Last Glass of Wine by Bekki Lynn

From the Publisher

Lana Moore, a server at Rogan's Steakhouse and approaching thirty, finds her obsession with her boss a distraction and senses he wants her to quit. But then, he loses control and she's left confused, needy. It increased the fire, so when she learns he's no longer her boss, she demands he finishes what he started. Until she learns the truth. Cole, Rogan's young assistant manager, wants Lana. But when he loses control and nearly takes her right there in the restaurant, he knew he risked both of their jobs. Before things can be righted, he receives bad news from home. He has to leave Lana before anything happens between them. Then things balloon between them and he can't keep his hands off, nor can she until she learns only part of the truth of his leaving.[Erotic Contemporary Romance: Contains graphic sexual content and adult language.]

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Chapter 1

"Lana!" Cole called from the office doorway.

Lana Moore jumped and caught the pitcher before it spilled everywhere. "Yes," she said with caution. She looked around the soda station at the assistant manager. He stood with his hands shoved in his pockets. His eyes pierced hers across the distance.

"You're closing tonight," he told her.

She cocked an eyebrow, but he had returned to the office. Anger rose in her. There was no way in hell she was closing--she was the three o'clock person. Aside from that, she'd closed the last three nights while working double shifts. Lana stormed into the office and shut the door behind her. Cole sat watching her on the monitor, obviously expecting her. "This is my only non-closing night shift on this schedule. Have a five forty-five server take it," she told him as she stared at the back of his shaved head.

"It's not open for discussion," he said, turning toward the computer on his desk.

"I have--"

"Not my problem. I needed a closer and you're it. One more word and we'll add it to your file."

Speechless over the absurdity, she stared at him, wishing she could afford to tell him to go fuck himself because she quit. Lately, he'd been on a major roller coaster of mood swings. And they seemed aimed at her. "Can I use the phone?"

He moved it within her reach.

She dialed her father's number. "Hey, it's me," she said when she heard her father's voice. "I'm not going to be able to get over there to give you your insulin shot at ten, so give Aleece a call and have her run over." She glared at Cole as she spoke. There wasn't any tell-tale sign he paid attention. Lana chewed herbottom lip while her father told her he could do it himself. He couldn't and they both knew it. His eyesight wasn't clear enough to see the marks on the syringe. "Promise me you'll call her. I don't want you going without it and mom coming home tomorrow to scold us both." She listened to him promise, but his tone told her he wouldn't. "I love you, see you Sunday." After hanging up, she took a deep breath before she called her sister. A major mistake. Her abdomen quivered at the scent of Cole's cologne.

After four rings, the thought of her sister not being home or reachable gave her an uneasy feeling. She noticed Cole had stopped adding numbers to the spreadsheet and glanced at him. He looked up at her with a hurry-up-and-get-out-of-here look. Tough--she wasn't leaving until she had her father taken care of.

Her sister's voice had her saying, "Aleece, Dad is supposed to call you to do his shot at ten. I know he won't, so please--" Her sister argued about how she didn't like doing it and that was why mom had assigned the task to her. "Please, just this one night. I won't get out of work early enough." Aleece stressed how much she owed her. "Whatever, Aleece. We can discuss it at dinner Sunday. Just don't forget. Ten o'clock." She hung up and stormed from the office, hoping the door slam rattled Cole's brain cells. Her sister wasn't the most reliable, and she hated having to count on her for something this important.

She grabbed a towel to wipe down her section and pushed against the kick plate, sending the door flying into the wall outside the kitchen. Why she had feelings for the bastard was beyond her. He was being a total ass.

With a deep inhale and slow exhale, she tried to calm herself down. Damn it! The scent of him had embedded itself in her nasal passages again. From experience, she knew it would take hours before it'd clear out. In the meantime, she'd have to work at staying pissed at him. Not that he wasn't making it easy.

Hell, he'd have a good laugh if he knew he turned her on. She wasn't his type. He preferred the tall women with size--six bodies and no shape to them.

"Hi, Lana," Janet said as she passed her on the way to the kitchen.

"Hi, Janet." Lana went through the doorway into the bar still seething. There wasn't a damn thing wrong with her five-one, size-twelve body. Her blond hair didn't come from a bottle, as Cole would know for sure if he saw beneath her navy slacks. She had beautiful breasts, a waistline and hips he could grab onto as he pounded her flesh. He definitely wouldn't have to worry she'd break. If she did have a fault, it'd have to be her short legs, but they could still wrap around him and pull his cock deeper. She groaned. It never failed. He had a way of monopolizing her thoughts, and they tended to stray to sex.

Gathering the plates and rolled silverware on her first table, she set them aside along with the condiments and started to wipe down the oak tabletop. There was another smooth surface she wanted to rub down. Cole's hairless head as she rode his cock.

She'd give anything to knock the breath right out of the man with her well-toned thighs as he brought her through multiple orgasms. She slammed the pepper shaker down. Lana shook her head and gave a frustrated moan, then continued to wipe down the half-moon booth.

When her section looked spotless, she returned to the kitchen, dropped the towel into the bucket, and eyed the pitiful attempt Taylor made in setting up the expo station. She checked the coolers for supplies and shook her head. The salad dressings weren't stocked, nor were the supplies Cole would need to carry him through a night of expo-ing. Damn lazy kids. She made a mental list and cut through the prep area at the back of the kitchen to get to the walk-in cooler.

On her second trip out of the walk-in, she ran into Taylor. "Did you bother to check side-work before you signed people out?"

"Yeah," he said in the drawn-out tone he used when he lied to her.

She shook her head. "Next time, do a better job."

"What bug crawled up your panties?"

"A responsible one." She glared at him, and as he stepped aside to let her pass, she saw Cole come from the office and stare her down. She'd love to ask what crawled up his ass. "Just chop some chives, please."

"Maybe."

Lana rolled her eyes and went to put things away. When she straightened after stocking the salad cooler, she watched Cole stretch his five-seven body up to pull server tickets from the printer. If he knew how the movement tightened his ass and how she wanted to reach out and run her hand over it, he'd laugh, but it wouldn't be because he found the attention flattering.

He stuck the slips in the ticket rail, then turned to talk to one of the young things sporting shapeless uniforms. Why didn't he have her close?

Cole leaned toward the brunette, and Lana stopped breathing. Or it felt like she did when she thought he was going to kiss her. He didn't, but she slammed her glass down on the shelf and left the kitchen anyway. Ginny, her best friend, told her she needed to get past the over-hill syndrome and flirt with him. She couldn't. It wasn't in her nature, at least while she was sober.

She walked up to the bar and Tracey, the only person she did hang out with from work, came over. "I'm taping the game. Come over and watch it with me after work."

"I'm closing."

"What? You don't close on Fridays."

"Just chalk it up to another one of the man's latest attempts to get me to quit."

Tracey moved closer. "I told you, he doesn't want you to quit. He likes you. When you two finish tonight, go over across the way and have a drink. Make yourself accessible."

"You sound like Ginny. Anyway, he's back there practically in Angela's bed right now."

"You both love baseball--see if he's going to the Chiefs game tomorrow night."

"I bet he's taking one of the twigs."

Tracey lifted a brow. "Ooh! You're in a mood."

"I'm sorry. Closing means I have to rely on Aleece to give dad his insulin shot."

"He doesn't know her, does he?"

Lana shook her head. "If he did, he'd want to bed her. What is it about young, thin, shapeless girls that turn a man on?"

Tracey shook her head. "Turning thirty really has you bummed out. We need to do something big for it. A private party with a couple strippers, maybe."

"I don't think so. If I could, I'd sleep through the next few weeks, then wake and pretend it never happened."

Tracey laughed. "Relax. You'll see, it won't be so bad. You won't wake up and find gray hair or wrinkles."

She shrugged and saw Cole out of the corner of her eye. He stopped near the computer, a mere two feet from her.

"Fix a glass of wine for Lana and me." Then he playfully slapped the edge of the counter and walked away.

"All right. That's a prime example of what I tried to tell you the other night. He wouldn't order a drink to share with you if he didn't like you."

Lana chuckled. "Right. He's probably got something else up his sleeve, and he's trying to soften the blow."

Tracey grinned at her. "Give him a kiss when you take the wine to him."

"A kiss like that only works if the feelings are reciprocated." Aside from Ginny, Tracey was the only person who knew how she felt about Cole. It'd come out one night while they were driving back to Peoria from a game at Wrigley Field. Tracey had reminded her Cole came from Chicago.

She drank from the glass. "It's going to be a long night. The ladies better be ordering Lemon Drops tonight."

"I'll keep something coming your way," Tracey told her as she added more wine to the glass.

"I'll be back. I'm in the bar again tonight." She took the wine and headed back to the kitchen.

Cole stood with his back to her. He'd changed into a kitchen t-shirt, the taut navy fabric emphasized his muscular shoulders and slimmed down to his waist. She swallowed a moan. He put an apron over his head while speaking to yet another early-twenty-something female. She kicked the twinge of envy out the other side of her heart. Hell, why would he want an older woman when at twenty-seven, he could have his pick of the younger mix?

As she went to walk around them to set the glass on the expo table, Cole reached out and took the glass from her, and his fingers brushed against hers. Shivers spiraled down her spine, but she ignored them and grabbed the ticket Juan laid on the plates he'd set in the window. She checked the ticket and pulled baked potatoes from the warmer drawer under the table.

Snippets of their conversation reached her and she tried not to listen, but it wasn't possible to tune it out when he laughed. God, she loved the sexy sound. The way it seemed to come from deep within him. The rare exchanges they'd had over her checkouts brought chuckles she found alluring, but his laughter--the way it lighted up his face, his eyes. Just once she'd like to see him look at her with such pure delight. But no, all they ever discussed were work issues or stupid moves the coach made in the Cubs game.

She turned to see if the server the food belonged to happened to be in the kitchen. For a moment the look on Cole's face distracted her. The playfulness and pure joy reminded her of the time he'd come through the door sliding and dropped down on a knee as he sang the chorus to Total Eclipse of the Heart. That was the moment her heart screamed, he's the one. Shaking her head, she picked up the tray to serve the entrées herself.

When she returned to the kitchen, Cole picked up the wine glass and faced her. His chat pals had been pulled away to take care of their own tables, she imagined. She added the tray to the stack sitting on the bottom shelf of the table as he stuck the glass under her nose.

"Gary will be here in the morning. I need the place clean, and I know you'll make sure it is," he explained, needing redemption for disrupting a family obligation, she supposed.

She took a sip of the wine and set it down without accepting his half-assed compliment. "I need to see if I've been sat." There wasn't a reason she could think of to let him off the hook so easily. It would only give him reason to pull the stunt whenever he felt like it.

"Lana, I didn't know about your father."

For a moment their eyes met while she waited for more, but instead something akin to a look of disgust came over his face as he turned away. "I'll give my sister a reminder call later," she said as she walked away and pushed through the door. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them reign. What did he see when he looked at her? Obviously, whatever it was grossed him out. Excuse me for not being supermodel material.

"Hey, Lana,"

She looked up at Roxy, who'd turned from setting plates on the rack in the main dining room. "How many?"

"No, you haven't been sat. Would you tell Frank his party is arriving? Thanks."

"No problem." Lana turned to return to the kitchen. Frank stood at the end of the alley. She grabbed her glass and headed down. "Frank, your party is showing up." After adding soda to her glass, she stood near the bread-warmer and sipped it.

"Bake with butter and sour," Cole said in his own quiet manner as he looked over his shoulder.

Her heart leapt, and she knew she should have walked away and left him to handle his job himself, but she couldn't pass up the chance to work with him. Despite everything else, they made one hell of good team. She set her glass down and moved to his side. Working with him like this had become the highlight of her evening shifts. When or why it began, she didn't know, but it'd become a ritual. And now that she thought about it, she didn't have the constant need to fuck him while they worked to get the food out.

There came a pause between tickets, and she glanced around at the servers who had tables and were bustling around getting salads and drinks. At least they'd be making money tonight, she thought with a mixed bitterness.

"Loaded, Lana; do it to me," Cole said, drawing her back to their little world.

Lana hesitated a second or two. She couldn't think of a comeback that wouldn't sound stupid coming from her, so she just fixed up the potato. He reached for it, letting his fingers linger on hers as she shook the last of the sour cream from the scoop. She swallowed and stepped back to take a long drink from her glass. It didn't cool the heat running through her.