“Jesus, Patti,” Marty muttered, rubbing her temples.
“What? If I were twenty years younger, I’d—”
“I think we know what you’d do,” Cain said with a laugh.
“Good,” Patti said with a nod. “Now listen up. I’ve had a few hours to think and that never happens. Anyway, the doctor’s suggesting a few changes and that got me to thinking. How would you girls feel about becoming the next generation of Banked Track?”
I glanced around at my team and back down at Patti. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Take over the bar. Ownership and all. I’ll stick around and show you the ropes, but you girls are the future of the sport here in Galloway Bay. Flat track or banked track. WRDF or on your own, I can’t see handing a piece of history as important as Banked Track to anyone else. Can you?”
Epilogue
“Toast, toast, toast,” my team chanted, their glasses raised in the air as we celebrated Patti’s release from the hospital…and secretly celebrated our plans to take Patti up on her offer.
“To banked tracks, exceeding expectations, second place, and that straight piece in Priest’s pants,” I said, shooting a smile over my shoulder at the man himself.
“Immortalized in a toast, I don’t know if I should be honored or horrified,” he said as he started to stroll by, cupped the back of my neck, and pulled me in for a hot kiss before letting me go and continuing on over to where Jordan and Sheriff Chase watched the latest football game on the TV screen mounted in the corner.
“Be honored and reward me hard later,” I called out to his retreating back. “Oh…and with skates on.”
“Anything you want, Mayhem,” he said with a wink as he sat back and tipped his beer to his lips, his hot gaze running over every inch of me.
“You guys suck, man,” Sean said.
“Right,” Rory added. “It’s bad enough we’re not getting any at the moment, but to have these two sex fiends fucking each other with their eyes and making us watch? Total and utter betrayal.”
“You guys are happy for me and you know it,” I said, tipping my glass back, that root beer flavor hitting the back of my tongue followed by that sharp bite.
“Holy shit, look at that guy,” Marty said, her drink clunking against the table, making liquor spill down her hand.
Not that she cared. Her mouth had fallen open and she’d gone nips up for whatever fine piece walked through the door.
“My God, he’s just—well, damn. Damn,” Rory said as she pulled out her cell.
“Way to be stealth,” I said, knowing damn well she was going to snap his picture.
“Aren’t you going to look at him?” Eve asked. “I mean, shit, even I’m looking at him.”
“Patti’s feeling okay, right? I don’t want her to see him and have another heart attack,” Zara said.
“She’s feeling great—doh, here she comes,” Rory said, craning her neck.
“And she’s sending him over here.”
Tall, dark, and absolutely every woman’s type, the guy stepped up and smiled. “Sorry to interrupt, ladies. Maisy Flynn?” he said, glancing down at me.
I turned in my chair and glanced up at him and they weren’t fucking kidding. He towered over our table with wide shoulders, dark and thick wavy hair brushed back, and black intense eyes all wrapped up in a power suit.
And he did absolutely nothing for me.
No buzz, no zing, nada.
His scent was positively edible, but turns out, I wasn’t hungry.
But then, the only man I’d ever want sat just ten feet away, watching me with amusement in his eyes as my entire table went through some sort of mass ovary explosion.
Well, my ovaries had a very specific trigger these days, and that was Priest telling derby stories to his nephew, Cain. “I’m Maisy. What can I do for you?”
“You’re a hard woman to get ahold of,” he said, his full mouth curving in a smile.
“I don’t go far. Who are you?”
His eyebrow lifted and a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Micah Alessi…your brother.”
My drink caught in my throat, where it lodged, then came spewing back out across the table, spraying Rory and Sean in the process. Priest brought over a stack of napkins and started helping us get cleaned up.
I scrubbed at my leg and glared up at the nut. “What the hell are you talking about?”
He reached over to the empty table next to us and pulled up a chair.
Nice of the psycho to think he was invited.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” he said as he reached into his jacket.
“I don’t answer numbers I don’t recognize.”
He snorted, and even that sounded elegant. Must have been the tie.
“More proof we’re related.”
“What makes you think I’m your sister? We look absolutely nothing alike.”
“Because I look like my father,” he said, sliding a picture from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. “And you look just like your mother,” he said as he flipped the picture around toward me.
I stared down at the image, my mother’s smiling face, her arms around me, holding me on her hip, standing intimately close to a man with dark skin, thick dark hair, and the same full mouth as the man sitting with me now—with a young boy sitting on his shoulders.
“I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I remember you.”
I held the picture between my fingers, every nerve ending humming. “How, I mean, what—how is this possible?”
He interlocked his fingers and propped his elbows on his hands. “Well, when a man and a woman are attracted to one another…”
“Ha! He’s a smart-ass just like you, Maisy. Another identifier,” Rory said.
“Do you have any other proof beyond the picture?” Priest asked, his fingers kneading the back of my neck and shoulders.
“We’d need to get tested to know for sure, but I
