“She looks like she might still be on the market.” Jack isn’t going to play along blindly.
“Give it up, man. Adair Archer? I don’t think that’s going to work out.”
“I’m a modern guy. She can keep her last name.”
“Do you two want to know how many goats I can bring to the table for my dowry?” she asks dryly.
“And she’s feisty?” Jack’s eyes dance as he crooks his head, a wide grin splitting his mouth. “You might have competition for this one.”
It’s time to change the topic of conversation. “Don’t you have customers to serve?”
Jack tips his head toward the bar.
“Let me get you a drink. I’m just playing with him,” he says to Adair. “Sterling needs a little help with his sense of humor.”
“Truer words have never been spoken,” she says.
I poke her arm. “I’m the one who needs help with my sense of humor? Really?”
“I might die before I see you laugh again,” she says as Jack circles around the bar and pulls out three tumblers.
“I’d ask what your poison is, but this one is on the house, so I get to choose,” he explains. “It’s a local distiller. Best stuff in the state.”
Adair studies the bottle as he pours. “Those are fighting words in West Tennessee Whiskey territory.”
“You’re a West girl?” he asks her as he continues to pour.
“Not really. It’s just what everyone I know drinks.”
What she doesn’t want to say is that the West family and her family go way back and that, like everyone else in Valmont, she’s got some incestuous codependence going with them.
“This is better bourbon. I’d lay money on it that you’d agree,” he tells her, sliding her a glass.
“No thanks.” I hold my hand when he goes to pour mine.
Adair eyes me over the rim of her glass. “Still don’t drink?
“You know that’s for the best.”
“Thank God,” Jack interjects. “I’m tired of wasting the good stuff so that you can just stare at it all night.”
“It’s rude to refuse,” I say to him.
“It’s rude to waste whiskey,” Jack says. He looks at Adair. “Do you know why he doesn’t drink?”
Adair glances at me as if considering her answer before shaking her head. “It’s a mystery.”
I have no idea why she lies. She doesn’t owe it to me to cover this up. She might not know everything—like the fact that I’ve had a drink since I left town. More than one. But she knows why I stopped drinking in the first place. She knows why I hate the stuff. She knows what it does to some people. It’s a lesson we were both taught too well.
But while she understands, she doesn’t take the same approach I do. She toasts Jack, their glasses clinking. Her eyes light up when she takes a sip. “Oh, that is better.”
“I’ll send you a bottle,” he tells her.
“You better not send it to her house. Her family is very particular,” I explain quickly. “You can send it to my place.”
“Can I now?” he says meaningfully.
“Can he now?” Adair repeats with just as significant a tone.
“People are going to know soon enough, Lucky,” I say to her. She freezes at the sound of old nickname on my lips. I take her surprise as an opportunity. “Life has a funny way of working out.”
“Excuse me,” Adair says, looking slightly flustered. I expect her to call me out—to expose the ruse. She doesn’t. “I’m going to use the restroom.”
“Do you know where it is?” Jack asks her.
“I’ve been here before,” she assures him.
I watch her as she disappears into the crowd, heading toward the ladies room. I can’t help admiring her shapely ass as she goes.
Jack whistles. “You didn’t tell me she looked like that. You think she’ll need a rebound guy when you’re through with her?”
I turn blazing eyes on him.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I’m just joking,” he says, adding thoughtfully, “but it sure doesn’t seem like you are.”
“The plan is the same. I just want to take this slow. Enjoy it.”
“Does she really deserve that?” he asks. It’s the first time Jack has really questioned my plan. He’s never asked for specifics. He’s stuck by my side. Sometimes a person goes through things in life that bind them forever to another soul. Jack and Luca? They’re bound to my soul. We might question each other. We might fight. But we’ll always have each other’s backs even if we have questions.
“Trust me, she does.” My gaze falls on a bottle of West’s behind the bar, and I remember what Money said at the gala—about Oliver and his side gig as a pharmacist. “We have other concerns at the moment.”
I fill Jack in on the particulars. Jack doesn’t have the same moral flexibility as Luca and I do, but one thing we all share is an intolerance of men who use innocent women.
“I think we should have a private conversation with him,” I say to Jack.
“Done. You find a way to get him in here, and I’ll make sure we have time alone,” Jack says. The past shadows his eyes. I don’t see it lurking there much these days. Unlike me, Jack lives in the light most of the time, but some ghosts always haunt you. “Sterling, is it possible…”
“No,” I say.
“How is what you’re doing to her any different than what this Oliver guy did?”
“I’m not drugging her or lying to her,” I tell him. “She knows I don’t love her. She asked to play this game.”
“And you’re okay with her losing? Because that’s cold, even for you.”
I look to my old friend. He has a right to ask questions if he is going to be involved. “Do you want out?”
“You know that’s not what this is about,” he says.
“If she changed, she wouldn’t have to worry,” I say to him. “But she wanted to play—just like old times. She still sees everyone around her as a means to an end.”
“How is destroying her
