by Jadyn Chase
Kylen’s Secret
Smokey Mountain Dragons
Jadyn Chase
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Copyright © 2019 by Jadyn Chase
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.
Contents
1. Hannah
2. Kylen
3. Hannah
4. Kylen
5. Hannah
6. Kylen
7. Kylen
8. Hannah
9. Kylen
10. Hannah
11. Kylen
12. Hannah
13. Kylen
Epilogue
More from Jadyn
1
Hannah
“Well, hello there!”
That was the response I got from every man who walked through the door of the Watering Hole bar in Norton, Georgia. I could say that was the response I got from everyone who walked through the door, but they were all men, without exception.
I squared my shoulders to face them all down. I kept my voice steady and gave each one a polite, “Hello,” back.
I should have expected this. If a strange woman moves to a new town and takes a job as a bartender, she’s bound to attract attention from the male clientele. Right? Right.
Several dozen times that first night, I asked myself while I polished the glasses and wiped down the bar, What am I doing here? I told myself I should have gotten in my car and driven back to Fayetteville where I belonged.
How did I get here? I couldn’t even remember exactly. Oh, wait. Yes, I could. I promised myself I would leave home as soon as I got my driver’s license. Then my aunt convinced me I couldn’t do anything with my life without a high school diploma, so I waited until I graduated from high school.
I promised myself I would leave right after high school—just hit the road and never look back. Then I ran into my high school guidance counselor at the grocery store. She convinced me I would have a better chance if I got some kind of work skill, so I stayed again.
I got halfway through an accounting degree at the local community college. One night Father got drunk and beat up Mama the way he always did when he had a few too many. I just couldn’t stand it a second longer. I didn’t have as much money saved up as I hoped, but none of that mattered anymore. I got in my car and started driving.
I stopped for gas in Norton. When I went to pay for it at the counter, I discovered I had thirty dollars left in my pocket. That wasn’t enough to buy another tank of gas. When I returned to my car, I spotted the sign over at the Watering Hole. Bartender Needed. Apply Within, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So that explains what I was doing there and how I got there. Only now, standing behind the bar greeting every redneck in five counties and serving them beer and liquor by the gallon, did I realize my mistake. Every single one of them reminded me of my Daddy, and now I had no money to leave.
I kicked myself and started making plans. I would save up some more money. I would put up with these drunks for a few months, just long enough to get a different job. Then I would go back to the community college, finish my accounting degree, and head north.
Another posse of mule-kickers trooped in, and they all stopped inside the doorway. One big bruiser with his shaved scalp covered in tats raised an eyebrow when he saw me. “Well, hello there. What have we here?”
I nodded to him. “Hello.” Then I turned back to my work. The longer this went on, the more uncomfortable I got, but it only got worse when he sauntered over to me.
He propped one arm on the bar. Thick, bright red hair covered his arm from knuckles to his elbow, and a fine powder of dust clung to each hair. The early evening sun streaming through the window lit up his hair to blazing fire red.
Curiosity made me look up at him. At this distance, I could see his eyebrows were red, too. His pale green eyes sparkled, and a twisted grin spread over his face. “You’re new here, aren’t you? What’s your name?”
“Hannah,” I replied. “Hannah Larsen.”
“I’m Everette. Everette Lynch.” He held out his hand, but to my great relief, I had my hands full of glasses from the dishwasher, so I didn’t have to shake it. “Did you just move to town or something?”
“Something like that.” I put away the glass I was drying. “What can I get you?”
“A bottle of Corona and two shots of Tequila.”
I served him as quickly as I could. I had to get away from him to serve his friends, anyway, and the rough face looking out from all that ink gave me the creeps.
I got so busy pouring drinks and drawing pitchers from the beer taps that I lost sight of Everette in the crowd. I was never so glad to lose sight of someone.
His friends kept me occupied for a while, but pretty soon, they drifted away to the pool tables and poker games going on in the background. They left the bar clear, but I caught the occasional glimpse of them in the crowd. Everette’s bald head loomed above everyone else’s, and his hulking frame dwarfed all of his friends. His voice boomed over the ruckus so I heard every word he said.
About an hour later, the door flew open. The wind caught it and smashed it against the wall, and five more men came in. One giant muscular mountain man type grabbed the door and hauled it closed behind them.
They stopped just inside, and all their eyes migrated to me. I braced myself for another confrontation, but it didn’t come. The man nearest to me locked his blue eyes on me, and for an instant, the whole bar went deathly quiet. All activity ceased, or was it only in my head?
His straight blonde hair parted on the side and fell part way over his chiseled, angular face. Delicate lips quivered somewhere between a smile and a frown, but that face could never look dark or forbidding like so many others I saw that night. That face revealed a depth of curiosity and intelligence that inspired me to find out who he was.
He wasn’t the biggest in the group. That huge guy behind him stood several inches taller, but something about him made him stand out from the crowd. A clean, button-down blue shirt showed off his wide shoulders, and his jeans accentuated his narrow hips and long, slender legs. He wore polished leather cowboy boots underneath.
Just then, a younger man on his far side let out a loud laugh. My eye snapped to him. He guffawed toward Everett Lynch and his party at the poker tables. That made me notice the silence. It wasn’t in my head at all. Everett and his friends glared at the newcomers, who glared back. A palpable wave of hostility strained the whole room.
Everyone present waited with bated breath to see what would happen. Everett bared his teeth at the strangers, but the tall, blonde guy didn’t take his eyes off me. His big friend elbowed him, and the five of them sauntered toward the bar.
The blonde guy stopped right in front of me. His blue eyes mesmerized me like no one I’d ever met before. He nodded. “How are you doing?”
I gulped. “I’m fine. What can I get for you?”
“A bottle of Jailhouse for me, and…” He looked over his shoulder. “What are you having, Ezra?” He spotted the big guy elbowing his way toward the darts target and grinned. “I guess he’ll tell you himself what he wants.”
I put the beer bottle in front of him. I had to turn aw
ay to serve his friends, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay there and talk to him. I glanced to my right to see his young comrade already drawing a pitcher of Budweiser from the taps. He would have walked away drinking straight out of the pitcher if the blonde hadn’t called him back. “Hey, Liam! Come back here and pay for that.”
Liam tossed a twenty on the bar and disappeared. Now nothing stopped me from staying right where I was. The stranger cocked his head. “What’s your name?”
“Hannah,” I told him. “Hannah Larsen.”
He raised his bottle. “Very nice to meet you. What’s a nice young lady like you doing in a dive like this?”
I shrugged, and the color rushed to my cheeks. His eyes gave me a quivery feeling in my middle. “I’m just passing through and I ran out of money to buy gas. I saw this place needed a bartender, so I figured, why not? How about you?”
“Oh, I live here,” he replied. “I was born and raised on Smokey Mountain just out of town. That ox over there is my brother Ezra, and that whippersnapper over there is my other brother Liam. Those are my two cousins, Wyatt and Adrian.”
I studied him closer. Everything about him captivated me. “You didn’t tell me your name.”
His face burst into a brilliant smile, and his cheeks flushed pink. He lowered his eyelashes for a second, and his lips twitched like he wanted to suppress that irrepressible smile. “I’m Kylen. Kylen Kelly.”
He stuck out his hand and I shook it. My instincts told me to drop it in a hurry, but for some reason, I couldn’t compel myself to let it go. His palm radiated heat up my arm, and his fingertips seemed to excite an electric response from the sensitive skin on the back of my knuckles.
He finally managed to let go and raised his bottle to his lips. I covered my embarrassment by nodding toward the bottle. “Not many people order Jailhouse. I was beginning to wonder if anybody knew we even carried it.”
He lifted it up again like he was making a toast. “Gotta keep it local, you know. Besides, it tastes a lot better than some of the swill these guys drink.”
“I’m impressed,” I told him.
He broke out laughing. “If that’s all it takes to impress you, then you’re an easy sell.”
I blushed. I went through the motions of serving anybody who came to the bar, but he commanded my whole attention. I always migrated back to talking to him.
“So where are you staying?” he asked. “Please tell me you have a decent place to stay.”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I replied. “Larry, the owner, rented me a room upstairs. He’s taking the rent out of my wages until I get on my feet.”
“That’s going to get awful lonely, just going back and forth between your room and the bar,” he remarked. “You’ll want to get out and meet people, I imagine.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “I’m meeting people now. I just met you.”
He bowed his head and laughed again. That laugh infected me with a sense of hope and excitement for the first time in…. well, I couldn’t remember when. I never really dared to hope before—about anything.
Just then, a thud startled me into spinning around. There was that same red-haired arm propped up on the bar with Everett attached to the other end, but he didn’t pay any attention to me. He glared at Kylen. “You and your brothers clear out. This is our bar.”
Kylen didn’t turn around. He took a leisurely sip of his beer and set the bottle down in exactly the same circle of condensation on the bartop. “Norton is neutral territory. You know the rules, Everett. If you don’t like it, you can clear out yourself.”
The palpable tension between the two sent another wave of oppressive silence through the establishment. All noise died. The clink of billiard balls and poker chips fell quiet. No one moved except Everett’s friends, who eased in behind him to menace Kylen.
“You should know better than to turn up here,” Everett snarled. “We’ll bury you if you don’t make yourselves scarce.”
Ever so slowly, Kylen rose off his bar stool and faced Everett. Everett towered over him. His massive body made Kylen look slight, but Kylen stood up to him. “You’ll be burying yourself and your whole Clan if you go around shooting your mouth off like that in public.”
Everett clenched his teeth. His tattoos gave him an evil, animalistic appearance. He bumped his huge chest into Kylen hard enough to push him back a step. “You’re playing with fire, boy.”
Liam materialized out of the crowd. I didn’t see where he came from. He sandwiched himself against Kylen’s shoulder. Neither of them came up to Everett’s nose. Wyatt and Adrian wormed their way over and took their positions behind Kylen. Now the two groups faced down in what promised to be a devastating collision of testosterone and brawn.
Everett sneered at the four of them. “Is this the way you want it? Do you really want to start a turf war over this flea-bitten town?”
Out of nowhere, the giant figure of Ezra cast a shadow over the scene. He jammed his body between Kylen and Everett. Of the whole Kelly group, he alone stood as tall as Everett. Ezra’s sheer size pushed Everett back, and Everett had to look straight ahead to make eye contact with him.
Ezra’s voice rumbled deep in his chest. “If anybody starts a war, it will be you. We came here for a drink and a game with our friends—nothing more. Now back off before I send your useless ass back to your Mama in a body bag.”
2
Kylen
I kept watch on the Watering Hole long after we left. Ezra slunk up behind me and murmured in my ear. “Come on, man. It’s a long drive home, and I’m tired.”
I didn’t turn around. “You go ahead. I’m sticking around a little longer.”
“Don’t go getting into trouble,” he warned. “You heard what Pop said.”
“I won’t get into trouble. Go home.”
His footsteps crunched in the gravel. A minute later, the Jeep purred out of Norton on its way back to The Ridge on Smokey Mountain. I probably should have gone with them, but I couldn’t leave.
She was in there. I never thought I’d live to see the day a girl as sweet as her would drop out of the clear blue sky, right into my own bar, but there she was.
Long after Ezra said it was time to leave, she haunted me. I spent the whole time sitting at the bar talking to her. Even now, I pictured her in front of me. Long, wavy layers of molten blonde hair swooped down to her shoulder blades. Deep black pools of eyes hinted at the forgotten depths in her soul. No one ever touched those secret places. She kept them hidden from the world, but something in them made me think she wanted to show them to me.
Beige leggings hugged her long, athletic legs tapering down to Converse sneakers. A close-fitting, long-sleeved t-shirt revealed the sloping line of her ribs blending to her shapely waist. The outline of her lacy bra hinted at the round ample breasts underneath.
Cripes, what was I thinking hanging around Norton in the small hours of the morning, sweating over some girl—and an outsider, at that? She told me point blank she was just passing through.
Still, something kept me captive there, and it wasn’t Hannah. Well, it wasn’t only Hannah. No, it was the way Everett Lynch looked at her when he noticed her smiling at me.
No one knew better than he did not to mess with the neutrality agreement between the Kelly’s and the Lynches. He had no good reason under the sun to get in my face like that. He did it because of Hannah. He did it to make her stop talking to me. He did it to steal her attention to himself.
I didn’t tell Ezra or Liam that. I didn’t have to. They both knew enough to put the pieces together on their own. Ezra would drive home and tell my Pop what happened. Any confrontation like that with the Lynches could only mean more of the same in the future, and that concerned the whole Clan.
Every nerve snapped to attention when the neon Watering Hole sign over the bar switched off. The lights died behind the windows and the place went dark. I stiffened in my hiding place and watched the door whisper open. It was her.
Hannah ca
me out and turned her back to the street to lock the door. She had to leave through the front door, lock up, and walk around the back of the building to the stairs leading up to her rented room. Only someone who lived their whole life in these mountains would know that.
When she told me Larry rented her that room, my mind went into overdrive. She had to walk outside completely unprotected. Now here she was with her back to the world. It was the most dangerous position to be in, and she probably didn’t even realize it.
Or maybe she did realize it. Her hands fumbled with the keys and she dropped them. They clattered onto the sidewalk. She bent down to pick them up and dropped them again. She must have been nervous, so she must have been smart to know the risk. She looked over her shoulder toward the street and I caught a glimpse of wild terror in her eyes. She knew, all right.
She finally got hold of the keys and slotted the right one in. She flipped it and the bolt shot home. She pulled the keys out and dropped them in her pocket. She turned away, and that’s when it happened.
A deep-throated chuckle vibrated out of the gloom. Every hair on my neck stood on end. How did I know this was going to happen? Those Lynches couldn’t be more transparent if they tried.
Everett strolled out of the dark. He rocked from one thick leg to the other. His brothers emerged from the shadows beyond and they all converged on Hannah. She shot a glance at Everett and started walking faster, but they cut her off before she got to the corner.
Everett saw her making her move. He darted forward and dodged in front of her. “Hey, little lady,” he rasped. “Where do you think you’re going?”