Page 3 of Ajax

I think about leaving now and again, but my financial situation is hopeless, and the guilt over the idea of leaving hangs over me. He misses her desperately, and me and Tyler are all he has now.

This stupid crush on Ajax has to stop. I’m never going to approach him, and he’s clearly not interested. He looked happy tonight—enchanted with that woman.

I wish I had her confidence.

But it’s time I faced reality.

Ajax Monroe is never going to look at a dumpy barmaid.

TWO

AJAX

Two years later

“You have gotto be shitting me.”

I fix a glare on Digby, but all he does is shrug.

“All you have to do is turn up. Be your usual charming self.”

Cookie snorts. “He might as well not turn up.”

“You two can continue this conversation without me. I’m out.” I carry my coffee cup into the kitchen, rinse it out, and sit it beside the sink.

Digby and Cookie—without my knowledge—signed me up to a dating site, then arranged a date with a woman they say is a stunner.

What that means, I don’t know. I refuse to look at anything they’ve done, but apparently I’m meeting this woman on Friday night at the local pub.

Anger courses through me. They had no right to do this.

I storm out the back door, pausing only to put my boots back on before I stamp toward the cabin I’ve built a short distance from the house.

My living situation is complicated. For the last few years, I’ve lived on a farm with my three best friends—Digby, Cookie, and Shane. We’re all ex-military, but Shane did security work for a while which helped establish the farm and get us going.

Then he brought Jessie Lane to stay with us.

A famous Hollywood actress who was being stalked.

And then like the dunce I am, I met a woman at the pub and fancied myself in love.

At six foot six with scars all over the place—including my face, I don’t tend to attract the ladies. If anything, I think I frighten them. But Jessie took to me straight away, and I like to think we have a special bond.

But the woman I met at the pub? It wasn’t until I brought her home and she spent the night with me that we all discovered the hard way that she was Jessie’s stalker.

She’s doing time for stabbing Jessie in our kitchen—something I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself for. And I’m back to being lonely. Not that I’d ever admit that to any of my friends.

When Shane and Jesse built their own home on our farm so that they’d have privacy, I followed suit to give myself breathing space. I can’t say Victoria—or Emma as it turns out—broke my heart, but she did break any faith I had in myself to attract a good woman.

Which is where Digby and Cookie come in.

It’s not fair. I’m not an unreasonable man. And I’ll probably go to the pub and meet this woman they’ve set me up with because the least I can do is apologise and explain about those knuckleheads. But it makes me angry that they never asked me if it was okay. It’s hard enough making friends without feeling the pressure of some dating site.

Even worse—Shane and Jesse are over in the states, and I don’t have them to side with me and tell Digby and Cookie what a dumb idea it is.

I don’t like going to the pub by myself. It means being out in public, and people looking, and people judging me.

I’m much more at home on the farm with my sheep.

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