Ninety Seconds

Beck POV "The lady in the back corner," Lainey said. I looked. My mother was sitting in the corner booth with her purse on the seat beside her and her hands folded on the table. She looked like she was waiting for church to start. My mother does not drink in my bar. She says it smells like wet dog and bad decisions. She drinks iced tea, and one glass of wine at Christmas, and she had certainly never ordered a whiskey sour. I put down the glass I was holding and went over there. "Mom." "Hello, sweetheart." "What are you doing?" "I'm having a drink." "You don't drink." "I'm trying something new." She smiled up at me. "They say it's good for you at my age." I crossed my arms and kept my voice down, under the noise of the room. "I told everybody to leave her alone. I said not to say one word to her about me." "I haven't said one word about you. I ordered a cocktail." "A shaken one. You know I don't own a shaker." "I do know that." "So you asked my new bartender, on her first night, for the one thing in this building she can't make." "I did." She said it without a drop of shame. "I wanted to see what she would do." I looked back at the bar. Lainey had found two glasses that fit together. She had them pressed rim to rim in both hands, and she was shaking them over the sink, hard, with her whole body in it. Her hair was coming loose. Her top had pulled tight across her chest. I was not going to have that thought in front of my mother. I had it anyway. I had it in detail. "She didn't tell me no," my mother said quietly. "She didn't come back and say you were out. She went and built one." She looked pleased with herself. "I like her." "She's with somebody." "I heard." "So there's nothing to like. She works here. That's all it is." "Of course it is," she said. She reached up and patted my cheek, the way she has since I was four years old. I let her. The last Luna of Cedar Ridge can pat whoever she wants. Then Lainey was coming across the room with the drink on a napkin, and I stepped out of the way and shut my mouth. "One whiskey sour," she said. "Shaken. More or less." "Thank you, dear." My mother took a sip. I watched her eyebrows go up. She had come here to test the girl. She had not expected the drink to be good. "Wow. I'll be honest with you. I didn't think he had sweet and sour mix." "He doesn't. But apparently I remember more about my college days than I thought." My mother laughed, and she looked right past Lainey at me while she did it. I knew that look. "Well," she said, and she patted Lainey's hand. "My son is very lucky to have you." I closed my eyes. When I opened them, Lainey had turned around. She looked at me. She looked back at my mother. I watched her put it together, starting with the eyes. "Your son," she said. "He didn't mention it? He never does. I'm Vivian, dear. Vivian Wade." "Lainey." "Oh, I know." My mother slid over and patted the seat beside her. "Sit down a minute. You've been on your feet for two hours. Tell me about yourself." "She's working, Mom." "And you're the boss. Give her a break." Lainey looked at me again. She was asking permission, and she was fighting a smile while she did it. My mother had been alone with my mate for less than a minute, and I had already lost control of my own bar. "Five minutes," I said. Lainey sat down. I went back to the bar, because somebody had to pour. I filled four glasses and listened to the corner booth the whole time. Nobody in that room could hear them over the noise except every single person in it who wasn't Lainey. My mother went easy. I'll give her that. "So what were you in school for, with all those college days?" "Accounting." "Accounting. And before you came to rescue my son's bar?" "I worked the front desk at a vet's office." "Bartending, accounting, and animals." My mother set her glass down. "Those are three very different things." Lainey laughed. "I know. The first one paid for the second. The third one I just fell into." "Which one did you like?" It was the same question I had asked her. I heard the same small pause before she answered. "The animals. I loved it. They were going to help me go back to school for it. Vet tech." "Were?" "We moved," Lainey said. That was all she said. It was two words, in a light, even voice, and she smiled when she said them. My mother didn't answer right away. She looked across the room, over the top of Lainey's head, and found me at the taps. She had only come to be nosy. She hadn't expected to find anything. I had asked that girl one question about her life and stopped. My mother had been at it for ninety seconds, and she had gone straight to the thing I had spent five days trying not to wonder about. I always do. I'll manage. We moved. That was three times in two days. Every time, she had said something that sounded light, and it wasn't light at all. I set down the glass I was holding, very carefully, so I wouldn't break another one.