Page 32 of Sunkissed Colorado

After Piper left, I sat there nursing my beer and brooding. I could head home. Put my drama with Zandra behind me for the night. There were plenty of other bars in this county, filled with pretty tourists looking for a fun night.

Yet I didn’t leave my seat.

What the hell was Zandra’s problem with me, really?

Since the day she’d started, she’d been avoiding me and making no secret about it. When I walked into a room, she suddenly realized she had other places to be. She’d refused altogether to shadow me for a shift at the bar, acting like any knowledge I could offer was beneath her.

Instead, she’d been holed up in Manny’s office studying his contracts and vendor lists without including me.

It was pissing me off.

Zandra claimed she wouldn’t sabotage my application for the manager job. I wasn’t so sure I believed her. But even if she changed her mind and went back to Chicago, she could leave a poison pill behind by telling her grandfather what a tool she thought I was.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wonderedwhyitbothered me that much that she didn’t like me. Was it really just about the job?

No, it felt like more than that.

When she avoided me, it made me feel…crazy.

What had she meant the other day about me being cruel? I could be insensitive without meaning to, but cruel just wasn’t me. The whole situation was itching at me from the inside out. Like some kind of mental poison ivy I couldn’t stop scratching.

Enough was enough.

I waited until after closing. “I thought you weren’t working tonight,” one of the expos said as he perched chairs upside down on the tables. Nearby, another staff member swept up.

“Can’t pull myself away.” I helped with closing tasks, pretty sure Zandra hadn’t noticed I was still here.

A little while later, I heard Winnie call out, “Night, Zandra,” as she grabbed her purse from behind the bar. “See you tomorrow.”

“Have a good night,” Zandra replied from the kitchen, her voice carrying that warm tone she used with everyone but me.

Then Winnie’s footsteps faded and the back door clicked shut. I said goodbye to the last stragglers in the kitchen.

It was just me and Zandra left now.

Showtime.

I found her in the back storage room. Which couldn’t have been more perfect. An idea popped into my head. I stepped inside, swiped the key ring from its hook on the wall, and slammed the door shut behind me.

Zandra jumped and looked up from the clipboard she was holding.

“We need to talk,” I said.

The storage room was cramped, filled with bathroom supplies and stuff we had no other place for. Even in the harsh overhead light, my brain stuttered for a brief moment over how ridiculously gorgeous she was. The eyes and that long hair…

She set the clipboard on a shelf. “Talk aboutwhat, Callum?”

“About why you don’t like me. Real truth this time.”

“I just don’t. Can I get by, please? I’m finishing up.”

She tried to go past me, but I blocked her way. “Everyone likes me. Unless they have a specific reason not to.”

“Maybe I have a specific reason.”

“Such as?”

“If you don’t have the self-awareness to figure that out, I can’t help you.”