Page 68 of The Bodyguard
“Is this the part where the wise bartender solves all my problems?” I snapped.
“I don’t know. Do those problems have anything to do with Sabrina King?”
I glared at him while he poured my whiskey. “What do you know about me and Sabrina?”
“I know you’ve hung out here a few times. Had dinner. Sat at the bar. I’ve seen you around town doing errands with her, too. And, of course, there is the way she looks at you. Like you hung the moon or some shit.”
I didn’t want to know that. I didn’t want to know how she looked at me. It’s why I…I tried my hardest not look at her.
I took a sip of my drink and felt my tongue go numb.
“I know you don’t look at her the same,” Jack said, and it was like a knife in the gut.
Because he was right. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I was broken. All that she offered wasn’t mine to take, because I wasn’t going down that road ever again. Fifteen fucking minutes. For fifteen minutes I had been the happiest schmuck on the planet, waiting for the woman I loved to pledge herself to me.
Who would put themselves through that again?
“You hear what she’s doing?” Jack asked.
What the hell was she doing? As far as I knew she was planning a freaking engagement party and a wedding at the same time. If she wasn’t in the middle of putting something together to eat when I got home, she was usually on her laptop. Any time I asked her what she was doing, she would say her job, which to her meant shopping for things.
“No,” I snapped, pissed that he knew something that I didn’t about Brin.
“Setting the vet up with an animal rescue shelter. Doc and Charlotte have been wanting to do it for a long time, just couldn’t get enough donations. Sabrina King got her soon-to-be brother-in-law to pony up the whole nut. As long as it’s maintained as a no-kill shelter.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.” Like a woman who would bring her cat on a date and keep it in a towel-lined purse.
“Hot and kind. You don’t find that too often, huh?”
I looked at Jack then. He was a good-looking guy. Right age. Someone Sabrina might date after we ended things. I might see them around town holding hands and shit. Because he was right. Sabrina was hot and kind and a million other things. A good man would see that in her and want it for himself. Suddenly I had this urge to break his nose and make him not such a good-looking guy anymore.
“You didn’t strike me as a poacher, Jack,” I said calmly.
He laughed. “Oh, I don’t poach. But I’m telling you this, man. If the situations were reversed, how long would you stay with someone who doesn’t look at you like you look at them back? Me? Not too long, I would think.”
I couldn’t hear this anymore. I needed to get out of there. I shot back my drink and grimaced as the burn slid down my throat. I threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar and walked way.
As soon as I hit the street I saw him.
A tall, lean male wearing a black hoodie. He was heading for what appeared to be an old Nissan that looked like it had seen a lot of miles. I jogged up to him before he could get in the car.
“Hey! You! Stop.”
He turned toward me. “Is there a problem, sheriff?”
“Do I know you?”
The kid put his hood down and I thought his face seemed familiar. “I’m Danny Wade, Pete Wade’s son.”
Right. I knew Pete had a son named Danny. “Haven’t seen you around here for a while.”
“I was working a well outside Houston. Dried up, so now I’m back until something else opens up.”
What else did I know about Danny? Something about him and his father. “You living with your dad? Last I heard you two had a falling-out.”
As I recalled, Pete had been furious enough with his son to kick him out of the house. He’d just never said what it was about.
“He’s up in Wyoming until fall, working on a drill up there,” he said, spitting on the ground while he did. “Only reason why I’m home. Me and Dad don’t mesh well together.”
