Flirtatious Rhys loves nothing better than chatting up handsome strangers on the job—until quirky Jareth, a player with unique moves, captivates him with absolute silence.
Server and bartender at Rook's, a restaurant rumoured to be lucky for lovers, Rhys enjoys his life to the fullest. A playful social butterfly, he revels in flirtation and flights of fancy. Though he's never been one for settling down, after seeing so many happy couples in action he's started to wonder if it's about time.
Then Rhys meets Jareth. Or, more properly, Jareth meets Rhys, jumping the terrace fence at Rook's when they're closed and there's no crowd to be lost in. Quirky and compelling, Jareth catches the loquacious Rhys' attention with deliberate, absolute silence. No matter how Rhys may tempt him, Jareth refuses to speak a word—but there are other ways to get his point across, and Jareth has no problem making his intentions and desires for Rhys crystal clear.
Communicating with the captivating charmer is a challenge, but Rhys is having the time of his life playing the quiet game. He might even—much to his surprise—have started falling for Jareth, a man who makes his own luck when it comes to love.
General Release Date: 13th September 2013
Did that guy just jump the fence?
Rhys glanced up, distracted from his work. He’d been busy straightening chairs and replacing vases of wilting orchids with fresh roses, but this promised to be more interesting. See, everyone knew Rook’s closed their doors between three and five daily, or they should. With a certain reputation of being lucky for lovers, Rook’s stayed booked for weeks in advance.
Whether or not the rumour was true Rhys couldn’t say, but it paid off, and in spades. Until he got proper work using his degree in classics—if such a thing were possible—Rhys figured a man could do far worse than wait tables here. Especially if that man had a penchant for flirting and a propensity for playing good-natured pranks, as Rhys did.
It wasn’t what he’d trained for, no, but dear God did Rhys love his work.
Maybe he’d been wrong—if someone had jumped the fence, surely Rhys would have heard them land, wouldn’t he?
Still, Rhys checked again. Stranger things had happened, and often did.
At first Rhys thought his eyes had played a trick on him. He saw nothing but the play of light and shadow between tall glass and steel buildings, sweeping in sheets over all two storeys’ worth of Rook’s Spanish colonial structure. Must have been my imagin—
Wait. Nope.
Tall, slim and nimble on his toes, a man had in fact hopped the four-foot-high brick wall dividing Rook’s fresh-air seating from the sidewalk running parallel between the restaurant and the city thoroughfare. He crossed Rhys’ path as if he belonged there, as careless as a caracal and as freely as a bird.
Rhys dropped his workbasket on a tabletop and wiped his hands on his apron. Hello, gorgeous. He didn’t mind being proved wrong. Especially not like this.
A dark purple shirt clung snugly to the man’s shoulders, surprisingly broad compared to the trim line of his hips in their tailored black slacks. He had smallish feet, encased in glossy leather shoes, and wore reading glasses, their lenses barely encircled by the thinnest frame of sterling silver. A faint five o’clock shadow darkened his sun-warmed skin, a shade or two lighter than the maple-sugar hair tucked carelessly behind his ears. He carried a worn paperback novel in one hand, his place near the beginning marked with his forefinger.
Only the wind ruffled him. If his jump had taken anything out of the man, a casual observer wouldn’t have been able to tell. He took a seat at one of the ironwork tables, opened his book, and resumed reading. Whoever he was, he had moxie in spades. Rhys almost wanted to applaud.
Instead, Rhys carried on swapping roses for orchids as carelessly as the man had jumped, and glanced up to speak offhandedly, "The food here is good, but not that good. You know we’re closed, right?"
The man grinned at Rhys. His smile was surprisingly boyish, softening his almost too-sharp jaw and stubborn cleft chin in a transformation from forbidding to charming.
Correct that—I definitely want to applaud. Part of Rhys hinted at a standing ovation already.
Rhys loved the unusual. The quirky. The peculiar. And when they were all wrapped up in a package this pretty, with the added trimmings of sexy intellectualism, one could call him a lost cause from the word go.
"I should be telling you that you’ve got to leave," Rhys said, pretending to wipe up a few drops of spilt water from the tabletop. "But if I did, would you? Not that I am, mind."
The man made no reply. Rhys wasn’t entirely sure the guy had heard him. He seemed content to bury himself in Great Expectations for hours, but—come on.
"I haven’t read that one since high school." Rhys dawdled closer with his cleaning cloth and workbasket. Being caught lugging around baskets full of flowers didn’t bother him—he was secure enough in his masculinity to wear daisies tucked behind his ears if he ever got the urge. "It’s impossible to go half a block in this neighbourhood without tripping over a donated park bench if all you want to do is chill and catch up on your reading. But you’re here. I have to wonder—what’s your game?"
The man marked his place with one finger and glanced up. A double helping of playful mischief lit up his aura with its puckishness. He tapped the cover of his book, winked once, then pressed his forefinger to his lips with an almost silent exhale. "Shh."
"Did you just shush me?" Rhys asked, delighted.
Willa Okati can most often be found muttering to herself over a keyboard, plugged into her iPod and breaking between paragraphs to play air drums. In her spare time (the odd ten minutes or so per day she's not writing) she's teaching herself to play the pennywhistle.
Willa has forty-plus separate tattoos and yearns for a full body suit of ink. She walks around in a haze of story ideas, dreaming of tales yet to be told. She drinks an alarming amount of coffee for someone generally perceived to be mellow.
Willa Okati - Interview for The Quiet Game
You have upwards of forty tattoos, so can you tell us about any of them?
Each one means something. The coffee cup on my left arm is in honour of my One True Love. The Celtic Knot cat over my heart represents freedom and creativity. The Latin text scrolling across my shoulders is a reminder to never give in to fear. Each one is significant, and was inked before or after a life event…
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