Hosed (Happy Cat #1)(9)
Meanwhile my little brother—the oldest of my three younger brothers—is behind the bar, scowling while he yanks the taps and tops off Coke glasses. Jace glances my way, adds a don’t start, jackass sneer to his bad attitude, and disappears into the kitchen.
I make my way through the bar, answering questions about yesterday’s lube fire, which will be a hot topic in Happy Cat until something more exciting happens. Like Sunshine Toys releasing their holiday line-up or a new petition to kick the company out of town starts circulating. We used to fight about installing windmills by the highway or who cooks the best catfish, but lately, it’s been all Sunshine drama all the time.
And, as usual, the town’s split on whether the fire was karmic retribution for the shamelessly perverted or simply an unfortunate accident.
I claim a stool far away from Olivia, who’s at the other end of the bar entertaining three-quarters of the single men in town between the ages of twenty and fifty. Probably reading their chakras or adjusting their auras or something.
More power to her.
Them, too. I don’t always understand her and her new-age mumbo jumbo, but I’ve never known Olivia to say a bad word about anybody, or even bless anybody’s heart. Not in the backward insult kind of way, anyway. What she lacks in Southern education she makes up for in sheer enthusiasm, and there are worse ways to while away an evening than with a friendly woman who likes to smile a lot, even if she may have been short-changed in the common sense department. At least she has good intentions, which is more than I can say for some of the other people in this town.
She waves.
I wave back.
And Jace slaps a bottle of Blue Moon on the bar in front of me with more force than absolutely necessary.
I arch a brow. “That aromatherapy spritzer Olivia worked up for your temper seems to be working.”
“It was for my heart chakra, jackass,” he says with attitude that’s over the top, even for Jace.
I lean in, adding in a softer voice, “Whoa, hey. Something happen today?”
“Nothing I want your opinion on.” Jace heads back down the bar to grab an empty burger basket without further comment, and I stifle a sigh.
Jace has been stuck in the same pattern with the same woman since high school, and about every four months, like clockwork, it gives me a nasty case of heartburn. All I’ve ever wanted is to see all three of my brothers happy. It eats at me that I can’t fix Jace’s bad habit. And hooking up again and again with a woman whose favorite form of entertainment is seeing how close she can get to cheating on him before he explodes is a bad habit, not love, no matter what anyone else has to say about it.
The fact that Ginger is a kindergarten teacher doesn’t automatically mean she’s sweet, innocent, or “too good” for my rough-around-the-edges brother. She’s trouble, the sneaky kind that slips under most people’s radar and makes her all the more dangerous because of it.
Why am I the only person in town who sees this shit clearly?
Even Jessie, my chief and a woman whose judgment I admire in most areas, seems taken in by Ginger’s game.
It’s like with Steve, Savannah’s ex. Just because he’s a good-looking high school football star turned banker prodigy, people think he’s the catch of the fucking town.
Or they did until he got caught balls deep in a sheep. But even now it’s clear some people think there must have been some kind of mistake. I’ve heard a few people say that Savannah wasn’t seeing things clearly. Or that she was making the whole thing up. Or maybe the sheep was asking for it, walking around, all freshly shorn and showing off its hindquarters in that field after dark.
No wonder she left town.
Cassie is the first person I’ve met who pegged Steve as fast as I did.
It makes me curious what she would say about Ginger. I’d ask her, but given her cool dismissal this morning, I’m guessing she’s not interested in more than a civil neighborly relationship. Plus, Jace would be pissed. He already knows how I feel about Ginger, and asking an outsider’s opinion won’t help my case.
The door opens, and the savvy brunette herself breezes into the bar.
Cassie’s bouncy brown pigtails are ridiculously cute, and a wayward part of me is instantly dying to know how they’d feel wrapped around my hands. Knowing my luck she’s probably wearing one of those sexy-as-hell tee shirts of hers, and I’ll be fighting to keep my gaze above her neck for the rest of the night.
I cast a subtle glance south of her pretty smile as she waves at Ruthie May, and sure enough—this time she’s wearing a vintage Ms. Pac-Man tee, the character posed seductively on top of chunky letters. And though I’ve never found a yellow ball wearing lipstick sexy in the slightest, I can’t stop staring.
But of course it isn’t Ms. Pacman that gets to me. Or the shirt. It’s the woman in the shirt, the curvy, sweet-smelling, adorably serious woman who has been running through my mind pretty much constantly since I made an idiot of myself this morning trying—and failing—to offer intelligent commentary on her scientific thoughts about the microbial life in the human gut.
I’m no dummy, but I was a welder before I joined the department. I’ve never darkened a hall of higher learning. I was too busy busting my ass to help my parents put food on the table right out of high school to have the time, or the money, to go to college.
Most days, that doesn’t bother me much. I love being a firefighter and I’m proud of the sacrifices I made so that my younger brothers could have choices I didn’t have. But sometimes, I wish I’d had more opportunity to stretch my brain and people to talk to who know more about the world outside of Happy Cat.