The Good Chase by Hanna Martine

Actually that wasn’t true. She wasn’t surly all the time. Sometimes she switched that out with annoyed. Or snippy.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said to Dean. She’d been saying that a lot, and she meant it every time. She had to do something to get out of this funk, particularly since she didn’t quite understand
why
she was so down. It wasn’t like she and Byrne had meant anything to each other in the first place. It had only been one kiss.
    One kiss, some of the most fun conversation she’d had in eons, an electric attraction, and a singular close-call sexual experience. Sigh.
    â€œIt’s okay,” Dean said. Now he looked at her with what she could only categorize as fatherly concern, and that made her uncomfortable on a whole other level. She already had one father, thanks.
    â€œThere’s a couple in the Corner Pocket who requested you specifically,” he said.
    She peered across the sparsely filled main room—not that unusual for early on a Tuesday evening—to the private room in the far corner. To get that room, you not only had to make a reservation, but you also had to spend a minimum amount of money that had most people laughing when she told them what it was.
    â€œMenu help?” she asked Dean.
    â€œDidn’t say.” When she slid behind him to get out from behind the bar, he touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
    â€œYeah, absolutely.” A little too cheery. It made him frown. She waved him off. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
    But the truth was, two weeks still hadn’t cured her of images of Byrne. Him, all dirty and sweaty in his rugby gear. Him, in old, worn clothes and flip-flops outside the campground shower house. Him, wreathed in campfire smoke, his face so close to hers.
    Two weeks since her stupid, fragile hope—a hope she hadn’t really known she’d been harboring—had been ground to dust beneath his ridiculously expensive loafers at Yellin’s party.
    But there was no way they could make it work. Too much crisscrossing between her worlds: personal and professional, past and present.
    Focus, Shea. You’ve got customers now.
    The Corner Pocket was an octagonal room with a similarly shaped, specially made table filling the center. Four windowed walls looked out over a cobblestoned intersection in TriBeCa. The other four walls were curtained off, separating the Pocket from the rest of the main bar. She wondered who the couple could be inside. Visiting dignitaries? Celebrities? Trust-fund babies?
    But when she pulled back the velvet curtain to step inside, the man and woman sitting three seats apart looked as not-famous as two people could be. Both in their fifties, Shea guessed, plain and unassuming. They were both dressed in dark suits, and the woman’s cherry red blouse was the only splash of color in the whole room.
    Shea smiled as she dropped the curtain, but the man and woman did not return the gesture. The man crossed one ankle over his opposite knee and sat back in the cream-colored, calf leather chair. The woman cocked her head, as though examining a horse at the racetrack. Odd.
    Shea came to the edge of the table and rested her fingertips on the shiny wood. “Hello, I’m Shea Montgomery. What can I do for you this evening?”
    After a brief pause, the man flipped closed the thick menu he’d had open in front of him and gave it a little push toward her. The thing was as thick as a Bible, and out of everything she’d done at the Amber, she was most proud of her choices and descriptions listed on those pages.
    â€œYou know the minimum we have to spend in here.” Now he smiled a little, but it was more a gleam in his eye than anything else. “Why don’t you bring out something really special for us? Your best. And we’d love to hear why you picked them.”
    Okaaaay. “Fantastic. Are you thinking Scotch or bourbon