“You really mean that?” I ask, looking back at my food before I get lost in his eyes.
“I do,” he says. The sting of tears threatens to fall, and I blink them away. I pick at the food and finally give up trying to eat. Standing up, I put away everything.
Beau finishes his food and stands to start cleaning up in front of him. He puts everything in the bag and places it to the side. Then he walks over to the stage where the bands perform and begins to pick up some of the debris from there. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” he says, “but if I help, that means you can open sooner.” He shrugs. “I don’t know what I would do with my nights if I wasn’t sitting on that stool.”
With a laugh, I continue picking up the stools and wiping them off. “You always were in my way.” I side-eye him. “Always coming behind the bar and trying to lure the ladies with your talk of pouring drinks.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t trying to lure anyone.” He steps off the stage. “I was trying to help you.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “You liar.” Shrieking, I say, “You asked both Becky Johnson and Ashley Walker out while pretending to help me.”
“Hey.” He points at me, walking over. “They asked me out. I didn’t want you to lose business, so I took them out on one date.” He puts the box on the bar. “So technically, I was doing you a favor.”
I roll my eyes and prop up the last stool. “That is such bullshit.” Walking over, I put the rag down next to the box with the trash and prop my hand on my hip. “I owe you a lot, Beau.” My voice goes low when he steps toward me.
His hand reaches out to wipe my cheek right under my eye. “You owe me nothing, Savannah,” he says. His voice goes a touch low, and we just look at each other. “You’ve already given me so much.” My hands go to his hips, and I swear that my heart is going to beat out of my chest. “Besides, who else is going to help you fend off all the men?”
Chapter Nine
Beau
Her blue eyes gloss over to a dark blue, the same blue as when she gets nervous. The same blue that I’ve fallen in love with. “Besides, who else is going to help you fend off all the men?”
She laughs, breaking the moment. I was so close to kissing her, and I thought this was going to be it. I was going to take the leap and just do it, but then she laughed and the moment was broken. Her hands on my hips now push me away, so my hand falls from her warm cheek. “Fend off what men?”
“All of them,” I say, turning and grabbing the box with the debris that I picked up from the stage. “Literally all the single ones who wait by the bar to see if you will pick them.”
She swings around now. “That’s such hogwash.” She bends down and picks up one of the chairs, only to have it fall on its side. I look down and see one of the legs are broken.
“You don’t see it.” I grab the broken chair and set it off to the side. “They stand there and watch you,” I say, and she watches me while I pick up another chair to see if it’s broken. “Sometimes when you twirl and dance to the music …” I spot a broken chair and set it down next to the other one. “They stand there and just watch you like you are the main event.”
She stands there with her mouth hanging open. “That’s not true.”
I laugh now. “It’s so true.” Walking over to the bar and grabbing the wet rag, I toss it to her. “Wipe down the tables while you catch flies.”
She glares at me now, walking to a table that’s been flipped over. She puts it up right, then wipes it down. “I think you are just saying all these things because I teased you about your harem.”
“My harem.” I shake my head, putting all the good chairs to one side. “Harem or not …” I look over as she bends down and washes off a table. Her ass is perfect and round, and now I’m like one of those creeps checking her out. “I leave with only one girl every single time.”
She looks over her shoulder at me. “That you do.” She walks over to the jukebox and presses a couple of buttons. “Might as well sing while we work.”
She heads to another table while “Slow Dance in a Parking Lot” comes on. “Dance with me?” I ask her, or maybe I am telling her. She looks over at me. “I like this song, and you can never dance when you are working.”
She doesn’t move. She just looks at me unsure on what to do. I reach out and grab her hand, pulling her to the dance floor. “We dance,” she says to me when I slip my arm around her waist and pull her to me. “I mean, not all the time.”
“We’ve danced four times,” I say, and her eyes go big.
“Six,” she counters, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Just last week, you walked behind the bar and pulled me to this dance floor.”
I look down into her eyes. “I beat Teddy to it,” I admit. “One of his friends dared him to come over and ask you to dance, so I beat him to it.”
She throws her head back and laughs out loud. “You did not.”
“I did, too.” I smile, lifting one hand to push her hair away from her forehead. “He was just going to try to cop a feel,” I fill her in, “and there was no way in fuck I was going to let that happen.”
“Aren’t you my knight in shining armor?” she says. We stop dancing and just stand in the middle of the dance floor. “Mr. Mayor,” she jokes with me.
“I hate that title,” I say, admitting that out loud for the first time in my life. “It’s so old-school. Why can’t I be Mayor Beau instead of Mr. Mayor?”
“You can be whatever you want.” She raises her eyebrows. “You’re Mr. Mayor.”
“When my father told me he was retiring, something woke up inside me. I wanted to be the one who was in charge now. I wanted to be the one who made a difference. I wanted to be the one to bring new changes.”
“Out with the old and in with the new.” She moves her hands from my neck to my chest, laying her palms flat.
“Not everyone is going to like the new changes I want to bring.” My voice goes low. “But I don’t want to be just a little town anymore. I want to bring people here. I want them to come visit every single summer with their kids and have all these memories.”
“What changes do you want?”
“I want to build a rec center. After-school programs, sports programs, community dances. Senior centers.”
“That sounds amazing.” She looks at me, and she has a tear in her eyes. “It sounds amazing, and I’m going to be the one beaming at you from the front row every single time you have a ribbon cutting.”
I shake my head. “It’s all talk for right now.” My arms hold her closer than before, squishing her hands between us. “We have a meeting tomorrow, so let’s hope that they are ready for a change.”
“If anyone can convince them, you can.” She smiles, and I start moving us in a circle. “Everyone loves you.” I want to ask her if that means her, too. I want to know if she feels the same way. I want to tell her that everyone loves her, too, but I love her the most. I want to tell her all this, but I don’t. I just look into her blue eyes as though I’m in a trance. My head moves down just a touch, and I swear I hear her breath hitch. The song stops, and it’s now so quiet all you can hear is the two of us breathing. “You are going to do great things, Beau.”