1
Quinn
I am a glutton for punishment. Ever since the tender age of fourteen, I knew there was something wrong with me. Because of all the boys in all the world I could go and have a crush on, I fall for him.
My older brother’s college roommate. The mysterious boy with the troubled past who could have any girl he wants. The cute boy with the dark hair and deep brown eyes who’s as smart as he is cocky, who somehow managed to both get into med school and win over a lifetime friendship from sports-loving Dean, who only attended the same college because of a basketball scholarship.
And those girls? I was never one of them. Not then, and I won’t be again now.
I don’t expect to see him here tonight, but if he shows up, I won’t be surprised. Everyone is back in town for Dean’s engagement party, and it’s inevitable we all end up at Getaway, the bar owned by my twin brothers. My heel catches on the toe of my other shoe, tripping me and making me slosh my very full Dirty Shirley down the front of my dress.
“Shit,” I mutter and sip my drink as I turn around to grab a napkin.
“Smooth, sis.” Logan holds out a rag.
“It was that obvious, huh?” I set my glass on the wooden bar top and take the rag.
“In your defense, I did fill your glass to the top. I thought I was doing you a favor, but now I know otherwise.”
I roll my eyes at my brother and blot at the stains on my dress. Of course I’m wearing white. Never fails, does it? I slide onto a barstool and wipe the sides of my glass, taking a big drink before returning the rag to my brother. He takes it and tosses it at Owen’s face, making him lean away from the girls he’s been flirting with all night.
“What the hell?” Owen snaps, throwing the rag in a bin behind the counter. “I had a good thing going.”
“You’re going to pay for those drinks you gave away, right?” Logan shifts his eyes from me to his twin. They’re identical, thick as thieves, but radically different in many aspects, which works out in both their favors. They balance each other out—most of the time.
“Take it from my pay.” Owen grabs a bottle from the top shelf, arms himself with a cocky smile, and goes to the end of the bar to refill empty shot glasses. I pull my phone from my purse and see I missed a text from Jamie. She got held up at work and is rushing to get changed. She says she’ll be here in fifteen minutes, which could mean up to an hour in Jamie-time. I relax in my seat and sip my drink as I mindlessly surf the internet.
“You’re working, aren’t you?” Logan rests his elbows on the bar and leans in, peering at my phone.
“Not this time. I’m trying really hard not to even check my email. I’m looking at a castle for sale in Scotland.”
Not missing a beat or even questioning me, my brother just shakes his head. “Mom can hardly handle you being less than two hours away in Chicago. She’d lose her shit if you moved to Europe.”
“But look, it has a bookshelf that opens to a secret staircase.”
“That is pretty badass.” A moment passes as I continue to look through the images of the castle. Logan sets a glass down on the bar next to me and grabs a bottle of whiskey. “So you’re just going to sit here, drinking by yourself while you look at castles you’re not really going to buy?”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Logan just chuckles and goes to take drink orders from new customers. I slowly sip at my drink, mildly entertained by what’s on the glowing screen in front of me. A large group comes in, filling the bar with bodies and noise.
Newly expanded, Getaway is a large bar, and it needs every single square foot it can get. I’m proud of my brothers for turning this place around from the hole-in-the-wall bar it was when they first bought it into something people flock to.
The woman next to me gets up and a man immediately slides onto the stool. His cologne is overwhelming, making me gag.
“I couldn’t help but notice” —he starts, leaning in— “that you were here alone.”
Blinking, I look up from my phone at the man next to me. He’s wearing a dark suit with the jacket unbuttoned and is flashing me a bright-white smile.
“I’m Cam, by the way.” He extends his hand, showing off his large-faced watch in the process. He’s overdressed for the bar which caters to the blue-collar people of Eastwood, Indiana.
“Quinn,” I say, finding it hard to be anything but polite. It’s in my nature to assume people aren’t assholes. His attention is unwanted, but not rude. Not yet at least. He grips my hand tight, pressing his finger over the pulse-point on my wrist like he’s trying out some lame move he read about in a dating-blog article.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No.” It feels like a lie. I am from around here. I just don’t live here currently. I always assumed I’d end up back here someday.
“Didn’t think so. I’ve been doing business in Newport the last few months and have stopped in here every now and then. If you’d been in here before, I’d remember it.”
I force a smile and shift my eyes to the bar. All I need to do is look at one of my brothers for them to come running, shove a fist in this guy’s face and kick him out for life. Three of the four are here tonight, and they all take their roles as big brother seriously. Instead, I grab my drink and fiddle with the straw, wishing I had the power to speed up time and make Jamie walk through the door.
“So, you’re here alone,” he says more than asks. Of course I’m alone, and it’s obvious.
“For now. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Yeah.” He gives me a wink. “Me too.” He inches closer. “We can wait together. Want a refill?”
“No thanks. My friend is a boy. Well, no, more like a man. Not more like. He is. He’s my man-friend.” The words keep coming out of my mouth even though I wa
nt them to stop. “I’m waiting for my man-friend.”
“Right. Man-friend.” Cam’s eyebrows arch in amusement. “In case he doesn’t show, you know where to find me.”
“Yeah,” I mumble, flashing a polite smile before getting up and going behind the bar. I fill a glass with a small amount of vodka and then fill it with cherries.
“What are you doing back here?” Owen breezes past me to get a bottle of tequila. I pull a cherry from its stem and pop it in my mouth.
“Making myself a drink.”
“That’s just cherries and vodka.”
“Exactly. I’ll give the cherries a few minutes to marinate in the booze then I’ll eat them.”
Owen responds with a head shake and points to something next to me. “Hand me that glass?”
“Sure,” I say and hand it to him. “It’s getting busy in here. Where’s Heather?”
“Waiting on her sitter to show up. She’ll be here…eventually.”
“I can help in the meantime.”
Owen considers it as he pours a drink, hurrying back across the bar before coming back. “Can you make an Old Fashioned for the guy in the white shirt?”
“A what?”
“Old Fashioned.”
I blink and reach into my purse again for my phone. Holding up my finger to tell Owen to wait, I do a quick Google search. “Got it. Well, maybe. What does it mean to ‘muddle’ a drink?”
“I’ll make it. Here.” He hands me a bottle of whiskey. “Pour ten shots and take them to Dean’s table, along with this margarita for Kara.”
“Easy enough.” I move my glass of cherries to a safe spot, grab a tray, shot glasses, and carefully pour. I worked at a bar in college and lasted three nights before getting fired for not being able to keep up. I like fast-paced jobs. Hell, I’d go so far as to say I enjoy being in a field I can describe as demanding. But there was something so overwhelming about being surrounded by drunk people all shouting and yelling for their drinks.
Centering the margarita and arranging the shots around it, I lift the tray. A few shot glasses wobble, and the amber-colored liquid sloshes around. I take a step—nothing spills. Holding the tray as level as I can, I slowly make my way through the bar and feel a new appreciation for Heather, who can sprint through here, in heels no less, and deliver drinks without so much as losing a drop of booze on her way to the table.
I spy Dean and my soon-to-be sister-in-law, Kara, at a crowded table at the back. I sidestep to avoid a group of drunk women all wearing matching pink shirts that say “Marie’s Last Fling Before the Ring” and grit my teeth as I watch the smallest bit of whiskey roll down the sides of the glasses. Maybe I shouldn’t have filled them so high.
Stopping in front of Dean’s table, I make my move to set the tray of shots down. Right as I’m lowering it, a drunk guy stumbles and bumps right into me…and the tray full of alcohol.
2
Archer
Boobs.
All I see are boobs. Large. Perky. Round. They’re in my face and I’m having a hard time straightening up to look at the waitress’s eyes. Alcohol drips off her perfect tits, rolling down onto the table and splashing into my lap.
“Sorry,” the drunk asshole who bumped into her slurs, stumbling away. Dean, who’s on his way to being just as toasted as that guy, jumps up and takes the waitress by the arm and helps her straighten up. The guy had shoved her forward and she hit the table. In a desperate attempt to save the tray full of shots she brought it closer to her body which resulted in all ten shot glasses and one strawberry margarita sliding down the tray and crashing against her ample chest.
I’ve never been jealous of an inanimate object before today. She’s leaning over, alcohol streaming down the tray. A shot glass hits the table and rolls, landing on my lap.
“You all right?” Dean asks, brow furrowing. He looks through the crowd for the drunk guy who bumped into the waitress. She takes a step back, looking at the alcohol running down the front of her white dress. I raise my gaze from her breasts to her face, and my heart stops in my chest.
It’s Quinn, and I haven’t laid eyes on her in years. Her green eyes widen in shock, full lips parting ever so slightly. And then red rushes to her cheeks, embarrassed not by dropping the tray, but by having everyone look at her.
It may have been years since I’ve seen her, but I remember her well. Even though I shouldn’t. Even though it’s wrong.
“Logan’s going to kill you,” Dean says with a grin.
She shakes her head. “I do his taxes. He won’t kill me.” With a sigh, she shifts her gaze, looking at me for the first time. “I am so—” The words die in her throat the second we make eye contact. Everything about her is sheer perfection—even with the booze covering her dress. Her brunette hair falls down her back in waves, and I can see a hint of her freckles dotting her cheeks. She blinks rapidly, long lashes coming together. Then she turns her head down again, wiping away a bead of alcohol rolling down her neck. I can’t help but look too, eyes going right to her tits, which are currently covered in whiskey. My cock jumps at the thought of licking it off her.
“Sorry. I’m so sorry,” she finally finishes.
“It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.” I exhale and reach across the table for a napkin. It’s damp from the drink that was resting on it, but it’s better than nothing.
“Thanks.” Her fingers brush mine as she takes the napkin, swiping it over her collarbone. “It’s going to be hard to explain this if I get pulled over on the way home.” Her hand plunges between her breasts, wiping up as much of the whiskey off her sun-kissed skin as she can.
“You too, Archer.” Kara points to the shot glass that’s resting on my legs. “You both smell like alcoholics.”
Her comment, as innocent as it is, makes me cringe. I do know what an alcoholic smells like. And it’s often much worse than smelling like straight whiskey and a strawberry margarita.
“Whatever,” Quinn says, shaking her head. “It is what it is, right? Could be worse. Want me to get you refills?”
“Refills implies we got the first fill,” Dean teases, picking up empty shot glasses from the table. I lean over and grab three from the floor. Quinn does the same, but her back is to me. My mouth goes dry as I watch her bend over, oblivious to how dangerously close her ass is to being exposed in that short dress.
It’s just a sundress, white with little pale-yellow birds patterned along the hem. On anyone else, I wouldn’t bat an eye. But on Quinn, a potato sack would look erotic.
She’s tall and lean, getting most of her height from her long legs. I’ve wanted to bury my face between her large breasts since the moment I saw her, and those tits are what threw me on day one, thinking she was much older than she really was.
Even when I found out our age difference, I still wanted her. Her brother was my roommate freshman year of college, but it didn’t matter.
Until it did.
Dean became more like a brother than my best friend, and I didn’t realize how much I needed his family until they took me in. The whole Dawson crew—all seven of them—are good people.
The kind of good that’s hard to find.
The kind of good that values family. That means it when they say they’ll be there for you. The kind that makes you feel welcome and safe, who invites the guy who’s been living with their son for a few months back to the family farm for Christmas because his own parents had to fly out to Vegas at the last minute to deal with some shit no one should deal with over a holiday.
Then it mattered.
“Thanks,” Quinn tells me and puts the final shot glass on the tray.
“Why are you bringing drinks out?” Dean sits back down in the booth and puts an arm around Kara.
“Heather is running late and I tried to be nice.”
“That’s where you went wrong, sis.” Dean picks up his beer only to realize it’s empty. “Don’t do favors for those dickheads.”
“Those dickheads who brought you anoth
er beer?” Logan appears behind Quinn, with a towel in one hand and a beer in another. Dean laughs and takes the beer from his younger brother.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Quinn starts. “Some drunk guy bumped into me. On accident,” she adds quickly, knowing her brothers well. All four of them are over-protective, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve secretly wanted Quinn for myself for the last several years, I would have felt sorry for her. Dating can’t be easy with Owen, Logan, Dean, and Weston always looking over her shoulder.
Logan shrugs it off and mops up some of the booze on the floor with the towel. “There’s a reason you’re not a bartender anymore.”
“Trust me, I know.” She picks up the tray. “I’ll go get more.”
“No!” everyone shouts at the same time. Laughing, Logan takes the tray from her. “I’ll get it.”
“Thanks,” she tells him and pulls her phone from her purse, firing off a text message. “Dammit. Jamie’s already on her way. I was hoping she’d bring me more clothes,” she mutters to herself. The white fabric of her dress is stained from the margarita, and she has to be soaked down to her bra from the whiskey. Well, if she’s wearing a bra. My eyes go back to her chest on their own accord. I don’t see straps, and the faint outline of her nipples are visible through the wet fabric.
Dammit. I need to stop.
“I have an extra set of scrubs in my car,” I offer before I have a chance to think about what I’m saying. “They’re clean.”