Top of the list? That had to be how much Flynn hated himself. Or at least the sad-sack version of himself he’d turned into since entering WITSEC.
“These should quiet down those thirsty backpackers. Thank you, Flynn,” said a soft voice to his left. He whipped his head around to stare at the waitress as she picked up a tray of longnecks.
The pretty waitress.
The one thing in his life Flynn absolutely did not hate.
She was girl-next-door pretty. With long hair that fell in waves, the same dark brown as a good vanilla porter. Eyebrows that arched her face into a smile even when her lips didn’t play along. Skinnier than his usual type back home, but it worked on her. She was small and fragile-looking. Made a guy want to be careful with her. Kiss her slowly. Thoroughly. Keep kissing her while taking off that blue shirt and finding out if her bra underneath matched . . .
The pretty waitress drove him crazy. Because Flynn wanted her. Had since his first shift here a month ago.
That was a hell of a long time to want a woman and not make a move on her.
But he was no good. No good for her, no good for any woman. Flynn was a morose son of a bitch who lied 24/7 to everyone but his two brothers and he wouldn’t inflict himself on anyone, let alone someone as sweet as Sierra.
Sierra . . . huh. He didn’t even know her last name. Not that it mattered. Because a name didn’t tell you jack shit.
At least, he hoped his current name didn’t tell anyone anything about him.
“Dude. My beer.”
The outrage in Kellan’s voice was enough to make Flynn tear his gaze away from Sierra and notice the foam pouring down the side of the glass. No wonder his little brother sounded pissed.
“Sorry, K.” He flipped off the tap.
“You hear that sound?”
Flynn cocked his head. Since it was Sunday night, there was only the jukebox going instead of a live band. Only a handful of the less than two dozen tables were filled. The pool table wasn’t being used in the back room. No darts going on, either. All in all, even for a Sunday night in June this bar was quiet. Which, to his mind, perfectly summed up this town of three thousand locals. “Hear what?”
“The sound of generations of our Irish ancestors rolling over in their graves.” Kellan grabbed a stack of cocktail napkins and wiped off the glass. “Sure an’ the fairies will punish you with bad dreams for wasting the mother’s milk of our land,” he said in a thick Irish accent.
“There’s no fairies in Oregon.”
Shaking a finger, Kellan gave him a look of disappointment. Something Flynn had gotten used to seeing from both him and Rafe, more and more often. “Is there no magic in your heart then, young Maguire?”
“No,” he said shortly. Then Flynn remembered that Kellan had volunteered to leave the house tonight so Rafe and his girlfriend, Mollie, could have some privacy. And he’d sat here keeping Flynn’s sorry ass company all night. So he ratcheted up the corners of his mouth to a smile. Well, something closer to a smile than his usual scowl. “But there’s no bullet lodged in there, either, so I guess that’s something.”
“Jesus, Flynn.” Kellan hunched his shoulders. Threw a lightning quick glance over each shoulder. “You can’t say stuff like that. You know the rules. No discussing your old, um, career in public.”
The only occupied tables were down by the doorway to the room with the pool table. Flynn could hear Carlos, the Gorse’s manager, groaning over whatever baseball game he was listening to in his office. Sierra was still delivering that tray of drinks. He could’ve literally named every member of McGinty’s crew and nobody would’ve heard a thing. Kellan was just overly paranoid.
Of course, Kellan hadn’t been used to lying his whole life, like Flynn and Rafe. They hadn’t come out and talked about being in the mob to their dates, but they also mostly hung out with women who knew the score. Whose families were involved, too. To everyone else they encountered—from doctors to bartenders to the kids he’d mentored—they’d stuck to their cover stories.
It’d been easier for Flynn, since he ran the legit business. The one they could launder money through whenever McGinty needed a fast influx of clean cash. The one that supplied paychecks on the up-and-up so that they all looked like tax-paying, law-abiding citizens, even if most of the organization only worked on Flynn’s construction sites a couple of times a month.
He was used to how it felt to say one thing and know there were three more things deliberately being left unsaid. And he’d honed an instinct about when it was safe to reveal more.
Kellan didn’t have the luxury of those years of training. He was still in the paranoid phase, assuming that everyone who crossed paths with the Maguire brothers could see right through them to their dirty-dealing histories.
Probably because that’s all he saw when he looked at his brothers. They’d pulled Kellan from law school with only a semester to go after he’d worked his ass off to learn everything there was about justice. About being on the side of right and might.
Then he’d found out the rest of his family stood on the other side of that line.
“Relax.” Flynn whipped his bar towel at Kellan’s shoulder. “What did we tell you was rule number one?”
“Ever? Don’t touch your shit without asking.”
“Still true. But I meant the number one rule of this.” He circled his hand to indicate not just the cranberry red walls of the Gorse, but the whole cranberry-crazy town.
“Nobody thinks you’re guilty. Unless you give them a reason to.” Kellan winced. “That’s abominable grammar, by the way.”
“There’s no grades when it comes to what it takes to stay alive. You either do or you don’t.”
“Great pep talk. Thanks, bro.”
Shit. Kellan was trying. But everything that used to get through to Flynn didn’t work anymore. He didn’t care about his clothes—and he used to buy every piece of workout gear between the covers of GQ. He didn’t care about missing the fight club. He certainly didn’t care about this bartending job that he’d been pushed into.
Instinctively, his gaze searched the room for Sierra. The one thing in this new life that made him feel . . . anything. Even if it was mostly frustration. Blue balls were no fucking fun. Working a whole shift with them? The worst. Just looking at Sierra, though, would soothe the frayed edges of guilt poking at his stomach for being a jerk to his brother. When he didn’t find her, Flynn forced himself to look back at Kellan.
“Sorry. I’m being a dick.” Add that to his list of things he hated. Because deep down, he really hated this fucking attitude that he couldn’t shake. Now, though, it was comfortable. As easy to slip on as a pair of fleece pants.
Flynn worried that the day was coming—soon—when he’d lose the ability to ever take it off again.
“Oh, you mean tonight? Yeah. You’ve been a total dick. Pretty much every day for the past seven months, too? You bet.” Kellan lifted his mug in a fake toast, then drained almost half of it.
Offering up as close as he could get to an olive branch, Flynn said, “This isn’t as easy as we thought it’d be.”
“Nope.” Kellan cocked his head to the side. Those blue eyes, way lighter than his own, squinted at him. “Want to tell me what exactly you and Rafe were high on when you thought this might be easy?”
Drugs were for idiots. “You know we don’t touch that stuff.”
“Yet it’s the only explanation I’ve got for you two thinking this would be a cakewalk.”
Before he could defend himself, a loud shattering noise had Flynn jerking around just in time to see Sierra fall to the floor in a heap. Right next to a knocked-over table with a spray of broken glasses all around it. That she was lying in the middle of.
He didn’t bother going down to the end of the bar and lifting the hatch. Every second he wasted was another moment that Sierra might put out her hand to lever up and cut herself. So Flynn just planted a palm in the middle of the bar and vaulted over it.
C
rouching next to Sierra, he heard the crunch of glass as Kellan rushed to his side. “Don’t move,” he cautioned her. Flynn put a hand lightly on her abdomen to drive the point home. Tried not to notice the way she tightened at his touch.
“It’s hard to serve beers from the floor,” she quipped. And those bluish-gray eyes that almost never looked at him head-on lifted to meet his. With what he’d swear to his dying day was an audible click.
Nah.
Had to be the crushed glass shifting.
Didn’t it?
It was easy for Flynn to slip back into his take-charge mode. It was a mask he’d put on every day at the construction company and he knew exactly how much force to put into his voice to be sure people listened to him—and responded. “Where are you hurt?”
A self-deprecating smile ghosted at the edges of her pretty pink lips. “My pride’s pretty well bruised.”
“Sierra.”
“My ankle.” She sighed. “I landed on it and sort of twisted.”
“Kellan, we’ll need ice.” His brother wordlessly left to carry out the order. Flynn splayed his fingers wider when he felt Sierra start to shift. “Does it hurt anywhere else? Are you cut?”
“No. Just sticky and wet from all this beer now on the floor.”
Sticky and wet. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that the woman was trying to get a rise out of him.
But Flynn did know better. Because while Sierra was just about the only person he felt comfortable talking to, she sure as hell didn’t flirt with him. Not ever. Only made bearable by the fact that she didn’t flirt with anyone else, either.
“I’m going to pick you up,” he announced. “Once you’re vertical, put all your weight on me. Then I’ll brush off the glass.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” Sierra spoke so quickly all the words merged together into one.
What the hell? Why did she sound . . . scared at the idea of him holding her?
Flynn put an arm beneath her knees and worked the other behind her neck and down her back. Glass nicked the back of his hand.
It didn’t matter.
Because he was finally touching her. He might as well have been lifting a dandelion, she weighed so little. Even though he consciously held her away from his body because of the glass, Flynn noticed everything. The firm calf muscle against the back of his hand. The heat of her back through the sticky shirt. The way it pulled taut against her small breasts.
He watched to be sure she kept one foot off the floor, and then stood her up. Flynn grabbed the bar rag from where he’d stuffed it into his waistband and wrapped it around his hand for protection. Sierra white-knuckled his left arm.
Slowly, carefully, he brushed her off from shoulders to ankles in long, sweeping motions. He kept an eye peeled for any dots of blood on her shirt that might indicate a nick. Instead, it was just the blood from the backs of his knuckles seeping through the towel. Flynn tried like hell to keep the whole thing professional. Medicinal. One coworker performing a safety check of another.
Yeah. That angle sure as hell wasn’t working for him.
When he finished her sides, Flynn came back around in front. Damn if her cheeks weren’t pink. “I’m going to carry you into the back now.”
“Oh, but Flynn, you—”
Whatever objection she was trying to get out he cut off by sweeping her back into his arms. This time, he did hold her close. Who knew when he’d ever have another chance? Flynn cradled her against his chest.
Holy hell. He almost stumbled in shock and decided that—if her ankle wasn’t broken—this would now rank as his best day since they’d moved to this dot on the map. Maybe even his best day in the last four dots.
Holding Sierra was like holding sunlight. Her warmth shot through him, reminding him how good it felt to be alive. How good it felt to be a man. That maybe life wasn’t a complete shitstorm after all.
Reminded him that no matter how hard he tried to be good and stay away from her . . . well, maybe he wasn’t good enough to be that strong anymore.
This rush of goodness was the way he’d heard some of the mobsters talk about doing heroin. Flynn had no doubt that Sierra was even more addictive.
And dangerous. At least for him.
The trip around the bar and down the hallway to the manager’s office took too little time. He had no excuse to keep holding her. No excuse to keep rubbing his cheek against Sierra’s soft hair. No excuse for inhaling deeply and appreciating the clean, floral scent that spurted want and need and full-out lust straight down to his dick.
So Flynn placed her on the rolling wooden chair that Carlos pushed at him. Then he knelt in front of her and pulled her bad leg onto his knee.
Carlos put a hand on Sierra’s shoulder. His thick eyebrows joined into a single dark line of concern. “Dios mio. What happened?”
“I was careless.” She waved a hand, dismissing the whole thing. “A couple of the darts landed way off the board. I climbed onto a table to get them, but they were stuck into the wall so well that I lost my balance and fell.”
“The drunk who threw them into my wall should’ve pulled them out,” Carlos growled.
Sierra ducked her head. “It’s no big deal. Really. I was just trying to be helpful. Instead, I’ve disrupted everyone and made a mess. I’m sorry.”
The woman risked herself for stupid darts? Flynn’s worry for her morphed into anger. “You’re lucky you aren’t cut from landing on all that glass. Why didn’t you ask me to do it?”
In a low voice, not looking at him, she answered, “I didn’t want to bother you.”
A brick between the eyes would’ve hurt Flynn less. This was his fault. One hundred percent. He’d tried not to let his fucked-up darkness touch her in any way. She was his first friend here in Bandon—pretty much the only one he had besides Carlos. Something about Sierra’s bone-deep sweetness made Flynn comfortable. Made him let down the guard he kept up around everyone else. She never pushed or asked hard questions. They just talked, and it was the most relaxed he was any given day.
But tonight he’d been wallowing in self-pity. Again. She must’ve picked up on his crap mood, and that made her unwilling to ask a man who topped her by at least six inches for a basic, work-related assist.
Flynn wanted to howl his frustration at his own idiocy. Actually, he really wanted to find a heavy bag and whale on it for a couple of hours until his knuckles ached, his lungs burned, and his muscles cried for mercy.
But now was the time to focus on Sierra. “I’m sorry. Sorry that you didn’t feel comfortable asking me for help. For the future? I’ll do whatever you need. No matter what I’m in the middle of. Got it?”
She nodded, long hair still shadowing her face.
Flynn unlaced her black sneaker. It was streaked with different colors of paint. It made him wonder what she did in her off-hours. Was she painting her house? Would she be climbing a ladder with a weak ankle? Would she let him help, or refuse his not-yet-made offer?
Even though he was careful easing the shoe off, Sierra’s sharp intake of breath made her pain at the movement obvious. Which made Flynn’s guilt stab into his gut even deeper.
Sierra’s ankle was already swelling. He didn’t even have to roll down her black-and-white polka-dotted socks to see that. Frankly, he didn’t trust himself to touch her skin again. “Ice,” he barked as soon as Kellan hustled into the room.
His brother handed over a dish towel bulging with cubes. “I’ll go out and clean up while you two take care of her.” He grabbed the broom and dustpan from the corner on his way out.
“Thanks, Kellan.” Carlos barely spared him a glance as he fussed over Sierra with little pats and frowns. He was acting like a grandpa instead of a hard-ass covered in tats and a telltale curve to his nose indicating multiple breaks. “Do you want a drink, Sierra? A couple of shots to cut the pain?”
“Oh, no. I’ve got ibuprofen at home. I’d rather take that than make myself feel worse with a hangover.”
“No.” She looked up at that to give him an amused half smile. “I’m not one of those women who reapplies their lipstick every twenty minutes.”
He’d noticed. He’d noticed everything about her look. Natural. Like hippy-natural. Which he found weirdly sexy. Weird because the women he’d dated in Chicago were all big boobs, loud makeup, and bigger hair. Sierra was just . . . herself. Which turned Flynn on more than he’d been willing to admit. Okay, hell. He’d admitted it. He’d just refused to act on it.
Until tonight.
Until seeing her crumpled on the floor of the bar. It had sent a primal surge of protectiveness through him that unlocked everything he’d kept tamped down for weeks now. All the interest. Lust. Attraction. Need.
Carlos produced a brush from his desk drawer. “Here. It’s Madalena’s.” She was his sister who did the books for the Gorse. Flynn had only met her once, but appreciated her no-nonsense personality. “I’ll go watch the bar for you, Flynn.”
“Thanks.” He carefully pulled Sierra’s hair over her shoulders so it draped down her back. “This should be the quickest way to get the glass out.”
“Oh, but you don’t have to—”
That was the kicker. After spending years doing what people told him he had to, Flynn now did only the bare minimum. Sure, he could just hand her the brush. But this, helping Sierra, was a compulsion he couldn’t resist. “I know I don’t have to. I want to help. Let me.”
“Okay.” Her shoulders relaxed down at least an inch as she sighed. Then Sierra sighed again as the bristles made contact with her scalp. This one was different, though. It was pure feminine pleasure.
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