Badd Business Read online

  Remington was silent a long moment. “What do you know, you dirty old coot?” he snarled.

  Mr. Badd wasn’t fazed. “Less than most, but a damn sight more’n others.”

  I turned to assess Remington’s response to this not-so-thinly veiled insult.

  Remington just rolled his eyes and shook his head. It seemed as if this was a familiar dance for this group of men. “Oh, fuck off.”

  “Come a little closer and I’ll teach you some respect,” Mr. Badd growled, sounding for all the world like an irritated bear. “Even with a busted leg and arm I can still whup you.”

  “You wish,” Remington said. “You ain’t been able to whup any of us since we was teenagers.” He winced at the twang in his voice, which I hadn’t heard before. “Dammit, old man. Two minutes in a room with you and I’m talking country all over all again.”

  “Ashamed of your upbringing, are you?” Mr. Badd asked.

  “Our height and looks already leave people assuming the worst about us,” Remington answered. “Sounding like a country bumpkin only makes it worse. So yeah, I worked hard to leave the accent behind when we left.”

  “Bein’ as dumb as you are big, and as much an asshole as you are good-lookin’—that’s what has people assuming the worst.”

  Remington flipped him the bird. “Yeah, well…everything I know, I learned from you. So what’s that say about you?”

  Roman—normally clean-shaven, his jaw now heavily stubbled, his hair short and gelled into spikes, still wearing the trousers and button-down shirt from a suit—shot a hard look at Remington. “Dude, what crawled up your ass and died?”

  Mr. Badd chuckled. “Rem is as even-keeled as any Badd will ever get, so if something has him acting a fool, I guaran-damn-tee you it’s a woman.” His eyes went to mine. “Don’t take it personally, darlin’. My boys are clueless about women.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “It has nothing to do with me, I’m sure,” I lied.

  Mr. Badd just laughed again. “Honey, you can’t sell bullshit to a bullshit artist.”

  I patted his hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Badd. I hope you recover quickly.” I glanced at Izzy and then Kitty. “I’m gonna head back to Ketchikan. My boss has a case he needs help preparing for.” I waved at the room in general, but specifically, intentionally, and somewhat blatantly ignoring Remington. “Goodbye, everyone.”

  Izzy and Kitty exchanged glances, and then followed me out as I hustled toward the elevators.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Juneau, wait,” Izzy called after me.

  I didn’t wait, but instead walked even faster. I had no intention of waiting around for the Izzy Inquisition, or for Kitty’s quiet, well-meaning, and often effective questioning.

  Of course, short of running, there was no way I was going to outpace them, and they both caught up to me as I reached the elevator bank.

  “Juneau, what the hell?” Izzy demanded, standing in front of the elevator, preventing me from calling it. “You’re acting weird.”

  “I am not,” I protested. “I just have to get back to Ketchikan.”

  “Juneau, it’s us,” Kitty said, the good cop, as always. “What’s going on with you? There is something wrong.”

  “Nothing!” I all but shouted.

  Which was a mistake, because me raising my voice was a dead giveaway that something is wrong.

  “Well, I was almost buying the ‘have to get back for work’ excuse,” Izzy said. “But I know something is wrong.”

  I groaned, tilting my head backward. “Okay, you know what? Fine. Remington Badd is a disgusting, arrogant, crude, foul-mouthed barbarian.”

  Kitty burst out laughing. “Well…yeah. He’s a Badd. Have you met Roman?” She shook her head, amused at me. “For that matter, have you met any of my eight bosses? Who are, may I remind you, all Badds, and they have their questionable moments just like Remington, Ramsey, and Roman do.”

  “Hearing you talk about Roman being that way, or hearing about a few crude jokes from Bast or Zane is one thing,” I huffed, “but having it directed at you is different.”

  “No joke,” Izzy said, fanning her face. “I didn’t think anyone could make me blush, but Ramsey? Hooooo-boy, that man is dirty.”

  Kitty and I exchanged glances. “Wait, what?” I asked. “When did you meet him? I thought you’d never seen him before.”

  Izzy faked a ditzy, demure shrug. “I have my ways.”

  “Izzy.” Kitty stared hard at our best friend. “You haven’t had sex with him already, have you?”

  She shook her head. “No…not exactly.”

  “Izzy.” Kitty’s tone demanded details.

  She just grinned. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Juneau, and how Remington clearly said or did something that has her acting like she has sand in her vag.”

  “Izzy!” Kitty and I scolded in unison.

  “What? It’s true!”

  I huffed in irritation. “You are so nasty sometimes, Isadora.”

  “I just calls ’em like I sees ’em,” Izzy drawled, cackling. “And you know how much I love getting your goat.”

  I reached past them and jabbed the call button. “I’m going home. I’m heading back to Ketchikan as soon as I can change my flight.”

  Kitty just patted me on the shoulder. “You’re in for a long day then, because I think the last nonstop leaves in, like, twenty minutes.”

  I sighed. “I’ll figure something out. I just see no point in hanging around in the hospital with a bunch of crude, vulgar, arrogant men…whom I have no desire to know any further.”

  Kitty’s expression hardened a little. “That’s not fair, Juneau. Roman may be all those things, but he has a really good heart. He’s actually very sweet, it’s just buried under a pretty thick layer of—”

  “Macho assholery?” I suggested.

  Kitty laughed, nodding. “Yeah, pretty much. But once you see that the whole macho asshole thing is just a big front, you start seeing a lot more beneath it.”

  “That’s just the sex talking,” I muttered.

  Kitty’s eyebrow lifted. “Oh? You think so?” She poked me in the shoulder. “You and I are a lot alike, and we both know it. You really think I’d be this blinded by sex? Even world-class, earthshaking, unforgettable sex? Do you really think I’d let myself be sucked into a relationship with someone like Roman Badd unless I genuinely believed there’s something valuable and worthwhile in it for me? Beyond sex, I mean.”

  I eyed her levelly. “World class, earthshaking, and unforgettable?”

  Her grin was…lascivious, really the only way I could describe it. “Juneau, you have no idea.”

  I glanced at Izzy. “You have anything to add?”

  She just shrugged. “Nope!” she sang. “Not a thing.”

  “Izzy,” I snapped. “I know you have something to say. You always do.”

  She gave me an uncharacteristically opaque stare. “I’ll have something to say on the subject eventually, but not yet.”

  “Okay, well I do have something to say,” Kitty said. “I don’t think you’re giving Remington a fair chance.”

  “I just met the man. He’s not my type, and I’m not interested.” I shrugged, acting as matter-of-fact and nonchalant as I could. “I don’t need to know anything else.”

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the elevator arrived, the doors sliding open; I stepped on and put my back to the farthest corner. “I’ll see you guys back at home.”

  I watched Kitty and Izzy exchange significant glances, the kind which told me they’d be having a conversation about me as soon as the doors closed.

  Fine, let them talk.

  I knew all I needed to know about Remington Badd, and I knew I wasn’t interested.

  3

  Remington

  “God, you asshats don’t have a single goddamn clue about what the fuck you’re doing here, do you?” This was my cousin, Sebastian, whom we’ve taken to calling Bast l
ike everyone else.

  He was standing in the stockroom of our bar, sorting through our inventory. He had on a pair of cut-off khaki shorts which hung past his knees, battered red cross trainers, and a heather-gray Badd’s Bar and Grill pullover hoodie, the sleeves tugged up to his elbows, revealing his tattooed forearms. He had a clipboard in one hand, a pen in the other, a bar towel folded in thirds and tucked into his back right pocket. A tattered, well-worn Seattle Seahawks hat, worn backward, covered his black hair.

  Ramsey and Roman were standing on either side of me, outside the stockroom, wearing expressions which mirrored my own—equal parts pissed off and embarrassed.

  “It’s a bar—you sell booze.” Roman toyed with a purple velvet bag, the kind that came with bottles of Crown Royal.

  “So you figured it couldn’t be that hard,” Bast interpreted. “Newsflash—it’s fuckin’ hard. Any monkey with half a brain can pour beer and take money for it. That’s the easy part. Everything else that leads up to that, and comes after it, is the hard part. Inventory, POS, loss percentages, overhead, paper stock, breakage, food sales, food inventory, food prep, employee hours, salaries, register balances, cash deposits…”

  He tapped his clipboard, and the stack of paper on it. “I’ve been running Badd’s pretty much on my own since I was seventeen. I took over inventory, and then I took over the deposits, and then I took over the rest of the management duties so Dad could just tend bar—and drink himself to death, it turns out. I make it look easy because I’ve been in the bar business my whole life—it’s literally the only thing I’ve ever known. You three numbskulls—” He shook his head, huffing a laugh.

  “Cousin or not, I can still break your teeth,” Roman growled.

  “You’re acting like a teenager. Swing at me and I’ll leave you to figure this out on your own.”

  Roman groaned in aggravation, raking his scalp with his fingernails. “Fuck! Fine. What about us three numbskulls?”

  “Well, you picked a hell of a good location for your bar—I’ve actually been eying this property for a few months—I’ve been thinking about expanding.” He left the stockroom and led us back into the main bar area, gesturing with his clipboard at the work we’d done so far. “You did a hell of a good job with the renovation. Not what I’d have done, but it works. It really works.”

  It was good to know from Bast that we had done something right. We started out thinking we’d do a minimal renovation, but once we started yanking shit out one thing led to another, until finally the place was down to the studs. And then Roman, in a stroke of blind luck, came across a guy who had torn down a century-old barn and farmhouse and was selling the wood for cheap. Rome bought it, rented a flatbed, brought it here, and we used it for the floors and walls. We combined that weathered look with more reclaimed and recycled pieces of steel, tin, and copper for the trim and light fixtures.

  And suddenly the whole place took on a…shit, I don’t know the right term. Industrial? Factory sort of look? That’s not totally right, though. We found some old batwing doors for the kitchen and bathrooms, and we stripped, sanded, and restained the bar that had been in here. Then we repurposed a bunch of mismatched stools, and we had ourselves a bar that sort of felt like a modern interpretation of an Old West saloon.

  We put up all sorts of eclectic artwork—pages from pinup calendars from the forties and fifties, classic movie posters, some old revolvers with their barrels crossed, and a gun belt hung above them, even a junked-out old antique motorcycle that had taken us an entire day to hang on the wall.

  I’d even convinced Roman to let us alter the name just a bit: it was now called Badd Kitty Saloon.

  All in all, I was proud of the work we’d done in here, making the place look cool and professional, and I was relieved that Bast saw the quality in what we’d accomplished.

  In a way, that was the easy part of opening this bar.

  It’s the rest of my concerns about the whole “opening and running a bar” that I was reluctant to share with my brothers.

  Fortunately, I think we can depend on Bast to give us a reality check.

  Still on his tour of our saloon, Bast said, “Great feel in here. Super masculine. Since our place is sort of designed to attract the women, hopefully this place will attract more of the men.” He indicated the bar. “You don’t have a POS, do you?”

  Roman frowned. “POS? You mean piece of shit?”

  Bast barked a laugh. “No—point of sale. A cash register. The computer where you ring up orders and take money.”

  Rome folded the velvet bag in half and in half again. “Oh. Um—no. I wasn’t sure where to get one, or what to look for. I did some research on it, but there’s a bunch of different types and different operating systems, so I just said fuck it, I’ll use Square.”

  Bast nodded. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I’ve been thinking of switching to a system like that myself. Hell of a lot easier to learn to use.” He clapped Roman on the shoulder. “You were planning on opening…when?”

  Roman shrugged. “I dunno. ASAP, I guess.”

  “Well, good news is, your interior is good to go, for the most part. You need soap dispensers, and either a hand towel dispenser or an air dryer of some kind in the washrooms.” He idly tapped his pen against the clipboard. “You’re missing a bunch of shit, though—basically all that stuff I was talking about back in the storeroom.”

  “Well, you’re the expert,” Roman said. “What’s the best plan?”

  Bast spun the pen around his thumb in a fancy flicking maneuver. “Well, it’s more complicated than me just outlining you a plan which, honestly, probably sounds a lot easier than it would actually end up being. I can’t just say do this, this, and this, and then let you go and do it—even if you managed to follow my directions exactly, you’d still miss shit and end up getting shut down, if not sued.”

  “Sued?”

  “Well, in order to run any business that serves food or beverages, you need a Food Serve certification, on top of a health department inspection. Have you done either of those?” Bast was answered by Roman’s glare and shuffling feet. “Didn’t think so. You try to run without that shit, yeah, you’ll get shut down so fast your head will spin, and there’ll likely be fines of some kind along with it.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Did you do any electrical or plumbing work?” Bast asked.

  “Nope. All we did was update the fixtures. But we did have an inspector come out and look at it. We have a properly marked and functioning emergency exit, fire extinguishers, all that.” Roman sounded inordinately proud of himself for being able to provide that answer.

  “Well, that’s one thing off the list,” Bast said. “Listen, getting this place up to speed so it can run smoothly will be…a shitload of work.”

  Roman’s scowl was an ugly one. “Yeah, I’m gathering that.”

  “Plus, you’re gonna need more than just the three of you, unless you each plan on working eighteen-hour days.” He paused. “And, in order to get up to speed, you’re gonna need expertise that none of you have.” Bast was clearly thinking about something.

  “Out with it, Bast,” I said. “What are you getting at?”

  Bast took a seat on a nearby stool, set his clipboard down, and fiddled with the pen, eyeing the three of us. “How committed to this place are you?”

  “I can’t answer for these bozos,” Roman said. “But I’m all in. With Dad still recovering and obviously being prone to relapse, I just don’t see myself going back to fighting fires anytime soon. Plus, I like this town. And, despite myself, I’m starting to like you assholes and your women. And I really like Kitty. So…I’m committed to it. A hundred percent. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it work.”

  “You really want to learn how to run a bar?” Bast asked, his eyes sharp, his tone sharper.

  “I’m not stupid, okay? I know I bit off way more than I could chew when I jumped on this bar idea—and then dragged these two yokels with me. But I’ve had
fun so far. And I see the way you guys run your place, and I like it. So, yeah, I do want to learn.”

  Bast nodded, and then glanced at Ram and then me. “What about you two?”

  Ram eyed me, and I eyed him back—we’d both always been skeptical about this plan, but we support Rome no matter what. Plus, we didn’t really have any better ideas at the time, so…here we were.

  I don’t know about Ram, but I didn’t love the bar scene quite as much as Rome. When it comes to drinking, I’ve always preferred to do mine on my own, with some buddies, out in the woods, or at home. The only reason I’d ever go to a bar is to pick up some company for the night; Ram is even less about the bar scene than I am, being the most outdoorsy of the three of us; he hates being inside for any length of time, so I can’t imagine him being cool stuck in a bar eighteen-plus hours a day.

  “I’m still trying to figure out a better plan for myself,” Ram says. “So I’m in, for now. But it’s provisional. You know I’m down to support whatever you guys want to do—three musketeers and all that shit, right? But, eventually, I know I’m going to get sick of playing bartender.”

  Rome toyed with a pair of beverage straws. “I feel you. That’s all I can ask for.” He eyed me. “What about you, Rem?”

  I sighed, flipping my hand through my hair. “You know, I’ve never been super excited about opening a bar. Bars have always been your thing, not mine, and certainly not Ram’s.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” Rome said. “You two assholes aren’t as sociable as I am.”

  Bast’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re the sociable one?”

  “Believe it or not, yeah, I am,” Rome said, laughing. His laugh died as he glanced at me. “So, Rem. You’re in for now? Provisionally, like Ram?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Bast nodded, stabbing the pen’s clicker against the clipboard repeatedly. “Okay, we’ve got one of you all in, a hundred percent, and the other two of you are provisional. I can work with that, I guess.” He flipped pages on the clipboard, bringing it to a blank page. “Let’s talk business.”