Page 98 of Not Mine to Rescue

Boots turned his back to the bar and leaned so he could get a long look at the women, who now had their heads together so they could carry on a conversation. “No doubt about it, that’s his dream chick. Speaking of dream chicks, there she is.” He grinned widely, then peeled off and stalked his wife down. She was such a small woman, she was barely visible in the crowd. If it weren’t for the streaks of bright pink in her hair tonight, she’d sink into the throng and disappear.

“Is that all true?” Walt nodded at Boots’ retreating back.

“Yeah. Brains, looks…”

“Age.”

That deserved a beatdown. I silently let him know he was in dangerous territory.

“It ain’t no secret you go for women twice as old as you.”

“I’m not twelve.”

He snorted into his beer. “Yeah, well, she ain’t twenty-four either.”

“Can’t you just be happy for me?”

He fired back, “Not until we run a background check.”

“What’s there to find? She’s a lawyer. Our criminal defense lawyer. I bet Nickel’s got a folder on her already.”

Walt frowned but nodded. “Lawyers have rules, you know that, right?”

I did. I’d been bouncing through the legal dictionary Honor dropped off at the house before Jim had his meltdown and outed us. The book was at least three inches thick. It weighed a fuck-ton being a foil-embossed, real leather-bound, hardcover. The only book I’d ever seen that was bigger was the family Bible Pop-pop had.

“And those rules can sink us.”

Smoothing his feathers might work, then again, it might not. “That’s why it’s only going to be these type of events. You know no one talks here. They know better.”

He stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. “And when she wants more?”

As much as I’d like to hope there would be a day like that, I carried a mountain of doubt that day would ever happen. Hell, the odds were probably worse on that than her carrying to term.

If she were even pregnant, that is.

The beer stuck in my throat and made me hoarse. “A man can dream, right?”

His jaw went sideways as he mulled my words over. Eventually, he raised the shot glass. “To dreams. They don’t always come true, but it’s kind of nice to have ’em once in a while.”

I tapped my glass to his and swallowed. The pain cut through me. It wasn’t because of the whiskey. It was the fear of what if that shredded my guts. What if we almost got there and had it ripped away?

Walt slapped my back. “I have to hand it to you, Wombat, your balls are bigger than your dick.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Honoria

Mary introduced me to four women. The first, Sierra, was from West Virginia. She had a thick accent and an abrupt manner. Then, Olivia, who was quiet, sweet, and just a bit out of sync. Hayley worked at the local library. And the last woman was referred to as “Digger’s ol’ Lady” but her real name was Marie Green. She was a psychologist who worked with juveniles in the system. I knew her even before she was introduced.

A small town, indeed. The fact that I knew at least two women here through work made me a little less guarded.

That was where I erred. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t been warned.

I couldn’t see Wombat in the crowd, and Walt had disappeared as well. Mary had trailed off playing hostess with Sierra. Olivia and Hayley slipped out of our conversation without notice. That left Marie, who I really didn’t have a lot in common with.

Especially when her biker husband showed up and whisked her into a corner for a very public make-out session that bordered on indecent.

No crime there.