Southern Sinner (North Carolina Highlands 3)

“How’d you know?”

“I have one too. Or had. Maybe I still have him. I don’t know.”

“Should I ask what you mean by that?”

“Actually, I wanted to ask you a question. A bizarre, batshit crazy, probably immoral question.”

“Ooooh, that sounds fun.” I set my beer on my desk and roll up the sleeves of my chambray top. “Tell me more.”

“First, you gotta tell me how you’ve been.”

My stomach does a neat little backflip. This is why Hank made such an impression a couple of weeks back. Sure, he was sexy as hell. But he also gave a shit. He was interested. He got how important my company is to me and never once talked about my work or my passion for it condescendingly.

Unlike some men who used to be in my life.

“Pretty good, actually. I was just looking at plans for our new brewery. My finance team and I wooed a big investor last year, and we got the green light on the construction of our new space. Twenty-four-thousand square feet of brewhouse bliss. We break ground in three weeks.”

“Holy shit, Stevie, that’s awesome. Cheers to your success. I’m not at all surprised.”

“Thanks. And cheers from afar.” I sip my beer and remember the one I bought Hank at that bar on the casino floor. The beer tastes good now, but for some reason, I remember it tasting better then.

Probably because of the excellent company.

I’ve had a lot of beer in a lot of places over the years. And while I love the drink itself, I love how it brings people together even more. “The company you keep is just as important as the beer you drink” is Lady Luck Brewhouse’s slogan for a reason.

“So, about this batshit question of yours,” I say.

“Yep.” I hear him gulp. “Sorry, just gathering the liquid courage to ask you. I’m warning you, it’s a doozy.”

“I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

“I hope you don’t hate me.”

“I don’t think I could ever hate you. Not when you brought me coffee every morning.”

For half a heartbeat, he hesitates. “It’s a bit of a long story—hence the beer—but here’s the gist of it: I want you to come up to my family’s farm and pretend to be in love with me at my brother’s engagement party. I have to convince him I don’t have it bad for his fiancée anymore. He wants to marry her, but he won’t start planning the wedding unless he knows I’m okay.”

I nearly spit out my beer. What the actual hell?

“That is a doozy,” I say. “I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Let’s unpack the fake dating shit first. That’s easiest.”

“Okay.” I take a long pull from my pint glass. “You really want to do that? With me? Like in Bridgerton?”

“You watch that show?” he asks, referencing the Netflix phenomenon based on a series of romance novels by Julia Quinn.

“You watch it?”

Our marketing intern, Paige, waves to me through the wall of glass that lines one side of my office. I wave back, making a mental note to look at the Facebook ad data she sent over earlier.

“Hey,” he sniffs. “I happen to like costume drama. There are always tits involved. Lots and lots of tits.”

I laugh. “And romance. And excellent writing.”

“Well, yeah, that too. But the tits—man, they’re the breast on television. I mean best. Best on television.”

“Boobs on the brain?”

“Since I met you, yeah. Yours are kind of the best.”

“Thank you. Anyone ever tell you that you have this half dorky, half dirty dad humor going on?”

“You’re not the first.”

I blow out a breath. “Wow. Okay. Not gonna lie, I’m intrigued, but I’m also . . . yeah, a little frightened. I know we’re supposed to start with the Bridgerton stuff, but I have to know—what’s the story between you and your brother? The one whose girlfriend you have feelings for. You told me a little bit about it in Vegas.”

“It’s my brother Samuel and his fiancée, Emma. What I didn’t tell you was that I kissed her. In front of him. Knowing full well he was in love with her, and she was in love with him too.”

My stomach drops. “Oh, Hank.”

A pause. When he speaks, his voice is different. Rougher. “I wanted to hurt them, I guess. I was hurting too. It was a dark time for me.”

There’s a tug in my chest. I want to ask him about that time—what made it dark enough that someone so thoughtful and self-aware would do something so awful. Why he hurt, and if he’s still hurting.

But one, that’s none of my business. And two, I don’t get personal.

So instead, I say, “I can’t imagine. I’m sorry.”

“No one is sorrier than I am.” Another pause. “Anyway, it was stupid and wrong, and I was ashamed. Ashamed enough to leave Blue Mountain Farm to go on a bender.”