Chosen by Her Read online

  Hopefully tonight would be busy at the bar. I could use the tips. This time of year was usually slower than usual. Most of the grad students hadn’t returned to town, which left the locals and the businessmen.

  I padded back to my room and looked at myself in the floor length mirror. My long blond hair was tied up in a messy bun and my normally bright blue irises were faded by being bloodshot. The dark circles under my eyes weren’t helping my appearance at all.

  I let out a scream, hoping it would help. “Fuck!” It didn’t.

  I tugged at the blue t-shirt I was wearing, pulling it down to expose my cleavage and show off the girls a bit more. I needed tips, and the girls always helped. My black skirt hugged my ass in all the right ways. At least my body was looking better than I felt.

  The advantage of living in the apartments was having the pool. It allowed me to get a little bit of a tan and I was able to watch the devil kids while their parents escaped my living hell. I wasn’t sure if they actually worked or just went out to get away from their two hellions. Again, the only way I was able to keep them in line were the girls. Thank God for pubescent boys. Thing 1 and 2 where ages eleven and thirteen. Almost too old for a sitter, but if left alone, they would definitely wreak havoc on anyone within a mile.

  A tight shirt and smile would make them listen to me, at least for a little while. Then they would disappear into their rooms and I didn’t really want to know what they were doing. Ever.

  I shook the thought out of my head and grabbed my purse. It was time to head to my second home, The Fox Hole.

  * * * * *

  I’d been working at The Fox Hole for a little over a year. Of all the bars on or near campus, this was the nicest. It wasn’t so much a college hangout as much as it was a place for graduate students and business people to come and unwind.

  Every now and then a few of the undergrads would come in, wanting to make themselves look important or spend their parent’s money on expensive drinks and food. That would be great, if they ever tipped.

  I typically worked the bar area. That was where the money was. Men having their business meetings, or meeting up with friends. The Fox Hole was as much a networking place as it was a bar.

  On a good night I could clear a few hundred in tips, plus my meager hourly rate. On a terrible night I’d take a few shots and make enough to cover gas and a stop at Loco’s Taco Bar next door.

  Tonight would be a toss-up. It was me and two other waitresses splitting the bar area and lounge. The regulars were typically at the bar. Those were the big tippers. The same guys that came in every day after whatever awful job they were complaining about, but still made enough to drive expensive cars, have flashy watches, and leave fifties for a tip for their favorite bartender. Something I would never see a part of.

  That wasn’t me. I tolerated the average guys who wanted to flirt and leave mediocre tips that I worked hard for.

  “Two bitter valentines and a pomegranate cosmo,” I yelled at Curtis, tonight’s bartender.

  “You know the drill—key it in, and I’ll work the ticket,” he snapped back.

  The bar was busy and I was hoping to keep the tables I had happy with quick service. I had only been here a few hours and had made maybe forty dollars. A portion of that went to Curtis. I grumbled and keyed the order into the system and headed back to check on another table.

  “Jamie? Right?” An older and mildly cute balding man stood in front of me as I tried to check on one of my tables. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to know him or maybe had waited on him sometime before.

  I smiled back. “Yeah…hey, how are you?” I pretended. “What can I get you?”

  He raised his glass which was half full of beer. “I’m good, but can I talk to you a second? I was wondering if you could help me.” He nodded in the direction of the bathroom hallway.

  “Um, I’m really busy. Maybe I can catch up with you later?”

  Without hesitation, he pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the tray I was carrying. “Two minutes.”

  A few dozen thoughts raced through my head. No one gives up a twenty that easily without some catch. I was wondering what strings were attached to it. “Two minutes, but I need to get back to work.” I walked toward the hallway, but stopped short, keeping myself in the main bar area. The guy didn’t look familiar at all and I wasn’t sure exactly what he had up his sleeve.

  “See that guy over there?” He pointed at a group of men sitting at the corner of the bar. I had seen a few of them in the bar before, but they had always sat at the bar. “Can you do me a huge favor, it’s kind of an inside joke, but I’ll give you a really good tip if you walk over there and flirt with him.”

  I could feel my face beginning to redden as I looked in the direction of the men and then back at him. “Take your twenty. I don’t have time for games.”

  “This isn’t a game, seriously. He’ll probably be here a while. When things slow down, just go over, flirt a little bit, take his order, see if he needs anything, just make it convincing. I mean, I know he’s nothing to look at, so I’ll leave you a really good tip for playing along.”

  I glanced back over at the men at the bar. Both men were nothing short of amazing. Both of them were probably mid-thirties, in great shape. And I was sure neither of them needed anyone to be paid to flirt with them.

  “No, thanks.” I pushed past the guy and grabbed my order from Curtis, taking just a moment to stare at the men at the corner of the bar and then continue delivering my order.

  When I looked back, the short, balding man was gone. I delivered my drinks and attempted to make some money while the bar was busy.

  “Jamie, that guy left this for you.” Trina dropped a white envelope on my tray as she passed by. “He said to tell you, thank you.”

  “What guy? Who?” I yelled as she continued walking toward her table.

  “The short guy you were talking to,” she yelled back over her shoulder.

  I let out an exhale as I grabbed the envelope off of my tray, hesitating as I passed by the trash can. Instead, I stuffed it in my pocket. I didn’t have time for games tonight, but curiosity won out. I’d check out the envelope later.

  After having run around the bar for a few hours more, the happy hour crowd died down and the crowd thinned out. I had a moment to finally catch my breath. I wouldn’t know exactly how much I had made in tips until the end of my shift when all of the credit card transactions had been processed.

  I leaned against the bar and took a sip of water. Tonight, I really needed something stronger. It had been a hell of a night. Cheap, angry, and drunk customers. Not the norm for this place.

  Trina and Jill, the other waitresses, were still working some of the bar top tables but for the most part, it was dead. Not what I had been hoping for.

  I stared across the bar and noticed the two guys still sitting there. Instinctively I reached for the envelope I had stashed in my pocket a few hours earlier and opened it. “Shit!” I yelled, loud enough for Curtis to hear.

  “Everything ok?”

  “Um, yeah. I just… hit my hand.” I lied as I looked down at the envelope, filled with green bills and a white slip of paper. I pulled it out and looked at it.

  Thanks for doing this. Make it look good.

  I thumbed through the bills. They were all fifties. All ten of them.

  I looked around, wondering if someone were playing a joke on me. I expected the short, balding man to pop out, laughing. “Fooled ya!”

  No one was looking at me. The bald guy was nowhere to be found, and I had a stack of cash with one instruction. Make it look good.

  I must have stared at my watch every minute until I finally made a decision of what I was going to do.

  * * * * *

  I rolled over and exposed my face to the cold air in the apartment. I fumbled for my phone as I reached for it on the nightstand where I usually kept it charging.

  It wasn’t there. I debated trying to pry open my eyes to look for
it but decided the pounding in my head wouldn’t get any better with the bright light I knew was streaming through the shades in my room.

  I vaguely remembered making it home. The blur of the evening began to come back to me in flashes.

  Fuck. Him.

  I reached over and touched the other side of my bed. It was empty.

  Did I dream it or did it really happen?

  I remembered cashing out and counting my tips. $120. Not bad for a slow night. And then I remembered the envelope…and him.

  I flirted. He flirted. We drank. Flirted some more…and then I’d touched him and that was it.

  I didn’t have to imagine how he filled out that dress shirt or suit pants any longer. Flashes filled my mind. The feel of his stubble on my face as I kissed his full lips. The taste of the bourbon he had been drinking. I had leaned in to grab something and touched his arm. I remembered the solid feeling as I looked into his eyes and I had felt the electricity pulse through my body.

  I believed I had followed the instructions I was given to the letter and it wasn’t a struggle. He was hot, chiseled from stone. His hands had roamed my body, grabbing my ass and pulling me in close to him as I felt his hardness pushing against me.

  Flashes of his naked body on mine inundated me, as if I were flipping through channels on the television. I could still feel him. I could still smell him. Amazing. Sexy. Passionate.

  I remembered climbing on top, kissing his neck and working my way down across his chest.

  I opened my eyes, staring at the ceiling in the blinding light as I tried to picture the tattoo on his chest.

  A sun embedded with a woman’s face.

  Flirting with him was the only thing I was asked to do. But I had taken it to a whole new level and as I remembered each flash, I felt myself feeling worse for having taken money and then sleeping with him. I didn’t even remember his name.

  One-night stands were definitely not my thing. In fact, I had only had one my sophomore year in college and it was my choice not to contact him. Somehow, we had never crossed paths on campus after that. Lucky for me.

  This was going to be a whole new kind of awkward. I had seen this guy at The Fox Hole a few times. No doubt he was going to be there every night I worked. There would be no escaping him.

  Unless I quit my job.

  Quitting was something I seriously began to consider as my hangover set in.

  Chapter Three

  Chase

  I should have known better than to do shots of tequila on a Sunday night. Especially on the Sunday before the first day of classes. Granted, class was in the afternoon, but I still had to show my face at the office. I hadn’t completely separated myself from Velocity Capital. Yet.

  The office felt a bit empty. I looked around with distaste. It’s not that I didn’t love the company and everything I had built. It was the memories that I had created here over the last two years. No matter what I did, the drama from the last few years seemed to always come back to the surface.

  Thinking about it made my head hurt even more than the hangover I was nursing. I’d somehow thought that getting up early and into the office on only a few hours of sleep would be a better idea than trying to squeeze in five to seven hours and coming in late.

  Bad idea.

  I took another sip of the coffee I had picked up a few hours earlier from one of the all-night donut shops in the city. It was cold, bitter, and thick. Not a good combination for a queasy stomach and pounding head. I clenched my teeth as I swallowed the last sip and then pushed my palms into the sockets of my eyes, gently pushing my eyeballs back into my head.

  “No more Sunday night drinking,” I whispered to myself.

  In all fairness, it had started out as a late lunch and a few drinks with Grant. It wasn’t supposed to take more than an hour or so, but for some odd reason, Grant and I had hit it off, which was uncommon for me. I always got along better with women, for obvious reasons.

  Typically, I’d stay in a business meeting only as long as needed and then I’d find a reason to exit if things were getting off track. Business is business, and I like to keep it that way. I had met Grant Ashworth at The Fox Hole a few months back. We had come in at the same time and had struck up a conversation about my car—one of the many toys I enjoyed on the weekends. This one was a cherry red’69 Stingray. I didn’t take it out much, but on that fateful day, I’d decided it needed to see the daylight and get out of the large garage I had for my small collection of cars.

  Grant was a collector as well. He was a successful businessman who ran a technology consulting company, building it from the ground up. We had similar backgrounds and it was a change talking with a guy about things other than business, although that’s where our conversations always ended up.

  It was also the reason we had been speaking so much lately. Sunday’s meeting was to finalize the plans for later today, but the plans didn’t include a hangover.

  “You look like shit,” Jake said as he walked into the office. “Another late night? Different girl, or was this the same?” He sniffed out a scornful laugh. It was obvious he didn’t approve of the decisions I had been making lately, but it didn’t matter.

  Jake was my assistant, and my friend. But beyond that, his opinion on my love life was always offered and only sometimes taken.

  “Grant,” I whispered, attempting to not have my own voice echo in my head.

  “Just Grant? I doubt that.” Jake laughed. “Chase, at some point you are going to have to stop trying to bury the thoughts of Summer by screwing everything in high heels. You need to take some time.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Jake,” I snapped back. “And it wasn’t like that.”

  “Chase, you and Summer were engaged. She worked here. She was a part of all of our lives…and now she’s gone. She didn’t just leave you. She left me and Alyssa…and you pretending like it didn’t happen only drags it out longer. You need closure.”

  I pushed my palms into my eye sockets harder and then released them, blinking open my eyes and seeing spots around Jake’s face. I blinked a few more times, trying to focus as I clenched my fists. I could feel the emotions coursing through my body like it had happened yesterday.

  “I am over her. I’ve been over her. It’s done,” I lied. I hadn’t really been over Summer or her leaving until the other night. And it had taken me an embarrassing six months to get over her.

  I’d buried myself in work, alcohol, and women to forget her, but no woman ever compared. Every time I undressed them, kissed them, touched them…I thought of her. And then the memories just stopped this last time.

  “Well, then can we stop tiptoeing around her name, maybe clean out her office and give it to someone else instead of leaving it as some kind of shrine?” Jake inched closer to my desk. “She took another job, Chase. She wanted to make a name for herself, and not as your wife.”

  Everything that Jake said was true, and it hurt to hear. Summer was gone and although she’d tried to reach out, I cut of communication. I hated her for what she had done, even though I didn’t blame her. Summer was smart, attractive, savvy, and definitely a force to reckon with in the business world. I was a combination of jealous of the company that managed to steal her away, and angry that she would leave me in the first place.

  I craned my neck, attempting to ease the tension headache that formed on top of the hangover headache. “Fine,” I grumbled back. “I need to try and focus this morning, and please, don’t bring her up again. It’s done.”

  Jake nodded and slipped back toward the office door. “Good luck on your first day back to classes,” he joked, but there was nothing funny about having to stand in front of a hundred and twenty students and explain how their semester was about to change.

  Chapter Four

  Jamie

  I had only meant to close my eyes for a few minutes, warding off the hangover that had set in, but all at once reality hit me. Hard. It was his face again. His body. His kiss.


  Then the vision of the envelope and the crisp fifties overtook everything. My heart sank. What had I done? I’d slept with a man for money. Although that hadn’t been my intention, it ended up that way.

  My vibrating phone brought me back into reality. I grabbed it from under the pillow and looked at the screen. A local number, but one I didn’t know. And why the hell would they be calling me at…I squinted my eyes to make out the time at the top of the phone. 8:50. Shit. I had really overslept and still felt awful.

  “Hello?” I croaked as I cleared my throat.

  “Jamie Dunn?”

  “Yes. That’s me.”

  “This is Ms. Anderson, from the university administration office.”

  My heart pounded as I tried to remember what time I was supposed to start my new job at the school. I closed my eyes, trying to picture the email, my calendar, and anything else that would help clear the fog from my head. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry, am I late? I—I overslept…” I immediately began fumbling for excuses, just in case.

  “Ms. Dunn, I’m calling to let you know that your work-study position has changed.”

  “Wait, what? I don’t have a job? I needed that money,” I pleaded.

  “No, Ms. Dunn. You still have a job. You’ve just been reassigned. Instead of working here in the admin office, you’ve been assigned as an assistant to one of the university’s professors. It’s still a paid position.”

  I took in a deep breath and exhaled. I had already budgeted for the income from that job. “What professor? Which department?” The last thing I wanted was to be some professor’s coffee girl, stuck inside of a classroom or office, making copies, posting stuff to his online classroom.

  “I’m not quite sure, but you’ll need to report to lecture hall 102 in the Hawkins building. Be there at 10:45. Thank you.”

  I babbled some kind of affirmative, and she hung up.

  This wasn’t what I had signed up for, working for a professor, in a lecture hall. With students? What the hell. There wasn’t enough money in the world… then I glanced over at the white envelope, still filled with money. That would only get me by for a little while.