Ready or Not by Melissa Brayden

rum.
    “And now you do,” Hope informed her, actually really enjoying the give and take now.
    Mallory, however, didn’t seem to be, as her eyes darkened at the retort. “So then you, what? Come back to work and convince your boss to order a case for the bar? You must be pretty persuasive.”
    Hope raised an eyebrow at Mallory, who was clearly on some kind of power trip for reasons she couldn’t identify. “My boss?”
    “Yeah,” Mallory said, pressing on. “He or she must trust their bartenders implicitly to give them ordering power is all. It’s a compliment.”
    Hunter shrugged. “Well, Hope’s excellent at her job. A rock star, and I’m sure that goes a long way.”
    “Yeah, I’m sure,” Mallory said, nodding. “But she’s still a bartender, and as such, one wouldn’t expect her to come with that kind of pull.”
    “Um…actually, I’m not,” Hope answered, nonchalant. This was kinda fun.
    Mallory quirked her head. “I’m sorry. You’re not what?”
    “Just a bartender. I mean, I’m that too. I love to tend bar, but I’m also a business owner.”
    “Owner of what?” Mallory asked.
    “Showplace.”
    Right on cue, four jaws dropped. “Wait,” Brooklyn said, making a rewind gesture with her hands. Hope enjoyed the rewind gesture. “You own Showplace? What happened to that bald guy with the big stomach who used to grumble at everyone? Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen him in a while.”
    “Ralph?” Hope asked. “He was causing the place to bleed money and sold it to me a year and a half ago.”
    “Back when you started working behind the bar and the place got crazy popular out of nowhere?” Hunter stared at her. “And you’re just now telling me this?”
    “I didn’t think it was a secret,” Hope told her in all honesty.
    The best part was that Mallory’s beautiful face was now carefully blank. It seemed she was out of ammunition, which was beyond pleasurable for Hope. She accepted the win but decided not to celebrate. Not really her style. “If you’ll excuse me I think I’m going to check out the water. I’m on kind of a high right now.”
    Mallory watched Hope descend the steps to the sand below with a prickle of regret moving up her spine. She’d behaved badly…again…and she wanted to somehow fix it, because this wasn’t her. At least, it wasn’t who she wanted to be.
    It was dark out now, but the light from the deck illuminated the surrounding shoreline, and with Hope’s blond hair, it wasn’t hard to track her progress as she walked along its edge. “Excuse me a moment,” Mallory said to her friends, who exchanged interested glances. “And stop that. No looking at each other.”
    “Like at all?” Brooklyn called after her. “Because that could get weird.”
    “You’ll figure it out,” she called back.
    When she stepped down onto the beach, she slipped out of her shoes and inhaled sharply at the cold sand against the bottoms of her feet. Unfortunately, when the sun disappeared, it had taken much of the warmth of the day with it. She walked gingerly down to the shoreline and headed north to where she saw Hope, who was staring out at the darkened water.
    “I have no idea why I’m rude to you,” she said to Hope’s back.
    Hope tossed a glance over her shoulder, but she was smiling and that was something. “Yet, you can’t seem to help yourself.”
    Mallory shook her head. “I don’t know what it is.”
    “Try. I’m honestly curious.”
    “I think it’s your cavalier carriage and that smile you have when you make the drinks that switches when you smile at me and then—” She paused because Hope was staring at her with amusement and that sent her defenses flaring. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “I think, in your roundabout way, you just said you’re hot for me.”
    “Pshhh. Um, no.” Mallory looked away as if it was the most ludicrous statement she’d heard in recent history. “That is absolutely not true. In