Conditioned (Brewing Passion Book 3) Page 2

  I was a barrel of fun, really. Not that it mattered. I was exhausted, and a date with my pillow, the TV and a pint of ice cream beckoned. Besides, unless they were asking me for more coffee or for the latest sales data for their weekly reports, men were of little use to me.

  No. Scratch that.

  I was of no use to any man. And I planned to keep it that way.

  Head down and work. Make money and put into my savings. Eat enough food to keep the machine going. Take advantage of the opportunity to drink great beer at one of my jobs. Avoid flirting at all costs. Sleep. Rise. Do it again. I was an automaton, according to my friend, Evelyn. But what did she know?

  You should open up and tell her why you’re such a wet blanket sometime.

  Stuff it, I reminded myself. It’s nobody’s business but mine.

  “Hey,” a familiar voice punched through my three-p.m. sinking spell. I blinked, forcing myself to smile. “Let’s go out tonight, chica.”

  Evelyn, my work friend—my only friend—flopped onto the fake leather couch in the break room next to me. I glanced at her. She had her long blonde hair up in a messy bun. The sleeves of her work blouse were rolled up to her elbows. Her long, bare legs ended in a pair of sky-high patent leather heels—her “selling shoes” as she liked to call them.

  “No thanks,” I said. My typical response and she knew it.

  She leaned forward and grabbed my hand, startling me a little. “I’m serious, Melody.”

  “So am I,” I said, letting her grip my hand a bit longer before I pulled away from her. Being touched made me nervous, even when it was just a friendly hand-holding thing by a colleague.

  “No more excuses,” she said, rising to her full, impressive height and towering over me as I sat curled up on the couch with my second cup of hot tea. Her eyes sparkled with something I thought might be mischief. I immediately felt defensive. “It’ll be fun. We’ll go to Top of the Hops and you can give me a tasting lesson.”

  I sighed and sipped, forcing myself to be calm. It’s okay. It’s Evelyn. She’s your friend, remember?

  “Okay, I mean, maybe.” I winced when she pumped her fist and held up a hand for me to high-five. Glancing around, worried we were making a total scene, I touched my palm to hers.

  “Super! I can drive if you want. I could pick up you up—”

  “No, no, I’ll meet you there. Seven okay? It’s Tuesday so it shouldn’t be too crowded.”

  “Perfect.” Evelyn finished the water bottle she’d been holding and tossed it into the garbage then tugged at her skirt and pulled her hair out of its bun. “I’ll be all over the west side this afternoon so I may go early and eat something before you get there.”

  “Try the Portobello burger,” I said. “It’s really good. They use locally sourced goat cheese.”

  “Will do.” She smiled at me, flapped her fingers at the other people in the room—all of them men except us—and flounced out, pretending to be unaware of the way they stared at her ass and hips in her short work skirt. When a couple of them let their gaze wander back to me, I shivered and looked down into the remains of my tea, willing them to leave me alone, wishing I were normal, cursing the assholes who’d ruined me for the millionth, zillionth time.

  Chapter Three

  Most mornings, Trent didn’t know which was worse—getting his daughter out of bed for school on time or letting her sleep. Either way it was a pitched battle and one he dreaded like the bubonic plague.

  Your choice, pal, he reminded himself firmly—again—as he eased open her bedroom door and slipped inside. She was buried under a mound of duvet and pillows, just a shock of her deep red hair showing. Trent sighed and watched her breathe for a few minutes, relishing the quiet and the time he was allowed to spend loving her so much his chest ached.

  It had been his choice, being a single dad. And most days he didn’t regret it. But as she eased into adolescence he was beginning to worry for his sanity.

  He sat on the edge of her bed after making his way through the detritus of dirty clothes, laptop, computer tablet and whatever else lay on the floor. Giving himself an extra few seconds to gaze at the half of her face now exposed since she’d flung the covers off, he could practically feel her perfect infant-self, cuddled into his chest or neck—the only way she would sleep for the first six weeks of her life. Smiling, head locked in on the memory sensations of her in his arms, helpless, his to protect and hold forever, he put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Shit,” she spat out as she sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Jesus, Dad. You scared me.”

  Trent sighed and stood, trying not to lurch into pissed off mode at her cursing. It was too early for anger and God knows she’d learned it all from him after all. Why be a hypocrite as long as she knew when not to use such language?

  His daughter groaned and flopped onto her back, yanking the covers up over her head. “Five more minutes? Please? Daddy?”

  “No, sorry, princess. I gave you an extra ten. Time to make the donuts. Up and at ’em.”

  “Fuck off,” she muttered from underneath the denim-covered duvet.

  Trent pulled it back and glared down at her. She matched it, using her mother’s beautiful eyes to send him spiraling backward into the sort of memories that were the opposite of sweet. He ground his teeth together, reminding himself that the girl was not her mother. She was her own self—a heady mix of two personalities that had no real business procreating.

  “Nope,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could manage. “Up. Now.” As he headed to her bedroom door and escape, she lobbed her latest volley.

  “I hate that school. It’s stupid. You should send me to boarding school back east, so I can be challenged…like Mom told you.”

  Trent rested a hand on the doorjamb and counted to ten before answering. “Taylor, stop baiting me. Get up. Get in the shower. Get dressed. Your breakfast will be ready for you.”

  “Whatever,” came the mumble from behind him.

  Deciding that deflection made up the better part of valor this day, Trent walked out into the hall, down the steps and into the kitchen, leaving her to her anger for a while longer.

  By the time Taylor finally emerged he was fastening on his watch and had cleared the tall granite eating counter of all dishes. She glared at him from under her bangs. “Great. Starving me now?”

  “Yep. That’s me. Dad the torturer king. Here.” He tossed her a granola bar. She caught it and shoved it into her backpack along with the lunch he’d already packed for her. “Get your ass in here on time and you get a hot breakfast. You’ve known this rule for how long?”

  She scowled at him, setting him back for a split second at her increasingly eerie resemblance to her gorgeous bitch of a mother. He smiled at her, determined not to touch a match to the simmering pile of potential confrontation. He had a long day ahead and needed to focus.

  “Ready?” he asked, sliding open the metal door of the loft to the hall.

  She shouldered her pack and stomped toward the elevator. Trent bit his tongue hard against the urge to mention the ripped tights and the short skirt. She knew the dress code—had violated it enough times to be on semi-permanent probation over it. The row of shiny earrings in the delicate cartilage of each of her ears caught his gaze but he bit down harder. He’d lost that battle in a massive compromise—she could pierce whatever she wanted as long as it wasn’t her nipples or genitals and he’d not protest, as long as her fair, perfect skin remained ink-free.

  So far, so good on that.

  So far as he knew, of course.

  Shoving down the creeping anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him, he hit the button and the elevator doors slid open. Taylor flounced into the lift, her eyes on her phone. There were times when he wanted to turn back the clock and be the dad chasing the toddler around, getting up every four hours with the newborn, playing his eighth consecutive game of CandyLand—anything but this. It was as if she’d turned sixteen and a switch was flipped whereby he was relegated
to the realm of the barely tolerable. And this from the little girl who’d been his shadow, going with him to construction sites, the office, the hardware store—barely able to let him out of her sight.

  When she flopped into the passenger’s seat of the Jeep, Trent knew she was itching for a fight. But he didn’t have the energy for it this morning. He let her sulk on the drive to her high school, blew her a kiss as she got out and forced himself to smile when she flipped him off before flouncing down the sidewalk to the delight of way too many punk-asshole boys.

  As he waited impatiently for the traffic to move around the circle and back out to the main road, he indulged in his usual form of self-torture—recalling his precious little girl once she’d grown out of her super-colicky baby stage and had latched on to him as if her life depended on it. She’d been a hardcore daddy’s girl from the get-go. And he’d adored being her hero, father, champion, everything she needed in the entire universe. He’d never felt more alive than he had then.

  But no need to let thoughts of his pretty, precocious, more than a little spoiled, auburn-haired waif of a daughter—replete in her pink tutus and princess crowns and clutching as many tiny stuffed animals as she could carry—spill over into memories of how much he hadn’t wanted to have her in the first place. Not if it had meant tying himself to her mother, Sheila, the ex-Mrs. Hettinger.

  But he had. Because he was the sort of guy who always did the right thing.

  The light beep of a horn behind him dragged him back to the present, and to the day ahead. He waved by way of apology and sped out into the street, joining the line of traffic heading away from the school.

  * * * *

  “Yo, Brad, you here? How’s it hanging?”

  “Low and heavy, or so the wife tells me,” he called back. “You ready for this wild-ass day, pard?”

  “That’s a double hell to the yeah.”

  Trent smiled at the tall, bearded man who was stacking boxes of liquor bottles in the tiny cramped office space behind his original store. When he’d decided to make the leap from mere employee to owning retail, he’d only hesitated for a second. Thanks to the success of this, his first big liquor store, he’d been keeping an eye on a few of the better locations for a while and had also latched on to the looming craft beer boom in the nineties. When the opportunity had come to buy out the old guy retiring and heading south who’d owned The Wine Cellar for the last thirty years, he’d jumped.

  That had been almost fifteen years ago now, he mused, flipping open his laptop and pondering the myriad fires to be extinguished in his mini-empire today. Running a hand across the smoothness of his scalp, he allowed the love of his job—of controlling his own destiny on a day-to-day basis—to muffle the vague sense of worry and frustration over Taylor.

  When the email he’d been dreading hit his inbox, he sighed, opened it and started plotting how he might salvage his purchase of an abandoned city block in Kalamazoo. He had hoped to open a coffee bar there—something new for him, but he had an expert coffee guy ready to jump in and run it, plus leads on at least three other high-profile potential tenants. The damn city wouldn’t allow it for some reason, and he figured it probably had something to do with the fact of his own success. He was victim of it, in some sense. There were too many small-minded eggheads on the city council who simply didn’t want him to expand.

  Small-minded fuckers.

  He leaned back in his creaky chair—a leftover from when the old guy still owned the place since Trent knew what to throw away and what to keep. With a glance at the large whiteboard he’d installed during his first week of ownership, he studied the last month’s-worth of sales reports. He now owned two large, thriving liquor stores, one of which was among the first to feature craft beer on its shelves. Both stores were in Grand Rapids, anchoring it on east and west sides. He also was part owner of a successful farm-to-table restaurant, a somewhat dive-y beer and burger joint that he was angling to buy out in the next year, and had recently been approached by a restaurant ownership group about a new, exciting project downtown.

  But now, he wanted this goddamned coffee bar and the mother fucking empty city block.

  “You’re too single-minded,” Sheila’s bitch-voice popped into his brain. “You get focused on one thing and won’t let go of it until it goes your way.”

  “Yeah,” he said to her, relegating her back to the dark recesses of his brain. “Which is probably why I’ve got a cool two million in the bank, bitch. And that’s just my walkin’ around money.”

  With a lunge forward, he started typing out his reply to the council’s rejection of his city block project. Two hours later, satisfied that his response was both obsequious in deference to their collective egos, but at the same time firm in his resolve that the damn block should be his to revive, he rubbed his eyes and looked up from the screen. Someone was calling his name.

  “Trent? Yo, dude, you need to take this call.”

  Hank, the bearded, long-time manager of his flagship store, was peering around the office door, holding the store’s cordless phone in one hand. On reflex, he stuck his hand into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out his phone. Ten missed calls. All from Grand Rapids High.

  Shit.

  Fuck.

  Hell.

  He held out his hand. With a sympathetic look, Hank handed it over then shut the door behind him. Trent took a breath, then put the receiver to his ear.

  “Hello. This is Taylor Hettinger’s father,” he said, laying his head down on the desk in front of him.

  Chapter Four

  When the text message hit my phone, I winced. I’d assumed—hoped, really—that Evelyn would forget about her invite out from earlier in the day. I was standing at my car, clutching the phone and trying to find an excuse, when the thing actually rang. I put it to my ear.

  “Don’t you dare flake out on me tonight, chica,” Evelyn blurted out before I could even say hello.

  “I…was… I mean…”

  “I know you’re trying to concoct a reason to go home. But I’m telling you, don’t do it. Come out with me. Remember how much fun we had last month? At that goofy art show with the naked dudes and the cheap wine?”

  “Si,” I said with a sigh as I unlocked the car. “I remember.”

  “So, let’s have another fun girls’ night. Top of the Hops. I’m headed there now.”

  “I thought you’d already be there by now.”

  “Yeah, I got waylaid at a few places. But this way we can eat something together. See you there!” She hung up before I could answer.

  Evelyn Benedict was a good friend and I didn’t want to disappoint her. I knew she was between guys at the moment, and bored, and she was fun to hang out with.

  So, go, chiquita. Why wouldn’t you?

  Because, I argued with myself even as I put on some fresh lip gloss and tugged the ponytail holder from my hair, letting it cascade past my shoulders. Because I don’t go out. It’s just not what I do. Not anymore.

  I kept up the inner back-and-forth as I pulled out of the parking lot and into the late evening traffic. By the time I made it downtown, it was a solid thirty-five minutes later and I’d broken out in a light, panicky sweat. As I held on to the steering wheel in the tightest of all possible death-grips, I forced myself to take deep breaths and remember that this wasn’t a party. It was just a bar. It was nothing new. My friend was inside waiting on me to eat, drink too many beers and have to ride-share home.

  No biggie.

  But as I put my hand on the car door handle, a wave of nausea hit me, bringing with it the smell of salt water and sunscreen, the sound of masculine laughter, the dry, excruciatingly painful rasp of sand rubbing against my bare skin. A tiny noise emerged from my throat—something between a whimper and a moan. I put my hand back on the steering wheel and stared through the front windshield.

  A rap on the window near my ear made me yelp in surprise. I met Evelyn’s bright eyes and big smile on the other side of the driver’s side door.
I opened the door and dragged out my purse, praying I wouldn’t fall over onto the asphalt, wishing I had more strength to handle something as innocuous as walking into the front of a crowded bar as opposed to behind it.

  “Hey, I thought that was you,” Evelyn said, stepping back to give me room to emerge from my car. “Let’s go. I’m famished.”

  As I pep-talked myself, I watched her head for the door, her long blonde hair swaying, her perfectly clad body drawing all sorts of attention. I gulped, shouldered my purse and followed her, head down, determined not to meet any strange man’s gaze.

  The front door made a funny tinkling sound when it opened, which reminded me that I had never entered the bar using this door. Even for my interview I’d been instructed to use the side door and now, of course, I came in the back entrance for my thrice-a-week shifts.

  I knew damn good and well I pulled on a different persona when I entered this building. One that was confident, sexy, flirty and irascible. Using my semi-native Spanish willy-nilly, showing off, cussing people out in a language they didn’t understand but that sounded as sexy as hell. I made killer tips when I bartended as a result but it was a persona, something I put on like a pair of expensive and very uncomfortable high heels. When I snuck out the back at two or sometimes three in the morning after sharing a beer and clean-up with the wait staff I’d step out of the sexy shoes and resume my clumpy, clog-like life.

  Melody Rodriguez—the girl no one ever noticed, if they weren’t taking advantage of her, that is.

  That realization hit me between the eyes like a lightning bolt. I hesitated as the over-cooled indoor air rushed past me, catching up with the hot summer evening. The bar looked like a different place from this perspective. A chill ran down my spine. My throat closed up. Tears burned the backs of my eyes. The only sound as I stood in the middle of a semi-busy bar was that of my pounding heartbeat in my ears.