Ten
“Good evening, Dr. Wyatt,” Jeannie Kaufman said as the man slid into his usual seat at the end of the bar. It was a busy Friday night, and he sat as far away as he could get from the other patrons at Trenton’s.
“Jeannie,” he said in his usual brusque tone.
But this time she heard something tight in his voice.
Dr. Robert Wyatt was an unusual man, to say the least. His family owned Wyatt Medical Industries, and Dr. Wyatt had been named to the “Top Five Chicago Billionaire Bachelors” list last year, which probably had just as much to do with his family fortune as it did with the fact that he was a solid six feet tall, broad chested and sporting a luxurious mane of inky black hair that made the ice-cold blue of his eyes more striking.
And as if being richer than sin and even better looking wasn’t tempting enough, the man had to be a pediatric surgeon, as well. He performed delicate heart surgeries on babies and kids. He single-handedly saved lives—and she’d read that for some families who couldn’t afford the astronomical costs, he’d quietly covered their bills.
Really, the man was too good to be true.
She kept waiting for a sign that, underneath all that perfection, he was a villain. She’d had plenty of rich, handsome and talented customers who were complete assholes.
Dr. Wyatt...wasn’t.
Yes, he was distant, precise and, as far as she could tell, completely fearless. All qualities that made him a great surgeon. But if he had an ego, she’d never seen it. He came into the bar five nights a week at precisely eight, sat in the same spot, ordered the same drink and left her the same tip—a hundred dollars on a twenty-dollar tab. In cash. He never made a pass at anyone, staff or guest, and bluntly rebuffed any flirtation from women or men.
He was her favorite customer.
Before he’d had the chance to straighten his cuffs—something he did almost obsessively—Jeannie set his Manhattan down in front of him.
She’d been making his drink for almost three years now. His Manhattan contained the second-most expensive rye bourbon on the market, because Dr. Wyatt preferred the taste over the most expensive one; a vermouth that she ordered from Italy exclusively for him; and bitters that cost over a hundred bucks a bottle. It was all precisely blended and aged in an American white oak cask for sixty days and served in a chilled martini glass with a lemon twist. It’d taken almost eight months of experimenting with brands and blends and aging to get the drink right.
But it’d been worth it.
Every time he lifted the glass to his lips, like he was doing now, Jeannie held her breath. Watching this man drink was practically an orgasmic experience. As he swallowed, she watched in fascination as the muscles in his throat moved. He didn’t show emotion, didn’t pretend to be nice. But when he lowered the glass back to the bar?
He smiled.
It barely qualified as one, and a casual observer would’ve missed it entirely. His mouth hardly even moved. But she knew him well enough to know that the slight curve of his lips and the warming of his icy gaze was the same as anyone else shouting for joy.
He held her gaze and murmured, “Perfect.”
It was the only compliment she’d ever heard him give.
Her body tightened as desire licked down her back and spread throughout her midsection. As a rule, Jeannie did not serve up sex along with drinks. But if she were ever going to break that rule, it’d be for him.
Sadly, he was only here for the drink.
Jeannie loved a good romance novel and for three years, she’d imagined Robert as some duke thrust into the role that didn’t fit him, nobility that hated the crush of ballrooms and cut directs and doing the pretty around the ton and all those dukely things when all he really wanted to do was practice medicine and tend to his estates and generally be left alone. In those stories, there was always a housekeeper or pickpocket or even a tavern wench who thawed his heart and taught him to love.
Jeannie shook off her fantasies. She topped off the scotch for the salesman at the other end of the bar and poured the wine for table eleven, but her attention was focused on Wyatt. She had to break the bad news to him—she’d be gone next week to help her sister, Nicole, with the baby girl that was due any minute.
This baby was the key to Jeannie and her sister being a family again. Any family Jeannie had ever had, she’d lost. She’d never met her father—he’d left before she’d been born. Mom had died when Jeannie had been ten and Nicole...
It didn’t matter what had gone wrong between the sisters in the past. What mattered was that they were going to grab this chance to be a family again now. Melissa—that was what they were going to call the baby—would be the tie that bound them together. Jeannie would do her part by being there for her sister, just like Nicole had been there for Jeannie when Mom had died and left the sisters all alone in the world.
In an attempt to demonstrate her commitment, Jeannie had even offered to move back into their childhood home with Nicole. It would’ve been a disaster but Jeannie had still offered because that was what family did—they made sacrifices and stuck together through the rough times. Only now that she was twenty-six was Jeannie aware how much Nicole had sacrificed for her. The least Jeannie could do was return the favor.
Nicole had told Jeannie that, while a thoughtful offer, it was absolutely not necessary for them to share a house again. Thank God, because living together probably would’ve destroyed their still-fragile peace. Instead, Jeannie would keep working nights at Trenton’s—and taking care of Dr. Wyatt—and then she’d get to the house around ten every morning to help Nicole with the cooking or cleaning or playing with the baby.
Jeannie might not be the best sister in the world but by God, she was going to be the best aunt.
That was the plan, anyway.
The only hiccup was sitting in front of her.
Wyatt didn’t do well with change, as she’d learned maybe six months into their partnership, as Jeannie thought of it. She’d gotten a cold and stayed home. He’d been more than a little upset that someone else had made him a subpar Manhattan that night. Julian, the owner of Trenton’s, said Tony, the bartender who’d subbed for her that night, had gotten a job elsewhere right after that. Jeannie knew that wasn’t a coincidence.
Maybe half the time Dr. Wyatt sat at her bar, he didn’t say anything. Which was fine. But when he did talk? It wasn’t inane chitchat or stale