my family says.” She had always been the sassy, smart-mouthed sister. Since she didn’t feel as if she could compete in looks or brains with four older sisters, she had found her own way to stand out.
After their father left, that had been one more way to manage the pain.
“So why did you leave the Rangers? Judging by your ink, you were a loyal soldier. I figure somebody who cares enough about a particular branch of the military to make it a permanent part of his body ought to stick with it as long as he can.”
He sighed. “You’re not going to let up, are you?”
“Would you like me to?”
He gave her a long look and appeared to be choosing his words as carefully as she picked over the fresh fish selection from her suppliers.
“I left the Rangers after my wife was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer.”
And there was the problem with being a smart-mouth. Sometimes you missed important signals and ended up feeling like a jerk.
She remembered him telling her the only Mrs. Delgado was his brother’s wife. She believed him, so either his wife had gone into remission and divorced him or she had lost her battle. Alex was afraid it was the latter.
“I’m sorry.”
He shoved away from the table, long fingers loosely clasped around the neck of his brew. “That was delicious. Let’s go play some pool.”
He obviously didn’t want to talk about his late wife. It was one thing to flirt with a player who had no more interest in anything long-term than she did. It was something else entirely when the man was a grieving widower whose pain was so raw he couldn’t even talk about it.
She grabbed her mineral water and followed him to an empty pool table. The Lizard had four billiard tables, two of them currently in use.
To reach the table where Sam was now setting up, she had to pass a group of college-age guys—mountain biking tourists, if she had to guess. With them was one woman wearing a skintight pair of pegged jeans and a white halter top that was completely inappropriate for a Rocky Mountain spring night.
She laughed suddenly, overloud and overfriendly, and playfully punched one of the young studs on the shoulder.
Only when Alex had nearly reached Sam’s table did she happen to glance at the woman from an angle where she could see her face, and a shock of recognition just about made her stumble.
Of all the people in town she might have expected to find flirting and half-drunk at The Speckled Lizard, Genevieve Beaumont would have come in dead last. Even behind Katherine Thorne.
“Hey, Genevieve.”
The younger woman shifted her gaze, and her eyes widened. “Alex.” She gave a noticeable sniff and turned back to her boy toys.
Bitch.
On some level she had sympathy for Gen Beaumont, who had been through some definite emotional turmoil the past year. She also would freely admit to a healthy degree of respect for at least one of Gen’s decisions to break off her engagement a year ago when she found out her fiancé impregnated Alex’s niece Sage.
But Gen had taken her anger at her fiancé and turned it into definite antipathy toward all things McKnight, as if the whole family was responsible for the man’s decision to screw around with a vulnerable young woman.
Sage was doing well now, busy at school studying to be an architect like her father, Jack, but Alex had deep sympathy for what she had endured with her unexpected pregnancy. She had planned to put the baby up for adoption but, in the end, Maura and Jack had adopted the baby and were raising Henry as their own son instead of their grandson. On the surface, it might look as if everything had worked out for all parties concerned. That pretty picture tended to gloss over all the complicated snarls of emotions.
She pushed away her family dramas and any concern for Genevieve Beaumont and the old tendrils of pain, and grabbed a cue off the rack on the wall.
“You want to break?” Sam asked her.
“Sure. I’ll warn you, I haven’t played in a long time. I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you much of a game.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty rusty, too.”
An hour and three games later, he won two out of three, but just barely.
“Not much of a game.” He snorted. “I haven’t had to work that hard for a win since basic training, when I came up against a guy who hustled new recruits for fun.”
She smiled. “We had a pool table in the basement when I was growing up. My dad, brother and I used to play for matchsticks. At last count, I think Riley owed me about eight hundred thousand. One of these days, I might have to collect.”
“Why do I feel like I’ve just been scammed?”
She smiled. “You won, didn’t you?”
“Barely.”
“I wasn’t lying when I said I hadn’t played in a while. But I guess it’s like so many other things. Once you take those first strokes, it all comes flowing back.”
He cleared his throat and she couldn’t hold in a smile at the sudden glazed look in his eyes. Was he, like her, thinking about something else completely? “Do you want to go for best of five?”
A loud burst of laughter from Genevieve’s group drew both their attention. While she and Sam had been playing, a couple others had joined Gen’s crowd. On the other occupied table, two rough-edged guys were arguing heatedly about a move. A couple danced nearby to an up-tempo country song playing on the jukebox.
Sometimes the loud, hard-partying scene at The Speckled Lizard grated on her nerves, especially after a long night at the restaurant. The only problem was, during the off-season, the after-hours nightlife in Hope’s Crossing was basically nonexistent, other than a few fast-food joints that stayed open 24/7.
She could always call it a night but she selfishly didn’t want to. She liked Sam. The way he moved, the way he smelled, the way he played pool. It had been a long time since she had met someone so intriguing.
“How do you feel about taking a little walk?” she asked on impulse.
He blinked at her, cue in hand. “Now? It’s past eleven. The whole town is closed down, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Why not? It’s a beautiful evening. These kind of mild spring nights are something of a miracle here in the high mountains.”
Don’t say no, she thought. The idea of going back to her house by herself tonight depressed her more than it should. Not that she had any intention of taking Sam there, but she definitely wanted to spend a little more time with him. This was a nice compromise.
“We don’t have to,” she added. “I only thought maybe you might like a quick guided tour of Hope’s Crossing, being new in town and all.”
He leaned a hip against the edge of the pool table, all those rangy ex-army muscles in delectable view.
Maybe inviting him out for a walk wasn’t the smartest idea she’d ever had, when she had to keep reminding herself he was the contractor at the restaurant and she couldn’t afford to mess things up now that her dream was within reach.
“A walk could be...interesting.”
“Great. Let’s go.” She ignored the flurry of nerves in her stomach as they hung up the cues and settled their tab with Pat at the bar.
He helped her into her jacket and then pulled on his own—a soft, thin leather jacket that made her think of motorcycles and bad boys—and then they walked out into the sweetly scented spring night.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NIGHT WAS RELATIVELY WARM