Jax waved over their waitress, and between the three of them, they ordered enough for a small army. Sawyer didn’t speak again until he’d put away two double doubles. Finally, content, he sighed and leaned back. “So. Why are we staring at the sisters?”
Not much got by Sawyer.
“What do you know about them?” Ford asked him.
“Other than Jax going at it with the middle one on the pier the other night? Which, by the way-nice, man.”
Jax let out a long breath and felt a muscle bunch in his jaw. “People need to mind their own business.”
Sawyer flashed a rare grin and helped himself to Jax’s fries. “Not going to happen in this town. As for the other sisters, I know the oldest has a sweet ass to go with her sweet-ass accent when she’s pissed, and she was pissed earlier at the post office when she found out that we don’t have guaranteed overnight from here. And the youngest, she might be hot, but she’s also crazy. I clocked her at seventy-six on a fucking Vespa 250. When I pulled her over and wrote her up a ticket, she said I was committing highway robbery because there was no way she’d been going a single mile per hour over sixty-five. She chewed out me, my radar gun, and my mama, and I gotta tell you, that girl has a mouth on her. Oh, and apparently I need some sort of guava shit facial because my skin is dry in my ‘P’ zone. Like I care about my P zone. She’s going to be trouble, big trouble.”
“I think it’s a ‘T’ zone,” Ford said, pointing to his own.
Sawyer sent him a look of banality. “Is there something you want to tell us?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking gay.” Ford shook his head, confident in his sexuality. “And all women are trouble, man. Every last one.”
At this, Sawyer raised a brow. Ford loved women. Always. Period. Sawyer looked at Jax for answers.
Jax shrugged. “It’s a sucky day in Mayberry,” he said and took another look at the table of sisters.
Tara was saying something through tight lips to her sisters. Chloe downed her drink and raised her hand for another.
Maddie shoved the stack of papers aside and reached into her purse, pulling out two knitting needles and a bright red skein of yarn. Jax wondered if it was the same one he’d seen wrapped around her the other morning.
Biting her lower lip between her teeth, she slowly and awkwardly worked the knitting needles, murmuring to herself as she did, clearly talking her way through each stitch with heartbreaking meticulousness. It got him right in the gut.
She got him right in the gut.
“Earth to pussy-whipped Jax.”
Jax slid Ford a long look. “Pussy-whipped?”
“I thought you gave up that shit when you ran away from Seattle.”
He hadn’t run away from Seattle. He’d walked. Fast.
Sawyer was looking like he’d found a bright spot to his day. “So exactly how many women do you figure have thrown themselves at you since you’ve been back in Lucky Harbor?”
“I don’t know.”
“All of them,” Sawyer said. “But this is the only one to hold your interest, and don’t even try to tell me I’m full of shit.” He hitched his chin to indicate Maddie. “So basically, it’s Murphy’s Law now. Sheer odds say you’re about to make an ass of yourself.” He said this as if it was Christmas morning and Santa Claus had delivered.
“And this makes you happy?” Jax asked in disbelief.
“Oh, fuck, yeah.”
Jax took another look at the sisters. The three of them were talking, but Tara was looking at her watch. Chloe was now making eyes at the busboy’s ass. Maddie still had her brow furrowed in fierce concentration as she carefully talked herself through another stitch.
“Christ, you have it bad,” Ford said in disgust.
It was entirely possible that for once, he was right.
Chapter 12
“You’re as happy as you make up
your mind to be.”
PHOEBE TRAEGER
For the third morning in a row, Chloe whipped the blanket off Tara. Maddie knew this because Tara’s distinct screech echoed in the small bedroom they’d been sharing in the cottage.
Where there was only one bed.
At least it was a queen-sized, and it’d been cold enough that they hadn’t minded being packed in like a litter of kittens. Well, they minded Chloe talking in her sleep, because it was usually things like “harder, Zach, harder,” which both Tara and Maddie could do without hearing.
Tara was still complaining about being woken up, her drawl thick and sweet as molasses. This was in direct opposition to the words she was saying, something about Chloe’s questionable heritage and the turnip truck she rode in on.
Cocooned in between the wall and a pillow, Maddie snickered and burrowed deeper into her own warmth. And then the blanket was rudely ripped off her, as well. “Goddammit!”
Looking disgustingly cheerful and put together in black, hip-hugging yoga pants and an eye-popping pink sports bra, Chloe smacked Maddie’s ass. “Get up.”
“Touch my ass,” Tara said, sitting up and pointing at her, “and die.”
Chloe grinned. “Two minutes.”
When she’d left the room, Tara gritted her teeth and rolled out of bed, wearing only a cami and boxers, looking annoyingly fabulous with her hair only slightly mussed. “I intensely dislike her.”
“You seem to intensely dislike a lot of people. Like Ford, for instance-who I didn’t realize you knew.”
Tara stiffened. “I don’t.”
“Your accent definitely thickens when you lie. You might want to work on that.”
Tara let out a long, shaky breath. “What do you think of him?”
“Ford?” She thought of him standing behind his bar, tall and sexy, that easy grin charming anyone in its path. “I like him. What’s going on, Tara?”
“Nothing.”
Maddie understood that sentiment. She had a lot of stuff that she didn’t want to talk about, either. She sat up in bed and patted her hair, knowing it resembled something from the wild animal kingdom. She sighed and staggered off the bed. By day, they’d been doing their own thing. She’d been going through the “office” in the marina, trying to make sense of the wacky accounting system-which seemed to be one step above a shoebox. Tara had been cleaning. Chloe couldn’t do either. She’d decided she was going to create a line of skin care products with the inn’s name and give away baskets to their customers when the time came. And when they sold the inn, she hoped the new owners would want the line.
It was a great idea, unique and perfectly suited for a small, cozy beachside inn-assuming they got customers.
When Chloe wasn’t working on that, she spent her time looking for trouble-and, given the two speeding tickets she’d already racked up, she’d found it.
At night, they ate as a family, which meant they fought. Maddie had discovered that it didn’t matter what subject they tackled. Tara and Chloe could argue about the sky being blue.
Mostly they fought over the inn. Tara wanted a commitment from her sisters to sell. Maddie wanted a commitment to give the place a fair shot. Chloe wanted… well, no one really knew. But one thing was certain, she still didn’t want to take sides.
So the tension mounted and manifested itself in stupid little disagreements. Like over yoga.
“Sixty seconds!” Chloe yelled from the living room.
Maddie tied back her hair. “Coming!”
“Liar!”
For being such a tiny thing, Chloe was a purebred pit bull. Maddie staggered to the living room, where Tara was already sitting obediently, legs crossed.
As they’d learned the hard way for three mornings running, Chloe took her yoga seriously. For the next forty-five minutes she chided, bossed, demanded, and bullied myriad poses out of them until Maddie was dripping sweat and barely standing on muscles that were quivering. “I need food,” Maddie gasped.