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Castor shrugged. “Probably just having a cozy visit with family. I’m sure Patricia and the Senator are thrilled to have him home.”
I wanted to scoff at the idea of the Wellbridges being a tight-knit sort of family like ours—Patricia Wellbridge, in particular, was the opposite of warm and fuzzy, and their mansion on a hill was more like a museum than a place you could kick back and relax—but I supposed that might be what Wellbridges considered “cozy.”
And it was for damn sure none of my business.
“Patricia most likely issued a command,” I muttered, finishing the last of Castor’s order and handing it to him.
He nodded a thanks and headed back to his customers.
Dan handed a check folder to a woman finishing her lunch at the bar and then turned to us. “Okay, I’m completely lost. Who is this guy? Why don’t I know him?”
“Because he hasn’t dragged his ass back to town in all the years you’ve lived here?” I shrugged.
“No, I mean…” Dan hesitated. “What’s his story? What’s he like?”
Castor returned in time to hear the question, and all three of us Honeycutt brothers answered at the same time. “He’s a Wellbridge.”
Dan wrinkled his nose in confusion but nodded along anyway.
“Dan hasn’t lived here long enough to know what we mean, and he’s not a Honeycutt, so Patricia Wellbridge is probably nice tohim.” Alden tapped his chin. “Let’s see. Imagine… Attila the Hun plus Dracula plus the Grindr guy who leaves before the…” He realized how close he was standing to one of my customers. “Shower water… has dried. That’s JT Wellbridge.”
Dan glanced at me, eyes wide. “That’s… wow. What did he do? To Flynn, I mean.”
“Nothing,” I began, but Alden interrupted.
“JT’s jerked Flynn around for years. Cheated, lied, gotten him in trouble with teachers. One time in high school, he actually pretended to ask Flynn out. As if a Wellbridge would lower himself todate a Honeycutt,” he said in an imitation of Patricia Wellbridge’s upper-crust accent. “Pfft.”
I couldn’t help but remember a Wellbridge lowering himself to do something else to me. The warm, yellow light from the old pendant lamp in the storage loft had shone on JT’s dark blond hair, turning it gold as he’d dropped to his knees at my feet. His face had turned up to me then, skin flushed with heat and blue eyes glazed over with need.
I swallowed and nodded. “Pfft,” I agreed feebly. I could still taste the memory of warm whiskey on his lips as he’d begged me to give myself to him.
Just once, Firecracker.
And fucking Christ, now I was hard.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Weren’t you the one who just said we weren’t gonna let him steal our focus?” I lightly cuffed the side of Alden’s head. “We need to spin up the new fermenters without disturbing the aging barrels. I have a design sketched out for the brew room expansion, but—”
Dan held up a hand. “No, wait. What do you mean this guy ‘pretended’ to ask Flynn out?”
I cast my eyes to the recently redone ceiling and the new seating area that ringed the second floor. “Jesus. It’s old fucking news, Dan. Not worth rehashing—”
But my brother Alden was an asshole, and rehashing was his favorite pastime. “I mean that JT was an entitled prick who thought he could toy with Flynn’s emotions, even back when they were teenagers, before JT had attained his final, evil form. All Wellbridges are the same,” he said bitterly. “They want what they want when they want it, and they fuck right off when they don’t get it.”
Dan frowned. “I get why the guy’d be interested in Flynn. Obviously. But… shit. Why not actually take you out instead of pretending?”
I narrowed my eyes at Dan. What did he mean by “obviously”?
Castor shot Dan the dreamy eyeballs this time. “Personally, I think JT was too intimidated by Flynn’s rugged masculinity.”
I stopped myself from picking daintily at a stray cuticle. “Huh?”
Alden hoisted himself up on the foot rung of the bar and reached for the soda hose, helping himself to a refill. “Well, I think JT’s dude-bro friends and his Wellbridge cousins put him up to it like a dare. His cousin Redmond,” he sneered, sitting back down, “is the worst Wellbridge of them all.”
I reached across and took the soda hose back before knuckle-punching Alden in the shoulder. “Thanks a lot. You make it sound like JT was never really interested in me.”
Alden lifted a skeptical brow, which made me clench my teeth.
“He was interested,” I ground out. “Plenty interested.”
