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One
“You have to spend the night in the hotel if you want to buy it. Because they had too many people back out. Isn’t that completely wild, Grandpa? I mean, I’m sure that it is haunted. Nothing can be around that long and not be.”
Cara Summers looked up at her grandfather. He was sitting on the shelf behind the bar. In an old Jack Daniel’s bottle.
Just as he had asked.
Cara had done her very best to fulfill his last wishes. Cremated and then placed on that shelf behind the bar so he could see everything.
He didn’t answer her question.
At least not audibly. She didn’t expect him to. Though she often felt his presence. It wasn’t anything she could really describe. But she knew he was there. It was why she talked to him. Almost as easily as she had when he was here. Hell, maybe it was even easier because he didn’t interrupt.
“The bar is empty, scrap. Who are you talking to?”
She knew the voice. She didn’t have to turn.
Even if she didn’t recognize the tone—and of course she would, after this many years of friendship. It was the way it made her feel. Because that was the thing. Jace Carson was one of six brothers. They all sounded relatively similar. Deep, rich male voices. But not a single one of them made goose bumps break out over her arms or made a suspicious warmth spread all through her body when they spoke. No. That would be way too convenient. Kit Carson liked to flirt with her, or at least he had before he had married Shelby Sohappy. And Flint enjoyed flirting with her to rile Jace up. But she knew that none of it was serious. Well. She had a feeling that any number of the Carson brothers would’ve happily had a dalliance with her if she was of a mind. They weren’t exactly known for their discernment when it came to women. Every one of them except for Jace. Oh, Jace wasn’t discerning either. But Jace was...
He was not interested in her that way. And just the mere suggestion of it made him growl.
They were friends. Best friends. Had been since middle school. It was a funny friendship. He was protective of her. And sometimes a little bit paternalistic. Or brotherly. But that was the thing. He saw her as a younger sister. The younger sister he no longer had, she knew.
And in some ways, she was an emotional surrogate for what he had lost when he had lost Sophia. She knew that. She’d always known it.
Every so often these days it made her feel bristly and annoyed.
Because the problem with Jace was that she wanted him.
And he didn’t want her.
“Just telling Grandpa about my next move.”
“Right,” he said looking around the bar. “Is he here now?”
“He’s always here,” she said, gesturing to the makeshift urn.
“Cara...”
“I know you don’t believe in any of this. But I do. I believe that I can talk to him. And that he hears me.”
“I’m sure that’s comforting.”
“I think that sounds more condescending and less accepting than you think.”
“I don’t mean to be condescending. But I don’t really mean to be accepting either. Just... I can understand why you need to think it, I guess.”
That was Jace. He just didn’t have a fantastical bone in his body.
He himself was a wonder. A masculine wonder. Over six foot but with broad shoulders, a well-muscled chest and not a spare ounce of fat over his six-pack abs.
He had a square jaw and compelling mouth with the thin white scar that ran through his upper lip. His nose was straight, his eyes the color of denim. Each Carson brother was sort of the same man in a different font, a remix of very similar and very attractive features.
It seemed kind of unfair that all six of them were just there. Exposing the female populace to their overwhelming male beauty. But there they were.
The really unfair thing was that none of their particular beauty called to her the way that Jace’s did.
When she had been a kid, the first time she’d met him, it was like the hollow space had opened up inside of her chest, just to make room for the sheer enormity of the feelings that he created within her.
