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“Ah, right. I forgot. The all-seeing, all-knowing bartender,” Kit said.
“You guys have a thing.”
“We do not have a thing,” Kit said. “In fact, she once told me that we have no situation at all.”
“You don’t say that to someone you don’t have a thing with,” Cara said. “If there’s no situation, there’s no need to remark upon the situation.”
Kit shrugged. The fact was, they did have a thing, and he knew it. Thatthingwas chemistry. But Kit liked his chemistry with women the way he liked his chemistry classes. Over quickly. Handled. Done. Graduated from. He was a satisfy-them—multiple times—and-leave-them type. He had done serious way early on in his life. He knew what it was like to have the burden of taking care of someone, and he never wanted it again. He had a huge family, and he loved them. All of them. Even Buck, who was gone. It was exhausting. He didn’t need to love anyone else. Not ever.
“Whatever you say, Kit. But anyway, why are you assuming that Jace is beholden to me? He can do whatever he wants.”
“He wants to hire strippers for the bachelor party.”
Cara looked at him, her eyes like daggers. “I’ll never speak to you again, Jace Carson.”
“Just a second,” said Kit, peering behind Cara at some of the jars at the back shelf of the bar.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if you have Jace’s balls back there.”
Cara was unmoved. She planted her hands squarely on the bar and leaned toward him, staring.
“And what are you doing, Cara?” he asked.
“Checking to see if you got any human decency in there. Because Jace has it. He is almost a gentleman.”
Boone laughed so hard he nearly fell off the bar stool. “Jace Carson. A gentleman. That’s because you only see him here in Lone Rock. And you never see him on the road. You’ve only seen a piece of him, sweetheart.”
“Call me sweetheart one more time and you can find out whether or not the spikes on this jacket are a decoration or for practical purposes.”
“That’s my girl,” said Jace.
She walked away from them, and Kit was just mad that she had managed to redirect his thoughts right back to Shelby.
Right. Like they were ever all that far from her to begin with.
That was the problem with Shelby. She was under his skin, and he couldn’t even really say why. Just sex. That was the thing. He wanted her, and he had never been able to have her. Maybe he wanted her in part because she was so... So decidedly off-limits. Actually, it should be a little bit more resolvable these days. She was single, and the barrier had been broken between their families. Juniper and Chance were already getting married. There was nothing forbidden about an association between the two of them at all. That should make her less interesting. That should make him entirely less aroused by the thought of grabbing her and pulling her up against his body, lowering his head and tasting whether or not her lips were sugary, salty caramel like he imagined...
Dammit.
“So, what is the bachelor party plan, then?” Boone asked.
“Well, because I don’t want our mother to kill us, I was never planning on hiring any strippers. However, I was thinking skeet shooting, some drinking. Darts. Pool. There’s kind of a bachelor pad house up there, all outfitted for this kind of thing. And, we need to have a camping trip.”
“A camping trip?” Boone questioned.
“Yeah. Like we did when we were kids.”
They didn’t talk about why. It was just one of those things. But the boys had gotten sent out of the house quite a bit when their sister Sophie had been sick and recovering from different treatments. Having the campout in the backyard was a way to get the house quiet for her.
It wasn’t a bad memory. Not really. But that time would always be bittersweet.
It was something that they shared. All of them.
“All right.”
“Yeah, I figured it would be good. Hell, we didn’t get to send Callie out into the world with any warning. She just went and eloped.”
