Page 97 of Rising Heat

“She liked you.”

I side-eye him.

“She looked like she had me profiled in under thirty seconds.”

“She probably did.”

“That’s…a terrifying skill.”

Mack snorts.

“That’s an Italian mother.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

darcy

I have a feeling The Brass Bell on a normal Thursday is warm, low-lit, and the kind of place where everybody knows everybody.

On St. Patrick’s Day, it’s barely controlled chaos.

Tyler pulls the door open and I step inside between him and Mack, immediately swallowed by noise, body heat, and the unmistakable smell of beer and whiskey, fried food, and bad decisions that have been accumulating since noon. Green shirts. Green plastic beads. Green cocktails glowing from every other table like radioactive waste.

Someone’s wrapped a garland of plastic clovers around the brass bell hanging from the center beam, and the Dropkick Murphys playing loud enough through the speakers that I can feel them vibrate in my chest.

Near the back, one booth somehow manages to be louder than the rest of the bar combined.

The second we come into view, a broad-shouldered guy with blond hair, blue eyes and a grin that practically announces that he’s been waiting for this all day is already climbing out of it.

“Daaaamn,” he says, looking straight at Tyler. “They actually brought her.”

Tyler laughs.

“Don’t make it weird,” Mack says.

“I haven’t even started.”

“That,” Tyler says to me under his breath, “is Coop.”

“Damn right it is.” Coop points between the three of us. “She made it. Pay up.”

“I never bet against her,” Tyler says.

Across the booth, a dark-haired guy in loosened police blues lifts his beer toward me.

“Nice to finally put a face to the name.”

I blink.

Tyler points at him immediately.

“See? That’s exactly the problem.”

Ryan just shrugs.

“No idea what you mean.”

A laugh rolls up from farther down the booth.