Page 11 of Tattered Edges

Rather than desperate, her proposal had been open.

She’d claimed to have been drunk and jet-lagged, but she hadn’t been obnoxious.

Admittedly, he’d been tempted—but not tempted enough.

At forty-one years old, it would have been a lie to say the offer of a single night with an attractive woman, likely more than a decade younger than him, had been unappealing—but he had his boundaries. What he’d told her was true. He didn’t sleep with tourists. He also did his best to avoid drunk strangers. He preferred his women clear headed and fully cognizant.

Most of all, he didn’t take guests of his pub to bed—no matter how beautiful and alluring.

Nevertheless, as he played back the moment when she’d lifted out of her seat and brazenly touched her lips to his, he wondered if there was a part of him that regretted his rejection.

It had been months since he’d enjoyed a woman.

His alarm clock sounded, extracting him from his thoughts, and he was quick to sit up and silence his mobile. Whether or not he regretted his decision was irrelevant. Chances he’d see the woman again were all but non-existent. It was a new day. As was usually the case, this one came with its own set of problems.

Today in particular, Archie Blackstone was at the top of his list.

Rory opened their text thread and shot off a message, inquiring if they were still on for that morning. While it was debatable whether or not he regretted rejecting the blonde American, there was no doubt he regretted putting his trust in Archie—the entitled heir to the business next door.

He’d known the man nigh on twenty years, but he didn’t consider them friends. At best, they were acquaintances, given the frequency at which they interacted. He dropped into the pub from time to time, usually with his father. Mr. Blackstone, whom Rory hoped would rest in peace, had been close with his Uncle Henry.

They, too, had become acquainted due to proximity.

London was home to more than eight million people, and yet the corner of St. Andrew’s Hill had always made the city feel smaller. It was the illusion of the pub, and the patrons who frequented it, which made such an alternate reality so very real. The pub made friends of strangers and turned enemies into allies. In the case of his Uncle Henry and Mr. Blackstone, neighbors had become like brothers. Different though their pedigrees were, and in spite of the wealth gap between them, the neighboring proprietors got on well.

Rory could still recall the two men sitting across from one another, the light of sunset pouring through the pub’s front windows, presiding over their game of chess while they bantered and drank.

Long after Henry’s untimely death, Mr. Blackstone had been a regular patron of The King’s Steed, until his own unexpected passing. It wasn’t long after he’d heard the news that Archie approached Rory with an offer he’d never refuse.

Tattered Edges, the used bookstore, had been in the Blackstone family for the last forty-five years. As Rory understood it, the business began as a passion-project for Archie’s grandmother, who had married into the Blackstone wealth. Her friendship with Rory’s own grandfather had been the catalyst for Henry and Sawyer’s tight bond.

That was what made the pub so special. It was no respecter of people.

The old woman outlived her husband and moved into the flat above the bookstore where she resided until her dying day. While her husband left the family publishing business to both of their children, Sawyer Blackstone had been the sole heir of the bookstore. As it had been a passion project for his mother, so it became a pet project of his. He kept it going out of a sense of sentimental pride more than anything else; and the thought of selling it, even though it only ever made enough money to break even, had been out of the question.

But the struggling bookstore was a piece of prime real estate Rory had been pining over for years.

While Rory waited on Archie’s reply, he got out of bed and slowly made his way to the bathroom in order to relieve his bladder. He stretched his neck as he went, unwilling to acknowledge the tightness he felt in his shoulders. The older he got, the harder it became to deny the consequences of a busy night spent behind the bar.

He found himself at the gym a few times a week, which kept his endurance intact, but he preferred dead lifts over stretching any day—and he felt it. Yet, he wouldn’t complain. He hoped to be behind the bar for another forty years or more—just like his Grandpa Jack.

Much like Tattered Edges, The King’s Steed was a family-owned establishment. It had been part of the Taylor legacy for more than a century, passed down from one generation to the next, each presiding owner keeping the tradition ofthe third placealive; each one contributing to the evolution of the pub and its place in the community.

In a perfect world, Rory and his Uncle Henry would have run the pub together after Grandpa Jack was ready to move on. Unfortunately, the world was far from perfect.

While Rory didn’t possess the surnameTaylor, his grandfather left the pub to his only grandson. Rory’s mother, brilliant as she was, never had any interest in the family business. Much to his father’s early chagrin, the pub had turned out to be the place Rory cherished more than any other in the world. He belonged behind the bar, carrying on the family tradition, and there was no mistaking that.

Years prior, it had been Rory who helped transform the menu, introducing a more sophisticated approach to cocktails. What started as an experiment bred from his desire to disrupt the norm soon became the beginning of a new era at The King’s Steed. Yet, it was Henry who thought of dividing the pub into theParlourand theTavern. His uncle never got to see the success of his idea, or experience how the pub’s evolving identity enlivened the business, but Rory accredited it all to him, just the same.

The argument could have been made that Rory already put his generational stamp on the pub. His grandfather had said as much, many times over, before he passed just two years ago. Except, Rory was far too ambitious to be satisfied with only the Parlour. He had other ideas. Grand ones. Ideas that had the potential to double the profit of The King’s Steed.

Trouble was, in order to make his idea a reality, he needed to expand the footprint of the establishment—and the only way to do that was to buy the bookstore, gut it, and make it his own.

Rory had just finished brushing his teeth when Archie returned his text with a confirmation the two were still on to meet that morning. The address he’d been given wasn’t far, located less than a block away from his alma mater, the London School of Economics and Political Science. It seemed like a lifetime ago when he’d been a student there; back when the future he thought laid ahead of him charted a much different course.

He planned to make the old, familiar twenty-minute journey on foot, and he hoped the trip would be worth his time. With Archie, one could never be sure.

Setting aside his phone, Rory started the water for a shower. When the temperature was right, he rid himself of his boxer trunks and ducked under the spray of water. He wouldn’t have time for coffee that morning, so a shower would have to suffice. Though, it was doubtful any amount of preparation would be enough to put him in the mood for the meeting.

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