Chapter 2 #2
“If you believe that, you and I should swap places.”
I dipped my chin. “Lark doesn’t want us doin’ that.”
Kill arched a brow. “How would he even know? Especially since we don’t have road name patches on our cuts.” He grinned. “Won’t be long before we won’t be able to do this sort of thing because we’d have to swap cuts, and I know we’d hate doing that.”
As usual, my brother had a way of tempting me to do…not exactly a bad thing, but most likely the wrong thing.
Risk should have been his middle name. Many months ago, I made the mistake of telling some of the brothers that should be Kill’s road name, but they laughed at me because we’d only just started prospecting.
More often than not, I wound up taking the risk with him, but that’s what brothers did for each other.
“Come on,” Killian drawled into the ensuing silence.
With a sigh, I turned my hands up. “Fine, but don’t mess up the till. We’re charging a cover starting at ten.”
Killian’s head moved in two short nods. “Yeah, we gotta tell Lark to promote the cover charge more. I’m certain that’s why it filled up so much earlier.”
I nodded, moved out from behind the counter, and took the stack of glasses from him. “I agree. We make more than the ten dollar cover in the amount of alcohol those people order.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I wonder if they’d come in if we charged the cover even earlier. An extra ten bucks a head is always an extra ten bucks.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Why mess with something that isn’t broken?”
I hit the kitchen to offload the glasses, then wandered behind the bar to help Lark and Mickayla deal with the crush of people getting their drinks before the music started again.
Mickayla sidled up to me, putting three cocktails on a tray. “Take those to table two, and please stop switching with Kill. Lark might confuse you two occasionally, but that’s happening less and less these days. He’s no dummy, and neither are you.”
She was right, but she was also jealous of our ability to swap places. Rather than respond to her comment, my eyes slid to table two. The three rednecks sat at that table, and their eyes were pinned on my sister.
“We need to hire some servers.”
Mick chuckled. “Too soon, and seriously, get out of here before Lark hears you and figures out the switch y’all pulled.”
I put the drinks on the table as fast as I could without spilling them. Two of the men had expressions that said they wanted to chat with me, which meant my goal was to avoid all conversation.
Before I could leave the table one grabbed my wrist, earning a death glare.
“Sorry, man, but she’s your sister, right?” the man wearing a black baseball cap asked me, and let go of me.
This was why Killian should have been on the floor. This jackass never would have touched him.
I managed to contain my sneer as I looked down at him. “She’s our bartender tonight. That’s all you need to know.”
The band started up again, and I busted my ass for the duration of their set while people ate, drank, and were generally merry.
The man wearing the baseball cap had switched to ordering Blue Moon drafts, which came with an orange wedge as a garnish. I hadn’t thought anything of it, until just before the band was done with their second set.
The asshole who’d grabbed my wrist wadded up the orange rind and launched it through the air at one of the bikers who’d been here last night.
Before I could attempt to talk anyone down, all hell broke loose.
The biker who hadn’t been hit by the rind moved faster than I thought possible and had one of the laughing jackasses out of his chair. With a hand at the asshole’s throat, he was shoving him toward a wall, and one of the other rednecks tried to pull him off their buddy.
The guy who’d been hit with the citrus had his eyes fixed on the only guy still at the table. The one who flicked the fruit.
The asshole stood and glared at the biker as he drew closer to me.
“Sir, let me get them out of here,” I said in a low voice.
“Nobody pulls that shit on me without feeling my fists,” the biker said.
I didn’t disagree with him.
Without moving my lips, I muttered, “One throw. Be fast.”
The biker’s body gave a slight twitch. With one hand he grabbed the asshole by the collar of his t-shirt, then he used his free hand to land a vicious left jab to the man’s nose.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Volt and Tundra were breaking things up with the other biker and the two rednecks. After a quick glance in the opposite direction, I noticed Lark and Blood were keeping things calm on that side of the room.
The brawl ended almost as fast as it started, thanks to the band’s lead guitarist causing ear-splitting feedback on the sound system. Funny how that screeching sound made most everyone stop what they were doing.
I grabbed the fruit-flicking asshole and escorted him outside.
“This is the second problem you’ve caused in as many days. Another time and you’re barred. Your buddies, too.”
“Fuck you,” he spat at me.
I fought off a lip curl but raised my eye brows. “If you want to play it that way, you can be barred right here and now.”
A knowing gleam hit his eyes. “You aren’t the owner, you’re just his lackey.”
I ignored the barb and stalked into the bar.
Back in the main room, the band had started a rock ballad from the late eighties. My guess, this was an attempt to ease the tension. It appeared as though most of the patrons had stuck around.
Killian sidled up to me. “Did you really let that guy take a swing?”
I didn’t know where Lark was, and a fib came easily to me. “No, man. He told me he was cool—”
“I’m not Lark.”
I twisted my head so I could lock eyes with him. “Would you let that shit go if you were in his boots?”
Killian chuckled. “Fuck, no. I also wouldn’t have let you get there first, though.”
I shook my head. “Whatever. You want to stay out front or what?”
“No fuckin’ way. I forgot how damn boring it is up here.”