“It’s the three musketeers,” I said as they reached the bar. “Will it be whiskey or beer tonight?”
“Beer for me,” Wyatt said.
“Me too,” Sinclair nodded.
“Me three.” Trina took a seat next to Sinclair. As I poured the beer, I glanced over at Trina. While my lust for Trina started in high school, she, on the other hand, thought I was lower than pond scum. She treated me like a gnat, she wished she could squash and make go away.
It hadn’t always been like that. There was a time when we were younger that she was nice to me. For a short time, I thought maybe she liked me too. And then, something happened in our senior year of high school that turned her against me. For ten years, I’d been trying to figure out what happened or at least change her opinion of me. It was my life’s work to solve the puzzle of Katrina Lados.
“Tough day at the office?” I asked, putting their beers in front of them.
“The usual,” Sinclair said. “But we just had a successful meeting about reintegrating 4-H into the schools.”
“As if there was any question about that.” I said. “You took down Stark. Re-starting a club should be nothing to you.”
Sinclair laughed and I was thrilled to see her so happy. To see her happy with Wyatt. When I’d learned she was pregnant at eighteen with his baby, I was shocked and scared for her. I didn’t know if it was because we were twins or simply siblings that we were so close, but I did everything I could to help her through losing Wyatt, who’d run off without a word, and having a baby while attending college. In my mind, she was a superhero to have achieved all that. I knew most people felt the same about her.
It was a stark contrast to what they felt about me. I never went to college. When I got out of high school, I got a job at the Salvation Station waiting tables to support my dream of making it big in my band. Ten years later, I was still working in Salvation Station, now as the bartender, and while my band played regularly, we’d given up on dreams of fame and riches. Not that I was complaining. Truth be told, I was perfectly content. I was well-liked, Trina notwithstanding, and enjoyed my life. Well, except my love life. In ten years, I still hadn’t been able to convince Trina to give me a try.
“You should have seen Wyatt and Sinclair,” Trina said. “You could see why Stark never stood a chance against those two.”
Wyatt shrugged, putting his beer down after a sip. “Sinclair is a force.”
“You two make a great team,” I said. They weren’t just words either. Now that they were on the same page, they were the town’s it-couple. They re-energized the farming community, pulled the entire town together against Stark, and were doing it while running a cattle ranch, my sister working as deputy mayor, and raising their nine-year-old daughter. My mother suspected that Sinclair got all the ambition genes and I had to concur. Me, I got all the affable ones. Sinclair, like Trina, didn’t suffer fools much. Me? I figured life was too short to let fuckheads bring you down. Not much bothered me. If people were happy and not hurting anyone, I didn’t care what they did.
“Who’d have guessed it since your fake marriage was anything but smooth sailing,” Trina said, of Wyatt and Sinclair’s re-start in life, which began with a fake marriage. The legal part of the marriage was real, but it was only done as part of a business deal on their part.
“Fake marriage isn’t easy,” Wyatt said. “It was definitely harder than the real thing.”
“Oh, come on.” Trina rolled her eyes. “How hard could it be? You two had the hots for each other.”
“It was still two different lives with a truck load of baggage tossed together,” Sinclair argued, bringing her beer glass to her lips.
Trina shook her head, clearly not buying it. “You’re making a big deal out of it. Seriously, how hard could it have been?”
“Well, let’s see.” Sinclair held up a finger. “For one, we were lying to everyone in town.”
“Including each other,” Wyatt added. “The only reason I did it was because I still loved Sinclair and I wanted her back, but didn’t tell her that.”
Hmm, fake married to get the girl. I looked at Trina, wondering if she’d ever consider something like that. I quickly dismissed it. She was too practical and serious. I doubt she’d ever believed in love and fairy tales. No her Prince Charming had a five and ten year plan, and a fat portfolio, not because she cared about money, but because she cared about a guy who could plan that far in advance.
“And I lied about Alyssa,” Sinclair said, of their daughter, whom Wyatt didn’t know he was the father of until a few months ago.
“Okay, so you had some baggage that got in the way. But if it were two people who didn’t give a fig about each other, I bet it would be a cakewalk,” Trina said.
Sinclair rolled her eyes. “Except the idea of a fake marriage is for people to think it’s real. People in love act like they love each other. It’s not easy to fake that.”
Trina pursed her lips. “Sure, it is. Just make googly eyes at each other.” She looked at
