No one sits at the far end of the bar to chitchat. They’re not even really there for the beer. They’re there to get away from something, maybe even everything. Then again, maybe the majority of people in a bar are there for that purpose.

I mean, I am.

Crave was my last-ditch effort to rid myself of a certain woman with the most aggravatingly irresistible vibe. A woman I’d love to fuck until she can’t respond with her quick comebacks anymore. Until all she can say is my name.

My phone glows on the bar-top. Swiping it on, I lift it to my ear. “Were your ears burning?”

“Should they have been?” Blaire asks.

“Machlan was saying you called him today and now my phone rings. Are you missing us, big sister?” I tease.

“Hardly,” she scoffs. Despite the gruff, I hear her smile. “Just thought I’d check in with you guys. I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“That’s because you’re too good for us these days.”

“Damn right I am,” she jokes. “I had a case end today that I thought was going to kill me. I might sleep for a week now.”

“You will not.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I just took on another case this afternoon.” She unloads a slew of put-downs in a very ladylike fashion, the words muffled as a car honks in the distance. “Sorry about that,” she says, coming back to the line. “Some asshole didn’t understand how crosswalks work. So what are you doing?”

“Drinking a beer.”

“Do you ever do anything fun?”

“All the time,” I deadpan.

“You’re a liar.”

“Don’t start on me, Blaire,” I warn, resting my elbows against the counter. “I don’t want to hear your shit.”

“You have to hear it from someone, and Lord knows neither of our brothers is going to give you sage advice.”

“Who said I needed advice?”

“You did when you just told me you’re drinking a beer on a Monday night,” she sighs. “Look, Walker, you need prodded along. I know you’re all ‘I’m fine,’” she says, mocking me, “but you’re not. You’re bored as hell. You’re grumpy. You’re stuck in a cycle that—”

“Blaire.”

“What?”

“Stop it.”

“This has gone on long enough, Walker.”

I know where this is going, and I’m not heading that direction. “I swear I’ll hang up on you.”

She groans in the line. “If Mom were here, she’d tell you the same thing.” With the reference to our mother, the octave of her voice drops and you can almost hear the mortal side of her that we don’t see often.

“But she’s not,” I almost whisper.

“I miss them, Walk.”

Blaire’s admission makes me gulp. Of course she misses our parents. We all do. None of us expected them to not come home that Fourth of July. We didn’t know they’d be hit in their boat and capsize, losing their lives on Lake Michigan. I know she misses them. I do too. But to hear her, the stoic one, the real badass of the family despite Machlan’s attempts to prove otherwise, say it out loud throws me for a loop.

“I thought of her yesterday,” she says, a lump clearly in her throat. “There was a woman her age with the same long, black hair in the courthouse. She laughed a high, almost singing sound, and my stomach hit the floor. I couldn’t stop looking at her . . .”

“It’s almost her birthday,” I say softly. “Dad would start bugging her right about now, asking her what she wanted.”

“And she’d say she already had it.” Blaire sighs into the phone. “I gotta go. I’m meeting a client in twenty minutes and I haven’t even found a cab yet.”

“It’s ten o’clock at night, Blaire.”

“So it is,” she sighs again. “Talk to you later.”

“Be careful. Love ya, sis.”

“Love you. Bye.”

The phone slides across the counter, hitting the napkin dispenser before stopping. The stranger takes another long draw of his drink, his fourth since I got here. Maybe I’m just not going at it hard enough.

Picking at the label on the bottle in front of me again, I allow my mind to go to the place it wants to go every time I stop purposefully focusing on something else—to Sienna.

I can’t make heads or tails of this woman. She’s too easy. Too sweet. Too confident. I’ve never seen a woman with the guts she has to do things like she does. I just don’t know what to do with her.

The money is one thing. There’s no way I can afford to go in the red on that kind of cash on a regular basis, although I see why she did it and I kind of love her heart for it. I wouldn’t have charged Dave anyway and MaryAnn’s husband would’ve worked off whatever their insurance didn’t pay. But I’m still on the hook and can’t afford to be out this much again. My customers’ money keeps the lights on.

Tags: Adriana Locke The Gibson Boys Romance
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