“You’re probably hungry,” I said. “I’ll make you some breakfast.”
“I need to go home,” she said.
“The roads aren’t clear yet,” Jude said. “We got almost two feet of snow last night.”
I stared at her mouth as she bit her full lower lip, mesmerized by the plump flesh caught against her tooth. I’d never kissed Lilah Abbott, not even that night in high school when we’d gotten her naked. Now I had the urge to feel her mouth give way under mine, to feel the tangle of her tongue.
“Shit.” I knew she was upset because she looked down, letting her long hair form a curtain over her face.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you can stay here until the roads are cleared. I know that’s not what you want but we don’t really have a choice.”
“How long will that take?” she asked.
“Could be later today, could be tomorrow,” I said. “They usually plow the roads in town first.”
We lived up on the mountain by design. The kind of work we’d done in the military didn’t make it easy to go back to regular life, get a nine-to-five, live in a house with a white picket fence or an apartment where everyone was in your business.
The dishonorable discharge wasn’t the only thing that haunted us.
Plus, we weren’t exactly the “linger-in-a-coffee-shop” or “have-lunch-at-a-cute-bistro” type.
Lilah didn’t answer, and I knew she was getting her head around the whole thing.
“I’ll get you that breakfast,” I said, heading for the fridge. “You’re probably starving.”
Rafe folded his arms over his chest and glared at her like she was the enemy. “Then you can tell us what the fuck was going on last night.”
8
JUDE
“I bartend at the Dive,a bar in Greenvale,” she said after taking a couple bites of her pancakes.
Nolan had pulled out all the stops with the breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh strawberries, the whole bit, and I wondered if he thought being nice to Lilah now would make up for what we’d done to her in high school.
Nolan was logical that way, but the Lilah thing didn’t have anything to do with logic.
“And?” Rafe demanded when she paused to take a drink from the fresh cup of coffee I’d just handed her.
I loved Rafe like a brother but the fucker really could be insufferable.
“Andthat’s where the whole thing starts,” she said. “At the bar.”
I admired the bite in her voice. She’d been meek in high school, a walking doormat. I’d heard rumors that her mom was super religious, so maybe that was why, but she’d kept her head down, hair falling over her face like a shroud.
But she wasn’t meek now — that much was obvious — and she wasn’t going to take Rafe’s shit.
Good for her.
I sat down at the island as she continued.
“I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but it’s like every other dive bar up here, except every now and then this guy in a suit would come in with three big guys watching his back.”
I lifted my eyebrows. This was getting interesting. “Like bodyguards?”
“Maybe,” she said. “They definitely watched him like bodyguards. Anyway, every now and then this guy comes in with the… let’s call them bodyguards, and he asks to speak to Vic, the owner of the bar. They go into the backroom, have a conversation, and the guy in the suit leaves without even ordering a drink.”
“Is your boss laundering money?” Nolan asked.