LITMIR.BIZ

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long lashes at me and I could swear she looked like she was going to cry. I saw her gulp and she gave her head a little nod of agreement.

      When she spoke it was only a hint of sound. “Don’t call Saint. I’ll wait it out.”

      Saint was her closest girl friend, and also my friend Nash’s lady. She was a sweet and shy young woman that somehow managed to balance out all of Royal Hastings’s bold and brash attitude. They were an odd pair, but I knew Saint would drop whatever she was doing in a heartbeat to make sure Royal was taken care of. I didn’t blame Royal for not wanting her friend to have to come collect her in her current state. She was a mess. She was still beautiful, kind of wild and untamed looking, but under it all she was a disaster, courting trouble as well as danger and other bad things, which is what she had been actively doing for the last two weeks. This wasn’t the first disaster I had been forced to avert because of her antics, and the time had come to tell her it had to stop.

      I pushed off the bar, walked around the open end, and glowered at Dixie as she smacked my ass on her way back to the floor.

      “My hero.”

      I grunted at her in response. I was not hero material. I fell more along the lines of arch-nemesis or supervillain. I poured Royal a glass of water in one of the giant beer steins I had behind the bar and thumped it down in front of her without a word. She jumped a little and I could see the regret and remorse starting to work its way into her face. A pink flush was blooming over the exposed crests of her cleavage and filling her cheeks.

      I made my way across the entire length of the bar, stopping to refill a couple of drinks, closing a tab, clearing some empty plates until I got to the kitchen entrance that took up the entire back part of the bar. We typically only served food until midnight, but I knew Avett Walker, the new girl Rome had agreed to hire to work in the kitchen as a favor to an old friend, was still lurking somewhere around. I hadn’t seen her hot-pink hair dart out of the front door as soon as her shift ended like it normally did.

      She was a mouthy little thing that had nothing but poison and attitude running in her veins as far as I could tell. She clearly didn’t want to be working here. Her mom, Darcy, was the kitchen manager and her father was the guy that had sold Rome the bar originally, but Avett didn’t seem to have any kind of fondness for the place. In fact she didn’t seem to have any kind of fondness for anything at all. She acted like coming to work each day was a prison sentence, which by default made me her jailer since I was her boss. We didn’t exactly get along. I think I saw too much of my old careless and thoughtless ways reflected back at me when I interacted with her.

      I called Avett’s name, and when I didn’t get an answer I prowled through the empty kitchen until I got to the massive walk-in fridge. I didn’t have time to screw around, so I found some cheese, some bread, and some random pieces of fruit and figured that would have to do. I needed to shove something into Royal that would soak the booze up so I could tell her to get her head out of her ass and have the command stick.

      I was kicking the door closed with the heel of my boot since my hands were full when the door to the beer cooler suddenly popped open and Avett came strolling out, fiddling with the zipper on her obviously stuffed-full messenger bag. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw me, her eyes widening and then narrowing in defiance.

      “What are you doing back here? The kitchen is closed.” Like she had any right to question where I went in this place. It was a diversionary tactic I knew all too well.

      I just stared at her and didn’t say anything. I looked pointedly at her bag and then back up to her chilly hazel gaze.

      “What’s in the bag?”

      She shifted her weight, and there was no mistaking the sound of bottles clanking together. She was trying to smuggle beer out of the cooler. It figured. My night needed one more complicated female I had to straighten out to make it more of a headache.

      “Nothing.” She went to move past me and the sound of bottles clanging together got even louder.

      My hands were full, so I just moved my entire body into her path to stop her. Avett took after Darcy way more than Brite, her dad. Brite was a giant of a man with a beard that I was sure had folk songs written in its honor. Avett was petite and barely came up to the center of my chest, and she had to tilt her head back in order to keep glaring up at me. What she lacked in height, she sure as hell made up for in bad attitude.

      “Put it back. Don’t do it again and this is the last you’ll hear about it.” When I was irritated, the South tended to be heavy and thick in my voice, and not in the same way it was when I used my drawl to get something I wanted or to make someone think I was nicer and stupider than I really was.

      “Get out of my way, Asa.”

      “No. You don’t get to steal from Rome. I don’t care what your beef with Brite is and I don’t care that you obviously would rather be out wrestling wild mountain lions than working here. I’m not letting you take advantage of Rome. He’s a good guy and he deserves better than that.”

      We had a glare-off and for a second I thought she was going to try and step around me knowing my hands were occupied, but I think there was some kind of invisible thread, some kind of aura that we shared that made her instinctively know that she could get away, but not for very long.

      She huffed out a breath that sent her pink bangs dancing across her forehead. She would be a really cute girl if she wasn’t such a pain in the ass and practically a decade younger than me. She was just a kid really and she sure as shit acted like it.

      “I’m going to a party and I don’t have any money for beer. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to take a twelve-pack from the cooler. After all, my dad practically handed this bar over to the soldier for free. A few beers seems like a fair trade.”

      I rolled my eyes. “It wouldn’t be a big deal. You know that Rome wouldn’t care if you asked him. But walking around like you’re owed something for some unknown reason isn’t all right with me, and I’m not going to let you do it.” I furrowed my eyebrows at her and shifted my weight. “How can you be broke? You just got paid on Friday.” Since she worked in the kitchen, I knew Rome paid her an hourly wage. It wasn’t enough to retire on but it was enough that it shouldn’t be gone in less than twenty-four hours unless she was up to no good.

      Instead of answering me, she whirled around and went to put the beers back in the cooler. I waited until she came back out, and made her lead the way out of the kitchen back to the bar. I had been gone long enough that the band was done with their set and that meant a crowd had gathered and Dixie was standing behind the bar trying to catch orders up. I nudged Avett with my elbow and deposited my haul into her hands. I pointed to Royal, who was sitting stoic in the middle of the rush, her head bent down and her gaze locked on the bar top.

      “Feed the redhead. Make sure she eats it, and if I ever catch you trying to steal again you’re out of here. I don’t care what I promised Brite or how much it would break Darcy’s heart.”

      She gave me a baleful look and muttered just loud enough that I could hear it, “Funny coming from you.”

      She wasn’t wrong. It was ridiculous coming from me, so I ignored her and dove into the mess of trying to sort the rush out. It was only half an hour until last call, so it proved to be a little trickier than usual. The weekends at the Bar were getting busy enough since Rome’s remodel that I thought maybe I was going to have to ask him about hiring another server as well as a bouncer. Business was good, and in order to keep it that way we needed to make sure the crowds got service just as good as the battered old veterans that littered the place during the daytime hours.

      I tried to keep an eye on Royal. I was worried she was going to try and leave before I could talk to her and before I could judge if she was sober enough to drive, but she was in the same spot, head bent down, eyes focused on the bar, and her water was gone. She had also put a good-sized dent in the food in front of her, so that made me breathe a little easier. She was abnormally quiet and I wished I had thought to grab her shirt for her when I pulled her out of the crowd earlier. She looked rumpled, like she had just

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