Trouble on Tap (6 page)

Olivia’s pulse took a nosedive before ramping up to warp speed. She’d never been one of those girls to lose their shit over pictures of hunky guys with cute kids, but damn if he didn’t make it look good. Better than good.

While she was in the process of reining in the hottie-inspired overreaction, Mateo looked up. She nearly fell down. The man was fucking lethal. The scars? Once the initial shock had worn off, the attraction had come back as meltingly hot as ever, because it had never been about Mateo’s looks. It had been about him. At least, the man she’d known during their hotel nights together.

His hazel eyes narrowed and he looked away, but not before giving her a quick once over that left her weak in the knees.

There had to be something in Salvation’s water supply that turned people crazy. That was the only explanation for her Jell-O-kneed reaction to a man who had less than no interest in her and acted as if he couldn’t stand her.

Ruby Sue pulled herself up to her full height of five-foot, two-inches and in her best stage whisper, said, “Looks like you need a new partner.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” she shot back. If there was anything that would send her last bit of sanity flailing into a black hole, hanging out with Mateo Garcia would be it.

“I’m always full of ideas.” Ruby Sue all but rubbed her gnarled, arthritic hands together like an old-time villain. “You know that.”

Her stomach sank like an iron balloon. “And that is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Mateo had never cut and run during a firefight, but the sight of Olivia and his sister together again had him thinking of beating feet out of there. Fast.

Luciana had a solid head on her shoulders and was an outstanding mom, but add Olivia into the mix and God knew what would happen. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to bail them out of jail. Again.

Still, the sight of her in a V-neck Sweet Salvation Brewery T-shirt that followed the famous curves that had landed her magazine covers taped to CHU walls from Iraq to Afghanistan had his thoughts turning to another direction totally. A few years ago, when he was nothing but a horny pretty boy who thought the world was his for the taking, he’d almost fallen for it. He’d learned better.

“Hey sis.” He dropped his gaze to the menu he knew by heart. “Olivia.”

“You don’t have to say her name like it’s a dirty word, you know.” Luciana rolled her eyes and settled Benito, still snug inside his carrier, into the high chair Olivia had moved to their table. “And hello to you, too.”

She slid into the opposite side of the booth next to Amalie, who was going to town on the kids’ menu. That left Olivia standing awkwardly at the end of the table. There wasn’t enough room for her to sit next to Luciana, and he, because someone upstairs held a grudge, happened to have an empty seat right next to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her hesitate, taking in the way she pressed her pale pink thumbnail into the pad of her pointer finger. Press. Release. Press. Release.

The woman should never play poker.

“You gonna sit or you planning to eat standing up?” Ruby Sue asked and poked Olivia’s upper arm with the corner of a laminated menu. She dropped the menus on the table. “I’ll be right back with some sweet tea.”

Rubbing her arm, Olivia sat down beside him. They weren’t touching, but in the tiny booth it didn’t matter. His whole body went on hyper-alert. The flick of her head as she flipped her hair back. The way she nibbled on her bottom lip as she read the menu. How she relaxed back into the seat as if his presence didn’t even register.

Not that it should. And not that he gave a flying fuck.

Sure you don’t, Garcia
.

He tossed down his menu in disgust. He’d lost his ear, not his balls. Time to man up.

“I didn’t think you knew she was back in town,” he said to his sister.

“It’s Salvation.” Luciana shrugged. “My phone started ringing last night with the news. So how did Marna Simons’s granddaughter like the rescue dog?”

The image of the six-year-old frozen with fear as the dog snored as loud as a Ma Deuce .50 caliber machine gun flashed in his mind. He and Simons had stood in the middle of the police department’s front lobby for twenty minutes trying to get the little girl to approach the dog. All the while, the furry beast slept blissfully unaware that his fuzzy ass was still homeless and probably would be for some time.

“Not at all. The mutt is hanging out at the station until I figure out what we can do about it.”

Along with the stench of wet dog. The things he did for his sister and her pet projects. Of course, he’d learned as a child that while he may be the older sibling, it was no use arguing with his baby sister once she made up her mind.

“Maybe you can train him to be a service dog for the police department.”

Luciana’s voice didn’t carry a trace of cunning, but his big-brother FUBAR alert was already blasting an alarm. When he’d started picking up stray dogs from the kill shelter for her, he’d told her in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t about to keep one.

He sure as shitting wasn’t changing his mind. “The only thing that mutt is good for is chewing things he shouldn’t.”

“Your shoes?” Olivia asked, an amused smile curling her full lips.

His combat boots had made it through several tours but not one night with the mutt. “Yep.”

“You know, I bet he’d be a good mascot for the veterans’ center,” Luciana said. “Maybe you could raffle him off to raise money. With the caveat that he’d have to go to a good home, of course.”

“Obviously you haven’t set eyes on the dog.” Or fought for air because of the fart missiles it fired.

Ruby Sue returned with a waitress who carried three tall glasses of sweet tea on her tray. The waitress dropped off the tea before going to help another table, but Ruby Sue stuck around. He’d have to be a complete idiot not to realize she was looking for a little gossip.

Either oblivious or purposefully ignoring the situation, Olivia took a long drink of sweet tea. Her pink tongue snuck out to swipe away the droplets from her lips, an act that left his mouth dry.

She wiped the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin. “He’s a cute dog.”

He snorted. “In what universe?”

“If he’s as ugly as all that, he’d fit in perfectly at the veterans’ center, considering what a wreck it is,” Ruby Sue groused. “Just disgraceful what they’ve let happen.”

Olivia looked from Ruby Sue to him to Luciana. “What happened to the center?”

“Remember that big old oak tree at the corner of Main and Rogers?” Luciana asked while retrieving a crayon from under the table that Amalie had dropped.

Olivia nodded.

“Lightning strike hit it and sent it straight through the center’s roof.” She handed over the crayon and ruffled the girl’s long brown hair. “For the past two years, local veterans have been using the courthouse annex until they can raise enough money for repairs.”

Packed in like sardines, more like it. Guys came in for help filling out VA forms, navigating the system, connecting with old buddies and networking for post-military careers. The veterans’ center was more than just a bar and a hangout. It was HQ.

“But so many people use that facility. Almost everyone in town has two or three family members either going in, on active duty or retired from the military.” She turned her blue-eyed gaze on him. “Can’t the county help out? Or the federal government?”

Like he was in charge of the county’s money instead of police chief of Salvation’s six-person force that included two part-time officers. “You may not have realized it, being a rich supermodel and all, but money’s tight for most people around here, and tax revenue is down so the county’s out and, because it’s not an official VA center, the feds don’t care about it either.”

Luciana kicked him in the shin under the table. Her shoe connected with the bone right under his kneecap with enough force to snap his mouth shut before he could say anything else. The stop-being-an-asshole look on her face was just the exclamation point on her message.

Olivia ignored the scuffle and continued. “What about a fundraiser? The brewery could host one.” She unzipped her giant orange purse and started digging through it. “Maybe make it an in-house brew crawl with folks signing up to taste all of the different beers.” She pulled out a small notebook and pen before flipping open the cover and writing First Annual Veterans Brew Crawl across the top in big, loopy letters. “We could even call in some of the other craft breweries in the area and have a beer-off.”

“What’s a beer-off?” Luciana asked.

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out.” She grinned. “Want to help?”

“I’d love to, but I’m wall-to-wall already.” She turned to Mateo, an ornery grin on her face, and his gut tightened. “But you’d be happy to help, wouldn’t you?”

If by “happy” she meant dead set against it. The extra sparkle in her eyes said otherwise. “Forget it, sis.” He would have sprinted from the booth if Olivia wasn’t the one between him and freedom.

“No way.” Luciana shook her head and crossed her arms. “You’ve been holed up in your house by yourself for too long.”

He liked his house. It was quiet. People left him alone. No one stared. “I work.”

“Exactly.” His sister tossed up her hands. “You work, go home and then go to work again. You need to get out.”

“I appreciate the thought, Luciana,” Olivia sputtered as she pressed her thumbnail into her finger. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“It is the perfect idea.” Jaw set, Luciana eyeballed him before turning her stony gaze to Olivia. “You…” she pointed at Olivia, “need someone to rein in your crazy. And you…” she glared at Mateo, “…need to stop hiding in your man cave and spend some time in the civilized world.”

“I’m not hiding.” He couldn’t stop the words, even knowing they were totally futile. If he didn’t do it, Luciana wouldn’t stop bugging him about it. She’d push and she’d push and she’d push until he either spontaneously combusted or gave in. Either way, she’d win.

Luciana crossed her arms. “It’s decided.”

It may be decided, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, and judging by Olivia’s stick-up-her-amazing-ass posture, he wasn’t alone. He shook his head. Despite everything, he was on the same side of an argument with Olivia Sweet. Someone up there really did hold a grudge.

“And it’ll be perfect to have you working together since Olivia will be staying at Dad’s old cabin behind your house.”

Mateo’s stomach dropped to his toes. “What?!”

“Luciana,” Olivia squealed. “I can’t do that.”

After his parents divorced, his dad had built a small cabin/guest house on the back of their property and lived in it while Mateo, Luciana and their mom had lived in the house. It had been vacant since his dad retired to Texas. Still, there was no way he could live half a football field away from Olivia and hold on to what little bit of sanity he still had left when it came to her.

“Everyone in town knows your sisters, Sean and Logan are all shacked up together at your uncle Julian’s old house,” Luciana said. “That place isn’t big enough for five people and the cabin is just sitting empty waiting for you.”

Olivia shook her head, the light-brown waves turning golden in the afternoon sunlight slanting in through The Kitchen Sink’s windows. “I don’t think—”

“And forget about rent. My brother, the hermit, has been renovating the bathroom for the past three months but the only progress he’s made is to yank out the shower. That mean’s you’ll have to trudge across the backyard to use the shower in the main house, so there’s no way we could charge rent. It’s perfect.”

Sharing a bathroom with Olivia. Giving her free rein to come in his house whenever she wanted. His brain immediately conjured an image of her in the barely there, see-through lingerie she’d worn at the hotels they’d stayed at—but instead of a five-star hotel, he imagined her wearing it in his house, his shower, his bed. His cock liked the picture. Liked it enough that Mateo had to shift in his seat to accommodate its thickening length.

“Do I have any say in this?” he grumbled.

True to her bulldozing form, Luciana just shrugged. “Dad left the cabin to me, so I can let whoever I want stay there, and you wouldn’t leave her to wash in the creek out back, would you?”

“Luciana, it’s sweet of you to offer but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.” Olivia’s cheeks had turned pink—the same shade they got whenever he had started talking dirty, telling her exactly how he was going to touch her, lick her and fuck her until she came so hard she couldn’t move.

Looked like he wasn’t the only one remembering old times.

He caught a glimpse of his twisted reflection in the metal napkin dispenser on the table. The sight was like having a gallon of ice water dumped over his head. She wasn’t getting turned-on. Olivia was embarrassed because she didn’t know how to say no to his sister’s offer.

The perverse urge to have her stay in the cabin fifty yards from his back door took hold of him with a steel grip. The pretty Olivia and the beastly him. Having to see the disappointment and revulsion in her eyes every time she looked at him would be just the punishment he needed to pay for the sin he’d committed against his team by living when they’d all died.