The statement was rife with truth. Mavis remembered how Harmony had loved Kyle for years. Well over a decade. Since she was a girl and he was practically a man, as far out of reach as the moon. So she didn’t step back from the embrace.
“I wish you could have told me,” Harmony whispered. “So what that he’s my brother? You could’ve talked to me.”
Mavis tried to take a gulp of air. “Can’t breathe.”
Harmony patted her on the back, consoling. “It’s going to be all right.”
“No. I can’t breathe.”
“Sorry.” Harmony let go of her.
Mavis took air in. Pushed it out. “I’m not emotional.”
“You might be an island,” Harmony observed, “but chances are, your place is crawling with pineapples.”
Ugh. Pineapples.
Harmony tilted her head. “You feel like getting drunk?”
Mavis let out a startled laugh. “You might talk me into it.”
“Good,” Harmony nodded. “After this, I could drink enough for both of us.”
“You usually do,” Mavis said as they walked to the farmhouse.
“That’s the spirit.”
* * *
“DON’T TALK TO ME,” Mavis told Kyle the moment he appeared at Tavern of the Graces.
“Yeah,” Harmony chimed, already three sheets to the wind. She raised her margarita. “Single girls for life!”
Kyle grinned. “Says the future Mrs. Bracken.”
Harmony brightened. “Oooh. That’s the first time I’ve heard it. Say it again!”
He obliged her, drawing closer. His mouth didn’t so much meld with hers as clash with it, heatedly.
“Oh, good,” Mavis groaned. “You’re doing that.” She picked up her half-drunk margarita and rattled the ice that remained. Catching William’s eye from behind the bar, she lifted it in indication. She was going to need another, she thought, tipping it back for a watery swallow.
“Mm-mm,” Harmony purred as she and Kyle parted. “I’m looking forward to that more on a day-to-day basis.”
“Like you two don’t do it enough already?” Mavis drawled.
“What’s she so aggro about, anyway?” Kyle asked his intended.
Harmony rolled her eyes at him. “You know what you did.”
“Are you still mad about dinner?” he asked Mavis.
Mavis narrowed her eyes on him. “No, I’m mad about what brought dinner to a screeching halt.”
“Sorry.”
She snorted. “That’s it? ‘Sorry’?”
“Well, what do you want?” he wanted to know.
“You choked him out,” Mavis stated, “like you were still recruits and it was time for initiation!”
“It was a reflex,” Kyle said.
“You might want to work on that,” Mavis pointed out, turning away to face the bar again.
“He’s using you, anyway.”
Mavis started to count to ten. She gave up at four. Swiveling, she confronted him. “I know when you look at me you have this irritating habit of seeing a six-year-old with hair like a porcupine. But just this once, could you maybe open yourself up to reality? I’m twenty-eight. I have all my adult teeth. Even if I do still have freckles and haven’t grown an inch since fifteen, I’ve been to college, I’ve held down three to four jobs for most of my professional life. I’ve met my fair share of people—men included. Not one of them was a saint and neither am I.”
His face had gone blank. “Where are you going with this?”
“I know what it is to use someone,” she replied sharply. “I’ve cut lovers off because they tried to get closer than I wanted them. If anyone’s a competent judge of whether your buddy was using me or not, it’s me.”
“Give me one reason he wasn’t,” Kyle said. “Because I can’t figure it out.”
“Why is that?” she asked. “Am I not what a man would want?”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Mavis,” he warned.
“It was more,” she threw at him. “He needed me and I needed him.”
“And now he’s gone again,” Kyle picked up. “He’s disappointed the people who love him again, and he hurt you in the process. Don’t paint him as the innocent party in this. That’s not what he is.”
“He made me no promises. I told him not to. I knew it would end this way.”
“Yes,” Kyle said with a nod. “Because that’s who he is.”
“I think you’re wrong,” she told him. “I saw things in him. I saw fear and defeat, grief and loss and everything in between. I saw someone who wants to stay. He wants to belong to something. He doesn’t think he deserves it. There’ve been too many who’ve told him he’s a lone wolf. The restless troublemaker who needs to move on so all the tidy notions people have about small-town life can keep on existing. That voice in his head, you know who it is.”
“He and Tiffany haven’t spoken in years.”
“They spoke the day before he left,” Mavis told him. “I got to hear for myself the things she tells him. You’re there, too—in his head.”
“Do you know how hard I worked to get him to come here in the first place?” Kyle said, raising his voice.
“Yes,” she granted. “You brought him back. But he touches me and you’re the one chasing him off into the night like a frigging dingo.”
“He shouldn’t have touched you,” Kyle said, undeterred. He raised his beard-stubbled chin. “He knows he shouldn’t have touched you.”
“Like you shouldn’t have touched Harmony,” she batted back at him.
“Maybe not, in the beginning,” he said. “But Harmony and I... With us, things could never be temporary. It was all or nothing. You and Gavin both knew whatever this was wouldn’t last. And he went ahead with it anyway. That’s where he used you.”
She lifted a finger. “I’ll remind you of one thing before you and I drop this forever.”
“Forever?” he said doubtfully.
“Forever,” she reiterated, piercing him with a glare. “When you and Harmony were first sneaking around this summer and I was the lucky party who stumbled in on the fact, what did I do?”
Kyle became reflective. “You called me a frog-faced good-for-nothing and hoped I’d get myself trampled by wild heifers. Then you gave me a nurple and told me to mind where I pointed my nether joints.” His gaze rested on her again. “Hard to forget.”
“After that,” she said, “when the initial shock and ‘ew’ factor had worn off somewhat, I kept it a secret when you both wanted it secret. More, I didn’t keep you apart.”
Kyle spoke levelly. “So...you’re asking me to believe that what happened between you and Gavin is equal to what’s between me and Harmony?”
Mavis glanced from him to Harmony. Her friend’s eyes were wide on hers. Mavis shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Kyle surveyed her, his stare passing left and right over her before settling. “I’ll say one last thing.”
Mavis couldn’t contain a quiet sigh of relief.
“If it was me where he is and Harmony where you are...nothing would be keeping me away at this point. You see, that’s where I doubt he’s in the same place you are, emotionally.”
“I’m not emotional,” she denied.
He stared at her, grim. He raised his beer to his mouth. “I’ve never seen you so emotional. Why do you think I’m so worked up about this?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, and shrugged, because she didn’t know what else to say or do. Gavin was still gone.
“Your heart isn’t any different from the rest of ours,” Harmony said kindly. She glanced up at Kyle. “Neither is his.”
“Hey, Kyle,” Olivia called from across the bar. She jerked her thumb to the stage. “You’re up!”
Kyle took a breath. “We’ll finish this
later.”
“I’m good with now,” Mavis replied.
He took off his hat and placed it backward over Harmony’s braided red updo. “Your cousin talked me into hitting the karaoke.”
Harmony crooned. “What’re you going to sing for me? No Beyoncé. Liv’s saving that for me. Do ‘Beast of Burden.’ I love when you do Jagger.”
“As you wish.” He kissed the skin along the ridge of her shoulder soundly before pointing sternly at Mavis. “No throwing peanuts at me like last time.”
Mavis shrugged, nonchalant. “There’s a reason they leave the singing to me.”
Olivia met Kyle at the head of the room. A grand introduction and overtures of homecoming followed. Mavis raised her glass as Harmony bounced on her stool, clapping like a lunatic. “That’s my husband, y’all!” she hollered.
Mavis shook her head. “Your single girl status has been wiped.”
“Kyle, do the hip roll!” Harmony guffawed when he did as she suggested.
Mavis turned away from the display and found a fresh margarita waiting on the bar. William stood behind it, polishing an empty pint with a cloth. “Round two,” he supplied.
She wrapped both hands around the glass. “Your timing is impeccable.”
William gave her a sideways smile, set the clean pint aside and reached for another. “That’s why I’m the new boss.”
“That’s right,” Mavis said. Olivia had only recently handed over the tavern reins to her eldest son. She and Gerald now were in charge of special events alone. She raised her glass again. “Well deserved.”
“Why, thank you,” he said with a bow of his head. “Only took a decade to wear the lady down.”
Chin propped in her hand, Mavis looked at him thoughtfully. He was the reedy kind of tall. He had green eyes, a slow grin and a voice like a baritone. Plaid was his go-to shirt pattern, much like her father. He liked to pair it, oddly enough, with board shorts and flip-flops. Blond and tan, he’d become a maverick behind his parents’ bar not because legacy dictated it but because he came by bartending naturally. Observing was Mavis’s gift; listening was his—and mixing.
He’d once made her palms sweat and her glands sing. And after all this time, there was sentiment there. As well as a little awkwardness. And now that everyone knew what they’d carefully buried, the awkwardness had doubled down. Bringing the margarita closer, Mavis scooped salt off the rim with her fingertip. She stuck it in her mouth. Her insecurities from years ago flared like a sore tendon. “Out of curiosity,” she said cautiously, “how did she take the news...about you and me?”
William raised both brows. “At first, she didn’t believe it because she thinks she’s better at reading Finnian and me than she actually is. When it finally sank in, she was impressed that I pulled it off—sorry. That we pulled it off, together, for so long. Also that Finn was able to keep his mouth shut about it.”
Mavis thought about that. Finnian was a notorious blabbermouth. “Yeah. How’d he manage that?”
“I paid him,” William said, ducking his head as if he were still ashamed.
Mavis laughed out loud. “You did not.”
“I learned early that the only thing that can shut my brother up is money,” William pointed out.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. “Any other feelings from the home front, about us?” she asked.
“Well, she did say that the subterfuge wasn’t necessary. She likes you. I think she’s a little upset with me for letting you get away.”
Mavis took a sip from the margarita. “I thought it was what you wanted.”
“What?” he asked, his hand hovering over the next pint in the queue.
She set the glass down, carefully. “Wasn’t it?”
William braced both his hands on the edge of the counter, scrutinizing. “I thought it was what you wanted. That’s why you ended it.”
Well, hell. Mavis sighed. “Oh, brother.”
He continued to stare, blank-faced.
She shook her head. “If you wanted to keep on, why did you let me end it?”
“Because I was a dumbass,” he said blandly. “I was young. I didn’t know the first thing about holding on to a woman. I figured you wanted something else. So I let you go.”
“Oh, I wanted something else all right,” she grumbled. Then she winced. “You didn’t...pine for me. Did you?”
William glanced over her head. He lifted his shoulder, eyes tracking their way back to her slowly. “Maybe a little.”
Mavis put her face in her palm. She cursed out loud.
“I don’t like the word pine,” he said, using the cloth to wipe down the space of the bar between them. “I like to think it was a little more dignified than that. Like brooding.”
“You pined!” She was going to need another margarita. “And you never said a word?”
“I cared enough to let you go,” he noted. “That’s what you do. ‘Love ’em and let ’em go’? It felt adult, at least. I figured if what we had was right, you’d find your way back at some point.”
She’d often wondered why some other woman hadn’t married him already. She wanted to believe, more than anything, that it wasn’t because of her. However, William had just blown up a whole decade’s worth of insecurities and assumptions. Now she didn’t know what to believe.
“Don’t hate me for this,” he said, treading gingerly. “But...would now be a bad time to ask if you’re available?”
She blinked. “No. Yes. No.” She held up a hand to stop herself. “Okay, it’s clear I don’t know the answer to that, either.”
“Are you—pining?” William asked. “Over him?”
Gavin. Of course he knew about Gavin. Everybody from here to Shreveport knew about her and Gavin, the same as everyone knew about her and William.
He nodded, gleaning the answer for himself. He went back to wiping, though the bar was noticeably clean. “It’s, uh, none of my business.”
Mavis frowned deeply. “You’d be the first to say as much.”
“Can I ask how you’re doing?”
“Fine.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said. He was doing his listening thing, she knew.
She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Look, just do yourself a solid and stay away from the lunkhead onstage,” she advised. “I’d prefer to keep seeing more than the top of your head.”
“The top of my head?”
“After he buries you,” she said, and paused for impact. “Alive.”
William glanced askance at the singing amateur. “Oh.”
She spread her fingers. “What’d you expect getting involved with the commando’s sister?”
He scratched his forehead with one finger. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t know. What’d you want to be with me for?”
“It felt safe.” It tumbled out before she realized she was saying it. When he homed in on her again, she looked away for the first time. “I...felt safe with you,” she finished lamely.
It took a moment. William’s mouth moved to a smile.
She lifted a finger at him. “Not another word.”
“Okay,” he said easily. He looked down. The smile grew.
Dear God, would somebody marry him? He was decent—likely the most decent guy she’d ever known. “Liv’s still got her double shotty,” she said. “Keep it loaded and take it to bed with you.”
“You don’t have to worry about me and your brother,” William said with something of confidence.
That was something. “If only,” she said out loud.
William’s part-time bartender shouted at him from across the bar and rattled off a large order of draft beers. He logged the information in his mind, tossed the cloth into the sink behind him and moved to fill the requests. He took a glass off the mirrored shelf above the long row of chrome-and-gold taps, chose o
ne and began to build the draft with only a small bit of foam on top. “Do you think we’ll hear you sing tonight?” he called back to Mavis.
She glanced at her near-empty margarita. “Make me another when you’ve got a minute and time will tell.”
“Easy there,” he advised. “You never were great at holding tequila.”
“My homegirl’s getting married, and I’d like to forget some stuff, at least until tomorrow.”
“All right then,” William acquiesced. “Round three, coming up.”
No sooner had he moved down the row of taps than a large hand clapped over her shoulder. “It’s your turn.”
Mavis squinted at Kyle. “Huh?”
“I’ve humiliated myself,” he indicated. “You’ll kill up there and humiliate me further. Win-win on your part.”
“I like where I’m at,” she claimed, and started to turn back to the bar.
“Don’t make me start,” Kyle advised. When she only doubled back to frown at him, he began to chant, “Mavis. Mavis. Mavis—”
She straightened when Harmony and several other tavern regulars struck up the tune. “Stop it.”
Kyle raised his voice, pumping his fist. “Mavis! Mavis! Mavis!”
The chant went up through the bar like wildfire. She scowled when she heard William taking up the call to arms, too.
Kyle grinned. “Come on! Give the people what they want!”
“Later,” she said, low, as she rose from the stool, “I’m going to throw a quail plate at your head.”
Kyle answered by tossing her unceremoniously over his shoulder.
Mavis thought about clawing him as he hustled her through bystanders to the stage. They parted for him. When he set her on her feet, he pecked a kiss to the center of her forehead and backed off quickly before she could bludgeon him. “Mavis Bracken, ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the mic before darting off.
Mavis pushed the hair from her face. As the music queued, she stepped to the microphone. She cleared her throat and raised her hand to the crowd. “Hi.” Lyrics flashed on the screen overhead. It was a Beatles song. She glanced at Kyle, tall and distinguishable despite his retreat to Harmony’s side.
Beatles songs had always been their weekend specialties at the farm.
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