Chapter 3 Mason #2
“For me?” She seems flattered but tries to cover it by flirting. “You tell me, since you’re the expert . . . Is it advisable to accept a Flaming Orgasm from a virtual stranger?”
Our eyes connect and there it is again, that spark.
Followed by a rush of adrenaline, straight to my cock.
“Sometimes those are the best ones,” Jace drawls, strolling up behind her—and startling her again.
I guess she didn’t notice that he just walked in, took one look at the two of us, and sauntered over to the jukebox to put on Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?
”—to fuck with me. A song that I didn’t know he knew existed.
Usually, Jace is a hard-rock-only type of guy, with the occasional Bob Marley or classic rock banger thrown in.
Sierra blows out a breath. “Ugh. You, again.” She sounds deeply unimpressed, and I kind of love that she’s giving him grief. His timing is for shit. But Jace is Jace, so he’s unfazed.
He responds with his trademark charming grin. “Me again.” He sticks out his hand. “Jace Crofton. Nice to meet you.”
She shakes his hand so reluctantly, I might have to grant her free drinks for life. “Sierra Daniels.”
“Sierra,” he says, “like the truck?”
She discreetly pulls a face at me, like: Is anyone educated in this town?
I fill him in. “Sierra means ‘mountains’ in Spanish.”
He leans on the bar next to her. “Your family speaks Spanish?”
I wonder if he’s actually interested, or just faking it to annoy me.
“Nope.” She picks up the shooter and gives it a sniff. “My parents happened to be backpacking in Spain when I was conceived, and my father thought the word was pretty.”
“Sounds romantic,” he quips.
“Oh, yeah.” She throws back the shooter. “Decidedly more romantic than when he ditched me and my mom three years later. Wow. That is good.” She slams the shot glass down, then waves her thumb over her shoulder, toward the bride. “But hey, maybe she’ll have better luck in that department.”
“Or maybe not,” Jace says. “Statistically.”
Sierra frowns a little, that vaguely haunted look returning. Leave it to Jace to really run a conversation into the ground.
“Trust me,” I tell her, “Jace knows even less about relationship statistics than he does about relationships.”
He laughs.
But Sierra seems distracted now, her mood regressing to where it was when she stepped out of my office. She watches me load the shooters onto a tray, drumming her fingers lightly on the bar.
“You know what?” she says with forced brightness. “Put those on my tab, please. And hit me up with another one of these heavenly ciders when you get a chance?” She holds her glass up in cheers. “It’s five o’clock somewhere, right?”
“Actually, it’s almost five o’clock right now,” Jace provides helpfully as she takes a swig.
“May I?” she asks me, holding the cider out as if to add it to the tray. “I won’t even drop them. Probably.”
“Go right ahead.” I give her a small smirk, trying to steer us back to where we were before Jace interrupted. “They’re on your tab, right?”
Doesn’t work.
She just says, “Thank you,” puts her cider on the tray, and whisks the whole thing away. I watch her walk over to the other girls, carefully, and put the tray down on one of their tables to a round of cheers. She pulls up a chair and sits down.
Jace watches her go, too, and says to me, “I’m sorry,” not sorry at all. “Did I just ruin that for you?” Then he smiles, the fucker.
“Always.”
Abby comes out of the kitchen with the guac and flatbread I ordered for Sierra, just as Oscar, my night bartender, shows up for his shift.
I put in a few more orders of appetizers for the bachelorette, on the house, tell Abby to keep their water glasses full and, if they stick around, slow their service and try to get them to order dinner.
“Let’s go,” I tell Jace, rounding the bar.
“What, we’re not even gonna have a beer?”
“You already had a beer. You’re cut off until you square up on your never-ending tab.” Same thing I tell him every time.
He just chuckles and follows me out to my truck.
“I can feel you grinning.”
“You’re in quite a mood,” he notes as we climb in.
“I never took you for a Rod Stewart fan.”
“I never took you for a fucking virgin. Did you need help back there? It’s like you’d never asked a woman for her phone number before. Thought I was gonna have to ask for you.”
When I say nothing, just start up the truck and pull out onto Water Street, then turn up Cherry Way, he prompts, “Well, you want intel or not?” He lights up a joint and I roll down the windows.
“Do I have a choice?”
“The bachelorette party checked into June Spencer’s guesthouse today.”
Makes sense. Explains why Sierra was looking for June.
“You know, right next door to your house,” he says.
“Yeah. I got it.”
“They’re here until Sunday. That’s two nights.”
“Thanks. I can do math.”
It is not surprising to me in the slightest that he knows all this. Orchard Cove is a small small town. And Jace Crofton has a talent for sniffing out attractive newcomers.
I’m assuming some of the other girls in that bachelorette were attractive. It’s only occurring to me now that I didn’t particularly notice. There was Sierra Daniels leaning on my bar, and the rest of them were just a general blur.
I’m pondering this, not loving it, when Jace presses, “Come on. You’re gonna sit there with that frown on your face, pretending you’re not interested?”
I didn’t say that. I didn’t think that.
Far from it.
What I’m interested in, apparently, is doing a whole lot of naked, sweaty things with a woman who just walked into my bar. And thinking about that electric charge I felt whenever she looked in my eyes.
And wondering how she might look beneath me, naked, as I taste every inch of her body . . .
“Or is this you pouting because she has to leave in two days?”
I clear my throat and try to stop thinking about going down on Sierra Daniels, because I’m getting hard and Jace is right there. “You know I don’t think that far ahead.” Not where women are concerned.
“Oh, I see. That’s how you’re gonna play it. So you’re not interested in that total smokeshow who just stood at your bar for like half an hour, drooling all over you.”
I don’t respond. There’s no need. He’ll keep talking regardless.
“And here I thought you two looked good together. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe you don’t like her pretty green eyes or that round, juicy—”
“Too high-maintenance,” I cut him off, irritated as shit that he noticed her eye color. And her ass. “That manicure. That purse. And what the hell was that shirt? KPop whatnow? We’d have nothing in common. And the only thing she was ‘drooling over’ was the alcohol.”
“You’re right,” he says, deadpan. “Nothing in common. She likes to drink . . . too bad you don’t own a bar and an alcoholic beverage company.”
I ignore the sarcasm. “City people vibrate at a different frequency. You know what Vancouver women are like. They flock to Orchard Cove every summer slathered in Lululemon and Sephora because they saw it on the ’gram, so they can make TikToks doing yoga on the beach to show their followers how down-to-earth they are.
They’re all the same. And they’re all Type A.
I’m not interested in competing with a woman or her social media following.
The power struggle alone would be a major cockblock. ”
To my shock, Jace doesn’t laugh or agree. Instead, he makes a downright judgmental sound as he smokes his joint.
“And what does that mean?”
“So, you’re an expert on city people because you’ve screwed some tourists?” he says. “You grew up here. How many times have you actually been to a big city?”
I take the turn onto Honeymoon Lane, slowing the truck down in the middle of the road. “Should I just kick you out here, or . . . ?”
He snorts. “Always gotta be in control, huh?” He pinches the butt of his joint and flicks it out the window as we pass June Spencer’s property, with the old Twisted Tree Orchard sign that needs fresh paint.
“Well, I tell you what. Kinda sad that at thirty-four years old you still haven’t figured out that you can’t control who you fall for. ”
It’s an oddly philosophical comment for Jace.
“Sure you can,” I retort automatically. What the hell is he talking about anyway? Fall for? I’m not falling for anything. Least of all his bullshit.
He’s just trying to get me to admit that I want her, so he can flirt with her to try to annoy me. It’s one of his favorite pastimes.
Normally, I wouldn’t care.
I don’t know why it’s bothering me this time.
“Unless you’d rather just keep pretending that you’re dead inside—”
“Who’s pretending?”
“—and just live alone forever,” he says.
We’ve looped all the way around the block, so we’re back at the waterfront but half a kilometer south of the bar.
As we pull into the drive of my family’s property overlooking the water, it strikes me how grouchy this will sound for a man who’s temporarily living with his entire family, but I say it anyway. “I like living alone.”
“Sure you do.”
I toss him a please shut up look.
He holds up his hands in surrender. “Fine. Go to bed alone. Don’t even bother heading back to the bar tonight to see if she’s there. I’m sure someone else will show her a good time while she’s in town . . .”
When I say nothing, just throw the truck violently into park, he chuckles.
Best friends know you annoyingly well, right?
Because he already knows, maybe before I do, that there is no fucking way I’m letting that happen.