Chapter 19
The Rollaway smelled like it always did on a winter’s night, Finch thought. He picked out the scents of spilled beer soaked into the floorboards, mulled wine, and the faint diesel tang that drifted in from the cars.
He’d had many moments in this place when he’d come home on leave. Some memorable, like the night he’d gotten drunk for the first time and then puked in his mother’s vegetable patch.
Some of the fairy lights had blown, and others were flickering.
Clearly the electrician hadn’t had time to fix them.
Someone had chalked the night’s specials onto the tinsel-wrapped blackboard behind him in handwriting too loopy to be Red’s, which meant Dee had done it.
Girls’ Night Special - Pink Mischief and Trouble in Heels.
Finch hoped he didn’t have to make any of those.
It wasn’t usually this full on a weeknight, or so Red had told him, but girls’ night drew everyone in. He searched for Nina again and found her with his sisters. She looked good—better than good, but then, Finch was fairly sure that to him, she’d look hot in a sack.
The halter top pushed up those lovely breasts, and the black pants were tight and showed every curve. He wanted to touch her again. He wanted to—
“Make me a Peachy Keen, Finch,” Dr. Hannah said interrupting his thoughts.
“Really, Doc? I’ve never made a Peachy Keen before, and I’m not sure I want to start now. Maybe a nice glass of chardonnay?” Finch said, looking at the lady who had given him his first sex talk, along with the other prepubescent kids in his class.
“Vodka, blueberry-flavored vodka, peach schnapps, and peach nectar,” she said, leaning on the bar like she had nowhere else to be tonight, the metal of her watch strap clinking against the scarred wood. “Don’t forget the vodka,” she added.
He looked at Red, who was beside him, but the big man was pouring four drinks with one hand and a glass of wine with the other, not even glancing at what he was doing.
“Ryder! You want to do Doc’s Peachy Keen?” he called over the noise.
“Do I look like I got nothing going on?” the man roared back from down the bar while pouring a glass of wine for his mom, clearly as pissed off about being here as Finch was.
“I have something for you, Finch,” Dr. Hannah said, swinging her large bag onto the bar and opening it. “It will help with the headaches.”
His eyes were starting to ache, as the lights were doing that thing where they pulsed at the edge of his vision, and he was about to tell Red he was done. Surprisingly, his head wasn’t hurting too badly so far, which was a good sign, given the noise and the low thump of bass from the speaker.
When he’d walked in here, the place had been empty other than Red restocking and singing along to the Christmas music that was now playing all over Lyntacky.
The large pink breasts hanging from the ceiling had caught his eye first. He’d never seen anything like them before, and he’d seen a lot in his life.
“It’s like girls’ night turns them feral,” Ryder muttered from behind him now.
“You owe Red a favor too?” Finch asked.
He nodded. “We need to be more aware of that because he’ll come for us again,” Ryder added, grim-faced.
“We do,” Finch agreed. “The man is cunning.”
“And then some.”
“These,” Dr. Hannah said finally pulling something out of the bag she’d been rummaging through. “Blue light glasses. They’ll help. I went by your place on the way here, but Hamish told me I’d find you at the Rollaway.”
She held out the glasses.
“I don’t need glasses.”
“They’re to stop the light affecting you. Try them.”
“Do I have to?”
“Don’t be pathetic,” Dee said, stepping up beside him and taking them from Dr. Hannah’s hand before he could object again. “And they say women are vain.” She then opened the glasses and slid them into place on his face before Finch could stop her. “Nice. They almost make you look intelligent.”
Keeping his eyes on the woman’s face and not the breasts which were on display due to her low-cut top and red lace bra, Finch noticed everything suddenly felt softer and less invasive.
The colors were muted, if that was even possible.
The fairy lights dimmed from a migraine-inducing white to something almost bearable.
“I chose the tortoiseshell and a larger frame, as you have a big head—”
“Never a truer word spoken, Doc,” Ryder interrupted her.
Finch raised a middle finger, which he hid with his other hand so Dr. Hannah didn’t see it, at Ryder. As he looked around the room, the ache in his eyes eased. Suddenly everything felt like it was dialed down a notch.
“Better?” Dr. Hannah asked.
He didn’t want to wear them or admit he felt better for wearing them, but since he was an adult, he would confess she was right. “They’re helping. Thanks, Doc.”
“Good, now make my drink. I’ve got dancing to do.”
She told him what to pour into the shaker and how much, watching his hands the whole time like she expected him to get it wrong. When she took her first sip, he waited until she smiled. “Good boy. It’s perfect, except for the garnish.”
“I got you, Doc.” Red dropped a lime twist and a wedge of peach into her glass without being asked. “Glasses look good, Finch.”
Ignoring Red, he rang it up and even worked the card reader without asking anyone for help this time, which felt like its own small victory.
After the doctor had walked away, he looked for Nina again and found her out on the dance floor this time, between two high-top tables that had been shoved aside for the night.
She was laughing, head tipped back, looking happier than he’d seen her since her mom died. She did a shimmy with that fine ass that had his body reacting before his brain caught up, so he turned away and busied himself wiping down a countertop that didn’t need wiping.
“Do they help?” Ryder asked, nodding to his face.
“Yeah. How do they look?”
“Doesn’t matter how they look, bud, it’s that they work and allow you to function without pain.”
“True.” He started to put away the Peachy Keen fixings, lining the bottles up with the labels facing out the way Red liked them.
“She’d be good for you. In fact, you both need something right now, so maybe think about asking her out on a date,” Ryder Duke said, not looking up from the glass he was pouring whiskey into.
“Who?” But Finch knew exactly who Ryder thought would be good for him.
“Nina, and don’t BS me that you haven’t just spent the past few minutes watching her dance.”
“Not looking for anything other than getting healthy, Ryder, so take off your matchmaking hat.”
“Just saying it could work,” the man said, nodding to the dance floor, which meant Finch could look at her again.
Nina was now doing a maneuver accompanied by a twist that did things to her breasts he could do without because it brought back the night they’d spent together and what they’d felt like to touch and taste.
“That expression on your face sure doesn’t tell me you’re disinterested,” Ryder said conversationally.
“Go do some work, Duke. Bradford looks slammed,” Finch said, nodding toward the far end of the bar where Bradford was fielding orders three deep.
“Finch!” His mother was his next customer, wearing a hand-knitted shawl in natural tones, wrapped around her upper body.
Under that would be a kaftan of some description, and under that, he had no wish to hazard a guess, because, direct Meadow McAllister quote, “Clothing is a socially conditioned convenience rather than a necessity.”
“Hey, Mom. What can I get you?”
“I like your glasses.”
“Thanks. Dr. Hannah said they’ll help my eyes in certain light.”
“Excellent. Can I have a mulled wine, please, eldest son.”
“I can do that.” In fact, it was the easiest thing he’d do all evening, since it was sitting in a slow cooker at the end of the bar, and all he had to do was lift the lid and ladle it out, the smell of cinnamon and cloves cutting through the beer-and-wine fug of the room.
He moved to where it sat, took down a glass, and filled it with steaming burgundy liquid, the steam fogging his new glasses for a second.
He did a survey of the room as he handed it over, looking for Nina again.
She was laughing at something the other barman, Kurt, who was a tourist apparently, but needed the work, was saying, leaning in close to hear him over the music. The spike of jealousy was unwelcome.
“Here you go, Mom, and I’ve got it,” he said, handing the glass to her.
“Such a sweet boy.”
“Some would disagree,” Ryder muttered from beside him.
The music changed to a song about raining men, and the women erupted like they’d been waiting their whole lives for this exact moment. Glasses shot skyward, and someone let out a shriek that could’ve shattered the bottles behind the bar.
“Up on the bar,” Red said to Ryder and Finch with the authority of a man both men were about to ignore. “It’s dancing time.”
“Absolutely not,” Ryder said.
“Categorically,” Finch agreed.
“It’s tradition,” Red said, like that settled the matter. “Besides, aren’t you meant to be good at taking orders?” he said to Finch.
“Not anymore,” he replied.
“Like I said, it’s tradition,” Red added.
“Since when?” Finch demanded. “We were born and raised in this town, and not once has anyone mentioned bar dancing to this song.”
“I can’t dance,” Ryder said, already edging sideways toward Finch in support. “And I especially can’t dance on thirty inches of wood. That’s not a stage, that’s a diving board.”
Red unfolded his beefy arms, refolded them, and said nothing. The silence alone moved mountains.
“Get those asses up there,” Dee said cheerfully and punctuated the invitation with a sharp slap to each of their backsides.
There was a beat of horrified silence.
“I feel objectified,” Ryder said, already climbing up because apparently he was a coward, “and that something has gone wrong with my life choices.”
A loud, delighted whistle split the air. Finch located the source—Libby, Ryder’s partner.
“You,” Ryder said, jabbing a finger in her direction, “need to behave.”
Libby raised her glass to him.
“I get vertigo,” Finch lied, which was a wild claim given that the bar was chest height.
Then Kurt vaulted up with ease and started gyrating his hips.
Nina shoved two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle. “Move those hips, Kurt!”
“That’s okay, you don’t have to, Finch. Kurt’s hot enough, along with Ryder, to make them happy,” Dee said. “I mean, look at Nina. She’s drooling over the man.”
He shot Dee a look, and something in her eyes had him tensing.
“You go on and put those glasses away,” she added. “Kurt’s got the moves, and I’m not sure both you and Ryder up there dancing—or not, as the case may be—is good for business anyway.”
“I can dance,” Finch protested.
“Sure you can,” she fired back, then burst out laughing. “Nina just waved money at Kurt. Her luck could be in tonight.”
His head snapped back to Nina. She was looking up at Kurt, grinning, a folded note pinched between two fingers.
“Did I tell you that my husband and I share everything? Amazing the things you see when you’re out exercising at 9:30 p.m.”
He knew then that Red had told her he’d seen Finch leaving Nina’s place the night of the funeral and had clearly added two and two and come up with the truth.
“Dee—”
“I won’t say a word.” She mimed zipping her mouth shut.
“But don’t mess around with that girl if you’re not serious.
She looks like she can handle it, but she can’t.
And you sure as hell can’t, either, in your current state.
” Dee leaned in to pat his cheek, her expression softening for just a second.
“But if you do, I think she’d be perfect for you, as you would be for her. ”
She then walked away, leaving him standing there with a wine glass in one hand and his pulse spiking.
Looking at the bar, he watched Ryder attempt to move his hips to the music, and his sister and sisters-in-law laughed so hard, one of them had to grab a table for support. His mother wolf-whistled loudly.
“Fuck it,” Finch said, climbing up there, the surface sticky under his boots. “Follow me, Ryder.”
He then moved two steps to the right, one foot behind the other, in a move he knew was called the grapevine, and Ryder followed, scowling the whole time as if the steps insulted him.
“Now back,” Finch instructed.
Soon Bradford and Kurt the asshole joined in, and the women clapped and danced along, hooting out their encouragement. Birdie and Blue were yelling insults at him—and filming every second on their phones to show Lynx, Jay, and Sawyer, he was sure.
“How do you know this shit?” Ryder asked over the cheers.
“Don’t ask. Can you manage a turn?”
“Fuck off,” Ryder snarled, but he turned anyway, badly.
Finch turned, too, and when he was facing the women again, his eyes locked on Nina’s. She gave him a wink, which he returned with a smile.
“Off, off, off!” June Matilda and her friend LouJean called, banging their glasses rhythmically on the table.
The men shook their heads at that, except Kurt the asshole, who took off his shirt to a roar of approval.
As he was waving it over his head, Finch nudged Ryder, who stumbled into the asshole.
Kurt had to stop his movements to brace himself against the new antler light fixture hanging too low over the bar.
Looking at Nina, Finch saw she was laughing now, and the look in her eyes told him she knew exactly what he’d just done.
He found his mom dancing in circles with her hands in the air, shawl gone entirely now, kaftan billowing. All good there, and clearly her eldest son hadn’t shocked her too much by dancing on a bar.
“What the fuck,” Ryder said softly, but Finch heard and saw he was looking at the doorway. A leather-clad figure walked past.
“Was that a Bandit?” Finch asked.
“Looks like it to me. Not sure why they’d be here tonight.”
“Takeout, maybe?” Finch said, remembering the encounter he and Dan had with their leader.
“Maybe,” Ryder said. “I just don’t trust those fuckers after the years of hell they put us through.”
“You’re not wrong,” Finch added.
“Dan told me you’re looking at the Burns land, Bud. It would be good for you, just FYI, if you want my opinion,” Ryder said.
“Not sure why you wouldn’t give it, seeing as everyone else in this town wants to tell me what I should do,” Finch said. “Also, agree about the bikers. Can we get down now?” he added with a final step to the side. “Music’s stopped.”
Ryder jumped off the bar, then grabbed his woman and bent her back over his arm to kiss her loudly. The rest of the women cheered and asked when it was their turn. Libby dragged him to the dance floor.
Did he want to have that? Be someone’s special someone? Yes.
He found Nina, and she was looking at him. She tapped the side of her face and smiled.
She liked his glasses.
Could Nina be that someone special? But it wouldn’t be fair for her to take him on when he was broken. He needed to be whole before he thought about a future with anyone. Turning away from her, he went to take the next order.