The Man Who Stayed (Ellery Cove #3)

Chapter 1

Kirstin knew he was trouble before he took the hat off.

That was always the first sign.

The ones who knew how they looked never came in quietly. They tried to, and that was worse. They lowered their heads and stepped through the door hoping nobody would notice the shoulders, the hair, the watch, the room adjusting itself around them. Like fame could be tucked under a ball cap.

It couldn't.

Not in Sailor Jon's.

Not on a Wednesday night in Ellery Cove, when the island was half-full and the regulars had the bar to themselves, cold beer and shrimp baskets and whatever song the jukebox decided to forgive them with next.

He came in alone just after seven, tall enough to make the door look shorter and broad enough that two women at the high-top by the window stopped talking mid-sentence.

He had a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, the strap riding close to his neck.

His right arm hung a little too still at his side.

Barely. Most people would have missed it.

Kirstin didn't.

She had spent six years behind that bar watching people hide things. Wedding rings. Bad moods. Fake IDs. Broken hearts. Men who said they were fine when their hands shook around a glass. Women who laughed too loudly because they were trying not to cry in public.

This man was hiding pain.

And doing a very annoying job of looking good while he did it.

His cap was pulled low, dark curls coming out from underneath it in a way that probably got mentioned in magazine profiles.

Jeans. Boots. A gray T-shirt that was simple because it was expensive.

Lean through the hips, wide through the shoulders, legs built for covering ground fast in every direction.

Baseball, then.

Of course.

It was taking over the island.

He paused inside the door and scanned the room. Not lost, exactly. More like someone who had spent most of his adult life being recognized before he had to introduce himself.

A regular at the end of the bar did recognize him.

"Holy hell," he said, soft and reverent. "That's Ethan Beck."

The name moved down the bar faster than a spilled drink.

Ethan Beck.

Kirstin kept drying the glass in her hand.

She knew who he was. Everybody who had ever watched SportsCenter or sat near Luke Banks for more than ten minutes knew who Ethan Beck was.

First-round pick. Top prospect. Rookie phenom.

Two All-Star teams before thirty. A center fielder who used to run down balls in the gap like he was personally offended by physics.

A right arm that had made highlight reels and a right shoulder that had eventually betrayed him.

Or maybe it was the other way around. She didn't care enough to remember.

She cared enough to notice he was favoring it.

That was different.

Beck crossed to the bar with the easy stride of someone trying very hard not to limp through his upper body. People watched him. He pretended not to notice. That, too, was annoying.

He stopped in front of her.

"Evening."

Kirstin set the glass on the shelf behind her. "Hat."

His eyes lifted. Brown, almost black. Tired. Amused already, and that was unfortunate.

"Excuse me?"

She pointed at the sign above the mirror behind the bar.

NO HATS ON THE BAR. NO FEET ON THE CHAIRS. NO FREE DRINKS FOR PEOPLE WHO SAY THEY KNOW JON.

He read the sign, then turned back to her.

"My hat's not on the bar."

"It's inside."

"The sign doesn't say anything about wearing one inside."

"That's because Jon wrote the sign, and Jon assumes men have mothers."

That got the smallest one out of him. Not the famous version, or at least closer to it.

He took the cap off.

The curls were worse without it.

Kirstin hated that immediately.

He set the cap on the stool beside him instead of the bar. Points for survival instinct.

"What can I get you?" she asked.

"Whatever you recommend."

"I recommend men know what they want before they walk up to a bar."

His mouth twitched.

"All right," he said. "Beer."

"We have a lot of beer."

"What do you like?"

"I'm working."

"What would you like if you weren't?"

"Someone who orders faster."

He laughed then. Quiet, surprised, like the sound had gotten out before he approved it.

"Fair enough. Local pale ale."

She pulled the glass and turned to the tap. Behind her, someone whispered his name again, and someone else said something about the shoulder. The words were low, but the bar carried the things people thought they were hiding.

Kirstin set the beer in front of him.

He reached for it with his left hand. Smooth. Controlled. The right never moved.

"You got a tab?" she asked.

"Start one."

"Name?"

His eyebrows lifted.

She held his eyes. "For the tab."

"Beck."

"I need a first name too."

"You know it."

"I know a lot of things. I still make people say them."

His gaze stayed on her for a second, and she saw it land. The first real measure. Not sizing up the room. Not reading the crowd. Her.

"Ethan," he said.

She entered it into the system.

"Ethan Beck," she said. "That sounds familiar."

"Does it?"

"Little bit."

"Good familiar or bad familiar?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Whether you put the hat back on."

He glanced at the stool where the cap sat. "Noted."

She moved down the bar to close out two checks and take a food order from Dale Hutchins, who had been coming into Sailor Jon's since before Kirstin was born and still acted like hush puppies were a new discovery every time he ordered them.

When she came back, Beck was still there.

Still nursing the beer. Still watching the room like he wanted to be alone and knew better than to expect it.

That made her soften for half a second.

Only half.

She had rules.

Baseball players were one of them.

He turned the glass once on the bar.

"You're Kirstin," he said.

She stopped with one hand on a stack of cocktail napkins. "That depends on who told you."

"Luke Banks."

"Then I'm sorry."

"He speaks highly of you."

"He speaks highly of everybody until they prove him wrong. It's a character flaw."

"He said you'd say that."

"Luke Banks is very irritating for a man everyone insists on loving."

Beck studied his beer.

"Brady said something too."

"Brady Johnson talks less, so I'm more interested."

"He said not to take it personal if you were mean."

"Brady Johnson is a wise man."

"He also said I probably deserved it."

"Brady Johnson is a very wise man."

Beck took a drink. His eyes stayed on her over the rim of the glass.

"So," he said when he set it down. "Do you always insult customers Luke sends your way?"

"No."

"Just me?"

"Just baseball players."

The bar noise moved around them. A chair dragged across the wood floor. Someone laughed near the pool table. The kitchen bell rang twice, and Sailor Jon yelled something through the pass that was probably a name and definitely a threat.

Beck leaned a little closer.

"I don't date baseball players," Kirstin said.

The words came out before he could ask the question.

His mouth stopped halfway to something.

"Since when?"

"Just now."

"You just now decided you don't date baseball players?"

"Yes."

He held her gaze for a beat, then glanced down at the beer in front of him, like the answer might be somewhere in the foam, and came back to her.

"Good thing I'm not a baseball player," he said. "Well, not anymore."

The joke with blood under it.

Kirstin should have let it pass. She should have taken the win, moved to the other end of the bar, and let Ethan Beck sit with his beer and his bad shoulder and whatever version of himself he had brought to Ellery Cove.

Instead, she held his eyes.

"You were on SportsCenter three nights a week for five years."

"Two and a half."

"You made two All-Star teams."

"One of those was a replacement."

"You had a Nike commercial."

He winced. "That commercial was a mistake."

"You hit a ball into the third deck at Yankee Stadium."

"That one was not a mistake."

The corner of his mouth moved like it wanted permission.

Kirstin dried the same spot on the bar twice and pretended she hadn't noticed.

"You're a baseball player."

His eyes dropped for half a second.

Not long.

Just enough.

When they came back, his expression had changed shape. "Trying to be," he said.

That should have shut her up.

It didn't.

"What do you have against baseball players?"

"The hats."

"The hats?"

She nodded like this should have been obvious to a man with a working brain.

"They wear them inside."

His mouth opened, then closed again.

She pointed at him with the towel. "Restaurants. Airports. Hotel lobbies. Interviews. Charity events. Funerals, probably."

"I have never worn a baseball cap to a funeral."

"Yet."

He glanced at the cap sitting on the stool beside him.

"That hat's not on my head."

"No," she said. "But it wants to be."

That got him again. A laugh broke through before he could stop it, warmer this time. Two regulars at the end of the bar turned. Sailor Jon glanced up from the register with the expression of someone who smelled trouble and wanted to know whether it would tip well.

"So if I promise not to wear a hat inside, I've got a chance?" Beck said.

"No."

"No?"

"That only fixes the hat problem."

"How many problems are there?"

"With baseball players?" She set a clean glass on the shelf. "How much time do you have?"

He glanced at the clock above the bar.

"Apparently more than I used to."

The sentence landed quietly.

Not hard. Not dramatic. Just there, between them, where the beer had been sweating a ring onto the bar.

Kirstin's eyes went to his shoulder before she could stop herself.

Beck noticed.

Of course he did.

He took another drink, slower this time.

"There's also the ego," she said, because soft places made her nervous. "Then there's the false modesty. Let me see, there's also the whole curls-coming-out-from-under-the-hat thing, which technically ties back to the hat, but is its own separate problem because it isn't original."

"That's a lot of judgment for hair I didn't personally arrange."