Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I blinked and the next thing I knew I was standing at the sink in the woman’s restroom, hands shaking as I scrubbed away the blood like an eleventh-century lady trying to remove the evidence of a crime committed on her behalf.
The gash in my palm only oozed out more of the damning evidence, turning me red-handed no matter how much I washed it away.
One of the stalls behind me swung open and I startled, turning to find a woman standing behind me, waiting her turn at the sink.
Her hair was a long, shiny caramel color and she wore immaculate white pants that I couldn’t imagine wearing without worrying about stains the entire time.
Her face was angular, with high cheek bones and thick eyebrows over hooded green eyes.
She looked familiar somehow, though I couldn’t quite place her, and my heart began to race along with my imagination.
Had I seen her during my time with the FBI? Was she one of the agents assigned to the Monica Park case who had finally tracked me down? Was she the person who had actually murdered my mentor before pinning it all on me?
“Oh, hey, are you okay?” she asked, her gaze going to the sink where cold water continued to run over the cut on my palm.
She stepped forward and pulled several paper towels from the dispenser before reaching out towards me, only hesitating when I flinched away from her touch.
Her voice was softer as she spoke again. “I’d like to help. Can I?”
“It’s just a scratch,” I told her even as I forced myself to turn towards her and allow her to take my hand, guiding it out of the water and into view.
She tilted it from side to side, checking the depth of the cut before making a dissatisfied noise and pressing the paper towels into my palm.
I winced at the feeling of rough paper pushing against the wound and her green eyes flickered up to mine in sympathy before going down to the apron wrapped around my waist.
“Oh,” she said, her lips tugging into a wide smile as her expression filled with recognition. “You must be Hale.”
“Do I know you?” I asked warily, pulling my hand away and narrowing my eyes at her. She was using my new name, which meant she probably wasn’t here to arrest me. Even still, I didn’t like the idea of a stranger knowing my name. Knowing things about me I hadn’t told them.
“You might have heard stories about me already. Only half of them are true,” she replied. “I’m McKenna Scott, but the regulars around here still sometimes call me by my maiden name, Kenna Cavanaugh.”
“You’re Trick’s sister,” I said. She nodded, her smile growing brighter at my recognition. In contrast, a hot flush of discomfort quickly overtook me. Kenna was supposed to be traveling the world. She was supposed to be gone for several months. And she wasn’t supposed to know anything about me.
Trick had clearly told her who I was, but what else had he told her?
“It’s nice to meet you.” I forced the words out through my teeth, looking at the spot on the wall just over her shoulder. There was a crack running through the paint and a little heart drawn in pencil like it had been placed there by the world’s most timid vandal.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Kenna asked.
“I’m fine,” I assured her, the lie sticking in my throat and threatening to choke me. I wasn’t fine. I was so far from fine. That wasn’t her business though, or her fault. “It’s been a rough day, is all. It’s nice to meet you.”
“You already said that,” Kenna pointed out.
There was a teasing tone in her voice, but her smile had dropped into a frown.
She reached over and turned off the still-running faucet before gesturing towards the bathroom door.
“But it’s nice to meet you, too. Come on, let’s go get you a bandage for that cut, shall we? ”
I didn’t have much of a choice, so I dutifully followed Kenna out of the bathroom and back behind the bar. She quickly located the first aid kit, washed her hands at the sink, and was halfway through bandaging my wound by the time Trick came out of the kitchen looking overwhelmed.
“There you are,” he said, sounding evenly mixed between annoyed and relieved as his gaze fell on me. I glanced over at him before shifting to looking over at the spot where the broken glass and blood had been. The floor was clean now, no sign of my mishap anywhere to be seen.
The ache of guilt ran through me. While being a bartender had never been my dream, it was the thing currently paying the bills, but it seemed I was causing more harm than good and that wasn’t something Trick should have to pay for.
I clenched my fist around the small bandage and tucked it up against my chest protectively, focusing on the stinging wound rather than the sting of shame at how much havoc I was causing.
“Come on, Hale. You know we can’t have customers back here,” Trick told me, and I tore my eyes away from the empty spot on the floor to find him crossing his tattooed arms, hovering behind his sister with a stern stance and a sharp scowl.
“Good thing I’m not a customer then,” she said, glancing back at him with a quick smile before reaching for my hand again.
I let her have it, watching as she turned it back and forth to check her handiwork.
With her back turned to him she didn’t catch the way Trick’s expression twisted in utter surprise, but I did.
“Uh,” he said slowly. “Hi, Kenna.”
“Hi!” she replied, and with her back still to him she winked at me, letting go of my perfectly bandaged hand with a small pat on my upper arm.
“How the hell are you here?” Trick asked. Kenna met my gaze and rolled her eyes like the two of us were in this together.
“It’s how the hell are you? Or you could try how was your flight?” she said as she spun to face him, her hands going to her hips in an excellent imitation of a board room power pose. “I’m so glad you’re home, beloved sister. Did you enjoy your time in London?”
“You said you would be gone at least six months,” Trick replied, pointing a finger at her like she was a child he was reprimanding. “I held interviews. I filled out paperwork. I hired someone!”
Kenna let out a long, weary sigh.
“Patrick, what day is it?” she asked with the tone of a patient kindergarten teacher walking a student through the first step of a complicated math equation.
“Saturday,” Trick replied, brows furrowed. When she waved her hand for him to keep going, he did. “June twenty-fourth.”
“Which makes next Saturday?”
“July second,” Trick answered, eyes going wide at the realization she had been leading him to. “Oh shit, the Tate memorial.”
“Gold star, pick a prize,” Kenna turned to the liquor shelf and pulled down a couple of bottles, quickly and expertly making herself a drink as she mocked her brother.
I remained frozen by the cash register, watching the back and forth between the two.
“I figured Gracie could use some emotional support, so here I am.”
“In my bar, drinking my liquor,” Trick said, frowning. “Again, why are you here?”
“I needed to speak with you,” Kenna replied, narrowing her eyes at him over her drink before looking towards me and then back to him meaningfully. “Privately.”
“I’m a bit busy here,” Trick told her, gesturing to the room full of patrons.
“That’s what you hired her for, isn’t it?” Kenna asked, looking over at me again. And somewhere between offering to bandage my hand and talking to her brother, I realized that her attitude about me had cooled dramatically.
“Of course,” Trick agreed, full of bravado as he turned to me. “You’ve got the floor. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Sure thing, boss,” I agreed, filling my voice with more confidence than I felt. “I’ve…got things handled out here.”
I did not, in fact, have a handle on things.
What was meant to be a quick chat had extended into the half-hour territory and despite my best efforts to cover the floor on my own, orders were piling up.
Four customers were waiting for their drinks, two wanted to close their cards out, and there were three tables waiting on food I hadn’t had the time to put in a request for.
But I’d always done well under pressure, and I wasn’t about to let this stupid job be my defeat.
Raising a finger to the waiting customers, I ran back to the kitchen, passing the food orders off to the night shift cook Mario, who was already working on a few other orders.
As he worked, I returned to the front and grabbed two beer glasses to pour while asking the duo who wanted to close what the names on their cards were.
Whirling around, I tapped a few buttons on the register and then handed the receipts off to them before picking up the beers and passing them across the counter. Beers, at least, were easy to serve. Just pull a lever and pray the keg wasn’t empty.
All that was left, then, were the two mixed drinks for the ladies sitting at the bar. The whiskey sour was easy enough, considering how often people ordered it, but I didn’t have the first idea how to make a blue lagoon.
Finally, Trick emerged from his office. Whatever his sister had needed from him had put a scowl on his face. Kenna was in an equally bad mood, storming past the bar and shooting a pointed glare over her shoulder at him before disappearing out the front door.
“My sister, ever the drama queen,” Trick said as he stared after her.
“Uh,” I replied, glancing over at him. In my hand, my phone still glowed with the recipe for a blue lagoon pulled up on the screen. “Everything okay?”
“Kenna is…complicated,” Trick told me, shaking his head.
He turned his focus to the drink in front of me and took over, making it automatically as he explained.
“We come from the kind of family that has a high social and financial standing, and while I’m proud to be the black sheep of the family, my sister prefers the precarious position of being a wolf in sheep’s clothes. ”
“What?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at his mixed metaphors.