Page 11 of Christmas at Hart's Ridge

“No,” she admitted.

“She’s catching on fine,” Jasmine cut in. “That’s what training is for.”

I scrubbed a hand over my unshaven jaw. I needed the help, that was undeniable. And Jasmine was a good judge of these things. She’d had a say in all the hirings—mostly seasonal and temporary—since she’d started at Goat’s Tavern and not once had she steered me wrong. She never missed.

The trouble was not whether Bethany could build a whiskey sour. Most of our customers only ordered beer, anyway. The trouble was she was wearingthat. It was…it was inappropriate. I knew this because of my entirely inappropriate reaction to her.

I had known little Bethany Albright her whole life, since the day her parents had brought her, red all over, home from the hospital. I’d been eight years old at the time and had no more use for her than I had for my own six-month-old baby brother. As kids, Ethan and Bethany had followed me around everywhere. I remembered Bethany as a small, scrawny thing with painfully bright hair. There had been less of her as the years went on, as ballet became the focus of her life. And then at sixteen she left Hart’s Ridge for good.

That’s when she became something else to me: Ethan’s girl. I didn’t know if they put a label on it. It didn’t much matter either way. As far as I could tell, my brother had never looked twice at another girl in all these years. While he never said much about Bethany, I knew they talked at least weekly on the phone. And the Christmas visits. I wouldn’t call myself a relationship expert, but even I knew this: You didn’t hop on a bus for twelve hours each way to visit someone you didn’t love.

The scrawny kid next door and Ethan’s girl: That was how I saw Bethany Albright. But now, standing behind my bar top, wearing jeans that made her legs look far too long and her butt far too squeezable, I didn’t see the scrawny kid next door. Her blue tank top scooped low enough to show a shadow of cleavage and a sprinkle of golden freckles. The hem ended an inch above the waistband of her jeans, revealing an expanse of the palest skin I had ever seen. Like polished marble or a moonbeam.

She didn’t look like Ethan’s girl wearing that tank top. She looked like a woman I wanted to take to my bed.

A completely inappropriate reaction. I blamed the tank top.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re hired.” I ignored Jasmine’s exaggerated eyeroll. “But you’re going to need to dress for the job. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Um…” Bethany looked down at herself and frowned. Her wide-eyed gaze cut to Jasmine. “No?”

Jasmine’s eyes took on a dangerous glint. Her hands went to her hips. “What’s wrong with the way we’re dressed, Luke? Because this is how I dress from September to May, when I switch to shorts instead of jeans. And if you think I’m going to wear shorts in winter, you’re mistaken. You’ve never had a problem with how I dress before.”

I split a look between the women who were now both staring me down in an unfriendly way. Well, shit. How had I not noticed that they were dressed almost identically? The only difference being that Jasmine’s jeans were tighter and her tank top was red. Come to think of it, Bethany’s top looked familiar. It was entirely possible that she hadn’t thought to bring a tank top with her to the mountains of North Carolina, what with it being the heart of winter and all, and maybe had borrowed one from her co-worker.

Somehow, it looked different on Bethany. It shouldn’t have been such a problem. Jasmine was a gorgeous woman with abundant curves, but I had never worked this hard to keep my eyes at face level in my life. I might have liked the way the tank top looked on Jasmine—I definitely did—but on Bethany, it gave me ideas. Questions. Like where else did she have freckles and what did they taste like?

“I just don’t want you to get cold.” I was aware that I sounded like a moron. Or, worse, her dad. “It’s going to snow again tonight.”

Bethany laughed. “I brought a coat, silly.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to command her to go put it on. I was saved from further sounding like an old man by the arrival of a customer, who shot both women an appreciative glance.

“You’re up,” Jasmine said, giving Bethany a gentle nudge. “You’ve got this.”

To my horror, Bethany flipped her thick, red hair over her shoulder and sauntered toward the customer with a swish of her hips that put terrifying ideas into my head about how she would move on top of me.

“What can I get you?” she asked—cheerfully, without even a hint of innuendo.

But still, the man—probably spillover from the ski resort at Evergreen, the town over, because I didn’t recognize him—looked Bethany up and down like he was going to order something that wasn’t offered on the menu. I crossed my arms and served him my besttry meglower.

The warning hit home.

“A beer,” he said hastily. “Whatever’s good and on tap.”

I didn’t stick around to hear what she chose.

I found Ethan across the restaurant, bussing tables. “You gonna do something about that?” I demanded, nodding in the direction of Bethany behind the bar.

Ethan looked nonplussed. “I already did. That’s why she’s here. She needed work, we needed help. Boom, done. You’re welcome.”

My brother was the second person to act like Bethany working the bar at Goat’s Tavern was somehow a gift. Which it sure as hell wasn’t.

I clenched my jaw. “I don’t mean her being here. I mean—” I looked back at the bar, where the situation had gotten even worse. Because now there was a whole group of men ordering shots from Bethany and Jasmine and they looked far too happy about it. “I meanthat.”

Ethan took another look. “Okay? They’re obnoxious, but they’re not being handsy. Jasmine and Bethany can handle it.”

“Jasmine can, but Bethany? She’s just a kid.”

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