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“It’s still early,” he countered. “Give it a little time.”

She didn’t let it go. Did she ever let anything go? “If it’s such a terrible place, why are you here?”

He’d asked himself that same question, more than once. The answer was always the same. “Imperfect as it is, this is my place in the world.” His world, not hers. He needed to remember that.

“Your place can be wherever you want it to be,” she said.

She was definitely naive. Clueless? No, he wouldn’t go that far.

Olive’s meal came out of the kitchen in a basket, loaded with fries and an oversized burger. She glanced down at it and laughed. “I can’t eat all this!” She looked up, with those deep, dark brown eyes of hers. “Have you eaten? Want half?”

“You keep feeding me.”

“You fed me. Seems only fair.”

“I can get you a to-go box for the leftovers.”

“Leftover fries and burgers are never good.” She took the plastic knife that was tucked into her basket and cut the burger in half. Without asking she grabbed a napkin, placed it before him, and carefully deposited the half burger.

“I can’t eat while I’m back here,” he argued.

She slid the napkin and burger to the side and patted the stool beside her.

Damn, she was persistent.

Tuck rounded the bar and took the stool next to Olive’s. He gestured for Ginny to grab another can of wine and bring him a beer. His bartender seemed amused by the situation. She got a glare for her trouble, but didn’t seem to mind.

“It is a good burger,” Olive said as she slid the basket closer to him. “Eat some of the fries. They’re great, but there’s no way I can eat this much.”

He grabbed a fry and popped it into his mouth. As the salt hit his tongue, he realized that he hadn’t eaten since a sandwich last night. His mind had been on everything but food.

“Tell me about this uncle of yours,” she said.

“Why?”

“You’re here, keeping his legacy alive. He must’ve been important to you.”

Might as well let her know what she was getting into… “Houston Tucker was an enormous shithead.”

Olive looked down at her fries and muttered, “Oh.”

“Don’t get me wrong. He did take me in after Mom died. I was thirteen, and soon after I moved in with him I was headed for all kinds of trouble. Yes, he was a shithead, but he was the only family I had and I was the same for him.”

“You’ve been here since the age of thirteen?”

Was that a touch of horror in her voice? Maybe he imagined that reaction. Why would she care?

Tuck shook his head. “Yep. I joined the Army at eighteen, as soon as I could. I couldn’t wait to get out of town, away from Uncle Houston, on to something else. Anything else.”

“I don’t get military vibes from you, not at all,” Olive said.

“Yeah, I’m not a fan of taking orders. I knew early on that I wouldn’t make a career of it, but I did my time as best I could, learned a lot, made a handful of lifelong friends. When I was done with that, I headed to Florida.”

“You were Florida Man.” She sent a wide, charming smile in his direction.

He had to grin at that. “For a while. I got a job as a bouncer in a bar in the Keys. I liked it, the place and the job.” He still thought about that time in his life, now and then. More than once he’d considered leaving all this behind and going back to a simpler life.

“If you liked it so much, why did you leave?”

Ah, the truth. Might as well tell all. “Uncle Houston got sick, and I came home to take care of him.” That hadn’t been a happy time in his life. Three years of taking care of a man who didn’t want anyone else to know he was sick. A man who didn’t like his nephew all that much. A man who was the only family Tuck had in the world.

Except…

He shouldn’t have kept his back to the room for this long, not on a Friday night. Introspection was interrupted by a shout, a scream, the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

Tuck spun around and leapt off the stool. The fight wasn’t more than six feet away, and the drunken combatants were making their way toward Olive.