Chapter 8 Jack #2
“You dated the person who owns this shithole? You, Rosemary Mayfield, of the romance bookstore and constant sunshine?” She turns and smiles at me, wide and knowing.
“You think I’m constant sunshine?” My blush returns with a vengeance, something only Rosie can manage, it seems.
“Everyone in Heartwood Hollow knows you’re constant sunshine, Rosie. It’s not me pointing out anything but the obvious.” She raises her eyebrows like she isn’t buying it, so I continue. “Which is also why you can’t go in there. There has to be another place that will work.” She shakes her head.
“This is the only one, I checked with Phillip. I’ll be fine, though. I just need to get a drink, a quick in and out.”
“Did things end amicably with your ex?” She hesitates for a split second, which tells me everything I need to know: things ended anything but amicably with her ex. I groan aloud. “Rosie.”
“This is what I have to do. You were full steam ahead, insisting that you needed to help me with this. While you’re cute, I don’t think you can convince Jake to give you what we need. I probably can.”
“With magic?” I ask, trying to ignore how she called me cute and how that settled in my gut in a warm and prideful way.
“You can call it that,” she says, then starts shifting in her seat.
“What are you doing?” I ask, looking over at Rosie as she stares intently at the run-down facade of the bar while readjusting her breasts in her bra and tugging the low neckline of her dress down a bit. I’ve made an effort not to look, but with her hands adjusting the lush curves, it’s impossible.
“Preparing.”
“For what?” She turns to me with a devious smile.
“To get what I want.” She reaches up to pull down the visor, checking herself in the small mirror.
“Isn’t that what the magic is for?” I ask, suddenly confused. She smiles and shakes her head negative, pushing her hair behind her shoulders and running a finger over the edge of her already perfect lipstick before turning to me.
“You ready to go, Jack Attack?”
I let out a heavy breath before shrugging. “I don’t think I have much of a choice.” She punches me in the arm with a wide smile.
“That’s the spirit,” she says before stepping out of the car and moving toward the door.
And watch is all I can do: in the dimming sunlight, her figure is clear, curves I’ve rarely taken the opportunity to observe since I’ve always been so annoyed with her, legs that seem to go on for miles despite her short stature.
Her strawberry blonde hair is loose, the ends curling down her back, and my mind goes places it’s never gone when thinking about my neighbor: what that soft hair would feel like in my hands, grazing over my skin, wrapped around my fist.
It shocks me, taking me aback, and I physically shake my head to get the thought out.
No fucking way, Jack, I tell myself. Get your mind straight. She’s pretty, but she’s also out of her mind. And trouble. So much fucking trouble. I don’t like trouble. I like normalcy and reliability, even though my entire world turned upside down in the last week.
After a moment, I realize she’s ahead of me, and I speed my steps to catch up with her as I remind myself we’re only here because we’re on a mission.
Once I can safely and securely sleep at night knowing I did everything to help my grandfather cross to the other side, I’ll be free of this and her.
Rosemary Mayfield is nothing but trouble, and I need to keep reminding myself of that.
A point that is proven when the doors to the bar open and Rosie steps in and… the entire bar goes quiet. All eyes move to her, and when I follow in behind, Rosie already ten feet ahead of me, I realize this is not just a bar. It’s what one might classify as a biker bar.
I really need to make sure I’m asking better questions on these future tasks we have.
Or at the very least, take in my surroundings instead of Rosie’s ass.
If I had, I probably would have noted the dozen or so motorcycles parked in the lot opposite ours.
But I didn’t, so now I’m here. Big men in motorcycle cuts stare at Rosie as she walks with purpose along the far side of the bar, some stopping to look at her ass, others shifting to look eagerly at the bar as if they know something I don’t.
“Heeeeey, Jake,” Rosie drawls with sugar in her words as she saunters up to the bar counter.
“No,” the tall, broad man with short blond hair says.
If I were to say who Rosie’s type would be, knowing little to nothing about her and never actually seeing her with a man, I’d say this was it: a G.I.
Joe–looking guy with shoulders twice as wide as his head who looks like he can barely count to ten.
“Come on, don’t be like that,” Rosie says, sidling up to the bar, putting her elbows onto it, and leaning in. Knowing how low her top is, I’m pretty sure she’s showing off her cleavage. The man at the bar, Jake, confirms my assumption when he falls for it, eyes dipping before shaking his head.
“I’m not playing your games,” he says.
“Me? Games? Never.” Even I know that’s bullshit. Jake sighs, then leans a hip on the bar, crossing his arms on his chest and making his too-big muscles bulge alarmingly.
“What do you need from me, Rosie? You’re banned from this place.” Well, that’s something she managed to leave out. Though, somehow, it doesn’t surprise me that Rosie would somehow get herself banned from a rough-and-tough biker bar, despite her sweet appearance.
“What, I can’t just come in to see an old friend?
” He continues to glare at her before she sighs, and her voice veers from the sugar-coated sweet tone to a different one altogether.
“Fine, I need a to-go cup of the oldest scotch you have in this place.” Silence fills the space for a beat before the man replies.
Exasperation, I’m thinking, follows Rosie with whoever she interacts with.
“You can’t get a to-go cup, Rosie. Then you’d be driving with an open container.” Her nose scrunches up, contemplating her next move. When she lands on her new tactic, she pouts before speaking again.
“The whole bottle?” she says with a raise of her shoulder.
“Our best bottle is going to cost you fifteen hundred dollars. Is the bookstore doing that well?” She grimaces, and I try and wrap my head around a bottle of alcohol that costs fifteen hundred dollars, much less it being at a place like this.
“Maybe with a friends and family discount?”
“Friends!?” he says aghast. “We are not friends, Rosie.”
“Oh, come on. Remember that time I dog-sat for you while you went to Denver? Or when I made you chicken soup when you were sick?” Rosie tries, but Jake just glares at her, crossing his arms over his chest and looking down his nose at her.
“I don’t know, when I think about you, I mostly remember how you told everyone we were mutual friends with that I was shit in bed and I cheated on you.” I cringe at that, but Rosie barely even shifts her face, no look of remorse or pity crossing it.
“And?” Damn, the girl is brutal.
“And that’s messed up! I should sue you!”
It’s clear she’s either going to try a new angle or completely give up on playing nice when her eyes roll, arms crossing on her chest in a mirror of his. She looks so incredibly unfazed, I’m almost envious.
“For what, Jake?”
“Libel or something!” He throws his hands up in the air, clearly frustrated, and Rosie pouts at him, as if she feels bad for the man.
“That’s for printed lies, bud. God, maybe I should have also told everyone that you were a dumbass,” she mumbles under her breath.
“I think the word you’re looking for is slander,” I add without really meaning to. I expect her ire, but Rosie looks over at me with a small smile, like she likes how I’m adding to her grand show of dramatics.
“Yeah! What he said! I should sue for slander because you told everyone I was a cheater who sucks in bed.”
Rosie’s face then screws up, a mix of confusion and pity showing once again.
“Honey, that’s not how that works,” she says gently, reaching out across the bar to pat his arm, which he’s placed on the worn bar top like he’s a small child who is bartering for a third ice pop. “It has to be proven to be untrue if you’re going to sue me for slander.”
“I’m not shit in bed.”
She gives him a look that hurts my ego, and I’m not even close enough to get the full brunt of it. “You keep telling yourself that, baby,” she says, and someone in the crowd lets out a low oooh like it was a schoolyard burn.
“Fuck off, Rosie.” Rosie doesn’t back down, instead standing there, hip cocked and her arms crossed on her chest like she’s an impatient mother waiting for her child to stop throwing a temper tantrum at the store.
“Hey, hey,” I say, stepping slower to Rosie because, despite everything, I do feel a bit protective of my neighbor and now pseudo-partner in crime.
“And who the fuck is this guy?” Jake asks, tipping his chin to me but looking at Rosie.
“Her nei—” I start, but Rosie is faster and speaks with a catlike smile, and panic runs through me.
“My new boyfriend,” she says with a wide smile. Yeah, that panic was warranted.
Jake lets out a humorless laugh before running a hand over his thinning hair, and without meaning to, I let myself bask in the fact that both sides of my family have always had thick heads of hair until the end.
“You bring your new piece in here and what, want me to do you favors? You always were a bitch.”
“Okay, there’s no reason to—” I start, stepping closer to the bar because even if she’s a bit of a pain and likes to stir the pot, that doesn’t mean she’s a bitch. The big man turns to me with a look of death on his face.
“You wanna fight?” he asks, moving around the bar until there’s no longer anything between us, and my pulse starts to pound.
Well. This has escalated quickly. It feels like any moment, it’s going to turn into Roadhouse, Jake smashing a bottle on the counter and threatening me with it, and try as I might, I am not Patrick Swayze in this one.