Tonight she was grateful, too, as her conversation with Ellis succeeded in taking her mind off the mysterious stranger so that she barely even noticed when he finished his beer and tucked a ten-dollar bill beneath the edge of his glass before walking out again without even a backward glance.
“Who’s the new guy?” Courtney Morgan, one of the bar’s waitresses, asked Sky.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, cashing out his tab and dropping his change into the tip jar.
Courtney seemed taken aback by her response. “A quiet one, is he?”
Sky nodded, though she suspected he was more than quiet.
He was a man with secrets—and she wanted to know all of them.
But she pushed him out of her mind, mostly, until the following Wednesday.
The bar was busier than usual that night, because Duke’s Diggers—the coed softball team sponsored by the bar’s owner—had played a rescheduled game, after which they came into the bar for the free wings that were a perk of playing for Duke.
“We missed you out there tonight,” Caleb said to Sky.
He was the team’s left fielder—and also the younger of her two brothers, married to his high school sweetheart and now father to an adorable two-week-old baby boy.
“You should have thought about that before you scheduled the game for a Wednesday night,” she said, tipping a second pitcher beneath the tap. “How badly did we lose?”
“It wasn’t bad at all,” he said. “Only two runs. And they never would have got those two runs if you’d been on third.”
“I appreciate your confidence, but it’s a team sport,” she reminded him.
“And the whole team—even Doug, who filled in at third—wished you could have been there.”
She turned the pitchers of beer so that the handles were facing him. “Go drown your sorrows.”
He shook his head even as he picked up the pitchers. “I promised Brie I’d head straight home after one beer.”
“Look at you—a responsible husband and father,” she remarked teasingly.
“I’m trying,” he said. “It would be a lot easier if Colton would sleep more than three hours at a time.”
“No one ever said parenthood was easy.” But she could see the fatigue in the shadows under his eyes and felt a stirring of sympathy. “You want me to put in a separate order of wings to go for you?”
He nodded. “Honey hot.”
Though not a flavor listed on the menu, Caleb liked his wings hot and Brielle liked honey garlic, so they compromised by getting them tossed in both sauces.
“You gonna share those pitchers of beer, Gilmore?” Chase Hampton called out from the round table in the corner.
“That’s my cue,” he said and headed off to join his teammates.
Sky had just sent the wing request through to the kitchen when the mysterious drinker of Sam Adams walked into the bar.
And damn, if he wasn’t even better looking than she’d remembered.
She glanced at the clock—9:48 p.m.—and wondered if the timing of his appearance was a coincidence or if it was going to become a habit. And while she told herself she wasn’t the least bit interested, she couldn’t deny that she was curious.
He took the same seat at the bar, gave the row of taps a similar perusal. “I’ll have a pint of Sam Adams,” he said.
She poured the beer and set it in front of him.
Raucous laughter broke out at the table in the corner and his hand tightened around the mug, gripping it so hard his knuckles went white.
“That’s our softball team,” she told him, not sure why she was bothering to explain. “Tuesdays and Saturdays are the usual game days, but the rain last week forced the reschedule tonight.”
He didn’t respond.
Of course not, because he only wanted a beer, not company or conversation.
So she made her way down the bar, clearing away empty glasses and wiping the counter. The stranger finished his beer, put ten dollars beneath his empty glass and walked out again.
For three weeks after that, his routine was the same.
Every Wednesday night, just before ten o’clock, he came into the bar. Sometimes he was a few minutes earlier, sometimes a few minutes later, but it was always and only on Wednesdays.
He ordered one beer, drank the beer, left a ten-dollar bill on the bar and walked out again.
His routine was always the same.
He never came in with anyone.
He never left with anyone.
He never talked to anyone.
And after five weeks, Sky still didn’t even know his name.
Sure, there were other ways she might have uncovered some information about him. Haven was a small enough town that she felt confident somebody knew something about the handsome stranger. But she wasn’t interested in gossip and she didn’t want secondhand information. She wanted him to tell her the secrets she sensed he’d buried deep inside—more important, she wanted him to want to open up to her.
But she’d settle for his name to start.
A few years earlier, after yet another failed relationship, Sky had decided that she was done with dating. Since then, she hadn’t met a single man who tempted her to change her mind—until he walked into Diggers’ on that Wednesday night.
She glanced at the vintage beer clock on the wall as she poured a couple of pints for Carter Ford and Kevin Dawson.
9:52 p.m.
And here come the butterflies.
Jake Kelly slid behind the wheel of his truck, turned the key in the ignition and shifted into gear. Even as he turned onto Main Street, he wondered, what the hell am I doing?
For the past two years, he’d focused his efforts on putting the past behind him and moving on with his life. He wasn’t trying to forget—he didn’t ever want to forget—but he knew that if he couldn’t slay his demons, he had to find a way to coexist with them.
“You can’t live like a hermit forever,” Luke had said, when he visited Haven a few weeks back.
“No one lives forever,” Jake had pointed out.
He’d thought the response
