, not that I’d veered off the path from Garrett’s to work a whole lot, but I planned on changing that.

When I’d woke that morning before eight, I had all these grand plans to drive up to Red Rocks, maybe even go check out downtown Denver, see Union Station. But I didn’t really want to do those things by myself, not just yet. All the guys worked more typical schedules, with evenings and weekends off, with the exception of Cole, who had strange hours like me.

And as if my thoughts had conjured him, my phone rang from the passenger seat and flashed his name.

“Hey, man. What’s up?” I said once I’d wedged the phone between my shoulder and my face.

“We never talked about finding you a place again last night, but I had an idea I wanted to run past you.”

“Shoot.”

I heard some shuffling papers in the background and a few clicks on a keyboard. “If you didn’t think it sounded too incestuous with all of us living there, there’s actually a unit about to go on the market just two streets over from Garrett’s.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be opposed to that, but how did you even know what my budget was?”

He laughed a little. “Garrett told me.”

“What a dick. Of course he did.” I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and sighed. “Yeah, send me the link. It would be nice to actually unpack my stuff somewhere that’s mine.”

“Will do. Talk to you soon.”

I turned off the truck after I’d parked in the back of the lot. There weren’t too many cars there, which wasn’t surprising since it was late afternoon on a beautiful weekday. For a few minutes, I just sat in the quiet of my truck, enjoying the heavy heat of the sun coming through the windshield. Michigan in the spring was beautiful, no doubt about that, but for some reason, I couldn’t remember why. I couldn’t remember how anything was as beautiful as a place where the mountains looked down on you everywhere you went.

Before I locked the truck, I slipped my aviators on and crossed the parking lot. I was searching out the key for the back door when I heard a sound back by the dumpsters. I cocked my head to the side and listened, but didn’t hear it again over the traffic rushing past on the street.

But I heard it again after I’d stuck my key in the lock and turned, so I leaned to the side and looked at the two large metal dumpsters just to my right. They were walled off from the rest of the parking lot by a concrete wall, and when I walked in front of the first one, I heard it again. Just a tiny little whimper.

Crouching down on the balls of my feet after the first dumpster came up clear, I peered around between the wall and the second dumpster when I saw it, all long reddish fur and giant brown eyes.

“Well hey there, little guy,” I whispered and held my hand out to the puppy. All curled up the way he was, I couldn’t get a gauge on his size, but he wasn’t tiny. His snout neared my hand and he took a cautious sniff.

He looked up at me again, and I swear, I felt it in my gut, his eyes looked so sad. Very carefully, I reached my hand closer and scratched the underside of his jaw, which he leaned into. I smiled and shifted a little closer.

“Come here, little guy. Can I get a look at you?” I clicked my tongue a couple times and his long, fuzzy tail uncurled from around him, thumping a few times on the concrete beneath his body.

Making a couple shuffles, he pulled his back legs up first, stretching his butt up in the air with a groan. But it wasn’t until he stood fully and then took an awkward lurch forward that I noticed the missing front leg. Or part of it was missing, at least.

“Oh man, what happened to you, huh?”

His tail was wagging in earnest now, and I eased a hand under his belly, tucking him into my chest as I stood. Sure enough, he settled right into me, heaving out a sigh when I stroked a hand down his soft, albeit a little smelly, fur.

The back door swung open and Brian, the skinny bar-back, came out, stopping up short when he saw me. His eyebrows shot up his forehead over the rims of his glasses when he saw the dog.

“Whoa, where’d he come from?”

Tilting my head toward the dumpster, I shifted the dog in my arms. “Back there. Look, he’s missing part of one leg.”

Tsking his tongue, Brian scratched the puppy’s head. “Poor dude.”

“Yeah, umm, what should I do with him? Drop him off at a shelter or something?”

But Brian was shaking his head. He held up a finger and fished his cell out of his back pocket, thumbing across the screen and pulling it up to his ear.

“Umm, Kat? It’s umm, yeah. It’s Brian. Yeah, I know you’re not on tonight, but I’ve got someone who needs to come see you.”

“Kat?” I whispered and he nodded. Huh.

“Yeah,” he said to her. “Uh huh. Dylan found a puppy back by the dumpsters, and I think you can help. Can I send him your way?”

Brian nodded and whispered for my phone number, which I gave him. The puppy swiped a soft tongue against my forearm and I grimaced down at him.

“Suck up,” I whispered down at his head.

Brian hung up the phone and looked up at me. “She’ll text you the address.”

“Okay. So what exactly does she do?”

“She’s a vet tech and works at some specialty place for animals that are missing limbs, that’s about all I know. Look, I gotta grab something out of my car and get back in there. Good luck with your dog.”