All Wrapped Up (A Pine Mountain Novel) (3 page)

BOOK: All Wrapped Up (A Pine Mountain Novel)
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“Do we have a problem here?” He unfolded to his entire six feet, five inches, crossing his arms over the
cement wall of his chest with clear disdain as he stared at the reporter.
“I was just trying to get a story,” the man sputtered, pulling the recorder back in a nervous jerk. Adrian’s gaze narrowed to a thin-bladed stare, and he leaned halfway across the bar as the man’s Adam’s apple lifted over his shirt collar in a hard swallow.
“Get it somewhere else.”
Brennan waited until the reporter
had slunk off his bar stool before turning to cock his head at Adrian. “You enjoying yourself over there, Gigantor?”
“Maybe.” But his satisfied smile marked the word as a massive understatement. “Look, I need reporters harassing my staff like I need a frigging prostate exam. Anyway, you’re part of the crew. I’ve got your back.”
The phrase sent a familiar ache through Brennan’s gut, but he
tamped it down. He might be strung tighter than a fistful of butterfly knots right now, but man, this was too good to pass up. “Aw, you’re all hearts and unicorns, Holt.”
“Uh-huh. And I can still turn you into paste if the spirit moves me,” Adrian flipped back, his smile tripling in size. “Now can we tend some bar here, hero? Or are you gonna just stand there looking pretty?”
“Speaking of
pretty,” Teagan interrupted, reaching between him and Adrian to pluck a bottle of tequila from the back shelf, “there’s a woman at the end of the bar who’s asking for you, Brennan.”
He bit back the urge to frown. “I told you, I really don’t want anyone’s phone number.”
Okay, so he hadn’t exactly dated anybody since moving to Pine Mountain, and yeah, it probably wouldn’t hurt him to try, but
Brennan wasn’t interested in the kind of girl who’d go all starry eyed with rescue syndrome.
“Well, good, because she didn’t offer it,” Teagan said over her shoulder, filling two drink orders at once. “All she did was ask for you. For what it’s worth, I didn’t get an idiot vibe from her. She’s down at the end of the bar, last seat.”
Unable to curb his curiosity, Brennan aimed a covert glance
across the room, but with the milling crowd, it came up about six people too short. A shot of unease rippled through his chest, but he locked it down before it could seep into his expression. This night had already lasted two weeks, the bar was still full to the rafters with people asking questions he didn’t want to answer, and the ibuprofen he’d thrown back three hours ago had gone on a complete
walkabout.
The last thing he needed was one more person with his name on her lips.
“Fine. But after this, if anyone else asks, I’m not here.” Brennan stuffed his bottle opener into the back pocket of his jeans, covering the rubber floor mats behind the bar with a purposeful stride. One quick meet and greet, and he was going work-only for the rest of the night. He didn’t care
who
walked in
the door asking for him.
But then he looked up into a set of startlingly familiar green eyes, and everyone in the entire bar disappeared.
Chapter Three
Even though Ava had watched him covertly for twenty minutes before snagging a seat at the packed-to-the-seams bar, the sight of Nick Brennan standing right there in front of her made her heart go for broke in her rib cage.
“Ava?” Her name was nothing more than a shocked breath as it moved past his lips, but the word landed in her ears as if he’d shouted it at her.
“Hi,” she
managed, and great. Sign her up for the lamest opening ever. Ava straightened on her bar stool, forcing herself to look past Nick’s decadently long eyelashes and the holy-shit expression plastered to his otherwise gorgeous face. “It’s been a long time.”
“It’s been seven years,” he corrected, blinking twice before taking a step back.
Oh God, maybe she’d made a mistake coming here like this
with no warning. But trying to talk to him at the hospital had seemed downright rude, and if she waited until tomorrow, she’d lose her chance. She’d never expected the place to be so jammed, though. Ninety percent of the town had to be in the warmly lit confines of the bar, most of them clamoring for Nick’s attention.
Ava made an attempt at a smile. “You look good.”
Okay, so it was a massive
freaking understatement, but come on. Nick’s stare was still melted-chocolate sexy, although his dark hair was longer than the near crew cut she remembered, just enough to be casually tousled without going the full-on bed-head route. A closely trimmed goatee had replaced the boyish clean-shaven face in her memory, but if anything, it made him even better looking. Long, sturdy muscles pulled tight
over his forearms as he braced his palms on the bar, triggering a long-buried spark in Ava’s belly as he leaned in close enough for her to catch the brisk ocean scent of his skin.
“Thanks. You look—” Nick’s words yanked to a stop, and Ava realized just a half second too late that the mother of all serious frowns bracketed his mouth. “Far from home.”
“Oh!” The sudden change in both his expression
and his body language peppered holes in her composure, torching the smooth, professional opening she’d practiced ad nauseam on the drive over. “Well, I, ah . . . I live in Riverside now.”
That jarred a frown. “You do?”
“For the last five years,” she said, pausing so he could respond with what he was doing so far away from his own hometown of Fairview, which sat just outside Richmond, Virginia.
But he didn’t. Instead, he moved his hands from the bar and took a step back, reestablishing the distance between them. “So what brings you out to the Double Shot tonight?”
Ava scooped in a breath and went right for full disclosure. “I came to see you.”
“Interesting change of heart,” he said, his tone utterly unreadable as he flipped a couple of shot glasses to the three-inch strip of black
matting on the inside rim of the bar. “Last I remember, you never wanted to see me again.”
“That’s not true.” The pungent scent of bourbon sent a razor-wire punch to Ava’s chest, and she held her breath to avoid another inhale as Nick filled the shot glasses with an expert flip. Damn it, she should’ve known putting herself within fifty feet of a bar would give her the sweats.
Just like she
should’ve figured Nick might be less than thrilled to see her.
Ava swallowed. “Listen, Nick, I—”
“Brennan.”
Now it was her turn to be surprised. “What?”
“I don’t really go by Nick anymore.” He slid the shot glasses a few spots down the bar to the guys who had motioned for them. His expression made the Great Wall of China look like a teeny little roadblock, but Ava refused to let it deter
her. Story or no story, she’d left him without a good-bye seven years ago. She might’ve had damn compelling reasons for her actions—even if she’d rather stick an ice pick in her eye than admit them—but she still owed Nick an apology.
“Brennan,” she said, trying the name on for size. “I know it might seem like I left because I didn’t want to see you again, but that’s not true. There were . .
. complicated circumstances. But just because I didn’t intend to hurt you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’m really sorry.”
“No sweat.”
“No sweat?” Ava’s brows took a one-way trip upward, and her shoulders met the back of her bar stool with a bump.
But Nick . . . Brennan . . . whoever he was just gave a shrug as he slid the frost-covered lid on the beer cooler in front of him to the open
position, barely looking as he took out a bottle and uncapped it for the woman standing behind her. “Sure. Like you said, it was a long time ago.”
Ava hesitated, uncertainty welling in her throat. Nick’s face was perfectly neutral, and even though his shoulders had gone momentarily tight beneath his dark gray T-shirt as he’d delivered the all-is-well, right now he was nothing but smooth movements
behind the bar.
Stupid
. Seven years had passed since she’d hastily stuffed everything she’d owned into a pair of beat-up suitcases and taken the sunrise ferry off Sapphire Island. Of course Nick had moved on and forgotten all about her. And anyway, that’s what she’d wanted.
Even if, despite all her efforts, Ava hadn’t been able to forget him.
“Right. It was a long time ago,” she said, shaking
off the thought as she buckled down. She’d come to the Double Shot for a story, and she needed to get to business. “You’re obviously busy, so I don’t want to keep you. I was hoping maybe we could talk after your shift, or whenever is convenient for you.” Ava’s instincts sprang back to life at the reminder of why she’d come, and she pulled a business card from her back pocket and handed it over.
Nick’s gaze flashed, wide with undiluted shock before his grip went tight enough to bend the card stock between his fingers. “You’re a reporter?”
She nodded. “I write for the
Riverside Daily
. What you did today out at Joe’s Grocery was extremely brave. I’d like to write a piece about what happened. We could—”
“Let me ask you something.”
He cut her off with such quiet intensity and precision
that Ava’s only choice was to reply, “What?”
“Do you still drink Arnold Palmers?”
Jeez. Nick might forgive, but it sure as hell looked like forget wasn’t on his agenda. “Yeah.”
“Good. Tell you what,” he said, his expression going sharp around the edges as he methodically filled a pint glass first with ice, then with just the right ratio of lemonade to iced tea. “Drink’s on the house, but
it’s the only thing you’re going to get out of me. I don’t talk to reporters. Especially not if they’re you.”
Before Ava could work through her shock to reply, Nick placed the glass directly on top of her business card and turned to walk away.
 
 
Brennan got four steps away from the end of the bar before he realized there was a zero percent chance this night wasn’t going to strike
him dead. Not to go all
Casablanca
or anything, but of all the bars in the Blue Ridge—hell, on the entire eastern seaboard, for Chrissake—Ava Mancuso just had to walk into his. Tonight. Looking for a fucking
story
?
There wasn’t enough distraction or liquor in ten small-town restaurants for this.
“Jeez, Brennan. You okay?” The degree of concern glinting in Teagan’s eyes was Brennan’s first
clue that his normally ironclad composure was unraveling like his grandmother’s knitting, and he funneled every last shred of control into his inhale.
“Yup. We’re low on Cold Creek’s summer ale. I’m going to grab a case from the walk-in.” Of course his back would probably dish up a whole lot of I’m-glad-you-think-so-tough-guy over hauling around anything heavier than a cheeseburger after the
strain of this morning’s rescue mission, but so be it. He’d come to terms with the fact that hurting went hand in hand with being busy a long time ago.
The pain kept him grounded, reminding him that he could do worse than hurting, and anyway, if he wasn’t busy working himself into exhaustion, he’d have way too much time to think about things. Like how the burnt smell of smoke still lingered
in his hair even though he’d washed it three damned times, or how he could still feel the weight of Ava’s emerald green stare on his back from halfway across the bar.
Time to go.
Brennan crossed the narrow channel of space behind the bar in half as many strides as usual, the startling lack of sound filling his ears with relief as he pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. Bypassing
Jesse with a nod and a quick “hey,” Brennan cut a hot path to the walk-in, not stopping his forward momentum until he was surrounded by three walls of industrial steel shelving and a whole bunch of cold, calm air.
Inhale. Exhale. Find control. Inhale . . .
Damn it, how had Ava Mancuso gotten even prettier in seven years?
“You look like shit, my friend.”
“Jesus!” Brennan’s head jacked around,
his eyes stinging from the frigid wake-up call as they popped back open to land smack on Adrian’s crossed arms and raised eyebrow. “You do know sneaking up on people is uncool, right?” He reached up to the shelf across from him to grab the case of beer that would keep him busy until Ava was good and gone from the bar, but Adrian stepped in his path, the door clicking shut behind him.
“And you
do know that you’re changing the subject, right?”
The words were all gravelly statement and left no wiggle room, but Brennan met them with a perfectly practiced and very blank stare.
“There’s no subject to change. I’m fine.” Getting into a pissing match with the guy wasn’t usually on Brennan’s to-do list, especially since Adrian was roughly the size of a small nation. But the last thing Brennan
wanted was to pop the cork on all of his ridiculous emotions right now.
Which sucked for him, because Adrian didn’t budge. “You’re rattled as hell. You want to air this out, or do I need to send you home?”
“You can’t send me home.” Panic spurted in Brennan’s chest, and he sucked in a breath of frosty air to dilute it. “The holiday season just started. The bar is slammed.”
“Jesse just went
out to cover the crowd and the overflow. I don’t want to replace you, but I will if I have to.” Adrian waited, and when nothing but the low hum of the walk-in and his buddy’s brows-up
what gives
passed between them, Brennan knew he was the captain of a sinking ship. If he wanted to stay and keep busy, keep moving, and keep his shit together, he was going to have to earn it.
“Look, all these
reporters just give me the shakes, all right? I’m not exactly a public-eye kind of guy.”
Adrian hit him with a look that read
fair enough
. “That pretty woman at the end of the bar is a reporter?”
“Among other things,” Brennan muttered, and damn it, he really needed to keep his big mouth on lockdown.
“Clearly, you know her.” Adrian held up a massive hand to cut off Brennan’s protest at the
knees. “Before you try to argue, Teagan already told me the woman asked for you by your first name.”
“So?”
“So, we’ve been friends for more than half a year and I didn’t even know you
had
a first name. Come on, Brennan. I get that you don’t want to take out a billboard, but between what went down this morning and the way you look right now, you’re torqued up to ten. I’ve got a bar full of
people out there, some of whom are liquored up and all of whom want a piece of you. You don’t have to talk about this, but you do have to be straight before I let you back behind the wood to deal with them.”
Brennan’s defeated exhale puffed around his face in the frigid air. “Okay. Yes, she’s a reporter at the
Riverside Daily
, and yes, I know her. We used to”—
be madly, insanely, irreversibly
in love—
“have a thing,” he bit out. “It was a long time ago.”
“Looks like you two did a number on each other.” Adrian tipped his platinum blond head at Brennan in a clear bid for more intel, but screw it. Brennan wasn’t getting away without at least telling him something, and maybe if he unloaded a little of what had happened, he could blow it off like the steam it was and get back to normal.
“It was the summer after college. Prime time to be young and dumb. I got a line on a job waiting tables at the beach resort out on Sapphire Island. You know, off the coast of Virginia Beach?” Brennan turned toward the open-air shelf at his side, straightening the cardboard cases full of beer against the metal grooves. God, Mason had been so freaking pleased with himself when he’d landed them
both on the short list to work at the prestigious resort for the summer. Two best friends, one last hurrah before the fire academy, and a gorgeous beach town full of beer and bikinis.
Brennan cranked down on the memory and stuffed it away. Copping to his summer with Ava was one thing, but the rest of his past wasn’t up for grabs. Not now.
Not ever.
“I met Ava on the first day there. She
was part of the summer staff too, working as a hostess,” he said, pulling a case of beer flush with the front of the shelf while Adrian fell into step straightening the cases on the opposite side of the walk-in. “I missed every single word the restaurant manager told us in orientation, but it was worth it. The way that woman looks in a pair of cutoffs should be a fucking felony.”
Adrian chuffed
out a laugh. “Sounds like love at first sight.”
Brennan returned the laughter, only without any humor. “More like love is blind. We spent the entire summer glued together, and I thought we really had something. But the morning after our last shift, Ava packed her bags and took off. No good-bye, no note, no phone call, no nothing. She just disappeared.”
“Ouch. Did you ever try to find her?”
Brennan’s pulse kicked beneath the heavy cloak of his composure. “I was twenty-two and off my rocker for the woman. Hell yes, I tried to find her. But Ava was a ghost.”
“Come on,” Adrian said, turning from the shelf to nail him with a doubtful look. “Between Google and social media, nobody’s a ghost these days.”
BOOK: All Wrapped Up (A Pine Mountain Novel)
11.46Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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