Jay shifted his attention from the spreadsheet on his computer to Carter Ford, his best friend of nearly two decades and now his right-hand man at Jason Channing Enterprises. Carter stood in the doorway of Jay’s office, which also served as the staff lounge and lunch room of Adventure Village.

He glanced at the papers spread out on his desk and, with sincere reluctance, shook his head. “It’s going to take me forever to sort this stuff out.”

“What stuff?” Carter asked.

“Invoices to pay, booking requests to log and emails to answer.”

His friend crossed the concrete floor and dropped into one of the visitors’ chairs, then lifted his feet onto the seat of another. “Isn’t that Naomi’s job?”

“It was supposed to be,” he admitted, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Until I realized that we were two months behind on our insurance payments and we missed out on the opportunity to host a corporate team-building exercise for fifty people because the email was ignored.”

The missed opportunity was an annoyance; the potential loss of liability insurance could have shut down their business.

“I thought you’d set up preauthorized payments for the insurance,” Carter said.

He nodded. “For the first six months, the payments were coming out of my personal account, to give the business a chance to turn a profit. Then the automatic debits were supposed to be switched over to the Adventure Village account, but Naomi didn’t send the paperwork to the bank.”

Carter swore. “Tell me again why we’re giving her a paycheck every two weeks.”

“She got her last one today,” Jay told him.

His friend’s brows winged upward. “You fired your cousin?”

“Yeah.”

“Your aunt’s gonna be so pissed.”

“Yeah,” he said again, already braced for the fallout.

But he trusted that, if it came down to a family battle, his father would be on his side. Because Benjamin Channing had been the one to urge Jay to find a job for his cousin at Adventure Village so that Ben wouldn’t have to make a position for her at Blake Mining. Naomi had an extensive work history, but she’d never managed to hold on to any job for very long. “And while I’m not opposed to nepotism, I am opposed to incompetence—and that’s why I’ve got to deal with this paperwork,” he explained to his friend.

“C’mon, Jay, you can take a break for a few hours,” Carter urged.

“Maybe tomorrow night,” he suggested.

“It has to be tonight,” his friend insisted.

“Why?”

“Because it’s our first anniversary.”

Though he was aware of the significance of the date and knew his friend was referring to the business, he couldn’t resist joking, “So where are my flowers?”

“The shop was out of yellow roses,” Carter bantered back. “And I know they’re your favorite.”

“Tell me you at least got a card.”

“Mere words cannot express my feelings,” his friend said.

Jay snorted.

“But I’ll buy you a beer after paintball tonight,” Carter offered. “And we’ll toast to year one.”

“And account ledgers written entirely in black ink,” Jay added, sitting back in his chair.

He believed in working hard and playing hard, and he considered himself lucky that there was a fair amount of overlap between work and play for the CEO of Adventure Village, Haven’s family friendly recreational playground.

When he’d bought his first property—two acres of dry, dusty terrain that included an old abandoned shoe factory—several of the townsfolk had scratched their heads as they tried to figure out why he would throw his money away. Few people gave him credit for having a plan; even fewer believed he might have a viable one, especially when he acquired the undeveloped parcel directly behind the old factory.

He didn’t talk about his project except with those who’d been chosen to work on the development. Because Jay knew that the best way to create buzz about what he was doing was to say nothing. The less people knew, the more they tended to speculate—and then share their speculation with friends and neighbors, who passed it on to other friends and neighbors.

When Adventure Village opened, he’d hoped all the doubters and naysayers and everyone else would understand that the land he’d purchased was an investment—not just in Jason’s future, but that of the whole town. As one of only three cities in all of Nevada where gambling was illegal, Haven saw a steady exodus of residents to the casinos in neighboring areas on evenings and weekends. And who could blame them when there was no action in their hometown?

But now the residents of Haven had another option. And not only were fewer people heading out of town on weekends, there were more people heading to Haven from other places.

Jay understood that part of the draw, at least in the beginning, was the newness and novelty of his facility. In a state where most people came to fritter away their money at the tables or in the bordellos, a facility that offered a variety of wholesome physical activities for all ages was an anomaly—and week after week, that anomaly was adding to his status as one of the wealthiest men in Haven.

And that was definitely cause for celebration.

“What’s the plan?”

“Assassins,” Carter immediately replied, proving that he’d already given the matter some thought. Or maybe it was just that Assassins was always his game of choice whenever they geared up and took to the field.

“Who’s in?”

“Kevin, Matt, Nat, Hayley, me and you.”

Jay looked at the papers on his desk again.

“You started this business because you wanted to have fun,” his friend reminded him.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “But I didn’t realize that fun could be so much work.”

“And that’s why you need a break.”

“Why can’t that break be tomorrow night?” he wondered.

“Because after the game, Kev wants to head over to Diggers’ to put his moves on the hot new bartender, and she doesn’t work Saturdays.”

“Kev has no moves,” Jay noted. “And what he thinks is hot is usually only lukewarm.”

“You’re right about the moves,” his friend agreed. “But his description of the bartender was actually ‘sizzling.’”

“Now you have my attention.”

Carter grinned.

Jay decided the unpaid and undocumented invoices would still be there tomorrow.

* * *

Alyssa loved her job at Westmount High School. Teaching was her pride and her passion, and helping young minds understand scientific laws and mathematic formulas was incredibly fulfilling. But despite a full timetable and the prep and marking to be completed outside of regular school hours, when she walked out of her classroom at the end of the day, she found that she had a lot of free time on her hands.

So she’d looked for opportunities to meet people and get involved in the community. She joined a book club, but the required readings and once-a-month meetings did little to fill her empty nights. She tried a pottery class but had more luck throwing her misshapen vessels into the trash than throwing clay on the wheel. She tried to teach herself to knit but got the needles hopelessly tangled—not just in the wool she’d bought for her project, but in the sweater she’d been wearing. As a result, she’d filled most of her empty hours through the long winter binge-watching Netflix.

Then one day, when she was picking up a few groceries at The Trading Post, she overheard Frieda Zimmerman (whose husband was the local mechanic and tow truck operator) tell Thomas Mann (the owner of Mann’s Theater) that her niece Erika had run off to Vegas to be a dancer. Alyssa hadn’t been paying too much attention to their conversation, but her attention was snagged when Mr. Mann commented that Diggers’ was going to be short a bartender. Because that was a job Alyssa had some experience with, having worked part-time at a campus bar while she was in college.

Her parents had acknowledged the value of their youngest daughter gaining some work experience and contributing to the cost of her education, but they hadn’t approved of the late hours or the work environment. It was the first time Alyssa hadn’t backed down in the face of their opposition, and although the job had been physically demanding, she’d enjoyed the work—and the chance to forget about her studies and everything else for a while.

Even on Friday nights, Diggers’ didn’t draw a crowd comparable to a college bar in Irvine, but Alyssa was eager for something—anything—to fill some empty hours. Duke Hawkins had been wary about hiring a schoolteacher to tend his bar, but as she was the only applicant with any actual experience, he’d agreed to give her a chance. In only a few short weeks, she’d earned regular shifts on Tuesday and Friday nights.

Sunday through Thursday, there was only one bartender on duty, but on weekends, there were two scheduled with overlapping shifts. Alyssa worked from seven until midnight and Skylar Gilmore came in at eight and stayed until closing. Sky was a couple years younger than Alyssa, but she’d been working part-time at the bar since she was of age and was now a master of the subtle flirtation that kept customers coming back without expecting anything more from the woman who filled their glasses.

Everyone in town knew Sky as the youngest daughter of David Gilmore, owner and operator of the Circle G—reputedly the biggest and most prosperous cattle ranch in Nevada. Few people knew that she was working toward her master’s degree in psychology. She was also open and warm and funny, and she knew everything there was to know about Diggers’ regular customers—and most of the less regular patrons, too.

Sky was the third of four kids. Her older sister was an attorney married to the local sheriff, Reid Davidson. In February, Katelyn and Reid had added a baby girl to their family, and proud Aunt Sky was always ready to pull out her phone and share recent pictures of her niece, Tessa. Liam, the second oldest, currently worked at the Circle G with his father and brother, though he’d recently purchased the abandoned Stagecoach Inn with the intention of renovating and reopening it as a boutique hotel and spa.

This plan had caused some tension with his father, who apparently insisted that Gilmores were ranchers, not innkeepers, which led to Liam spending less time at the Circle G and more at Diggers’—which was how Alyssa got to know him. Caleb, the youngest, seemed content to work on the ranch, though Sky remarked that he hadn’t been truly happy since a former girlfriend moved out of town a few years back.

“Liam said to tell you that one of the bulls broke through the fence bordering the south pasture,” Sky said when she joined Alyssa behind the bar Friday night.

“Does that mean he’s not coming in tonight?”

“He’s coming in,” her coworker assured her. “But he’s going to be late.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said, though she knew that if he was too late, her plan B would fall apart.

“What he didn’t tell me,” Sky continued, as if thinking aloud, “is why it was so important for him to show up tonight—or why you would have any interest in his plans.”

“It’s a long story,” Alyssa warned.

“We’ve got time—this place won’t get busy for at least another hour.”

So Alyssa told Sky about Diego’s impending visit to Haven. Ordinarily, she’d have no qualms about spending time with a family friend visiting from out of town, except that her mother had been less than subtle in her efforts to facilitate a romance between her youngest daughter and the nephew of her best friend, and Alyssa wasn’t the least bit interested.

“Is he a jerk?” Sky asked.

“No.”

“Unattractive?”

“No.” Because although she wasn’t attracted to him, she could appreciate that he had a certain appeal.

“Unemployed?”

“No,” she said again. “In fact, he works as a project engineer in the aerospace industry.”

“So why aren’t you interested?” Sky wondered.

“Because I don’t want to date anyone right now—especially not someone handpicked by my mother for the sole purpose of enticing me to move back to California.”

“How does my brother figure into any of this?”

“He had the misfortune of being here Tuesday night when my mother called to tell me about Diego’s potential travel plans. And he suggested that the only sure way to stop her from setting me up with someone from home was to tell her I’m dating someone here. So—” she looked at Sky, trying to gauge her friend’s reaction “—Liam’s going to be my pretend boyfriend tonight.”

Her friend’s brows lifted. “Pretend, huh?”

“Pretend,” Alyssa said firmly.

“Oh,” Sky said, sounding disappointed. “For a minute, I thought this story might be as good as the sexy book I stayed up all night reading.”

“Maybe I can borrow it when you’re done, because the only romance I want these days is in the pages of a novel,” Alyssa told her.

“Why’s that?”

“Because I like my life the way it is—uncomplicated by the expectations of a man.”

“Most men are simple creatures driven by simple desires to eat, sleep and have sex.” Sky grinned. “Although not necessarily in that order.”

Alyssa’s experiences with the male gender were too limited for her to be able to contradict her friend’s assessment. Instead, she said, “And I have no desire to cook so that a man can eat, or make up the bed for him to sleep on.”

“I noticed that you didn’t dis the sex,” Sky said, her tone contemplative.

“My experience in that area is limited,” she admitted.

“How limited?”

“Let’s just say I really don’t get what all the fuss is about.”

“Then you haven’t been with the right kind of guy,” her friend said. “And it’s probably a good thing you only want Liam to be a pretend boyfriend.”

“Now you’ve piqued my curiosity,” Alyssa said.

“I love both of my brothers dearly, but Liam is...” Sky paused, as if searching for the right words to express what she was thinking. “He’s not always considerate of a woman’s emotions.” She smiled wryly. “Sometimes he’s not even cognizant of them.”

“So if I was going to fall for one of the Gilmore boys, I should set my sights on Caleb?” Alyssa joked.

Her friend shook her head. “Except that my younger brother, though inherently more compassionate, is completely emotionally unavailable.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not looking to fall for anyone,” she noted.

“Those not looking are most likely to fall,” Sky warned.

“I’m not concerned.”

“How long have you been in Haven?” her friend asked as she began to unload a tray of glasses.

“Eight months,” she answered.

“How many dates have you had in that time?”

“Two,” she admitted.

“Two dates with the same guy or two different guys?” Sky continued to multitask as she interrogated her.

“Two different guys,” Alyssa clarified. “Neither of which I wanted a second date with.”

“Sex?”

She shook her head.

Sky gave Alyssa her full attention now. “You haven’t had sex in eight months?”

Alyssa’s cheeks flushed. “It’s actually been a little bit longer than that.” Actually, it had been a lot longer than that, but she wasn’t ready to admit to her friend that she was a twenty-six-year-old virgin.

“You haven’t met anyone in that time who’s made you think ‘yeah, I could get naked with him’?” Sky asked.

Even as she shook her head again, an image of Jason Channing filled her mind and heated her blood. Whenever she was around her upstairs neighbor and current running partner, feelings—unfamiliar and unwelcome—stirred inside her. Those feelings sometimes made it difficult to remember that she was happy living her own life and definitely not looking for romance. And even if she was, it would be a mistake to glance in his direction.

“No,” she said in answer to Sky’s question.

But then he walked right out of her thoughts and into the bar, and her defective heart skipped a beat.

He wasn’t alone. Of course “Charming” wasn’t alone on a Friday night. He was with a woman—blonde, beautiful, built. No, he was with two women. The second was a little taller, with darker hair, but no less beautiful. A second man followed the second woman, and they headed directly for one of the booths.

A double date, Alyssa guessed.

Then two more guys came in and squeezed into the booth, too.

Or maybe just a group of friends, she allowed.

Alyssa tore her gaze away from them to glance at the clock. Because as nice as Jason Channing was to look at, he wasn’t the man she wanted to see right now.

In fact, he wasn’t a man she could let herself want at all.

Chapter Three

As Jay made his way to the bar, he watched Alyssa give a smile to her customer along with his change. Her attention shifted, and though it might have been his imagination, he thought her smile widened when she recognized him.

“So you’re the one,” he said to her.

“The one what?” she asked.

“My friend Kevin insisted that we come here tonight to check out the hot new bartender,” he explained.

She automatically glanced toward the table where his friends were seated, suggesting that she’d seen them enter the bar. “Setting aside the accuracy of that description for the moment, I hope he didn’t make the suggestion in front of your new girlfriend.”

“My—Oh.” He looked over his shoulder. “Which one did you think was my girlfriend?”

She shrugged. “Either. Both.”

“I’m flattered... I think. But no, Nat and Hayley are friends and employees.”

“Is the boss buying the first round tonight?” she prompted.

Although there were servers who circulated around the floor, taking orders and delivering drinks, it wasn’t unusual for customers to order directly from the bartender.

“I am,” Jay confirmed. “Two bottles of Icky, one Wild Horse, a gin and tonic, one Maker’s Mark, neat, and a Coke.”

She turned to reach into the beer fridge for the bottles he’d requested, providing him with a nice view of her perfectly shaped backside.

“So what made you take up bartending?” he asked, his attention focusing on the chunky, lopsided heart-shaped pendant that dangled between her breasts when she turned back again.

“Too much time on my hands,” she confided, deftly uncapping the bottles.

He lifted his eyes to her face again. “Did you lose your teaching job?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what you really meant to say was too many lonely nights,” he teased.

“I’m not lonely,” she denied, scooping ice into a tall glass. “But I spend a lot of time alone and I thought this would be a good way to meet people.”

“How’s that working out so far?”

She smiled as she filled the glass from the soda gun. “The tips are good.”

He chuckled.

“Aside from that,” she continued as she poured the bourbon into an old-fashioned glass, “I’ve learned there are three types of guys who come into a bar.”

“What are those types?” he asked curiously.

“Type one are the regulars who might be genuinely nice guys, but their closest and longest relationships are with the bottle,” she explained as she scooped more ice into a highball.

“Type two comes in looking to meet a woman, but he doesn’t have any interest in getting to know her beyond the most basic exchange of information for the sole purpose of getting her into bed.” She added a shot of gin, then squeezed a wedge of lime into the glass.

“Type three is almost worse.” She added the tonic, another wedge of lime and a stir stick. “He seems like a good guy, and he’s usually with a girl who thinks so, too, but the whole time he’s with her, he’s scoping out the area for other females.”

“I’d suggest that there’s also a fourth type,” Jay said. “The guy who comes in for a drink with his friends and maybe to flirt with a pretty girl.”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged, a little dubiously.

“And then there’s Carter,” he said as his friend joined him at the bar—ostensibly to help him carry the drinks back to their table.

“Hello, Carter,” she said, greeting the other man with a friendly smile.

“For once in his life, Kevin was right,” Carter remarked, winking boldly at Alyssa.

Jay shook his head. “Type two,” he told her. “Not beyond reform, but risky.”

Alyssa nodded as she punched the drinks into the register. “Got it.”

Carter scowled. “What does that mean? What’s a type two?”

“It means that you’re not going to hit on the bartender—who also happens to be my neighbor,” he said firmly.

His friend’s gaze shifted from him to Alyssa and back again. “You live next to this stunning creature and you’ve never invited me over to meet her?”

“And this is him pretending that he’s not hitting on you,” Jay remarked as he passed some bills across the counter to Alyssa.

She laughed. “Well, I’m flattered,” she said.

“Let me know when you want to be not pretend hit on,” Carter told her, picking up several of the drinks to take them back to their table.

Jay shook his head to decline the change she offered.

Her smile slipped, replaced by an expression of concern. “Ohmygod.”

He craned his neck, looking behind him. “What happened?”

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

She lifted a hand to touch his face, her fingers brushing lightly over the stubble on his jaw—and the bruise that throbbed beneath the skin.

“Oh, that,” he said, wondering how it was that her cautious touch was so unexpectedly arousing. “Matt caught me with my shield up.”

“Huh?”

“Paintball,” he explained.

“Boys and their toys,” she mused, letting her hand drop away.

His skin continued to tingle where she’d touched him.

Or maybe that was just the bruise.

Yeah, it was definitely the bruise, he decided as he picked up the remaining drinks and walked away from the bar. Because he definitely wasn’t letting himself get involved with the girl next door.

* * *

“You calling dibs?” Carter asked when Jay rejoined his friends at their table.

“Dibs on what?” Matt Hutchinson wanted to know.

“Of course I’m not calling dibs,” Jay said.

“The bartender,” Natalya Vasilek answered Matt’s question.

“If anyone’s calling dibs, it’s me,” Kevin Dawson declared. “I saw her first.”

“No, you didn’t,” Carter told him. “Because the ‘hot new bartender’ is a friend and neighbor of our CEO.”

Kevin swore.

“But he’s not calling dibs,” Matt reminded them all.

“Maybe because he likes and respects the woman too much to talk about her as if she was an object up for grabs,” Hayley MacDowell said sharply.

“Whatever Jay’s reasons,” Kevin insisted, “if he’s not calling dibs, I am.”

“No one is calling dibs on Alyssa,” Jay said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Carter tipped his bottle to his lips but kept his gaze on his friend, silently assessing.

Conversation moved on to other topics, including a rehashing of all the highlights of their recent game. As they talked, their glasses and bottles emptied.

“I think Alyssa’s the real reason you broke up with Renee,” Carter said to Jay when the play-by-play had begun to lag.

“I broke up with Renee because she ranked below my business and my friends on my list of priorities,” he replied.

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