Page 28 of The Kings of Kearny

Bless her.

I made my excuses and went over to help. She was crouched down, hands on the sides of the steel drum. Sometimes the fixtures could be finicky when you tried to switch out kegs, and both of us had gotten a face full of beer foam on several occasions. We’d found the risk was mitigated when two people worked together to get the lines reattached.

I crouched down next to her, my leg protesting. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” she hissed. “You looked like you were about to blow a gasket, and I was just trying to give you an excuse to get away from those two.”

I stared at her. “I would hug you if they couldn’t see me.”

She grinned. “Mental hug received. Now let’s frown while we pretend to screw around with this for a few minutes.”

I raised my hands and jiggled the lines, dutifully frowning.

She frowned too, but prettily. “How’s the night going?”

“Like shit,” I said. “But people have been tipping me really well even though my attitude sucks.”

“Perks of screwing a King.”

“Screw. Singular. It won’t happen again,” I told her.

She eyeballed me, her frown replaced by the hint of a smile. “Mm-hmm.”

“Don’t mm-hmm me. I’m serious.”

She glanced over my shoulder, just a quick flick of her dark eyes before they landed back on mine. “Tell that to the psychopath who’s been staring at you all night.”

I stiffened. My leg protested, and I nearly fell over. “I thought he just got here.”

Her lips lifted into a full-blown smile. “Nope. He’s been over at a corner booth with a couple of other enforcers.”

“Oh.”

She butted her shoulder against mine. “When Rob made you laugh earlier, he half stood out of his seat like he was going to come kill him for it.”

Maybe Beth was right about the whole jealousy thing after all.

“I don’t know why,” I said. “We didn’t exactly end things on a good note.”

She frowned. “No?”

I shook my head. “I swear I’ll tell you later. Now help me up. My leg is starting to cramp.”

~*~

AS PREDICTED, JIMMYslipped out a side door the second we rang the bell for last call.

“Piece of shit,” Nina said.

Our third bartender for the night, a short black man in his early twenties named Kyle, crossed his arms over his chest and glared as the door banged shut. Being barely old enough to drink and having a baby face made the glare more cute than menacing, but I didn’t have the heart to tell Kyle that.

“One of these days, I’m going to fuck up my cash-out,” he said. “Like short it a grand so that Charley has to get involved and Jimmy will be forced to confess that he bailed early.”

“Don’t,” Nina and I said at the same time.

Kyle frowned at us.

“They’re war buddies,” I told him. “Even though Charley knows Jimmy’s a piece of shit, he’ll still take his side if it’s his word against yours.”

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