Saving the CEO (49th Floor #1)(4)
Chapter Two
When Jack arrived at the bar the next night, the bartender was deep in conversation with a…teenager? She was huddled with a girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, their attention both drawn by something on the bar.
“Ants, Cassie! Ants! Are they trying to alienate me?”
Cassie—that must be her name—waved a bar towel dismissively. “Ants, trains, whatever, it’s all the same. You just have to think about it the same way you always do.”
The scrape of his stool drew her attention. A flash of surprise flitted across her face, but it was quickly replaced by a grin. When she smiled she crunched up her nose, which, lightly sprinkled with freckles as it was, made for a seriously adorable picture. “Hey! You’re back!” She glanced out at the restaurant proper, toward the far corner where he usually sat.
“Yeah, it’s easier to spread out here at the bar, I found. And I’ve got a crapload of work to get done.” It was not untrue. His head swam when he thought of it. The reality, though, was that he was going to need a bar the size of his boardroom table to sort everything out. But he couldn’t do this work in the office. He huffed a disgusted laugh. Hell, he probably couldn’t do this work at all—that was the terrible irony.
She ducked for a moment, disappearing behind the bar. When she shot up, she was grinning and holding the jug of distilled water. She plunked it down in front of him. “The scotch supplier was here today and we have a bunch of new bottles—they’re still in back. I’m gonna go grab them.” Before he could protest that anything was fine—he wasn’t feeling picky—she was off, hips swaying in her black miniskirt.
He didn’t realize how openly he was staring until he swung his attention back to the bar to find the teenager eyeing him with no less subtlety. In her jeans and too-tight T-shirt, she looked out of place in the dark bar, which was usually filled with stockbrokers and young beautiful people with money to burn.
“You Cassie’s boyfriend?”
He shot her what he hoped was a quelling look. “No.” Then he pulled up the March invoices. Jesus Christ, he was only to March. He’d hoped to have this sorted out before the Wexler deal got underway, but it didn’t look like it was going to happen. He knocked his head momentarily against his fist, as if he could knock some goddamn sense into his head.
“Problem?” The girl was still looking at him.
“You could say that.”
“Well, you’re not the only one. Listen to this. Two ants are at a common point in time. The first ant starts crawling along a straight line at the rate of one meter per minute. Three minutes later, the second ant starts crawling in a direction perpendicular to that of the first, at a rate of one point three meters per minute. How fast is the distance between them changing when the first ant has traveled seven meters?”
His blank stare must have spoken for him because she pounded the bar and said, “Exactly. There’s also the part where we’re talking about ants! Ants! When, I ask you, am I ever going to need to calculate the rate of change of the distance between two ants?”
“I think it’s safe to say probably never?”
“Never say never.” Cassie had snuck up on them. She was carrying too much, hugging an armful of bottles. Carefully, slowly, she let them slide down her chest, until they thunked onto the polished cherrywood of the bar. He had a sudden vision of her doing the same thing naked. The bottles would compress her ample breasts, and as they slid down her body, those breasts would bounce back to their pertly rounded shape. Jesus. Stop it.
“The point is not the ants.” Cassie spoke to the girl even as she lined up the half dozen bottles and began turning them so the labels faced him. “The point is not even the ‘will I ever have to do this exact equation in real life?’ question. It’s about learning how to think mathematically. To problem solve.”
She looked at him and then back at the girl. No one spoke.
“Oh, I’m sorry! Alana, meet Mr. ah…” She bit her lip.
“Winter,” he supplied. “Jack Winter.”
“Mr. Winter”—Cassie shot him a smile—“Meet Ms. Alana Jamieson.”
“As in Edward Jamieson?” he asked, referencing the owner of the eponymous restaurant.
Alana’s version of the universal eye roll of teenagers everywhere confirmed her paternity.
Just then one of the servers came by, the one he thought of as the least annoying. “Two glasses of merlot.” Cassie nodded and pulled down two balloon glasses. “And, Cassie, nine bucks on a one hundred and seventy dollar check—what’s that?”
“Just over five percent,” said Cassie.
“Goddamn, what do these rich f*ckers think? That I’m here for shits and giggles?” Then the server reached out and tousled Alana’s hair. “Sorry, sugar. Getting stiffed makes me cranky.”
Cassie gave a little cough and inclined her head ever so slightly toward Jack. The server’s eyes followed Cassie’s and landed on him. She obviously hadn’t seen him sitting in the corner, but she didn’t even bother disguising her eye roll. What was it about him today that was inspiring feminine eye rolls? “Present company excluded, of course,” she drawled before grabbing her now-filled wine glasses and speeding off.