Page 9 of Stunner (Whiskey Dolls 3)

The smirk on his lips just then did things to my insides, things it shouldn’t, seeing as I’d just been jilted by his best friend after a year-and-a-half-long relationship.

“Glad to hear it.”

My chin jerked back. “You’re glad to hear I wasn’t in love with your best friend?”

He shrugged in a noncommittal way but didn’t say anything more.

“Anyway,” I continued, hoping I didn’t look as flustered as I suddenly felt, “Thank you for punching him out for me.”

“No need to thank me. The asshole deserved a lot more than a busted lip and black eye. You can consider it penance for being, what did you say? Cold and insufferable?”

I dipped the corner of my second piece of toast into the runny yolk of my last egg and bit down, chewing slowly as my brain churned, trying to wrap around the fact that Owen had done something that extreme on my behalf. To punch his best friend in the face for not doing right by me shed a whole new light on the man I thought I knew. It was disconcerting, and too damn much to wrap my head around after the train wreck I’d experienced the past several hours.

As we continued to eat in silence, my attention drifted over Owen’s broad shoulder to the photos he had stuck to his refrigerator. I hadn’t noticed them when I first sat down, but now that I had, I found myself fascinated by them. There were selfie photos of Owen and Gus, human and dog faces mushed together. Others had him with an older man and woman I could only assume were his parents. There were several of him with a beautiful dark-haired woman, and even more with a little girl who had the same gemstone green eyes as he had, the same tanned skin and deep brown hair. There were so many photos, you couldn’t see the surface of the fridge, and in every single one of them, Owen was smiling, big and brilliant and happy. It was a smile I’d never seen in person, one I wasn’t even sure he was capable of.

“Is that your family?” I asked, pointing the speared edge of my toast at the fridge.

“Mostly, yeah. There are some of friends on there, but the majority are of the Shields clan.”

Pushing off the stool, I rounded the counter and entered the kitchen, eager for a closer look at a side of Owen I’d never seen before, one I hadn’t known existed. My attention was drawn to the little girl in particular. There were so many pictures of her, more than any other person, and it looked like they spanned her entire life so far, from infancy to what looked to be about six, her big smile missing a front tooth.

Without thinking, I reached out and slid one of the pictures from beneath its magnet. In it, Owen was holding her up, propped on his hip, and she was dressed in a miniature graduation cap and gown in royal blue.

“She looks exactly like you,” I said, holding the picture up and looking over my shoulder to Owen. “Nearly spitting image.”

He moved closer, the grin taking over his face just then not nearly as big as the one in the photo, but it still packed a hell of a punch. He took the rectangular piece of paper from my hand and looked down at it, fondness swimming in his expression. “My niece, Hazel.” The way he said her name, the love and adoration ringing clear in his words... I would have been lying if I said it didn’t make him even hotter.

That grin of his blooming into a full-blown smile that made my insides hum. “She’s my little buddy. Got me wrapped around her little finger, and she and my sister both know it and use it to their advantage as often as possible.”

I turned to face him, resting my hips against the lip of the counter behind me as I crossed my arms over my chest to hide the fact my nipples had pebbled in reaction to him, another surprise. “That’s actually really sweet.”

He looked back up at me, arching that smug brow again as he moved to the fridge and stuck the photo back under its magnet. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

It was my turn to shrug as I bit back my smile. “Cold and insufferable, remember?”

“Fair enough.” He leaned to the side, grabbed my coffee mug from the bar where I’d been sitting, and passed it to me before propping himself against the counter across from me and drinking from his own mug.

We stood there, staring at each other as we sipped our coffee. I wasn’t sure if he felt it too, but I could have sworn that the air between us has grown thick and humid, making my blood tingle.That tingle felt oddly like a warning, telling me we were too close, that the emotions running through me were inappropriate given our circumstances.

I was saved from having to overthink every thought and feeling churning inside me by the familiar ring of a cellphone. The sound gave me a jolt. “Is that mine?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” The spell was effectively broken when Owen exited the kitchen and moved into the living room, picking up the beaded white clutch I’d been carrying the day before that contained my cell, ID, a bank card, and a bit of cash. “I meant to give this to you when you woke up, but it slipped my mind. Don’t know how since the damn thing’s been going off all morning.”

My stomach sank as I took the clutch from his extended hand and twisted the front clasp. The ringing stopped just as I pulled the phone out, and sure enough, Owen had been right. There were more than forty missed calls from my mom, my maid of honor and best friend, Sloane, and the rest of my crew from Whiskey Dolls. Then there were the texts, countless texts, mostly from the same people, spanning from worried to supportive. Just a brief scan showed messages reading:Everything is going to work out, I promise. Just as soon as Mercury is out of retrograde; that came from my mom, the spiritualist, to:I’ve been talking to the girls and we think we figured out the perfect place to hide Jackson’s body, from Sloane.

But out of the fifty or so texts, only one came from the man I was supposed to have walked down the aisle to the day before.One.

Jackson:I’ll stay gone for a few days so you have time to pack your stuff and move out. I’m sorry.

The son of a bitch. I’d have wished him dead, but I didn’t want him getting off that easy, so I silently wished he’d catch a raging case of gonorrhea and shingles at the same time.

“Thank God for small favors, I guess,” I grumbled to myself as I shoved the phone back into my purse. I’d get back to Mom and the girls later, once I knew what the hell I was going to do.

“That Jackson?”

I lifted my gaze to find Owen watching me intently, his eyes laser focused on me and sparking. “No. It was my mom.” I waved the phone in my hand. “All I got from him was a text at 10:00 last night telling me he’d be gone for a while so I could get my shit and get out of his house.”

Owen’s brows shot up, his nostrils flaring in a way that reminded me of a bull about to charge. “That prick actually said that?”

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