Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 485(@200wpm)___ 388(@250wpm)___ 323(@300wpm)
“Just restocking the liquor. Figured it’d be a good day to do it. If you can line them up on the bar, it’ll be easier for me to get into them. Usually Dallas is here to help me out because my knees are a little shaky.”
“I got you.”
As I moved the boxes onto the bar, he opened the one he’d carried and started pulling out bottles and storing them on the shelves along the wall. When I finished, he said, “Thanks for the help…what was the name again?”
“Dax Munro.”
He extended his hand for a quick shake, offering a friendly smile. “I’m Benny Saders, the manager here. I’m the one your guy Carter spoke to about arranging the shoot.”
“So I owe you more than moving a few boxes.”
“How about I owe you a drink? What’ll you have?”
“Oh, I’ll just have a beer,” I said, trying to be polite.
He eyed me skeptically. “What do you normally drink? Don’t tell me it’s beer.”
“A dirty martini, but that’s not—”
“Dirty martini it is!” he exclaimed before I had a chance to object further. “I need one too, and I make a great martini, so just be an angel and accept it. You’re basically doing me a favor.”
“Thank you.” I slid onto a stool while he went to work mixing our drinks.
“So you guys came in and nabbed our Jace Kruse,” he noted, wincing as he finished shaking the stainless-steel shaker. “Nice seeing him running around, getting the praise he deserves.”
I could tell by the way he said it, he held great reverence for Jace, as I figured quite a few people in town did.
“From my limited interactions, he seems like a good guy.”
He practically scoffed. “Let me tell you about this ‘good guy.’ About five years ago, I was watching my niece. I have a humble two-story place a couple of blocks from here. Well, it was past her bedtime, and she was sleeping up in my guest bedroom. I normally stay up and watch a movie until I pass out, so there I was, passed out in the living room with some old John Wayne Western on AMC. Woke up smelling burning, and there’s smoke coming in from the kitchen. I saw it was coming through the basement door, and so I did what anyone would do. I ran through the house, screaming for her, figuring I had time enough to grab her. But I get to the stairs, and it’s already ablaze. Never know how quickly fire can creep up on you until you see it firsthand.
“I called emergency services, and fortunately a neighbor had already reported seeing smoke coming from the house. But there I was, like some kind of animal, trying to think of every nook and cranny I could potentially find to get up to her. Fire was so hot, I had to get out the front door, but there I was, running around, calling for her. If I could have climbed up the goddamn walls, I would have. Fortunately, the firefighters were there not long after, and there comes Jace, running to me, and I’m shouting like a nutjob, begging him to save my little Rae. The fire was creeping on the first floor, under her bedroom, which was on the second, and Jace grabbed that ladder and pushed through the AC in her window. He found her crying and confused, coughing up all the smoke billowing into the room.
“Seeing how horrified she was was hard enough. But to think I would have had to live knowing something had happened to her in my care… I don’t know that I could have lived with that.”
“I’m glad she made it out,” I said, since it was really the only thing I could say after a story like that.
“He’s a saint. You would think that a girl who’d suffered that trauma would have a real terrible memory of the whole thing, but Jace spent time with her after, calming her down. It was real sweet of him, and to this day, she just thinks about how kind he was, not at all about the horror of being in that.”
“Even without knowing Jace very well, that sounds a lot like him,” I admitted.
“That man and his buddies sacrifice so much and give so much to this community, and if anyone deserves a bit of good luck and appreciation, it’s Jace Kruse.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said as he poured our drinks from the shaker into two martini glasses.
He really is Batman.
18
Jace
I enjoyed getting to play around with Zed and Joshua for a couple of hours for the photoshoot. It felt as though I was taking a short course in modeling as Quincy managed me through the different shots, telling me the best ways to stand and the poses he thought were more “my good side.”