“Now, that’s an exaggeration.” I jumped at the voice behind me and whirled. Simon. No. The accent, the swagger, the cheerful expression. Captain Blackthorne had entered our tavern.

“Captain.” I bobbed a quick in-character curtsy, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Stacey do the same. But as I reached my full height again I raised my eyebrows at him. “How do I exaggerate, milord?”

“We are not wed, we are simply pledged. For a year and a day, remember?” He nodded toward the golden cord, which I had found in my basket that morning. I wore it wrapped around my bodice like a belt and the ends dangled down among my skirts.

“Yes, of course.” But I wasn’t letting him off that easy. “And what is the difference?” It was so easy to slide into the bantery conversation with Simon-as-pirate, more than it ever was to talk to him when he was himself. I was even enjoying myself.

“The difference?” His smile widened; I’d said something either very, very wrong or very, very right, and he couldn’t wait to take advantage of it. “Well, the difference is . . .” He shrugged, but the wicked grin remained intact. “I’m not sure I can say. This is a family-friendly Faire, after all.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. Usually this would all but hide my inadequate cleavage, but in this outfit it highlighted it instead. I thought about dropping my arms, but screw it. Let him look. “This is a tavern,” I reminded him. “Nothing family-friendly here.”

To my horror, he took the dare. “Well, then . . .” He leaned his elbows on the bar, encroaching on my space. Patrons entered the tavern around us, and thankfully, Stacey and Jamie were able to catch them because neither Simon nor I was paying attention. For me, the world had narrowed to this black-clad man in front of me, and the impossible colors that sparkled in his eyes. “If we were wed, when night fell I would take you back to my ship, give the men a week of shore leave, and show you my appreciation very thoroughly, and in private. As it is, we are only pledged, and so I will show you my appreciation thus.” He reached across the bar for my hand, and for some reason I gave it. Never breaking his gaze from mine, he bent over my hand and his mouth lingered this time, much longer than it had when we had been performing in front of the crowd. This kiss on the back of my hand was intimate, and his eyes promised even more.

This was all fake. I knew that. He wasn’t a pirate. There was no ship to take me back to. He was a high school English teacher in a costume, and I was the snarky thorn in his side. He was probably doing all of this to make me uncomfortable so I would tell him to knock it off. Then he could later reprimand me for breaking character. Instead fire pooled low in my belly and my mind filled with the image of us in the moonlight on the deck of a pirate ship. The creaking of the wood, the breeze off the water. His hand touching my face, the warmth of his skin against mine.

“Emma?” Stacey’s voice startled me, and with a blink I was back in the tavern. Which was full of patrons and a concerned-looking fellow wench. Shit.

I snatched my hand from Simon’s grasp, and he started a little in confusion. Had he been on that pirate ship with me? “Excuse me, Captain.” My snippy tone covered up the mix of confusion, guilt, and arousal swirling inside me. “Some of us have work to do. I don’t have time to play.”

His face darkened as he took in the scene: a line of people waiting to buy drinks, and only three people to sell them. “Indeed.” He doffed his stupid hat and his bow encompassed the room. “Ladies. Gentlemen. Enjoy the day.” He sauntered out of the tavern, and I turned to the next waiting patron with a smile that shook only a little.

And the patrons kept on coming. I had originally thought people would cool it a little on the alcohol consumption on a Sunday afternoon, but apparently all bets were off when you were at a Renaissance faire. The familiar ache in my feet from the day before came back with a vengeance, and I longed for a break so I could snag a stool and sit down. Instead I opened cases of bottled beer while Jamie changed out a keg and Stacey handled cash. The three of us had become a well-oiled machine in only two days, but we were a woefully inadequate one. A single-cup coffeemaker for a party of ten. When the end of the day came I sank to the ground, not caring how dirty my skirts would get. We had five days until the next Faire day. Plenty of time for laundry.

Stacey counted down the cash while Jamie started locking up the stock, and with a whimper I hauled myself to my feet to help. I cleaned empty cups off the tables, and as I did so I realized we should have been doing that all day. We’d been so focused on serving people that the tables in our tavern looked like the overflow from the trash can: empty plastic cups stacked inside each other, some knocked over and lying in a puddle of hours-old beer dregs. I wrinkled my nose and made several trips to the nearest trash can, depositing plastic cups and paper cartons with a stray French fry in the bottom or a mostly gnawed turkey leg.

“People are pigs,” I said after finishing my fourth trip. I wet a clean bar rag in melted ice and wiped down the tables. The ones in the back were neater, like they had hardly been used. As I wiped one of them I realized from this vantage point, I could barely see the main lane at all. These tables were pretty well hidden.

“Can we move some of these tables?” I asked.

Jamie shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Right now?”

“God, no.” I tossed the rag in the trash and reached for the bow tying my bodice closed. “This wench is done for the day.” I loosened the laces and sucked in a grateful breath. “But maybe next weekend. People seem to be using the front tables as trash deposit, and no one’s hanging out, which is kind of the point of a tavern, right? Maybe if people lingered, they wouldn’t think of the place as a garbage dump.”

He shrugged again. “Worth a try.”

“We missed pub sing both days this weekend.” Stacey’s expression was mournful as she leaned wearily against the bar.

I shook my head. “What the hell’s a pub sing?” We were already in a pub, and nothing was happening. Was I going to have to sing? My head was pounding, I could barely feel my feet, and I’d just taken my first deep breath all day. There was no way anyone could expect me to sing like this.

“Pub sing,” Stacey repeated as though that explained everything. God, I was sick of being the newbie. I hated being told things with no explanation, as though I were supposed to magically know. My exasperation must have shown, because she hurried to explain. “It’s a sort of farewell at the end of the day. Some of the entertainers and most of the cast members gather at the stage up front. We sing songs, give toasts, and generally thank the patrons for coming. And since it’s up at the front, it’s an easy step to usher the patrons out so we can close the gates at the end of the day.” She pulled at her own corset strings behind her back and her sigh deepened. “I don’t know what we’re doing wrong this year that we can’t get up front at the end of the day.”

“I don’t know, either.” I moved behind her to help loosen her corset. “We’ll do better next week, okay?” We had to. This pub sing thing was important to her, so it was up to me to figure out a way to make that happen for her.

“The two of you weren’t at pub sing.” My eyes flew up from where I’d been concentrating on unlacing Stacey’s corset. Simon strode under the canopy and into the tavern, his hat in his hand. He didn’t look like a pirate anymore, even though he still wore the outfit. He was back to being Simon again. He’d dropped the accent, and his regular voice made my blood pressure rise, and not in the fun way his pirate persona did.

“Brilliant deduction.” I dropped my eyes again, dismissing him and getting back to unlacing Stacey, but she ruined my snarky effect by sighing.

“I know. I was telling Emily that we need to start getting over there at the end of the day.”

“You do. And you need to get out from behind the bar more. Wenches are supposed to add color to the place. You should be interacting more with the patrons, enticing them in. As it is, all you’re doing is acting like cashiers. You’re hardly in character at all.”

I breathed in sharply through my nose as Simon ended his diatribe. I couldn’t believe this. All that time he was kissing my hand and making me think indecent thoughts about moonlight, and he’d been critiquing my performance. How could he turn on a dime like that? Be fun and flirty with me all weekend, and then, as soon as the day is over—bam—back to his old critical self? I was getting emotional whiplash from dealing with him.

Stacey nodded along with him, but I wasn’t going to take this criticism lying down. My feet hurt too much to not defend myself.

“I’d love to.” I gave Stacey’s laces a couple more good tugs and she was free. Then I gave Simon my full attention. “I’d absolutely love to spend more time talking to people, interacting, all of that. But instead I’m working my ass off for this Faire.” Hands on my hips, I marched over to Simon until we were practically nose to nose. It was my turn to be in his personal space. “You were in here this afternoon. You saw how busy we were, right?” I barely gave him time to respond before I kept going. “You’ve got three people here, trying to do the work of at least six. There’s no way you can expect us to sell drinks at the volume we’re working here and be interactive at the same time. Unless you’ve got a cloning machine somewhere I don’t know about.”