New Hope, Old Grudges Read Online Anne Malcom

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary Tags Authors: Anne Malcom Advertisement

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I jutted my head upward and walked like I didn’t have a care in the world, like I owned the room and like I wasn’t at all self-conscious about walking into a bar alone on a Friday night.

Luckily, there was an empty stool close to the door, so I didn’t have to do too much walking and didn’t have to meet the eye of anyone staring. I’d probably catch someone I went to high school with.

I settled onto the comfortable stool. The couple to my left were having a heated argument, and the man to my right was engrossed in the game on the TV, therefore, no one was thinking that me sitting at the bar meant I wanted to make friends.

Perfect.

“What can I get you?”

I jerked at the voice, husky like she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day. The bartender’s weathered, tanned skin added to that theory. Her hair was bleached blonde, her skinny, muscular arms were exposed in a Harley Davidson tank, and she was wearing jeans that looked like they were painted on. She was pretty, in a harsh type of way.

I fumbled to think of a drink that would make a woman like this respect me.

“Whiskey. Neat.” The words out of my mouth had never once been uttered in the past. If I did drink—though I rarely did—it was sweet white wine, chilled to perfection. Or red wine with my mother.

The bartender’s kohl-rimmed eyes regarded me for a second, taking measure with an expert gaze I guess she’d honed being a bartender. I felt uncomfortable under it. Like I was being weighed for sturdiness and coming up lacking.

Then again, my resilience had already been established; I was here at a bar in my hometown with nothing to show for my years away. A cliché.

I thought she was going to refuse to serve me on account of being a failure. But of course not. She was a bartender. Failures were her bread and butter. Therefore, she just nodded. “Preference?”

My mouth went dry. I couldn’t think of a name of a whiskey if my life depended on it. “Dealer’s choice,” I said.

Again, the probing look, then another nod.

Seconds later, a glass tumbler was set in front of me with amber colored liquid in it. I regarded it for a split second then grabbed the glass and took a meager sip.

I had to school my expression, and it took everything in me not to cough and splutter like a teenager trying cheap booze for the first time.

I’d never been a teenager trying cheap booze for the first time. Our house always had expensive wine, and we’d been offered it since we were fifteen. My mother was ‘European’ that way.

My father didn’t drink hard liquor. Maybe a sip of wine here and there. But he didn’t like alcohol, and I’d followed his lead, as I always did, wanting to earn his respect even though he’d never made me feel like it was something I had to earn.

Even though my father rarely drank, had the odd cigar on special occasions, hiked out in the woods and ate heartily but healthy, he’d died of a heart attack at sixty.

On that thought, I downed the rest of the glass, wincing at the burn but embracing the softening of my thoughts that came afterward.

It was after I downed the drink that my gaze wandered down the bar. I was now feeling brave enough to see who else was at the local watering hole, to see if I could glimpse a familiar face.

I didn’t have anyone that I was hoping to see, not a single kindred spirit with whom I had hung out with in social Siberia. When you’re from a small town, a small high school and labeled persona non grata, even the ‘nerds’ didn’t want you in their crew.

But whatever. I survived, didn’t I?

Just.

My heart stuttered as my wandering gaze found another one, one that looked like it had been zeroed in on me for a long time. That made my spine prickle. And not entirely in a bad way.

Brody Adams.

He was here.

Sitting at the bar. Thankfully, the other end of it, and it was a long bar, but still, in relatively close proximity.

He wasn’t in uniform. Obviously.

A leather jacket hung on the back of his stool, and he was wearing a long-sleeved Henley. It molded over his broad shoulders, clung tight to his muscular arms. Jeans not entirely visible from my perch, but I bet the asshole looked great in them too.

It was then I realized that I’d been staring at him for a long time, and he was still staring at me. There was a knit to his brow, like he was trying to figure me out. Remember me.

Oh yeah, because he forgot who I was.

My grip tightened on my glass, and my eyes narrowed, flickering to the man beside him.

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