“You sure? The mind is a dangerous place to be roaming around this late.”
“Amen to that.” Cricket let out a soft laugh, then drained her Scotch.
When he picked up her glass and raised his brows, she nodded.
“Hey, if you need an ear...” He shrugged. “I’m a bartender, it’s my job.”
“You’re so full of shit.” Bobby or Billy—she’d forgotten—was off the phone and snorted like a pig. “Anyone tries to unload on you and you tell ’em to go find a damn shrink.”
Wyatt pinned him with quite an impressive glare. “I’m selective,” he said, and grabbed the Scotch.
After he poured her drink and corked the bottle, something behind her caught his attention. “Excuse me,” he murmured, suddenly preoccupied. “Sabrina.” He stepped to the side and motioned. “You okay?”
“Fine,” a woman’s soft voice replied.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to work. I’m really, really sorry I’m late, Wyatt. Please don’t fire me. I—I couldn’t help it.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, then muttered a curse. “What happened?”
Cricket sat up straighter, fighting the urge to turn around. Something about the way Wyatt looked stirred some instinct that lifted the fine hair on the back of her neck. If she hadn’t seen him with the children earlier, the hard edge in his eyes would’ve given her a completely different impression of him. She couldn’t resist a brief peek.
The bruise on the young woman’s face was impossible to miss, even though she’d tried her best to hide it with her long auburn hair. Cricket’s chest tightened at the sight. At what it so clearly meant. The woman, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and Wyatt were speaking quietly, their conversation not meant to be overheard, but Cricket couldn’t do anything about it, short of getting up and leaving.
“It’s fine, Wyatt. I promise. Can we drop this?”
He took so long to respond, Cricket stole another quick glance. The hardness was back in his eyes. “Don’t worry. Take the rest of the night off.”
“Thanks, but I really need the money.”
His jaw clenched. “After we close, you can stay upstairs if you want.”
“That’s okay. I’ve got it covered.”
Wyatt didn’t move for a while, but Sabrina did, slipping quickly behind the bar.
Cricket couldn’t help but think about how Wyatt was still watching the woman. No, not just her. He did a scan around the bar, and she had the feeling he knew exactly who should be there and who shouldn’t be in the crowded room, before his protective gaze returned to Sabrina. Cricket’s esteem for him went up, way up, along with her curiosity. So far, he’d surprised her twice tonight, three times if she counted this afternoon.
Interesting. The guy next to her? He was like a bottle of wine. The label might be enticing, but when you got up close, he was bland and boring.
Wyatt, on the other hand, had something going on inside, in addition to the tantalizing label. She was trying to remember if she’d met anyone who had ever stirred that particular feeling in her before. Although she didn’t know this man. He could be a wild card. A complication she didn’t need.
“Hey,” Bobby said, loudly in her ear. “He forgot your drink. I can get it for you if you want.”
“That’s okay.” She gave him her patented not-interested look, then glanced behind him to focus on Wyatt as he filled drink orders on the other side of the bar.
Then her phone rang. Small mercies. She pulled it out of her bag. “Jade. Where are you?”
“I’m here. Five minutes from the resort.”
“How?”
“I used my incredible charm.”
“Right. You bulldozed somebody into giving you a seat.”
“What’s the difference?”
Cricket laughed. Some things never changed. She hadn’t seen Jade since the day they’d graduated but they’d kept in touch through Facebook and Cricket knew she was working for some giant perfume company in New Jersey. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Is the hotel bar okay with you? I want to check in and dump my stuff.”
“Sure,” Cricket said, glancing at Wyatt.
“Say, fifteen minutes?”
Bobby leaned in and waved at her. Cricket turned on her stool, ignoring him.
“Okay,” she said, but Jade had already disconnected. It was probably going to be a late night, and she doubted she’d be back to flirt with Wyatt, but that couldn’t be helped.
She left a twenty on the bar, figuring it should be enough with tip, and walked to the door. Before she left, she turned her head, just in time to catch him staring right at her. His eyes narrowed and she wondered what he saw, but then his eyes widened, his brows raised in an obvious question.
She gave him her most enigmatic smile. At least she hoped so. She might just look like an idiot.
When he grinned back, she still wasn’t sure.
CRICKET’S PLAN HAD been to walk to Ronny’s shack. But staying up until two thirty this morning put that idea to bed. Which she wished she had done for herself, instead of taking a cab the sinfully short distance to the place where she’d grown up.
She couldn’t complain too much. Harlow had joined her and Jade after ditching the football player, and they’d laughed themselves silly in the hotel bar, and then after it closed, out on the deck. The talk had been about the past. She knew her reasons for not telling her friends about what was happening in her life now, but she also knew they’d all fess up soon enough.
Thoughts of Wyatt had floated through her brain all night. Just images, stray thoughts. She’d slipped once about him, and the others had glommed on to it like leeches. After that she’d been careful not to mention the bar. They all knew it. And soon enough they’d all be checking him out.
As the taxi pulled up on the beach road, she smiled at Ronny’s sky blue shack, the only one like it on this stretch of the best surfing beach for miles. The city had tried to make him change the color back when she’d been a teenager, but they’d given up eventually. That house was as much a landmark as anything in Temptation Bay, and surfers came from all over to meet Ronny, in his fifties, and still a legend in his own right.
She gave the cab driver too much money, then slipped off her sandals to walk the familiar sand, clean and cool in the early morning air. She’d worn one of her old sundresses, something she’d taken with her to Chicago out of nostalgia more than anything, but hardly ever wore. Last time had been on her last visit... God, three years ago already. How had that happened? She needed to come more often. He missed her. A lot. He’d promised to make her favorite breakfast, chocolate chip pancakes, and swore his groupies, the surfers that swarmed in the summer and made his shack their headquarters, were banished for the day.
She hadn’t the heart to tell him she hadn’t liked chocolate chip pancakes since high school. It didn’t matter. She’d eat whatever he had. Guess she missed him just as much.
The front door was open, but she stopped on the second step up to the porch. The board had been replaced recently. Unfortunately, the other two hadn’t, and it was evident that they’d already started rotting.
But that was her dad. Fix what’s broke. If it’s not, why bother? There were waves to catch. Fish to fry. Books to read.