Free Trading Down (Winner Takes All, #1) by PJ Adams Page B

the guy was standing there, leaning against the door-frame, bourbon in one hand, and that small, wet hand-towel trailing from the other. He’d fastened his shirt up. He’d even put his tie back on, knotted in a loose bow.
    Cassie didn’t know what this guy was doing here at Pappy’s Lobster Bar on a night like this, but she sure knew trouble when it was staring her right in the face with that disarming twinkle in its eye.
    §
    “So, you been someplace fancy tonight?”
    He sat on a tall stool, halfway down his second bourbon. “Nowhere fancier than this, I reckon.”
    Cassie looked at him, unsure how to take that. “You hungry, Lou’s still out back. Do you a steak, or a lobster. Got anywhere up to three and a half pounds, you want to see them.”
    “No stomach for food right now,” he said. “This is a whiskey and cigarettes kind of night if ever there was one. And Hell, I don’t even smoke.”
    “We got a machine over by the door, you want to start.”
    He cracked a smile again at that, then took another long pull of bourbon. That smile of his kind of stole over his entire face and made it a different kind of a face all together.
    “Maybe I will,” he said. “It’s not as if–”
    “Not as if what?”
    “Ach, it’s nothing. You don’t want to be standing there listening to me getting all maudlin, now.”
    It was Cassie’s turn to fix him with a raised-eyebrow stare.
    “A stranger in a bespoke tuxedo turns up in a bar halfway to freaking New Brunswick, walks in out of a storm peeling hundred dollar bills off a fat, soaking bundle he produces from his pocket... Guy does all that and then he sits staring into his drink like he wishes he’d found himself a bridge to jump off. You’re fooling with me, right? Save for Old Bub getting a new set of winter tires on his Chevy Apache, you’re the most interesting thing that’s happened in this neck of the woods since they paved the roads.”
    He laughed at that. She seemed to have found the knack for making him break out that big face-splitting grin. Not a bad skill to finally discover you have, all in all.
    “You’re not from round here, are you?” he asked.
    Cassie shook her head. She could smell someone changing the subject a mile off when they did it as clumsily as this guy, but she decided not to call him on it right now. “Me? No. Been here two seasons. I’m a Brooklyn girl.”
    “So what brings you here?”
    “Career,” she said, straight-faced. “It’s part of a long-term plan.”
    “Sure,” he said, “and I’m Mother fucking Theresa.”
    “You’re looking wicked good for your age. And your gender realignment. And, you know, being dead and all.” Then she softened. Guy was just looking to make a little conversation, after all. “Long dull story of bad luck and worse choices is what brought me here,” she explained. “We close for winter next week. Not sure what I’ll be doing after that.”
    “You got choices?”
    “I got choices. Maybe go back to school, maybe just head south and see where I end up. Get me some winter sun. Things usually work out okay.” She’d never really thought of it in that way before. She’d been getting too down recently – end of season blues. But it was true: things did usually work out okay. “So,” she said, “you dress like this every time you decide to go out walking in a storm?”
    “I do.” His turn to stay poker-faced. “I’m a better class of storm-hiker.”
    “Finest kind,” she said. She filled his empty glass without waiting to be asked, and then poured one for herself and said, “Thanks.”
    That raised eyebrow again.
    “It’s on your check,” she explained, “so thanks.” She raised her glass and took a sip, enjoying that first whiskey burn in the back of her throat.
    “ Sláinte .” He raised his own glass and drank. “It sure has been a night to remember.” Then: “The kind of night to remember you really want to forget.”
    “A girl?”
    He