Love On Tap (Love By Design 8)

And here I thought Jon Snow knew nothing.

It was I, who knew nothing while the dragon girl burned the world.

I put my hand on David’s chest pushing him back a little. He could have resisted, but he backed off with my request.

“Easy you two.” I glanced back at my ex. “Put your money away, Sierra. You know it’s not necessary.”

“Because you feel sorry for me?” Her coral lips were glossed and pouty stunning me for a moment before I cleared my throat and approach this situation from a different angle.

I sighed.

She was damn exhausting and I was getting sucked back in.

“Because we have history.” I said examining her pinched defensive expression. Again, I had to quell the auto-pilot response of tapping into my well of sympathy. I kept telling myself the well was bone dry and not worth the expense of my sanity.

“History.” Her tone made it sound like a question.

I answered. “Be careful, the doors you slam today won’t be open tomorrow.” I pushed the glass of whiskey down the bar. Her favorite and something she drank even as a hellfire underaged brat. I never knew where she got the whiskey, but I knew it made her braver and reckless, a dangerous combination in a woman who looked like she was barely hanging on.

I didn’t want to know what happened to her over the past decade. Mostly because it hadn’t included me and that hurt worst of all. I wasn’t a part of that history. I was a part of the long-forgotten past she walked away from. Where had she been hiding all these years besides Vegas? And yes, I knew that much. I hired a private investigator to find my wife when her grandparents died and saddled me with her inheritance and the winery.

Was she involved? Kids? The questions rounded my head over and over cutting tiny bits of flesh from my body pouring salt into the wounds. Sierra Occho destroyed me once. I spent the last decade reorganizing my soul without her and coming back from the shell of a man I had become in her absence. I couldn’t go back to living like a ghost all over again. If anything, I needed to exercise her from my mind so I could start living.

But seeing her here in the flesh did something to me, and I knew this could only end one of two ways.

3

Sierra

Andrew Easton would always be the one that got away, my North Star in the storm. The one statistical outlier I didn’t account for when I made my break with small town life. Handsome like his brother, but without the covert hero complex David always carried even as he joined the military. The Easton brothers were something special. Andrew was a different kind of hero. Patient. Tolerant. Accepting when he should have run like the hills meeting me. I bet their mother didn’t realize how lucky she had become getting two sons as near perfect as these two were. No one compared to them and I knew even then I wasn’t good enough to stay with him forever. He was my foolish indiscretion, a rest stop on my journey to hell, and my one allowance at temporary happiness.

Good looking and friendly was how I remembered them on my fast track out of town. I was a scared little girl who turned into a washed-up stripper just like Nona said I would. I had lofty goals of being a world class poker player, but no capital to get in the game unless I sold my one remaining asset now that the inheritance clause had run out, but that damn winery was filled with haunting memories.

Andrew and David taught me car

ds in the beginning when we would meet up in the backroom of the bar waiting on one of their parents to finish up the books for the night. As we got older both brothers would bike the mile and a half outside of town to the vineyard making sure I got home. Years would pass, David would join the football team and then it was only Andrew who followed me home. Those days pushing pedals over the hot summer asphalt with flies biting our ankles were some of my most treasured memories.

I knew Andrew wouldn’t like my return to New Paltz, but I didn’t expect his semi-frosty welcome either. Afterall, he was the one who summoned me to this godforsaken place. Suffice it to say, I had no idea what to expect. He always had a special softness for me, one I selfishly exploited from the beginning. From the day we meet, I couldn’t understand why he continued to give me his forgiveness and love when I deserved it least of all. Despite all of it though, meeting him was both the happiest day and the worst of my life. Fast forward to being eighteen when we had broken up.

Correction, I broke up with him on bad terms putting it delicately, my fault, and I left him without a backwards glance cutting the ties cleanly and efficiently like a razor blade to spare us both any unsolicited amount of heart break. In the years since, I got accustomed to those exacting slices. Sharp and precise the scars remained. I guessed I was wrong. Really wrong.

“So?” This time the question about my return came from Andrew. I picked up the tumbler of whiskey focusing on not having my hand shake and took a fortifying sip shunning my past.

I smiled, shaking my head watching him clean the bar with a bit more gusto than he needed. My eyes transfixed on the ropey muscles winding up his thick arms. They flexed under his t-shirt and I sighed remembering those arms, a younger version, embracing me and free of the ink that peeked out from the bottom edge of his shirt sleeves now. I wondered what story that ink would tell. Andrew was warm, hot like a heater when our bodies joined together. I had been so cold since I left New York and it was more than just a bone deep chill the hot Vegas sun had no control over, it was a hollowness that filled my heart.

I didn’t think I could tell Andrew the real reason behind my return. My selfish need to see him again. So I gave the next best thing.

“I came back to figure out what to do with the winery.” A half-truth which had Andrew cease wiping the bar, throwing the rag down. The movement was quick, and jerked me back on my seat. A half-truth which had Andrew cease wiping the bar, throwing the rag down. The movement was quick, and jerked me back on my seat. It wasn’t like him to be violent, but the motion startled me. He wasn’t that guy. He wasn’t the immediate past and I wouldn’t have to worry about him finding me or the money I lifted from him which was my share from the club anyway. I was good at disappearing. I had perfected my ability to blend in and vanish from a young age.

“Crushing grapes by hand or just hearts this time.” He leaned over the bar. The words gritted between his teeth. I shook looking into his eyes and seeing the pain and hate coming from their depths.

“I want to apologize.” I fisted my hands under the lip of the bar, hidden, letting my nails pinch the skin.

“You know what, it doesn’t matter what you want. What I want is for you to get out of my bar. We have an appointment with the lawyer, that’s all you needed to show up for.” Andrew turned and walked away leaving me in silence. A few patrons watched our awkward exchange. The door to the kitchen swung open and close on its hinges in time to my beating heart.

“Well, that went surprisingly well.” David put a shot of tequila this time in front of me and I slung it back without flinching at the bitter taste.

“You think so?”