Page 19 of Seductive Nights

"Ten will be perfect. I'll see you then."

She hung up the phone and took another sip of wine. Carley smiled. "What else can we get rid of?"

Margo burst out laughing and replied. "How about another bottle of wine?"

11

Jace stopped at the Town Hall office inside the courthouse. The clerk behind the counter smiled. "How can I help you?"

"I need to file the paperwork to have the town council consider the expansion of my business at next week's meeting, please."

"Oh, of course." She stepped away and pulled some papers from an organizer on the far wall. She strode to the counter and lay the papers in front of him. She pointed to the top sheet. "This is the application. You need to fill this out." She reached over and pulled a pen from a cup on the counter. "This next sheet is the detail behind your request. Fill it in as fully as you can."

"Okay."

The clerk pulled the last sheet from the pile. "This is the time of the meeting and location and what's on the agenda so far. This sheet will be updated before next week's meeting on Monday night."

"Okay. Thank you."

He moved to the small table at the back of the room and sat in the metal folding chair pushed up to it. He filled out the application using the neatest handwriting he had. More than once, he wondered if he should have asked for this to be emailed to him so he could have filled it out on his computer. But he was here now.

After the mind-numbing process of filling out an application and asking detailed questions in minutiae, he finally walked back to the bar. He'd opted for walking today, not that he wouldn't get thousands of steps in later, but as a way to reconnect with the town. Often, he lived in his own little world at the bar.

He felt pretty good about this application, and as he walked back to the bar, he noticed that the buildings around the square had second stories. There's no reason his couldn't. And as he stopped and looked at it now, staring at his building from the road, the building did block the view of the beach, but that wouldn't change. And a second story wouldn't change that either. He turned with his back to the sandbar and looked at the roadway behind him. There weren't any buildings back there whose view would be blocked. There were palm trees that hid his home, but there was nothing else. The Sandbar stood on Sunset Beach Road, and Main Street was a block over. His house was in between, sort of, and the only other building next to the thrift shop was the fire department, and that was absolutely a two-story. Plus, when it came to noise, the fire trucks leaving were plenty noisy, much noisier than his music. As he looked down Sunset Beach Road to the right, he had his little bungalows along the right of the road, and Grace's little bungalows were further down on the left. Jamie Hart's place and the barn and, finally, Sid and Grace's house way up on the bluff. He wouldn't be blocking any of those places’ view. And his friend Quinn, well he lived across the road from Sid and Grace's at the bottom of the bluff. He didn't have a view this way, so it wasn't going to block anything, was it?

He felt pretty confident about his request, and then excitement surged through him. Oh, he couldn't wait to get this going. Somewhere deep, deep down, this had been inside all along.

Things were finally coming to fruition. He couldn't be more excited.

He strode into the bar and began to prep for the lunch crowd. He was tending bar until Mason came in at five today. Normally, he waited tables and served lunches, but Mason had something going today. It was going to be a hot one, so being inside at the bar wasn't all bad. As he began pulling clean glasses from the dishwasher rack, the bar door opened, and he had to stop and stare for a moment. A tall, lanky redhead with long wavy red hair flowing down her back sauntered in with another man. The man wore a dark suit, which seemed at odds with the weather. His build could be described as portly. His hair was balding, and they couldn't have been more of an opposite duo if he had imagined them himself. The redhead wore a tight, black sleeveless dress and a diamond necklace. She was curvy and stunning. She noticed him staring, and her smile grew wide. She winked at him, and he grinned. She sauntered to a table with her companion, and they sat. He waited a beat, then went over to the table to take their order.

"What can I get you, folks?"

The redhead smiled at him. Her right shoulder rose, and her head tilted. She was flirting with him. In front of her companion.

Her red lips turned up in a smile and before she spoke, she slowly swiped her tongue along the inside edge of her lips. "I'd just like an iced tea, please."

He swallowed. "You got it."

He turned to her companion who seemed uninterested in anything, including the redhead, which he thought was funny. "I'll just take a coffee if you have it."

"Yes, sir, we have coffee. Coming right up."

As he walked away, his confusion grew, but who was he to judge? He prepared her iced tea, poured the gentleman a coffee, and brought creamers and sugar to the table with it. "Will you be having lunch with us?"

The man nodded. "Yes. What do you have for a special today?"

Jace nodded. "Let me get you some menus."

He strode to the hostess podium near the front door, and pulled two menus from the rack. He laid one in front of each of his guests and said, "Our special today is fish and fries. It's a recipe from my own family, and folks around here seem to think it's pretty good. If you're not into seafood, we also have a mushroom Swiss burger on special today. Both are two dollars off and come with fries, or you can substitute onion rings. We also have chicken noodle and beef barley soup. I'll give you a few moments to look over your menus."

He sauntered back to the bar and continued unloading the clean glasses from the dishwasher rack. His mind floated back and forth between the expansion, and how he would broach the town hall committee. They could be sticklers sometimes, and he wanted to formulate his argument if they gave him any grief. Now that Quinn had drawn the second story, he couldn't see his bar any other way. Quinn was right. The view would be phenomenal.

The redhead and her companion closed their menus, so he sauntered over to them. "What can I get for you, folks?"

They both ordered the mushroom Swiss burgers. She continued to flirt with him by tilting her head, lifting her shoulders, and smiling while staring into his eyes. He thought it was weird that her companion didn't seem to notice, or care, shaking his head as he moved toward the kitchen.

He tucked their order on the cook's rack and called out, "Order up!"

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