LITMIR.BIZ

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him to contact the girl and make things up with her.

      And Number Three...

      Jane heaved a sigh and leaned back against the door she’d just closed. Number Three might possess some genius intellect, but conversing about anything outside of the video games he designed had been impossible. And then the nitwit had believed she was going to invite him in for some dessert of a very personal variety after the dinner she had paid for.

      She wouldn’t have gone out with him at all, because he worked at Cee-Vid, which was too closely connected to Casey, except that Number Three—like Two and One—had won the weekly fishbowl drawing.

      The first thing she was going to do when she went to the bar the next day was throw out the fishbowl and all of its contents. If the only way she could get a date was through a drawing, she’d be better off looking into that whole mail-order-husband thing.

      She rubbed at the pain between her eyebrows caused by the past ninety minutes of mind-numbing boredom and headed into her bedroom, shedding her knee-length sweater dress as she went. It was still relatively early, and she was too keyed up to relax. So she changed into jeans and a bright red turtleneck and headed back out to Colbys.

      She’d throw out the fishbowl when she got there.

      Her assistant manager, Merilee, had worked for Jane long enough not to show her surprise when she walked in the door on what was supposed to be her night off. Jane went straight to the glass bowl and dumped the contents in the trash, along with the card displaying the “rules” of the drawing. Then she stuck the bowl beneath the counter and glanced around the sparsely occupied tables.

      She didn’t want to acknowledge what she was really doing: looking to see if Casey happened to be around playing pool. The pool tables were his primary interest where Colbys was concerned. Far more than any libations that she offered in the bar or food that they served in the restaurant.

      But the tables were quiet.

      “Everything all right?” Merilee asked when Jane sighed a little.

      “Just fine.” Jane grabbed a bottled water, then pushed through the door to the storeroom, where all the shelves were neatly packed with supplies. She went into the minuscule office squeezed between the storage room and the draft cooler where her beer kegs were housed and threw herself down on the squeaky chair behind the beat-up metal desk.

      But instead of opening the water bottle or booting up her computer, she picked up the photograph of her sister that sat in a wood frame on the corner of the desk. Julia was cuddling her infant son, Drake, and Julia’s husband, Don, was cradling them both in his arms. Happiness radiated from their eyes.

      Jane rubbed her thumb over the picture glass, melancholy weighting her down. Julia, who now lived in Montana, was two years younger than Jane. She and Don had been married only eighteen months, though they’d been sweethearts since high school.

      Would Jane’s marriage to Gage have been more successful if they hadn’t gotten married so quickly, while they’d still been in college, where they’d met?

      She rubbed her forehead again and set down the picture frame.

      Melancholy. She hated it.

      Annoyed with herself, she started up the computer and drank down half of the water while waiting for it to chug to life. For the past year, ever since she’d made the mistake of asking him for a little help with the recalcitrant thing, Casey had been after her to let him upgrade her system.

      And you’ve only resisted because you wanted to do it yourself. He wanted to take over, and you balked.

      During that first consultation, instead of fixing the computer, somehow or other, they’d ended up having sex in the storeroom after Colbys was closed down for the night.

      She set the water bottle aside and thumped her hand on the side of the computer, pushing away the memory. The computer gave out a little hiccupping sound and a fan somewhere inside it whirred to life. A few moments later, the screen finally lit up, and she set about updating her books. It didn’t take her long, because she kept up with the task almost daily even though she detested it. It might be overkill—her accountant, her ex-husband and Casey had all independently accused her of it—but she liked knowing to the penny where she was at any given time.

      She used to think it came from watching her mother scrimp and save and worry about every dime right up until she died before Jane moved to Weaver. But Julia had come out of their childhood without sharing this particular obsession of Jane’s.

      “Pregnant yet?”

      Startled, she swiveled in her chair, knocking the water bottle into the computer keyboard with her elbow. She gave Casey an annoyed look as she hastily yanked the keyboard off the desk, trying to protect it from the spilled water. “Ever hear of knocking?”

      “Door wasn’t closed.” He was leaning casually against the doorjamb. “Wouldn’t worry too much about that keyboard. It’s already a decade past its life expectancy.”

      She used the hem of her sweater to swipe up the spreading puddle with one hand and held the keyboard aloft with the other. It was awkward because of the cords tethering it in place; though she’d never admit it, she wished she had the nifty wireless things that Casey had tried to equip her with. “What are you doing here?”

      “Grabbing a bite.”

      The grill usually closed at ten on weeknights and it was still well before that. “Then get to it,” she said waspishly. “Jerry’s cooking alone tonight.” During their busier times, her main cook was joined by his son, Jerry Junior.

      Casey sighed noisily and grabbed the keyboard out of her hand, holding it high when she tried to take it back. “There’s no crime in asking for help.”

      “I don’t need help. I need a towel.” More annoyed with the way her stomach was jumping around at the sight of him than she was the minor spill, she scooted past him and grabbed a neatly folded towel from a stack of them in the storeroom. It was only a matter of seconds, but when she reentered the office, he was already sitting down in her chair, boots propped on the corner of her desk while he tapped away at the keyboard resting on his lap.

      “Stop that!” She tried shoving at his legs, but he was immovable. There was no room to get around him, so she reached across him to wipe the towel over the desktop, drying what was left of the water. She didn’t have the computer hooked up to an internet connection—another source of contention between them—nor did she have any little computer games to amuse him. She needed the computer for one thing and one thing only: keeping her business records. “You’re snooping.”

      “Nope.” His fingers flew over the keyboard with enviable ease. “Just doing a little maintenance. When’s the last time you backed up your data?”

      She glared at the back of his head, controlling the urge to swat him with the towel even though it was mighty tempting. “Last week,” she lied.

      He snorted. “Last month, you mean.” He tapped some more. “You need to be on an automatic backup. You’re maxing out your memory. You won’t let me add more. You keep everything that’s important about Colbys on this thing.” He looked over his shoulder up at her. “If you’re not careful, you could lose it all.”

      He was the only person she’d ever met who had honest-to-goodness gray eyes. If she hadn’t spent as many hours in his arms as she had, she would have suspected the distinctive color came from contact lenses rather than nature. But she was the one whose imperfect vision required the aid of contact lenses, not Casey.

      His eyebrow rose and she realized she was standing there like an idiot, staring into his eyes. “Fine,” she agreed abruptly. “I’ll get a new computer. Update it all.” She barely waited a beat. “I will get it,” she emphasized. “I don’t need you doing it for me.”

      “I swear, if you needed your own appendix taken out, you’d insist on holding the scalpel.” He turned his attention back to the computer.

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