I nodded, started to turn away.
Then turned back, mouth dropping open.
Then looked at Brooke, caught her gaze, and let my eyes drop back to the cover. She frowned, but then let her own gaze drift down to the book, eyes crinkling with mischief as a smile spread over her face. “What do you think of it?” she asked Iris.
I opened my mouth, but Iris cut me off before I had the chance to intervene. “Oh my God, it’s amazing! Have you read Brooke McAlister before? She’s on my instant buy list. I love her books so much!”
I didn’t think Brooke had thought through the actual conversation before she’d started down this path.
One, because my Brooke—well, Kace’s Brooke—was Brooke McAlister.
And two, because my-slash-Kace’s Brooke was also terrible at taking compliments.
I grinned. “Funny story,” I said, certain there was now mischief in my eyes, “is that this Brooke”—I indicated Brooke, whose cheeks were now flaring bright red—“is—”
“Brent,” Brooke warned.
I ignored her. “That Brooke.” I tapped the book’s cover.
Iris’s mouth dropped open. “No way.”
“Yes, way.” Brooke smiled shyly. “Thanks for reading them.”
“Omg, reading is the least of what I do to them—” Iris broke off, shook her head. “Sorry, that sounded really freaking weird. But my point was that, yes, I read them. Also, yes, I devour them. I preorder the eBooks so they can hit my Kindle at nine p.m. the night before release day, then stay up all night reading, then I order the paperback to be delivered on release day so that I can reread the story on actual book pages.” She sighed, held the novel to her chest. “You write the best male characters. I swear Jace was my favorite.”
Kace chose that moment to pop his head in, muttering. “Don’t want to cock-block, bro, but I really need a hand.”
I nodded. “Sorry. I’ll—”
“Wait,” Iris said, and I stopped, not realizing that she wasn’t looking at me in the least. Her gaze was flicking between Kace and Brooke, and a wide grin had broken out on her face. “You’re Jace?” Her lips parted on a slow exhale. “Whoa. That’s—”
“Fiction,” I growled, shoving between them and now seriously regretting having put my woman on Kace’s end of the bar.
What had I been thinking?
Kace was . . . a fucking model. Every woman drooled after him, wanted to get in his pants. Iris would be—
“Did you really steal Brooke’s credit card?”
Kace’s brows pulled down.
“That means yes,” Brooke whispered, lips curved at the corner. “And while my Kace was the initial inspiration for the book’s hero, I did make Jace much more alpha, much more of an asshole, and much more stubborn.”
“Hey,” Kace protested. “I’m alpha.”
“He’s not,” Brooke stage whispered. “I love the man, but what I love the most is that even though he strives to take care of me, even though he can be pushy and demanding sometimes, that he is not an alpha. He’s a beta or even what I’d consider a pussy cat.”
Kace made a strangled noise.
I was suddenly feeling a lot better, especially when Iris nodded and said, “Alphas. Fun to read. Not so fun to live with.”
“I’d take Kace over Jace, every day of the week,” Brooke said. “He’s a much better kisser than a fictional hero and that goes doubly so for in the—”
Now it was my turn to make a strangled noise.
Kace glanced over at me, made a sympathetic face. “We’ve gotta get out of here, dude, before we hear more shit we shouldn’t.”
“Gems of the female psyche you mean,” Brooke teased. “But seriously, that guy needs a beer before he loses his shit.” She pointed to a man who was angrily occupying a stool on my end of the bar. “Clean up your stations, take care of your customers, and let Iris and me chat.”
I glanced at Iris, and her eyes came to mine, still wide but filled with excitement.
So, I nodded, took off for my end, stowed the box carefully because I sure as shit wasn’t sharing my food spoils with Jace-slash-Kace burly, broody, bartender beauty extraordinaire. Then I washed my hands and started running through orders.
I’d been working—taking requests, pulling beers, mixing drinks, pocketing tips—for almost fifteen minutes before I managed to take a breath.
Kace glanced up from the tray he was filling for one of the waitresses, a plethora of cocktails for one group of their regulars—including Heather O’Keith, who owned a small portion of Bobby’s still, but had sold the rest of her portion of the business to Kace. He signaled to the waitress that the drinks were ready to go and then crossed over to me.
“Um, it’s been three days since I’ve seen you, bro,” he said. “Want to clue me in to what happened?”
My eyes flicked toward Iris, not that they’d been doing much else aside from the bare minimum required for me to focus on pouring the drinks but not overfilling them. She was still chatting away with Brooke, her color high, her expression excited. Brooke, for her part, used to be exceptionally shy but had come out of her shell in the last year. Plus, I’d had the feeling that she and Iris would hit it off.
Just so long as she didn’t hit it off with Kace.
Asshole.
I grunted, turned away to pull a few more beers and set them on the server’s tray.
Kace was standing there, looking perfectly at ease, except for one raised brow.
“She came into the bar on Christmas Eve. I noticed her, she left. Came back because she left her purse.”
“And now you’re saving seats and plunking her ass next to Brooke’s?”
“She’s too good for me.”
“Know that feeling well, bro,” he said. “So, you gonna stay away from this too-good girl?”
I shrugged. “I probably should.”
“That’s not a no.”
It wasn’t. Because I knew that I wasn’t a great guy, even though I had a checkered past, the least of which was not being there for the sister of my best friend when that best friend
