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For the next half hour, I kicked back, doing what I would normally do even though the rest of the bar was in a Kace Tomlin craze. I chatted with Rush or Jax here and there as they came behind the bar, but mostly I just sipped my beer, brainstorming solutions for the guest house renovation and occasionally humming along to the classic rock tunes that came over the speakers.
When I looked at Kace a while later, though, something grabbed my attention.
There was another guy on a barstool in front of Kace, and the two of them had been chatting for quite a while. Kace was giving the guy his signature smile and charm, and suddenly I realized that they were almost definitely flirting.
Flirting. The thing I didn’t even know if I’d been technically doing with Kace or not.
Envy flared through me, hot as fire.
I didn’t know what I wanted with Kace, but when the idea flashed in my mind that I might have to see Kacekissanother dude, something inside me went haywire.
I chugged the rest of my beer and charged up toward them. I wasn’t hanging in the background any longer. I could flirt with Kace, too.
“Fancy seeing you here,” I said as I walked up, trying to sound suave and cool and most likely ending up sounding like a dorky dad.
Kace looked up at me and immediately gave me his sexiest bedroom eyes, glancing up and down my body and letting his gaze linger. The camera crew was also still surrounding him, and I dimly registered that all of thiscouldend up on TV at some point.
But I was too distracted by the other, younger guy who’d turned around to look my way.
“Mr. Wood,” the kid said, giving me a smile. “Didn’t even know you were here. How’s Maddy?”
Suddenly I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Lucas,” I said, struggling to maintain a neutral face. “I did not realize you were here, either.”
“Wait, how the hell do you two know each other?” Kace asked. “Small fuckin’ world, Jade River.”
My stomach lurched again. “Lucas was on the same volunteering team with me and Maddy last weekend.”
Lucas had been there as one of the college kids helping to coordinate the volunteer effort. He was probably around nineteen—certainly not quite as young as my daughter—but I’d seen the two of them as beingveryclose in age.
And now Lucas was here, flirting with Kace, who wasalsoway closer in age to him than to me.
“Oh. Right on,” Kace said, seemingly not flustered at all by that information.
“How you been, Mr. Wood? I didn’t realize you knew Kace Tomlin. Isn’t this so cool?”
I rubbed at my temple. “Lucas, how are you even in here?” I asked politely. “Aren’t you nineteen or twenty? You can’t be drinking.”
Lucas held up his glass. “This is just a regular Coke.”
Rush nodded at me from behind the bar. “Carded him as soon as he sat down, Nathan. He’s allowed to be in here, even though I’d prefer him at a booth instead of the bar.” Rush gave Lucas a look.
For fuck’s sake. I hadn’t even cared one bit about my age until Kace Tomlin had come into my life. Now, I was constantly questioning if I was too out-of-touch, too washed up, too old.
I was tired of it. And I sure as hell didn’t like whatever jealousy had flared up in me before walking over here.
“I think I’m going to head out,” I said, slapping one hand on top of the bar.
“Like hell you are,” Kace told me. “I just got here.”
“You’ll have plenty of fun, I promise.”
I fished a twenty out of my wallet and popped it onto the bar before heading out.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even know what I wasthinking. All I knew was that I had to get out of there, before I fucked up and said something awkward in front of Kace, the whole bar, and a camera crew.
10
