Page 9

“The suit in the Beamer?” Repo asked.

“That’s him,” Georgie said, giving the men a careful smile.

“He just tossed his phone on his seat as we were passing and started banging his palms on the wheel,” Reign said. “Seems like you’re better free of him, babe.”

“Tell me about it,” she agreed.

“He’s pulling off now,” Duke, who’d stepped back outside to check, called.

“Sounds like maybe Georgie here could use a walk back to her car before you get back to work,” Reign said, still giving me that barely-there smirk.

I looked at Georgie, and she gave me a small smile.

“I mean, I’m okay. But if you want to take a walk, I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“I’ll be back,” I told Reign as I moved out from behind the bar.

Georgie pushed her almost full cider to the other side of the bar before standing and grabbing her glasses and cap.

“Take your time,” Reign called, making me shoot him a look as Georgie fell into step with me.

“Was that your boss?” she asked as we stepped outside.

“Not really. He’s my boss’s father, actually.”

“Wait. So you aren’t a SWAT officer anymore?”

“No. I haven’t been for a few years now.”

“Did you just want a career change? Sorry. I’m probably asking too many personal questions. I haven’t really talked to anyone in a while.”

“It’s not too many questions. I had some differences of opinion with my unit. They didn’t like that. Thought I was being disloyal. So I was out.”

Georgie glanced over, head cocked slightly. “It sounds like they were doing something wrong.”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“I’m sorry. That’s messed up.”

“It is what it is. It was probably good for me to get out of that line of work.”

“Construction suits you better?”

Of course that was what she thought.

Even if she knew about the club, I didn’t have my cut on. And she’d been talking to me in a bar that was all torn apart.

“I like working with my hands.”

“Me too. I mean, not construction. I once tried to hang a picture on the wall and ended up putting the hammer through the drywall. I tried to fix it with one of those kits. Long story short, I had to enlist someone else with a hammer to fix it.”

Was it old-school of me to like that? To be the one with the hammer? Yeah, probably. I had a lot of respect for the women around the club who could do all sorts of building projects themselves. But some part of me always liked when one of them called me to ask me to help them do something.

I liked being useful.

I liked being the fixer.

I’d have been thrilled to get a call asking me to put up some pictures.