Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
LIAM
It should be impossible to get fried food wrong, but I’ll give Sunshine Diner this: they don’t believe in the word impossible. Sharon isn’t here, but Briar leaves a holiday card for her.
Yes. I’ve fallen for a woman who carries blank cards in her purse in case she wants to make someone’s day.
I drop her off at her apartment after we eat and order symbolic whiskeys neither of us wants to drink. She invites me upstairs, but I’m fixed on doing this the right way from now on.
“Not tonight. I have plans for tomorrow. Let me do this.”
She nods, and the hope in her eyes is nearly my undoing.
“We’re going to be okay.” It’s the only promise I can make, since I know it’s far from a sure thing that the brewery will survive the year.
“Is that a promise?” she asks.
“Damn straight.”
I ride back to my apartment, tempted to turn around and say fuck it to my big wooing plan—why bother having plans other than being with the person you want? But I stay the course, since I’ve roped Otis and Cormac into helping me too.
When I open the door to my apartment and step into the dark interior, a small flame flares to life in the corner, illuminating the face of the person sitting in my green armchair.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Hannah.” My heart does its best to thump out of my chest as the tiny flame illuminates my sister’s face. “Do you want to kill me?”
“Jury’s out on that,” she responds.
“I’m taking your key back.” I flip on the overhead light.
Hannah hisses like a vampire and covers her eyes.
“How long have you been sitting in the dark?” I’d laugh, because it’s fucking funny, but I know why she’s here.
“It was worth it,” she says, getting up from the chair and opening the globe-shaped bar sitting beside it. “I’m going to drink your best whiskey, and then I’m bringing the rest of the bottle home for Travis.”
“I have a feeling I know what this is about,” I say, closing the door behind me.
It’s a natural escape route, true, but I suspect my little sister is going to yell at me.
No way do I want to get verbal smackdown from the half-pint.
My weed-dealing neighbor is just the right amount of scared of me, and I’d like to keep it that way.
“Aren’t you a genius?” Hannah murmurs, filling one of the glasses stored in the spherical mini bar nearly to the brim.
“Are you going to pour one for me too?”
“As if.” She glares at me. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I have.”
She takes a long sip of her drink, shrugs, then says, “Asking you to leave your job felt like the bigger request, but you barely flinched. You seemed excited to get yourself fired. But you only waited a few weeks before trampling all over your promise to leave Briar alone.”
I don’t deny it. Instead, I sit on the couch and pat the cushion beside me, reminded of when she was a little kid and we’d watch cartoons together.
“Nope,” she says, coming over to stand in front of me. “But I’m good with looming over you.”
“Only with a lot of imagination could you call that looming.”
She stomps her foot, and I sigh.
“Yeah, I’m a bad brother, but there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“You’re sleeping with her,” she says, putting it out there, the way she likes to do. “I’ve seen the way you look at each other, and there’s no way you wouldn’t have gone for BabeinBoots999 unless you were getting it on with someone better. She was a total hottie with a body.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
She admits to her catfishing scheme, and I shake my head ruefully, because if I’m a madman, my sister’s a madwoman. Our baby brother’s probably in some deep shit if he ever falls in love.
“Admit it,” she says, nearly sloshing her drink with an exaggerated hand gesture. “You didn’t answer her because you were already sleeping with Briar. I told you not to. You promised me. On pain of death.”
“Don’t kill me just yet.” I rub my forehead before looking up and meeting her eyes. “I…I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, but we’ve been working together, spending a lot of time together, and she’s…”
“Yes, she’s gorgeous,” Hannah fumes. “I knew that all along, hence why I asked you to make me that very important promise.”
“It’s not like that.” My voice rises with every word. “I’m in love with her, dammit. I didn’t try to be. It just…happened. It was inevitable.”
A moment of silence lingers between us, full of unspoken words that could ruin or save everything.
Then Hannah throws back half of the whiskey in a single gulp, sets her glass on the coffee table, and sinks into the chair.
Frowning, she says, “You got drunk on Christmas again. I called you. I could tell you’d been drinking. ”
“It wasn’t about Julia. I feel more at peace about what happened with her. I was with Otis. He gave me his blessing.”
“Jesus Christ.” She shakes her head, her red curls flying. “I was gone for less than a week.”
“Maybe you should leave town more often,” I quip.
“Does Briar love you back?”
I sink back into the couch cushions and run a hand over my beard. “I really fucking hope so. I kind of screwed up.”
She groans. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the whole Tinder thing to her this afternoon, huh? In my defense, I only had a suspicion. I was trying to pump her for information.”
I have to laugh, but then I confess what happened earlier this week and tonight. I tell her about the problems with the brewery and Don Sterling’s hope that Briar will fail. By the time I’m finished, her glass is empty.
“I’m not happy about this,” she tells me, triggering a sinking feeling inside of me. I meant what I said to Briar earlier: I want Hannah’s blessing, not her permission—but I want it bad.
“But I hope I will be,” she finishes, her gaze hooked on mine. “I hope it’s going to be the best thing in the world, and you’ll have a dozen babies—”
“Yeah, that’s a big nope.”
She laughs. “And that you’ll continue to be a grumpy bastard for your whole life, but a happy grumpy bastard. You’re much more fun when that part’s on lock. But you’re on probation. I’m going to ask Briar for regular reports on how you’re treating her.”
I grumble. Hannah throws a pillow at me. And even though everything’s still so uncertain with the brewery, I feel like it’s going to be okay after all, the way Dottie has been telling me.
Hannah rises unsteadily from the chair.
“Yeah, you’re not driving,” I say. “I’ll take you home.” Unlike Hannah, I haven’t been drinking, other than a few sips of bad whiskey at the diner.
My sister takes a step, shrugs, and grabs the bottle containing the rest of the good whiskey. “That’s fair. You can tell Travis everything too. I know how you boys like to gossip.”
I laugh. “You know what? Maybe I will tell him someday.”
When we get to the door, though, I pause. “Say, Hannah, did you have any idea this would happen?”
She gives me a wry look. “Not really, no. But did I think it was possible?” She shrugs.
“I’ve known Briar for months. She’s gorgeous, she’s funny, and she loves beer.
Yes, I thought it was possible, and I figured I’d make it crystal clear that if you were going there, you were going to be very damn serious about it. ”
She taps my nose with the tip of her finger. “You’re welcome.”
An hour later, I’m back at Sterling Manor, the green fabric wrapped around my head like I’m Rambo.
“Oats in position, over and out,” Otis says into the radio. Sophie would probably slap me, but he needed a call sign, and he made the mistake of asking me to assign one to him.
I shouldn’t have let him help. Cormac, either. I don’t like the thought of either of them getting into trouble on my account. They both insisted, though, and I eventually agreed since I’ll be the only one breaking and entering.
The plan?
I’m getting that “recipe” for Briar. Obviously, Don Sterling can have another one made—he could probably afford to have thousands of them made—but that won’t matter, because we will have stolen this one from him.
I figure she can chop it into firewood. Or have it whittled down to a crown and dipped in gold.
Whatever she wants, but it will be hers.
When I went into their house earlier, I opened a hallway window. The alarm system was already glitching, thanks to Cormac, who created a device with a very different purpose that also creates interference for alarm systems.
I’ll have to climb the fence, but that’s nothing I haven’t done dozens of times as a teenager. Thankfully, Ole Don doesn’t have any cameras set up. I made a point of looking earlier, and to be honest, also kept an eye out on my first visit.
Otis is my getaway driver, parked down the street from Sterling Manor.
Cormac placed a call to the Sterlings an hour ago, informing them of a gas leak. He also confirmed they’re currently at a hotel, far away from the scene of the about-to-be crime.
I slide into the evergreen trees at the side of the fence, out of sight of the Sterlings’ nearest neighbors. The air is crisp with the scent of broken pine needles.
I’m about to start climbing when I hear a nearby rustling, followed by the sound of someone cursing.
I pop out of my cover and see Cormac, dressed all in black, heading toward me, his curly hair blowing around in the icy breeze. He waves at me, then trips over a root and almost face-plants in the brush.
Jesus fucking Christ. He’s supposed to be safely at home now that he’s successfully confirmed the Sterlings’ location.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss as he reaches me, adjusting his glasses, which have fogged up.
“I wanted to help. I’ve never been invited to commit a crime before.”
All the more reason for him not to join me for this one, but there’s a determined look on his face. I weigh my options and decide to let him come. The Sterlings aren’t likely to come back tonight, so it’s probably safe enough.
I’ll let him come for his own sake, so he can feel like a badass.
“All right. You ever scaled a fence before?”
“Uh…no. Is that a problem?”