She was girl-next-door pretty. With long hair that fell in waves, the same dark brown as a good vanilla porter. Eyebrows thatarched her face into a smile even when her lips didn’t play along. Skinnier than his usual type back home, but it worked onher. She was small and fragile-looking. Made a guy want to be careful with her. Kiss her slowly. Thoroughly. Keep kissingher while taking off that blue shirt and finding out if her bra underneath matched . . .
The pretty waitress drove him crazy. Because Flynn wanted her. Had since his first shift here a month ago.
That was a hell of a long time to want a woman and not make a move on her.
But he was no good. No good for her, no good for any woman. Flynn was a morose son of a bitch who lied 24/7 to everyone buthis two brothers and he wouldn’t inflict himself on anyone, let alone someone as sweet as Sierra.
Sierra . . . huh. He didn’t even know her last name. Not that it mattered. Because a name didn’t tell you jack shit.
At least, he hoped his current name didn’t tell anyone anything about him.
“Dude. My beer.”
The outrage in Kellan’s voice was enough to make Flynn tear his gaze away from Sierra and notice the foam pouring down theside of the glass. No wonder his little brother sounded pissed.
“Sorry, K.” He flipped off the tap.
“You hear that sound?”
Flynn cocked his head. Since it was Sunday night, there was only the jukebox going instead of a live band. Only a handfulof the less than two dozen tables were filled. The pool table wasn’t being used in the back room. No darts going on, either.All in all, even for a Sunday night in June this bar was quiet. Which, to his mind, perfectly summed up this town of threethousand locals. “Hear what?”
“The sound of generations of our Irish ancestors rolling over in their graves.” Kellan grabbed a stack of cocktail napkinsand wiped off the glass. “Sure an’ the fairies will punish you with bad dreams for wasting the mother’s milk of our land,”he said in a thick Irish accent.
“There’s no fairies in Oregon.”
Shaking a finger, Kellan gave him a look of disappointment. Something Flynn had gotten used to seeing from both him and Rafe,more and more often. “Is there no magic in your heart then, young Maguire?”
“No,” he said shortly. Then Flynn remembered that Kellan had volunteered to leave the house tonight so Rafe and his girlfriend,Mollie, could have some privacy. And he’d sat here keeping Flynn’s sorry ass company all night. So he ratcheted up the corners of his mouth to a smile. Well,something closer to a smile than his usual scowl. “But there’s no bullet lodged in there, either, so I guess that’s something.”
“Jesus, Flynn.” Kellan hunched his shoulders. Threw a lightning quick glance over each shoulder. “You can’t say stuff likethat. You know the rules. No discussing your old, um, career in public.”
The only occupied tables were down by the doorway to the room with the pool table. Flynn could hear Carlos, the Gorse’s manager,groaning over whatever baseball game he was listening to in his office. Sierra was still delivering that tray of drinks. Hecould’ve literally named every member of McGinty’s crew and nobody would’ve heard a thing. Kellan was just overly paranoid.
Of course, Kellan hadn’t been used to lying his whole life, like Flynn and Rafe. They hadn’t come out and talked about beingin the mob to their dates, but they also mostly hung out with women who knew the score. Whose families were involved, too.To everyone else they encountered—from doctors to bartenders to the kids he’d mentored—they’d stuck to their cover stories.
It’d been easier for Flynn, since he ran the legit business. The one they could launder money through whenever McGinty neededa fast influx of clean cash. The one that supplied paychecks on the up-and-up so that they all looked like tax-paying, law-abidingcitizens, even if most of the organization only worked on Flynn’s construction sites a couple of times a month.
He was used to how it felt to say one thing and know there were three more things deliberately being left unsaid. And he’dhoned an instinct about when it was safe to reveal more.
Kellan didn’t have the luxury of those years of training. He was still in the paranoid phase, assuming that everyone who crossedpaths with the Maguire brothers could see right through them to their dirty-dealing histories.
Probably because that’s all he saw when he looked at his brothers. They’d pulled Kellan from law school with only a semesterto go after he’d worked his ass off to learn everything there was about justice. About being on the side of right and might.
Then he’d found out the rest of his family stood on the other side of that line.
“Relax.” Flynn whipped his bar towel at Kellan’s shoulder. “What did we tell you was rule number one?”
“Ever? Don’t touch your shit without asking.”
“Still true. But I meant the number one rule of this.” He circled his hand to indicate not just the cranberry red walls ofthe Gorse, but the whole cranberry-crazy town.
“Nobody thinks you’re guilty. Unless you give them a reason to.” Kellan winced. “That’s abominable grammar, by the way.”
“There’s no grades when it comes to what it takes to stay alive. You either do or you don’t.”
“Great pep talk. Thanks, bro.”
Shit. Kellan was trying. But everything that used to get through to Flynn didn’t work anymore. He didn’t care about his clothes—andhe used to buy every piece of workout gear between the covers of GQ. He didn’t care about missing the fight club. He certainly didn’t care about this bartending job that he’d been pushed into.
Instinctively, his gaze searched the room for Sierra. The one thing in this new life that made him feel . . . anything. Even if it was mostly frustration. Blue balls were no fucking fun. Working a whole shift with them? The worst. Just lookingat Sierra, though, would soothe the frayed edges
