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Chapter ThirteenAdam wasn’t sure when the night had taken a turn for the what-the-fuck, but Jules seemed determined to throw herself into getting shit-housed drunk to be scandalous. She was three shots down and weaving on her feet. He recognized that look in her eye, though. There would be no backing down, and if he tried to derail her, it would backfire.
Whoever put it into the woman’s head that she was on the shelf was a goddamn fool.
“How about—”
“You’re right. Stuart, another purple nurple!”
Stuart shot him a wide-eyed look but started pouring Jules another of the sickeningly sweet shots. Adam wasn’t sure why she couldn’t just shoot whiskey. It was a classic. He leaned against the bar. It was time to distract her before he had to carry her out of here over his shoulder. “So you’re planning on showing Grant up by, what, getting blackout drunk and passing out facedown in a pile of your own puke?”
“Ew, gross. No.” She made a face and then had to catch herself on the bar when she swayed too much to one side. “Don’t be silly. I’m stunning him with my amazing drinking abilities.”
“Amazing is one way to put it.” At least her uncle had left ten minutes ago. The man had been staring at him intently enough that Adam was half sure he’d walk out the door and find Rodger and his friends waiting for him. “Why don’t we head back to your place?”
She shook her head. Well, she shook her entire body. “Not yet. I want to play darts. Or maybe start a bar fight. That’s a thing people do in bars, isn’t it?” She frowned. “I don’t get out much, and Aubry is the one who starts fights, so I never get to drink too much and let go. Let’s let go tonight!”
A fight was not on the books, and letting her drunk ass anywhere near pointy objects was the worst idea he’d ever heard. Adam looked around the bar, searching for inspiration. He’d never realized how many potential weapons there were just sitting around until he had a drunk good girl wanting to get into some trouble. “Bar fights are overrated.”
“God.” She grabbed the shot Stuart set on the bar and downed it before Adam could blink. “Of course you’ve been in a bar fight. I bet you’ve been in a ton.”
More than he cared to remember, all for reasons he couldn’t remember. He didn’t drink much these days, but in his early twenties, he’d been angry and felt like he had something to prove. Trouble had been his middle name, and he’d gone looking for it every chance he had.
Hell, that was why he’d started riding bulls to begin with. That moment before the gates slammed open, he wasn’t thinking about how tight his skin got when he stayed in one place too long or the sad look in his mama’s eyes when she realized he was itching to leave Devil’s Falls again. There was just Adam and the bull and the next few seconds of freedom and adrenaline.
When had his life gotten so empty?
He worked to keep the smile on his face. “It’s overrated.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Her expression was so woeful, he almost laughed. She instantly brightened. “I love this song!”
He hadn’t even been aware of the song changing, and then she was off, shooting around him and veering to the dance floor where she started… He stared. Only someone being really, really nice would call that dancing. She looked like a marionette whose strings were cut, all jarring motions and jerking limbs.
It might have been the cutest thing he’d ever seen. Awkward. Horribly awkward. But cute.
Adam sighed. “I need a beer.”
Almost instantly, one appeared at his elbow. Stuart didn’t immediately move away. “She’s a good girl.”
“So I keep hearing.” Along with the part no one but his mama seemed to be able to say. He wasn’t good. Oh, he wasn’t bad. But he wasn’t anywhere near Jules’s level. She practically shone with goodness. Hell, she owned a business whose sole purpose was to make people happy—and she’d managed to rescue half a dozen cats in the process. She was so sweet, it should make his teeth ache.
But then he thought about her sunny smile that only seemed to appear when he was inside her.
Adam’s body kicked into high gear, and it was everything he could do to keep his reaction from physically manifesting. He turned away from the bar, beer in hand, to find Grant on the edge of the dance floor. Whatever the man said had Jules’s back going straight and her shoulders going back in a stance he recognized. Shit.
He strode across the bar, arriving at her side in time to hear Grant say, “Jesus, Jules, it was a joke. Obviously I wasn’t being serious.”
