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“You know I’m not, Dawg. ” Donny sighed, shaking his head in regret. “This was just a misunderstanding, man. ”
“I see her around my sister again and you’ll pay for it,” Dawg informed him. “And you know I can do it, Donny. That is, if I can beat Natches to it. ”
Donny definitely looked worried now, while Sandi paled fearfully.
Natches’s name was synonymous with the bogeyman since the day he had been forced to kill his own cousin Johnny Grace nearly eight years before.
“I told you, I don’t want Mackays for enemies,” Donny repeated as he pulled at the loose neckline of his T-shirt as though it were choking him.
Sneering at the two in disgust, Dawg pushed past them and moved to the bar, intending on following Eve. Instead, he was brought to a stop as John stepped from behind the bar before he could reach it.
“Sierra’s talking to her,” John told him, his voice low. “I’ll make sure she gets home tonight. Sometimes, as my wife says, a woman just needs another woman to talk to. ”
There was no loosening the muscles at the back of his neck, but Dawg tried. Reaching around to rub at his nape in frustration, he blew out a hard breath.
“Call me if she needs me,” he finally said in irritation before shaking his head helplessly. “Hell, John. How do you survive hurting a sister?”
Because he had hurt her, and he knew it. By making her swear to go against her own instincts and stay away from Brogan, he had a feeling he’d hurt her more than he suspected.
“You let them forgive you and you go on. ” John finally smiled back at him in compassion. “That’s all you really can do. ”
Clapping him on the shoulder, John turned and went back behind the bar to give the bartenders a hand.
Let her forgive him?
He turned and headed to the exit. He would love to let her forgive him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so certain he deserved it.
FIVE
John’s wife, Sierra, was striding furiously through the hall leading to the bar as Eve pushed through it, intent on collecting her purse and leaving. Sierra must have left the bar while she was at the table with the bachelorettes.
Before Sandi had made a fool of her.
Eve didn’t want to cry. She hated crying. But as Sierra stopped several feet ahead of her and stared back at her in disbelief, she could feel her throat tightening with the hated dampness.
“I’m sorry, Sierra,” she whispered, pushing her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she blinked quickly to hold the moisture back. “I’m just getting my purse. I promise not to try to return. ”
She knew the rules.
As she had stared into Dawg’s eyes after jumping back from where she’d held Sandi to the floor, shame had surged through her.
She hadn’t thought about the rules on fighting then. Not until she’d seen Sierra and the fury glittering in her brown eyes.
Shame burned like a cinder in her chest.
When there was a fight anywhere on bar property, then both fighters were banned. The rule made sense. She really could have walked away, but once Sandi had dared to not just insult her mother, but to also use that sissy-bitch move and backhand her, it had been over with.
Besides, jealousy had been eating her alive.
Sandi had been able to sit next to Brogan. To laugh with him. To talk to him without censure, while Eve was restrained by a promise she couldn’t break.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me, Eve Mackay,” Sierra demanded furiously.
The tears fell.
Sierra was a friend, and now she wasn’t going to forgive her.
“The fighting rule only applies when I say it does,” Sierra continued, moving to her quickly, surprising—actually shocking—Eve as she wrapped her arms around her. “And that rule does not apply to employees whom little bitches like that decide to torment all night. ”
