Page 4 of Resist

“Are you fucking kidding me, Ainsley? I ask for one goddamn thing and you act like it’s some big damn deal.”

She rolled her eyes. He asked for one goddamn thing a minute, but pointing that out would only prolong this fight and she didn’t have the energy. For the last year, she’d been running this tavern with only Maren’s help, which meant she was here from open to close, six days a week, for three hundred and twelve days a year. Mick didn’t believe in closing for the holidays because the regulars at the tavern preferred to do their celebrating over pints rather than with their families. Considering the patrons, she suspected their families didn’t mind their absence around the Christmas trees or Thanksgiving tables. Of course, she wasn’t one to judge because she preferred working on those days rather than spending them with her family too.

“Fine,” she huffed. “Anything else, oh lord and master?”

“Yeah. Lose the fucking attitude. It’s no wonder you’re not married. What man’s going to saddle himself to your smart-ass mouth?”

Before she could respond to that lovely comment, Mick hung up on her.

She wrapped her hands around her phone and throttled it, imagining it was her dad’s neck. Then she shoved the phone in her pocket and sighed heavily. It wasn’t like she expected him to say thanks or show her any appreciation.

That wasn’t Mick’s way. He was a spare the rod, spoil the child kind of guy. Spankings—and the well-placed backhand when she became a teenager—were pretty much part of the daily routine during her childhood. Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if her mom had stuck around to offer something resembling affection. However, Mom had cut and run when Ainsley was six, Eli eight.

Mick had raised them on his own, though she used the wordraisedsparingly. Mick’s life as a single parent had been exactly the same as when he’d been married. The only difference was he’d started dragging two kids along with him to work.

As such, she’d grown up in this tavern, sitting at a booth with her brother doing homework or coloring, watching whatever sport was on TV, eating the cheap microwave food her dad sold to the drunks for dinner. Her bedtime was split into two halves, the first happening on a lumpy couch in the back storeroom that doubled as her dad’s office. Once he closed the tavern for the night, he’d wake up her and Eli, the three of them would walk home at midnight, and she’d spend the rest of the night in her bed.

Child services would have had a field day with her father, but no one who drank at Mick’s gave a shit about the two little kids sitting in the corner, listening to their dirty jokes, watching their drunken brawls, and sucking in all their secondhand smoke.

Ainsley had never taken a puff of a cigarette in her life, but she figured she could look forward to the same ailments Mick now suffered from, given all the secondhand smoke she’d breathed in as a little girl.

She rubbed her eyes. God, she was tired. And it was still three hours until closing time.

“Boyfriend?” Coulton asked, making it clear he’d been listening.

She shook her head. “My father.”

“You call him Mick?”

“Yeah. The word dad doesn’t apply to him. Indicates a relationship that’s not really there.”

“So you’re not close?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what the fuck we are. This is his place.”

“Oh, of course. Mick. Should have put that together,” Coulton said, giving her a self-deprecating grin. “Is it his night off or something?”

“No. Mick hasn’t been able to run the tavern the past year, so I do.”

“Hey, Ainsley,” Petey called out. “You fucking working or what? I’m empty. Get your scrawny ass over here.”

And that was a perfect example of why Coulton’s “please” had sounded so strange.

“You just took the last swig, asswipe, so I’m pretty sure you’re not dying of thirst,” she retorted.

She’d gotten her Miss Manners lessons at Mick’s, so she probably shouldn’t throw a stone when it came to other people’s rudeness. Glass houses and all that crap. Trudging in Petey’s direction, she decided she was done making small talk with the hot guy. Nothing was going to come of it, so why bother?

She refilled drinks for a few of the guys, purposely remaining on the opposite end of the bar, away from Coulton. He made it easy to stay away by nursing his beer. As long as it was half full, she didn’t need to go ask if he wanted another.

Ainsley listened with half an ear as Petey and Brant bitched about some supervisor at the factory where they both worked. Apparently, their new boss was a third their age and fresh out of college with some fancy degree in manufacturing or management or something else equally useless. Petey was pissed because the young guy was trying to make a lot of changes that wouldn’t work.

“Same fucking thing every year. Some new asshole comes in, tries to fix what’s not broken, then moves on, leaving us to deal with the next twat and his big ideas,” Petey griped. “Got a right mind to fucking quit.”

Ainsley rolled her eyes in unison with Brant, because Petey threatened to quit his job—the same one he’d worked for nearly forty years—every day.

She started to say as much when the tavern door opened.

Shit.

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