I really expected to have more to say about having just finished the first draft of my first novel.
The door opened just before she got it, and she blocked Tameron’s view while she exchanged a brief word with whoever it was coming in. He was just preparing himself to politely inform the newcomer that last call was in twenty minutes when Gloriana’s wild red mane disappeared into the night and Gwen cocked her eyebrows at him.
She crossed to the bar and hopped up to the same stool Gloriana had vacated a moment earlier. She folded her arms on the bartop, then sank down until her chin was resting on one wrist.
“I’d kill for something with rum in it.”
“We don’t close for another fifty minutes,” he said, already reaching for a bottle. It wasn’t quite the same as ‘last call at two’, and she heard the difference. She nodded, accepted the tumbler when he set it down in front of her, and swallowed a third without even looking to see if it was dark.
Tameron tried to decide if that was a reflection of her trusting him, or if she was just too tired to care. In the end, he thought, maybe those amounted to the same thing.
She sat there, chin on her arms, watching him with undemanding interest as he tended to the last remaining patrons and began the process of packing the Oak up for the night. He got the distinct impression that she’d be able to do it all without him after seeing what was required, and made a mental note to call her in at the end of a shift some night and see if he was right. She didn’t offer to pick up a cloth when he started wiping tables, but when turned back to the bar at the end he found the surface clean and the rags neatly folded, bottles fronted and ice melting in the sink.
Gwen herself didn’t look like she’d moved an inch, but she did grin at whatever she saw on his face.
