Page 3 of Hot for the Jerk

Glancing up at the Christmas crowd, I found a whole hell of a lot of eyes on me.

Fucking hell.

Raina was singing Dolly’s part, but Vica refused to sing for Kenny.She held out the microphone to me.

Then the whole fucking bar started to chant my name.

“Jag-ger!Jag-ger!”

“You can’t deny your fans, Jag,” Dom said with a chuckle, looping his arm around his woman, Chloe, as she came to stand behind him looking a little green around the gills.She was still early in her pregnancy, so we weren’t telling anybody, but the morning sickness seemed to be spreading into most of the day these days.

The kids still pushed me from behind, and Griffon was still pulling on my belt loops.If I really wanted to stand my ground, I could, and they wouldn’t make me budge.But fucking hell, it was hard to say no to the little squirts.

Eventually, they had me all the way on stage, and Vica, with a shit-eating grin and a cheeky glint in her brown eyes, handed me the microphone just as Kenny started to sing that “tender love is blind.”I put the mic to my mouth and sung the words.Again, I didn’t need to read the prompter.This was a song that was as ingrained in my mind as “Summer of ’69”—perhaps more.All I thought of when I heard this song was my parents, madly in love and dancing around the living room.And now my siblings and their women went and ruined it by making me sing with the devil in stretchy black pants and a forest-green sweater that hugged her soft curves like a second skin.

Fuck them all.

Raina glowered at me as she sang Dolly Parton’s words—beautifully.

Fuck.

I turned to her, hate in my eyes, and replied with Kenny’s part.Then came the chorus, where we both had to sing, and everyone in the bar cheered even louder than when we sang our solos.Her cousins, who she ran the vineyard and winery with, slowly made their way toward my brothers and their women—all of them smiling like this had been an elaborate plot between them.

Pink slashed high across Raina’s cheeks, and she made deadly promises with her eyes at her cousins, who didn’t seem to care.Much like my siblings.

Her nostrils flared when she turned back to me for the next round of the chorus.Loathing burned like acid in my gut.This woman was everything I hated.A know-it-all.A one-upper.A cheat—not in relationships, at least I didn’t think, but in life—and an all-around irritation.She was like a mosquito in a dark room.But fucking hell, she was a pretty mosquito.One you might hesitate—just for a moment—about squishing.Until you remembered she was a bloodsucking pest, probably riddled with disease, or at the very least, about to make your arm very fucking itchy for a week.

I sang harder.

So did she.

I poured my soul into the words.

And fuck her, she did too.

It was like we were fighting and collaborating at the same time.

And why in god’s name was my cock hard?

What the fuck?

Somehow, this felt like fucking foreplay now.Really rough, really angry, really hot foreplay.

The last round of the chorus was upon us now, and she did what Dolly always did, emphasizing certain words and singing them just a little louder.She was good.I’d give her that.Good at tricking the crowd into loving her.

She was no Dolly Parton though.Dolly was a saint, and Raina probably had horns hidden beneath her hair somewhere.

We faced each other, ready to finish up the song.

Her eyes glittered like peridots under the recessed lighting of the pub, and she smirked at me like she’d won something, and sang the lyrics, asking me to “sail away” with her.

I repeated, “Sail away,” three times before finishing it with, “with me.”

Then the music ended, and the entire restaurant exploded with applause and cheering.My nieces and nephews charged the stage hugging me, and off in the corner, Raina’s nine-year-old son, Marco, gave his mom a smile and a thumbs up.

Raina set the microphone down on top of the monitor and sneered.“You were a little pitchy.”

Anger bubbled hot in my veins as my nieces’ and nephews’ praises blended together to create a muddling din in my brain.I seethed.“You couldn’t find a key if it hit you in the face.”

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