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The cold air didn’t take long to reach its deathly fingers deep into the bar, where I stood waiting for Jenna to finish wiping down the counters. She had this look on her beautiful face—it was almost incredulous, wondering what I was still doing here.

“Another stressful day?” I ventured when she glanced up at me.

“Every day is stressful when you own a business,” she assured me.

I wasn’t a stranger to owning a business. Okay, so maybe technically my father still owned Braun Biotech, but the older he got, the more responsibility he gave me. Someday it would all be mine. It wasn’t really that different than Jenna and her father—we actually had more in common than she might think. Too bad I couldn’t tell her.

“What happened today to stress you out?” I moved closer to her, one step per word, so that by the time I ended my question, I was standing right beside her. I put my hands on her hips and rotated her to face away from me, and as she started to answer my question, I began to knead the sore muscles of her neck and shoulders like I had the night before.

“I got a call from the City Engineer’s office about my pipes,” she told me. “They’re giving me until February first to show a contract with a plumber to bring them up to code.”

“February first? That’s only ten days from now.”

“You’re like a walking calendar,” she retorted.

I huffed. “I meant, it’s not much time.”

“Yeah, my comment stands.” I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was rolling her eyes. I’d spent all evening observing her, and her eyes had gotten quite a workout.

I tightened my grip on her sore muscles, eliciting a gasp. “How much is it going to cost?”

“Don’t know,” she rasped out, clearly straddling that line between pleasure and pain. “I’m getting an estimate tomorrow.”

“Is there any way I can help?”

My question hung in the air for a split second before she jerked away from my grasp and whipped around to face me. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

I stepped back from her. “I’m no one.” I raised my hands up, palms out. “I just…I hate seeing small businesses struggle, that’s all.”

Ugh, how many small businesses had Braun Biotech put out of business since they opened? I didn’t even want to know. I felt like such a hypocrite.

But the truth was, I wanted to help her. I was interested in HER. I didn’t fully understand what was happening to me because helping people wasn’t usually on my radar. I was usually trying to figure out how people could help ME.

There was something different about Jenna Campbell, and I’d known it the first moment I met her. It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous—though she was, clearly, with those turquoise eyes and flaming hair, the porcelain skin with a lovely smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and those curves that made my mouth water. There was something about her spirit. Indomitable. She was a fighter. There was a melancholy flickering just below the surface, a candle in a dark corner of a house, but it was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the raging fire inside her that burnt up all her sadness and rage and fueled her, kept her going.

I didn’t know what that sadness or rage was about, I only knew it was dwelling there, underneath, glowing embers of a long-burning fire.

“So you want me to believe you’re new to the neighborhood, and you just stumbled in here last night to watch the game, and now you care about my small business being affected by this shitty plumbing issue? Pardon the pun.” Her hands fisted at her hips as she glared at me. I knew those knots I’d just rubbed out of her muscles were back—and they’d multiplied in strength.

Why did I have to meet her when I was doing this stupid bet? It would be so much easier to say, “Oh, hi, I’m Fox Braun, and I’m a billionaire. Here’s a blank check—get your plumbing fixed.”

But I couldn’t do that. I could only offer her what I could provide as Frank Bryan.

“No disrespect to you at all… I am sincere in my sympathies for you. I don’t have money, so I can’t help you directly with your pipes—well, not those pipes.” I chuckled—she wasn’t the only one who could make puns. “But I can offer stress relief.” I waved my magic fingers at her. The way her eyes lit up at the sight of my fingers and my smile, I knew she was thinking about another magic appendage I owned.

“So that’s what this is about? You figure the stressed-out bartender needs a good hard fuck, and you’re like Superman sweeping in here to provide it?”

“At your service,” I said with a bow. It was cheesy. It was ridiculous, really, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she threw my ass out on the street at the absurdity of it.

But she didn’t. Her lips twisted in a wicked smile as she said, “Well, then, don’t let me stop you.”

It was all the encouragement I needed. I spun her back around to face the bar. She braced herself with her hands against the edge as I reached around her waist to unfasten her jeans. I pulled them down, and she stepped out, revealing a simple black thong, making the two hemispheres of her ass look like the type of globe on which there is world fucking peace.

I might not be able to give her money—I doubted she would take it, anyway.

But I could still help. After all, money didn’t solve all problems.

Just most of them.

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