Hooked #3 (The Hooked Romance Series - Book 3) Read Free

head for a moment—feeling the strange cleanliness of my hair
after so many days of wallowing. Mel shrugged, sensing my interest. “Why not
try it?”
    I entered the pub door. The smell of greasy food, of
musty beer entered my nose, and the comfort made my head spin. Mel and I sat
down at the bar, a few seats away from the woman on the telephone. She was
speaking with such exactness, with such fortitude, that I understood; she owned
this place. I peered around me, feeling the striking masculinity, the power of
the cute place. How had she done this on her own? What could I learn from her?
    A young man—a bartender about my age—walked toward
us languidly, drying a pint glass in his left hand. “Can I get you ladies something
to drink?” he asked us. His smile skirted to the left, then to the right. His
black curly hair was wrapped in a handkerchief. I thought about him at home,
wrapped in the calamity of guitar music and marijuana.
    “Two pints. The dark—the porter,” I nodded toward the tap system. He nodded back, swiping
two glasses from the top shelf.
    Mel shuffled a bit on her seat, looking toward me
with a small bit of earnestness. What was my plan? Her eyes wondered.
    The woman on the phone finally said her very loud
good byes, huffing a bit as she exerted her finger to
the OFF button. She sighed, looking up at the bartender. “Those lunatics,” she
said, shaking her head. She turned toward us, raising her left eyebrow. “I’m so
sorry about that, ladies. Sometimes working out rent issues can be a bit of a
bitch. Chicago rents, you know.” She laughed, showing all of her teeth.
    Mel elbowed me in the side as the bartender set the
drinks before us. I felt my heart beating fast in my chest; I had to act now. I
took a slow, steady sip, feeling my eyelids dip languidly over my eyes. I
cleared my throat, turning back toward the woman. “You know. I saw you had a
place open upstairs.”
    The woman laughed for a moment, not taking me
seriously. I was, after all, no older than the bartender cleaning her
barstools. “Yes. Well, you see. That’s mostly my problem. It’s a wide-open
space, one that I can’t seem to do much with. I thought about making it an area
for dancing, maybe karaoke on certain nights.” She waved her hand back and
forth. “But we’re not really the scene for that, you know. It wouldn’t really
work.”
    I nodded expressively. “Well, I’m looking for a
space right now. For my dance studio. We were bought
out by a corporate developer.”
    The woman’s dark eyes widened. Her lips slimmed
dangerously into a grim smile. “Those bastards,” she murmured. “They got you
too? It’s not for that bookstore down the street, is it?”
    I nodded, shrugging my shoulders. “It’s fine. I
just—obviously—need a new place to be. Maybe even a better place.”
    “Well.” The woman turned her eyes to the sky. “This
place gets plenty of light. You’d need it—when? During the
day?”
    “Morning and day time, yeah,” I said. “Sometimes around dinner time, but only about twice or three times
a week.” My brain was going over the usual schedule, trying to remember
life before the whirlwind of Drew.
    The woman nodded. She stood up, revealing that her
short frame only brought her five feet into the air. She breathed with an air of
determination. “Why don’t we go up and look at it, yeah?” she said. “Bring your
beers.”
    I grabbed my slippery glass, and Mel did as well. We
sauntered up the back steps as they revolved in a tight circle. Finally, my
head spinning, we burst into the bright light of the empty room.
    I tapped my shoe against the wooden floor, standing
up against the wall. “Wow,” I murmured, shaking my head. The room was longer
than I had expected when I had been in the pub. The wooden boards swept long
and clean across the room, and the windows were strong, zealous. They pointed
toward the east, yielding much more sunlight during the morning and the
afternoon than