Page 5

NYLA

My antlers insisted on slipping over my face for the past hour.

Wearing my hair out tonight had been a mistake.

Sweat rolled down my back under the blanket my hair formed in a packed restaurant that offered no reprieve or breath of air whatsoever with a broken air conditioner in sweltering December.

The antlers and hair weren't tonight’s only error. So was the polyester reindeer costume.

The tights itched with every step and the dress sat way too short for the football team who whistled each time I went up the stairs to the mezzanine level to serve them along with my troupe of reindeer servers who followed me around like we were ready to haul the sleigh for the night.

Only, I hadn't spotted Mason flirting along with the rest of his team mates no matter how hard I searched for him.

Twice I checked the booking to make sure I had the right team, but from the matching ink several of the oversized boys were more than happy to show off to my girls—who I had to drag away to wait their tables—I was pretty sure I had the right club.

Just… No Mason.

“Lena, have the first courses been cleared?” I grabbed my best waitstaff as she darted past me.

Her cheeks blazed as she shoved what looked like a handful of something into her apron.

“Uh huh. First course is away. Chaz knows. Mains are up soon for the set menu, then dessert.”

“Okay.” I turned on my heel and headed back downstairs, checking the other tables.

Amazingly, the rest of the night ran fairly smoothly so far.

I’d pulled one of my regular bar staff, Josie, out from her normal area and put her on the front desk while I helped wrangle the team upstairs for the event.

“How are you going?” I reached over Josie’s head to dive into the emergency chocolate stash I kept behind the till for moments just like this one as my empty stomach rumbled on cue.

“I’m fine,” she muttered absently, crossing out a line on the ledger where we kept our bookings, never having made the transition to a digital system.

With so many hands in the pot, a paper based process seemed simplest. “We have two more parties left to come in for the night and we are done .”

“That will be a relief. Any dramas down here?”

“Only your two boys in the bar having it out low key.” She pointed the end of her fluffy pen bearing crossed, googly eyes over her head without looking up.

I glanced at the bar where Kesh handled two customers at once, passing over a pair of beers and taking change from another for a cocktail that she speared with a piece of spiralled lime.

Two tall figures hunched at one end of the bar.

I didn’t recognize the older man but there was no disguising Mason’s dark, shaved head or the ink that peeked from the rolled sleeves of his white linen shirt.

His collar was open at the top button as he half turned in my direction, gesturing to the open level upstairs.

He looked so different in jeans than his usual sports coaching clothes minus a seasoning of mud that I had glossed over him more than once in my search for him this evening I suspected.

But I couldn't miss him now.

“I think they’re starting to make people uncomfortable,” Josie continued. “Wanna break it up?”

I stared at the gap between Mason and his friend where they sat at the bar. The rest of the patrons squished together away from them in the smaller space where we placed everyone waiting for tables once we ran out of rooms and reservations bulked up, especially on a Saturday night close to Christmas.

On a night like tonight.

“Right.” It was time to pull my reindeer hooves up and behave like a big doe. “I’ll handle it.”

“I never doubted you.” Josie turned away to greet her next booking that she swiped off the ledger with her fluffy pen. One of the googly eyes drooped and fell off the feather as I stalked across the floor, fixing my antlers firmly in place.

“Gentlemen, I believe your table is upstairs, if your drinks are ready?” I nodded to Kesh to make sure their order was complete.

All done, she mouthed back, grabbing two martini glasses. She coated them in sugar syrup, then dumped them upside down in a tray of salt crystals, already chatting to her next customers lining the bar.

Mason twisted about, the tight expression shifting into something more relaxed and like the version of him I recognised. “Nyla. I wanted to look for you after I finished here. This is Leon. He’s my coach.”

“Hi, Leon.” I waved. “I’d shake hands, but I’m not terribly clean right now.” I winced at how that came out and hoped for no snappy comeback tour.

Fortunately, Mason’s coach seemed to be made of the same stuff as much current crush.

You can’t have a crush on your kid’s summer football trainer. Even if he was the only one who had taken the timeout to listen to both Brady… And me.

Double wince for the desperation bid on the lonely reindeer at the bar.

That was not the right reason to crush on a man. Even a six foot something plus one who looked like Mason that I wanted to lick.

Stop. That.

We need to focus on restaurant things. Not the lickable football thighs.

Okay, this was getting out of hand. Or thighs. Uh, rugby hormones. Or, something.

I wanted to rest my head in my hands and make a hideous, unsociably acceptable noise, but instead I kept on smiling until my cheeks ached. Mason’s coach looked slightly alarmed.

“Your table is this way,” I managed to utter through fixed, straining facial muscles.

My body moved on its own as I rotated on my heel and marched my reindeer dressed behind up the stairs, leading Mason and his coach back to his teammates. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, the fake as hell smile had fallen off my face and my muscles resumed their usual programming.

“Thanks for the guide,” Leon muttered. He squished past me and greeted his players to a chorus that grew louder the longer I loitered in a place I no longer needed to be in right now.

“You're welcome.” I dithered on a little longer, counting heads and plates, noting the distinct lack of courses that should have arrived but hadn't. I twisted on my behooved boots, the fluffiness of my costume swinging about with me, and ran face first into a solid wall.

Yup, that’s what I’d be calling Mason when I was able to breathe again and didn’t host a face resembling a reindeer that started with the letter R.

“Are you okay? Sorry about that.” Mason poked gingerly at my tenderised nose.

“I’m fine.” I batted his hand away and turned about, aiming for the stairs, but he was still in the way. “Uh–” I looked up at him expectantly. And up. When did he get so damn tall?

Or maybe I'd just never been quite this close.

Picking him up from training with Brady didn’t usually involve drooling on my son’s coach at quite this close range, even if I often engaged in the activity at a reasonable distance.

Not to mention that he’d been the centre of more than one late night fantasy over the past two weeks.

Hello, rugby thighs .

Somewhere behind us, a cheer went up as his teammates did something I was sure hit the inappropriate bar.

The group had become rowdier in the last hour.

Not that it was unexpected in any room this full of cheer so close to Christmas when spirits ran high.

Still, Mason didn’t seem to take any notice of what his teammates were doing.

“I should get back to my job.” I motioned to the stairwell behind him, trying to ignore the additional layer of heat crawling up the inside of my reindeer costume.

Destination, my cheeks.

“We never have a chance to talk much when I see you at the field.” Mason hasn’t moved an inch.

I licked my lips. “Now probably isn’t the best time either.”

The flush that reached my collar insisted on its upward journey.

I resigned myself to my fate as an eternal, red-tinged reindeer.

The nose wouldn’t be my only glowy feature if the object of my rugby fuelled fantasies didn’t let me pass any time soon.

“Then when is?” Mason shifted to one side, exposing my exit strategy, though his habitual easy smile was absent.

“Normally Brady’s about. This time it’s my team. I’d—” He drew a deep breath and stopped.

I broke away from studying the stairwell where a fluorescent light flickered.

Must fix that . “You’d what?” I asked so softly that I didn't think he could hear me over the music that turned up a notch on cue. Hell, I barely heard myself.

“I’d love to take you out on a date.” Nope, still no smile. Mason was dead serious.

I swallowed, unsure if I liked this version of him or not. No, it wasn’t that I didn’t like this part of him. It was just…

The infamous Mason Hale intensity that didn’t usually bother me had come out to play.

And at full strength, up close, his presence was no small thing.

“A date.” That should have been a question, not a sentence. Mason scrambled my brain as well as my resolve not to have anyone in my life until Brady was older, if ever. Stuart had screwed up more than just one job. “I haven’t dated since…”

“Since you left Brady's dad.”

“You figured that out, huh?” Any breath I had left evacuated my lungs, along with my escape plan. Wait. Why does he assume that Stuart didn’t walk out on me?

Answer: because Mason wasn’t like any of the men who had hit on me in the last seven years since I walked away from the most toxic person in my life.

“Yeah. I might have done.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw where a five o’clock shadow grew that had no right to look as sexy as it did.

“You’re normally clean.” I gestured to his face and clamped a hand over my mouth. “Sorry. I have no right.”

“No.” His inked hand dropped to catch my wrist. “This is what I mean. We never get a chance to have a real conversation. Nyla…” Another cheer went up. He winced. “This isn’t my usual environment.”

My lips twisted in the parody of a smile. “But it is mine. I need to work, Mason,” I said gently, prying his touch away even as my heart ached.

His hand did drop this time and he stepped aside in full, letting me escape down the flickering stairwell. I reached the bottom and jumped the last few steps. My reindeer costume fluttered around the top of my thighs as my logical brain caught up with my night’s remaining list of things left to do.

Get the function’s meals out before they get out of hand up there.

Check the till and cash drawer. Again.

Because that was annoying me. I was still irritated about the weekend before being out so much and having to fess up to Stuart who had stared at me like I’d grown two heads and not been able to count. Not that he knew how to settle an account for the night in the first place, or how to do the banking, only fund it. Or manage staff effectively, or write a roster for that matter.

The stairwell flickered again as I hit the bottom turn, plunging me into darkness with the kitchen on the other side of the well. Here, even the sounds of the party above and the noisy, over-packed restaurant were muted, the kitchen’s heat blocked off by two walls of thick cement.

The fluorescent tube made a feeble effort at a flicker, and died.

Add to list: Fix that damn light.

I closed my eyes, revelling in my moment of relative, stolen peace before the restaurant's chaos resumed. All it would take was four short steps to the corner, shove my way through some of those hideous saloon swinging doors that Stuart and his business partner loved—those ones actually screwed on, thankfully—and everything would be back to normal.

Instead, I stood in my void of muted nothingness and inhaled.

And wasted time that wasn’t mine to take.

Why did I push him away?

I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes, bumping my reindeer antlers back where the headband had slipped forward a touch and blew out a long breath.

“That sounded heartfelt.”

Warm fingers closed around my wrists, tugging my hands from where I covered my eyes like a child, hiding away from the world.

Hey, any strategy in a storm.

Only it wasn’t a storm I stared into, but Mason Hale’s piercing stare. His eyes were darker in the shadowed area as I cowered from a place where, just for one night, I didn't want to be.

Here. At all.

Except maybe with him.