Chapter 3
Eric POV
Four days of Mercer acquisition filings and a board member in Phoenix who developed ethical concerns at the worst possible moment.
By Friday evening the tension has settled behind my eyes like something with weight, and I tell Marcus to take me to Blue Tears because the alternative is my apartment and a glass of scotch and I've already done that twice this week.
The room is moderately full for a Friday. I sit at the bar and let Dom put a glass of Macallan in front of me without being asked, and I watch the floor with the detached attention of someone who isn't looking for anything specific.
The regular hosts are working the room in their particular way — that practiced ease I've always found more exhausting than appealing. I know exactly what it is. Tonight I can't summon the energy to pretend otherwise.
I turn back to my drink.
That's when I notice him.
He's coming from the direction of the service corridor, carrying a tray with three glasses on it, and the first thing I register is the way he moves — not the rehearsed fluidity of the hosts but something more utilitarian, the efficient walk of someone focused on getting from point A to point B without incident.
He's in his own clothes — dark pants, a light-colored shirt with short sleeves, the kind of thing you'd wear to run errands on a hot July afternoon. The shirt sits against the line of his shoulder in a way that makes it obvious he's not carrying any extra weight anywhere.
He passes close enough to the bar that I can see his profile. Young. Early twenties, maybe less. Brown eyes, the color that looks warm even in low light. There's nothing calculated about the way he looks — no awareness of being observed, no performance for the room. He's just working.
I watch him deliver the drinks to a table near the far wall, exchange a few words with the guests, turn back toward the bar. When he passes me again I notice his hands on the empty tray — long fingers, careful grip, the wrists pale where the shirt sleeve ends.
"Waiter."
He stops and turns, and the brown eyes find me with the attentiveness of someone trained to respond quickly. Up close the impression holds — clean features, nothing overdone. He looks at me with a polite, neutral expression and asks if he can help me.
I open my mouth to say something — what, I hadn't decided — and then it happens.
His foot catches on the bar rail, some small miscalculation of weight, and the tray tilts. He reaches for it a half-second too late. The glass on the corner slides, hits my sleeve, and the remainder of whatever was in it runs cold and immediate down the front of my shirt and soaks through to the undershirt beneath.
He dips his head immediately, eyes dropping to the floor. "I'm so sorry." His voice is low and controlled even though the color has left his face.
He reaches for a napkin from his pocket, stops short of touching me, and then crouches down to collect the glass and the scattered ice from the floor, picking up the pieces with his bare hands, methodical and unhurried, as if the main goal is to leave the space cleaner than he found it.
I look down at my shirt. Then at him.
"It's fine," I say. "Leave it."
He straightens, holding the glass and the napkin, and looks at me with an expression that is trying very hard to stay neutral. There's a small cut on his index finger from where the rim must have caught him, though he doesn't appear to have noticed yet.
Dom materializes from somewhere to take me away from the spot, already apologizing — "Mr. Perry, I'm so sorry, this is entirely our fault" — and I wave it off.
"Who is he?" I say, when Dom pauses for breath.
"New hire. Started a few days ago — you haven't been in, so you wouldn't have seen him. Evan Dalton." Dom says it with the careful neutrality of a man who is still, technically, apologizing. "He's only on his second shift. I can have him off the floor tonight if you'd prefer, or if you want me to let him go entirely—"
"Don't bother." I set down the glass. "He's decent-looking."
Dom is quiet for exactly one beat — the beat of a man recalibrating — and then says, "He is. Though he was clear when I hired him that he's only interested in floor service." The pause after that doesn't need elaboration.
I understand what he's telling me. I look toward the service corridor, where the new waiter has disappeared, and then back at my drink.
"Five minutes," I say. "Send him up with a bottle. The usual room."
Dom's expression shifts — not quite hesitation, but close. "Mr. Perry, Evan is strictly bar and floor staff. Sending him up to a private room isn't part of his arrangement here."
I look at Dom.
He holds my gaze for a moment, then continues, with slightly less conviction: "I just want to make sure we're respecting the terms he was hired under—"
"Dom." I pick up my glass. "I've held a platinum membership at this club for two years. I'm not asking him to do anything except carry a bottle upstairs. Are you going to make that a problem?"
Dom is quiet for a beat. Then: "Of course not, Mr. Perry. I'll explain to him that it's a special circumstance. Please go ahead to your room — I'll have him there shortly."
The room is on the second floor, accessed by the members' elevator. It's a standing arrangement, part of the annual membership, the kind of room that exists for the specific purpose of making the world temporarily smaller and quieter.
I drop my jacket over the back of the chair and work the buttons of my shirt — the wet fabric has gone cold against my ribs. I pull it off and leave it folded over the arm of the sofa, and sit down in just my undershirt with my elbows on my knees and the quiet of a room that doesn't have any demands in it.
My head still aches. The Mercer filing is due Monday. My mother texted this morning — [Katherine Hargrove's daughter is in town through the weekend, I've told her you'll call] — which I read and then put my phone face-down on the desk.
The knock comes at the right interval. Not rushed, not too slow. I call out and the door opens.
He comes in carrying a bottle of Macallan and a clean glass on a small tray. There's a small piece of bar napkin wrapped around the cut on his index finger, which means he eventually noticed it. He sets the tray down on the side table with the same careful efficiency as before, and then he straightens and looks at me with an expression that is polite and composed and contains, underneath it, the wariness of someone trying to accurately read a room they don't entirely trust yet.
"Anything else?" he says.
"Wait." The word comes out before I've decided on the rest of it, but he stops, hand still on the tray, and waits with the patience of someone who has learned that wait usually means something is coming.
I stand up. The room isn't large, and crossing it puts me close enough to see the small details — the faint tension at the corner of his mouth, the way his breathing stays even despite it, the cut on his finger that he wrapped himself rather than going to ask Dom for a proper bandage.
I look at him for a moment. He looks back at me, and the wariness is still there, but so is something else — a steadiness that doesn't flinch, the quality of someone who has decided in advance that they are not going to be the first one to look away.
"Name your price," I say. "I want to fuck you."
