Challenged by the Single Dad

Single Dad and bartender Dom McEvoy is a workaholic. Despite hardly seeing his kid, he doesn’t trust anybody else to run the restaurant. Not after what happened with his last hire. It’s just easier if he does it all himself. But when his brothers out-vote him and hire a new bartender—who is better than Dom at everything—his temper flares and he instantly wants her gone.

Chloe Voss knows she can’t keep running from the pain of her past. She’s been a nomad for too long. It’s time to set down some roots—even if they’re shallow. So when she gets the job offer at the McEvoy brothers’ restaurant, things finally look as if they’re falling into place. Too bad her boss hates her. Dom challenges her at every turn. He’s grumpy, unpredictable and cold. Whatever, it’s only a job.

Until it’s not.

Until these enemies turn into lovers and their unbridled attraction threatens to blow up the business.
When a winter storm ransacks the island, leaving Chloe abandoned and in danger, Dom will do whatever it takes to save her, even if that means putting his own life at risk.

Dominic McEvoy slammed his palm into the swinging door that separated the front of house and the kitchen. His nostrils flared as he snagged his brother’s gaze, frustration bubbling hot in his veins.
Wyatt met him in the walk-in fridge. “Another one?”
“I …” Dom tugged on the hair elastic that kept his long-ish hair off his face. “There’s something about this one that I just don’t trust.”
“Just like there was something about the last one,” Wyatt said, shaking his head. “And the one before that.”
Dom’s eyes widened. “What do you want from me? I’m not going to entrust my bar to someone I don’t trust. I thought I trusted Nadine and look where that fucking got us.” He raked his fingers through his hair, enjoying the scrape of his nails against his scalp and the slight bite of pain it caused.
“That was a one-off and you know it. But we all agree that you can not keep burning the fucking candle at both ends. For Christ’s sake, man, it’s not even a candle anymore. It’s a melted pile of wax and a stump of a wick. We need another bartender—or two—to help spell you off. You know as well as we do that Silas needs more of you at home.”
Dom grumbled. “Don’t you think I fucking know that?”
“Then suck it up and stop finding reasons to let the new bartenders go. What’s wrong with this one?” Wyatt tipped his head to the side and plunked his hands on his hips, staring at Dom with impatience.
“She … she pours the beer weird. Like it has way too much of a head on it. Customers are complaining. So they come to me and I top them up, but ultimately, I know they’re getting more than the pint they paid for because of it. She’s wasting beer.”
Wyatt scoffed. “That’s something that takes time to learn. Hell, I’m still not great at it. Try again.”
“It shouldn’t take an experienced bartender half a day to learn.”
Rolling his eyes, Wyatt shook his head. “Aren’t all taps and lines different and have a learning curve?”
Dom should have started to shiver since they were standing in the walk-in fridge, but he was too hot under the collar and welcomed the cooler temperature. Wyatt, on the other hand, had goosebumps rising across his arms to go with his visible breath. “She’s also on her phone all the time. And no matter how many times I told her to wash her hands after she handled cards or cash before she grabbed a fruit garnish, she didn’t. That’s unsanitary.”
Wyatt huffed out a deep breath. “And you don’t think she deserves another day to work through her heinous and horrendous flaws?”
Dom sneered. “No.”
Another eye roll from Wyatt had Dom’s temper flaring. “Fine. But just like the last two, you’re the one to let her know she’s not a good fit. We’re not doing your dirty work for you.”
Dom shrugged. “Fine.” Then he stormed out of the walk-in fridge, nearly colliding with Radcliffe, one of the dishwashers. “Sorry,” he murmured, resting a hand on Radcliffe’s shoulder and ignoring the concerned looks from the kitchen staff.
He took a deep breath before steeling his expression and heading back out into the restaurant.
Like every bartender he interviewed and hired, they were all subject to a three-shift trial period. Of course, it was paid, but Dom refused to have a contract with someone he wasn’t sure of. The three-month probationary period where they could let someone go without cause wasn’t enough for him. Not after what happened with Nadine and Ginny.
Their newest bartender, Cammy, was busy flirting with a customer. She accepted his cash for his beer and gave him his change. Then she reached into the garnish bowl and grabbed a lime wedge for another drink she was making.
Dom sighed then glanced at his watch. There were three more hours left on Cammy’s trial shift. This was only day one, but he’d already asked her at least six times to wash her fucking hands after touching money.
She caught him watching her and smiled. “When do you think I can go on a break? I’m dying for a smoke.”
Gross.
A quick glance at the tables in the pub said he could handle things on his own for the rest of the night. He still had two servers on, and was used to being the only bartender.
“You can actually head home if you want,” he said, removing drinking glasses from the rotating glass cleaner. “It’s Wednesday, our slowest night, and I can handle things from here.”
Her brown eyes widened. “Really?” She didn’t seem upset by that at all. “Great. Because some friends asked me if I could meet them in Seattle. There’s this great band playing at some nightclub near Pike Place. I might be able to catch the last ferry.” She reached under the bar to grab her purse and sweater, pulling a cigarette out of a box and putting it between her lips. “So, like … I’ll just wait to hear from you for my schedule?”
Dom swallowed, taking in her heavy eye makeup and the yellow stains on the tips of her fingers. “Actually, I’m not sure it’s going to work out.”
Her face fell.
How old was she? Bennett was the one who went over her résumé, not Dom. He didn’t have time. The woman could be anywhere between twenty-one and forty-five for all he knew.
“What do you mean?” She pushed a strand of her dark-brown hair behind her ear, but it was too short to stay there and fell back across her cheek.
“We’re moving into the slow season, and I don’t think we can give you the hours you’re interested in. I just don’t think it’s a good fit. You’re a great bartender, but I think you’re better suited to a more fast-paced, high-energy type of establishment. I mean, didn’t your résumé say you’ve worked in mostly busy big-city bars and nightclubs?” At least that was what Bennett told him.
She scrunched her face up. “Yeah … I guess.”
“You’d be bored here. Not to mention you’d take a financial hit and not get the tips you’re used to, or deserve. We’d be holding you back, honestly.” He offered her a friendly smile, hoping she didn’t get too bent out of shape and think about returning with a Molotov cocktail.
Fuck, after the Nadine fiasco, his mind always went to the absolute worst-case scenario.
“Y-you’re probably right,” she said with a nod. “I was pretty bored tonight.”
“Right? We’re just not the right place for a person with your talent.”
She puffed up her chest a little at that comment.
“I will have Bennett mail you a check for your hours worked today, as well as your tip out. Sound good?”
Her head bobbed. “Okay.”
Phew.
He smiled again. “I’m really sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah … me too.” Though, he could already tell she was realizing she’d dodged a bullet.
Not as much as he was, however. The woman could not take direction or learn from her mistakes. There was probably a reason why she was applying at the pub in the off season, when all her previous bartending experience was on the mainland and at busy nightclubs. This was all she had left. The only place that didn’t know her reputation.
“So … I guess I’ll see you around,” she said, her gaze darting around the room, probably to hopefully catch the eye of a server or two to say goodbye.
But the two servers were busy working. So Cammy simply pulled on her leather jacket, said thank you and goodbye, and was out the door.
Maybe Dom should have walked her out, but he was pretty sure she had a car. And it was still early. They’d also installed a way better security system with way more cameras after what happened with Vica in August. The parking lot was lit up a lot better now too.
Now that the unsanitary bartender was gone, Dom could breathe again.
This was his space.
He ran the front of house while Wyatt ran the kitchen. Clint ran the brewery, and Bennett ran the business and finance side of things. Jagger was a floater, handling their social media, promotion, and also helping out in the restaurant, with the rental cabins, or any other part of the business when needed. Mostly though, he was the extra parent for the kids when the rest of the brothers were all working.
They were a well-oiled machine of a family, working to bring home the bacon so their little humans could put it in their BLTs—minus the lettuce and tomatoes of course, because kids were picky fucking eaters.
“Where’d Cammy go?” Penny, one of the longtime servers asked as she began punching an order into the POS system at the bar.
“I said she could go. It’s slow enough,” Dom said, glaring at the partitioned container of limes, lemons, oranges, and cherries. Finally, he just grabbed the whole thing and dumped it into the garbage.
“What was that for?” Penny asked, giving him a weird look.
“Contaminated,” he said with a grumble, grabbing his pairing knife, cutting board, and a lime from the bowl.
“So, is Cammy coming back?” Penny asked.
Dom was cutting up the lime way too aggressively, but he didn’t care. “No.” He also didn’t look up at Penny, but could tell she was frustrated by her audible sigh.
The rest of the night passed with no drama. Even if he had every intention of asking Cammy to come back, there was no need for her to stay any later. The restaurant emptied out by nine o’clock. It was fall now, and the days were getting shorter and colder. Sure, they still had a lot of locals frequent the restaurant, but besides the weekends, the tourists weren’t nearly as plentiful as they were in the summer.
“You want me to put that on your tab or are you settling up?” he asked Jolene Dandy as she approached him at the bar. Eight local women gathered together nearly every day to either knit, sew, or crochet—they had a schedule for which day they did what—and during the colder and wetter months, they reserved a booth at Dom’s restaurant. The warmer months saw them outside at a table in the garden of the local bakery and café, Let it Rise.
“Oh, just throw it on my tab, Dominic dear,” Jolene said, covering her mouth with her hand to hide her yawn. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“You ladies are definitely burning the midnight oil tonight.” He punched in Jolene’s teas, salad, and fries into his POS, adding it all to her tab.
“Well, as I’m sure you’ve heard, Ellie—who works at the spa—is pregnant.”
Dom frowned and shook his head. “I hadn’t heard.”
Jolene’s gray eyes went wide and she nodded. “Well, she is. And in her forties. Can you imagine? A high-risk pregnancy indeed.” She blew out a breath. “No, thank you. I’m glad I had my kids in my early twenties. No complications whatsoever.”
“We’re not all as lucky as you, Jolene.”
She ignored his sarcasm, or it completely went over her head, and she continued to chat. “Anyway, we’re all sewing her a quilt for the baby. And on our knitting and crocheting days, we’re making clothes. A single mother can use all the help she can get.”
“How do you know Ellie is a single mother?” Why was he feeding the beast and asking questions? Did he even care about Ellie from the spa? No. But he also needed to keep the customers happy, and that meant engaging them in conversation. Even if it was conversation he’d rather drink turpentine than engage in.
Wyatt entered the restaurant, walking behind the bar to fill up a water glass with ice, then club soda and a splash of cranberry juice from the beverage gun. He paused to listen in.
Jolene clucked her tongue. “Well, I don’t know of her being married or seeing anybody. Do you?” She leaned forward, resting a bony hand on the bar, waiting for more gossip.
Jolene Dandy was known as the “Island Mouth.” She was the biggest gossip. If you wanted your secret to remain a secret, you steered yourself as far away from Jolene as possible.
“Just because you don’t know of a partner, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one,” Wyatt chimed in. “Maybe she’s seeing someone on the mainland? Or maybe she decided that she wanted a child bad enough to do it on her own? Or maybe she’s in a relationship with a woman?”
Jolene’s eyes went even wider. “Is that what you’ve heard? That Ellie is in a relationship with a woman?”
Oh shit. Now Wyatt had gone and done it. And Dom’s brother instantly realized his folly by the way his mouth dropped open and his eyes went wide. “No. No. No. That’s not that I’m saying. Jolene, listen to me, I am not saying Ellie is seeing a woman. I don’t know. And neither do you. Don’t go telling people anything. I am merely speculating. You were saying she’s a single mom, but you don’t know that for sure.” He glanced at Dom. “Back me up here.”
Dom snickered. “My brother is right, Jolene. We don’t know Ellie’s situation. But what I do know is that it’s very kind of you and the Sewing Circle to be making her a baby blanket and baby clothes. Regardless of Ellie’s situation, she’s very fortunate to have such thoughtful people in her world.”
Jolene beamed; her silver-streaked blonde hair shiny under the warm recessed lighting of the pub. “You boys have a nice night, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Dom exhaled and nodded. “Drive safe, Jolene.”
“Shit,” Wyatt murmured. “What was I thinking?”
“Don’t fucking know,” Dom whispered as the rest of the women from the Sewing Circle approached the bar to either settle their bills or have Dom put their orders on their tabs.
Wyatt squeezed his shoulder. “Should we make a bet to see how long it takes for the rumor mill to be running rampant with speculation that Ellie has a lesbian lover on the mainland?”
“Don’t even fucking joke about that,” Dom said, giving his brother a dirty look. “You need to text Ellie and give her a head’s up.”
Wyatt at least managed to look a little sheepish and nodded, pulling out his phone from his pocket as he retreated to the kitchen. He was probably going to ask Vica or one of the other women if they had her number. That’s what Dom would do anyway.
Dom flashed the rest of the Sewing Circle ladies a big smile. “Hello, lovely ladies. Are we settling up or putting it on the tab?”
Several of the women who were in their seventies and eighties blushed. Even the younger forty, fifty, and sixty-year-olds went a little pink in the cheeks.
Most of the women had him add their bills to their tabs, but two—Sakura Reilly, whose husband was the local crab fisherman, and Kitty Barrington, who owned the local apiary with her husband Grimm—settled their bills like they always did.
Even though the kitchen closed at ten and Dom sent all his waitstaff home by nine-thirty, he still had a lot of cleaning and turning down to do which meant he wasn’t making the climb up the hill to his house until quarter to eleven.
This was exactly the kind of shit he was trying to not do anymore. He wanted to be there for his kid in the evenings. He wanted to have dinner with Silas and put him to bed. Read him a story, and relax in the evenings. But it was hard handing over control of your business—your baby—to someone else.
He’d always been a control freak, but the incident with Nadine and Ginny that summer just made things so much worse.
He didn’t trust anybody anymore.
Nobody knew how to run his bar better than he did.
Which meant he was burnt out, but also too stubborn to hire anybody long enough to fix it.
What if he hired the wrong person and they torched the place? Or stole from them?
He already felt guilty enough for hiring Nadine, he couldn’t make that same mistake again.
By the time he entered his front door, he could barely keep his eyes open.
His younger brother, Jagger, sat on the couch reading a sci-fi book. He glanced up, the glare of his glasses in the overhead, muted, pot lights obscuring his blue eyes. “You’re gonna have a fucking heart attack if you keep going this way, man.” He put his bookmark in the middle of the book and stretched his big frame out to stand up. “Silas asked if you could remember to draw him a picture tonight. Apparently, you’ve forgotten the last couple of nights.”
Nodding, Dom tore the hair elastic out of his hair again and exhaled a long, deep sigh. “Right.”
Jagger slapped a hand on Dom’s shoulder as he headed for the door. “We’ve been chatting about you.”
“Yeah? In a group chat I’m not a part of?”
“There are so many group chats we’re each not part of, get over it. And yes. Because we’re worried about you. Nadine was not your fault.”
Dom gave Jagger some side-eye. He was too tired to argue tonight.
“We’re taking over the hiring process. And the firing will be done by a vote.”
Well, that fucking woke him up. “Like hell it will. It’s my—”
“It’s our restaurant. And you are our brother. We care about you. We love you. But you can’t keep going the way you’re going. It’s unsustainable. We’ve already set up some interviews for tomorrow. And we will vote as a group of five who we hire and who we fire.” Jagger shrugged. “It’s not personal. But something’s gotta give and you know it.” He squeezed Dom’s shoulder. “Get some sleep.” Then he left out the front door.
Dom glared at the door for a few heartbeats, trying to get his blood pressure to go down.
Fucking hell.
It was goddamned mutiny was what it was.
He never interfered with his brothers’ areas of the business. What the fuck made them think they could interfere with his?
He stomped upstairs, tearing off his shirt in the process. He was about to go have a shower when he passed his son’s slightly open door.
Right! The picture.
Silas had a little drawing pad that with the push of a button could erase the image. It was like a modern-day Etch A Sketch. Every night Silas drew Dom a picture, and then before Dom went to bed, he erased Silas’s picture and drew one for his son to wake up to. They’d been doing it for years. And about two years ago, Dom ran out of ideas of what to draw. But Silas didn’t care. Sometimes he went with a simple smiley face, other nights he had more pep in his step and took some time draw a picture a bit more elaborate.
Tonight was a smiley face night.
Silas had drawn a cute little turtle.
Dom scribbled the smiley face, brushed his son’s hair off his face, and kissed his forehead.
Yeah, okay. Fine. His brothers were right. He needed to spend more time with his great kid. He needed to hire another bartender.
Hopefully they could find one who wasn’t a raving psychotic killer this time.