2. Tyler

I watched Naomi leave. Not in a huff or with any dramatic flare. She just walked out with her shoulders back and her head high.

Gavin held up his drink and gave it a shake. "A little help?"

I took his glass, fishing the piece of paper out of it before dumping the remaining contents down the drain. I made him another Jack and Coke, going extra light on the Jack. It wasn"t that I was trying to shortchange the guy out of spite, I just didn"t want to be responsible for getting him piss drunk.

With my back to him, I splashed a little whiskey on top to give him the impression I"d gone heavy on the alcohol. I"d barely set the glass in front of him before he snatched it off the bar and took a drink.

He grimaced before a grin spread across his mousy face. "Now that"s how you pour "em." He slapped the bar for emphasis, then spun on his stool to stare at the front door, sloshing a third of the sticky concoction out of his glass as he did.

All I could do was grind my teeth. "Keep spilling like that and you"ll be drinking out of a plastic sippy cup next time."

His laugh was thick and entirely too loud for the middle of the afternoon. "You"re going to have your hands full with that one," he slurred.

That settled it. After this drink, he was getting straight Coke whether he liked it or not. Or maybe coffee. Then his comment finally sank in.

I would have my hands full with Naomi.

The thought brought a flood of images to mind of our one night together. The way her sensual curves seemed to fit perfectly against every inch of my body.

Fuck. Me. That woman was the worst kind of addiction.

I"d been with plenty of others before her. That was one of the perks of being single and owning a bar. Even if you were just mildly attractive and not a total asshole, women wanted a piece of you.

I"d gotten so used to being used for a hot one-night stand that I didn"t expect anything else anymore. I didn't want anything else. No strings. No commitments. No feelings.

Then Naomi fell into my arms. I knew she was tipsy because I"d been the one serving her and the one verbally sparring with her in a way that felt more like foreplay than fighting. The thing was, with her, it never went anywhere. Which was frustrating as hell because every time she was around, I wanted to grab her and shut her mouthy ass up with a kiss.

I"d been the one to insist on driving her, and when she asked me to walk her to her door, I should have left her at the bottom of the steps.

Should have, could have, would have.

Having her in my Jeep, letting her scent and her energy infuse my space, was like playing with matches next to an open gas can.

This was the woman I"d wanted for years. The one I looked at but never touched because I wasn't the relationship guy and she never let our harmless flirt-fighting get out of hand.

There were plenty of reasons why the two of us getting involved was a shit idea, not the least of which was the fact that we worked next door to each other. But that night, with the flush in her cheeks and that ravenous look in her hazel eyes, I was a lost cause. She gave me the opening and I took it. Greedily.

Right up until common sense broke through the haze of lust. She'd had a rough day at the salon, and she'd been drinking. I loved working at the bar, but I wasn't the kind of guy who took advantage when a woman had clearly had enough to drink to cloud her judgment.

"You really gonna give her the boot?" Gavin asked, slowly spinning his stool back around to face me.

Dragging my mind out of the gutter, I gave him a shrug. "Like I told her, it"s not my call." My brothers were the ones who wanted to expand the bar, and business decisions at The Fox Den were majority rule.

Personally, I liked it the way it was. Relatively small, manageable, and not big enough to draw the kind of crowds that could start real trouble. Expanding meant we"d have a chance to bring in more money, sure. It also meant more cars in the parking lot, more staff, more minors trying to pass fake IDs, more people who couldn"t hold their liquor, and more room for patrons to get rowdy.

"Did you hear what she said to me?" Gavin asked.

"I did." And he"d deserved it.A guy could get away with calling a woman princess if he genuinely cared about her. Otherwise, it was just a dick thing to say.

"That hot little bitch needs to learn her?—"

A flare of hot anger caught me off guard, and before I realized what I was doing, I reached out, grabbed Gavin by his greasy hair, and smashed his face into the smooth oak. A second later, he slumped off his bar stool and hit the floor with a thud.

Tension coiled in my back and shoulders as I stared at the bar processing what had just happened. My anger had gotten me into plenty of trouble back in high school, but it'd been years since I'd lost control like that.

It was like a switch flipped in my head when he called her a bitch.

I pulled in a breath and gripped the edge of the counter in front of me. My violent reaction had startled me. My blood had gone from simmering in Naomi's presence to boiling in a flash. But as I stood there staring at the smooth wood beneath my hands, I couldn't bring myself to feel bad about it.

Still, logic said I needed to check on him, no matter how much I wanted to leave him drooling on the floor. Shooting a quick glance around the place, I sent a silent "thank you" out to the universe that we were the only two people there. Then I grabbed my drying rag and moved around the bar.

Oh good, the bastard"s awake.

"Wat haffened?" he groaned through his already swelling lips.

His nose was dripping blood, but not enough to suggest I'd broken it. If you asked me, he got off easy.

"You tripped trying to get off your stool, buddy. Let"s get you up and check out the damage." My voice sounded fine, but my pulse was still thundering in my ears.

I might have grabbed him by the arms a little harder than I probably should have. That was better than hurling him halfway across the room like my fury driven primal side wanted me to do.

Gavin winced, but he didn"t put up a fight. Between the whiskey and getting his face smashed into a solid wooden bar top, he was loopy as shit.

I held up three fingers in front of him. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Gavin squinted at my hand. "Six!" He shook his head with a groaning laugh. "Nope. That's not right." He did it again. "Five." He held up his own hand, his drunken gaze bouncing between my outstretched fingers and his, and he gave me a single confident nod. "Right as rain."

Like hell he was, but if I was lucky, he was drunk enough that the last few minutes wouldn"t convert to long-term memory in his pickled brain.

"Why don"t I call you a ride home?" I offered. It wasn"t really a question. He was leaving, and he sure as hell wasn"t driving himself.

Gavin waved me off as he tried to sit on the stool, missed, and damn near smashed his own face into the bar. I bit the inside of my lip to hide the smile that visual evoked.

It really shouldn"t have been funny. As the bartender, I could get in a lot of trouble for serving him enough to get him this drunk. Except, by my count, I really hadn"t served him all that much.

He stumbled again and I caught him, but not before he made a grab for his jacket hanging on the back of the stool. It slipped through his fingers and hit the floor with the muffled ‘tink'.

"Sit, Gavin," I ordered.

I was done pretending to be nice to the guy. Picking up his jacket off the ground, I slipped a hand in the inside pocket and pulled out an almost empty pint of Jack.

"Well, this explains a few things," I said, holding the bottle up for him to see.

He closed one eye and squinted with the other. "I was wondrin" where that went." Good god, the guy was a hazard. To himself, to others, and to my obviously unstable temper.

The front door swung open, and my younger brother Weston sauntered in with an energy drink in his hand, looking like he"d just rolled out of bed. People called us Irish twins because we were born eleven months apart. It didn't help that growing up we looked so much alike that people who didn't know us well often confused one for the other. We also both grew up with a strong aversion to commitment.

"Mornin" sunshine," I said when he took a seat at the bar. "Rough night?"

He rolled his eyes. "Something like that." His gaze shifted to Gavin and one eyebrow shot up. "I take it the sale is a done deal."

I nodded, grinding my teeth. "I"m going to need you to keep an eye on things for a bit," I motioned to our drunk former landlord. "Unless you want to give him a ride?"

West let out a sharp laugh and shook his head. "No way am I letting that tool puke in my truck. Call him a cab."

That was my original plan, but that meant the cabbie would have to deal with him. I might have some resurfacing anger issues, but I wasn"t that kind of monster. Plus, it was never a good idea to piss off the only cab company in town when you ran a bar for a living.

"Just watch the bar. It"s dead anyway."

He looked around. "Yeah, whatever."

The only bright spot was that I'd taken my Jeep to work instead of my Impala. That car was my baby, and if I'd driven it, Gavin definitely would have been taking a cab home.

I helped him up, slinging his jacket over my shoulder. "I"ll be back as soon as I can." Then I guided my former landlord and all-around skeevy asshole through the door and out into the afternoon sun.

We were moving into autumn in Colorado after one of the hottest summers on record, and for the first time in weeks, it finally wasn"t blazing hot outside. Gavin made it to my Jeep without falling, but he was out of it enough that it took three tries to get him situated in the passenger seat. Trying to get his seatbelt buckled was like wrestling with a giant toddler. I was tempted to just shut the damned door and risk it. What were the odds I would wreck my Jeep driving three miles on a Tuesday afternoon?

Plus, he was the douche who snuck a bottle of whiskey into my bar and got himself hammered before three in the afternoon.

Frustration was riding me so hard by the time I made it around to my door that I forgot I tucked that mostly empty bottle of Jack in my back pocket, until I dropped into my seat. It was like sitting on a rock.

I yanked it out and glared at it. Then I turned my attention back to Gavin, who was already sawing logs. "Asshole."

There was no way I was driving across town with an open bottle of whiskey in my truck. My brother Brandon could probably get the charges dropped if one of his buddies did pick me up for it, but The Fox Den didn"t need those kinds of rumors swirling.

Easing out of the Jeep, I made sure I still had my keys in my pocket and headed around the building to throw the bottle in the dumpster out back.

Two steps. That was how far away the dumpster was when I heard the unmistakable sound of crying. It wasn"t the uncontrollable sobbing and wailing kind of crying that some girls used to get attention. This was worse. It was nearly silent, as if the woman who was in tears was doing everything she could to hide them from the world.

I started to turn and walk away. I could throw the bottle of Jack in the back and roll the dice. But the better part of me, the part that came from having two loving parents who had drilled honor and decency into me and my brothers, demanded I at least check on the crying woman.