1. Leia

Chapter 1

The light above me flickered and I glanced toward the ceiling, squinting at it like I could diagnose the issue from a mere irritated gaze and willpower alone. But we were lucky the lights were still on at all, with the stack of red bills clamoring for my attention on my desk, and I sighed as I leaned over the table to swipe my rag over the worn wood.

"Quiet tonight, cher." Harry Allard's soft voice broke the silence, and I stiffened, pausing my movement for just a fraction of a moment.

I shrugged, trying to appear casual. "Guess that's what I get for having ancestors who missed the memo on the direction Baton Rouge would expand in." We weren't exactly on the tourist trail of town, and The Pour House stayed quiet more nights than not. Passing trade had all but been reduced to an army of frogs and too many mosquitoes.

Pierre, Harry's brother, chuckled. "The chicken wings were good tonight, though." He patted his slightly rounded belly, a smile of contentment softening his craggy features.

Pierre wore his ex-police years in the lines and wrinkles of his face like a badge of honor, but he was soft when it came to me—both brothers were, the uncles I'd never had—and Pierre probably contributed the majority of my profits on nights when I served wings.

I nodded, already automatically doing the mental calculations to work out when those would be on the menu again. Takings had probably been good enough to allow more food to be on offer tomorrow. It was always a tussle over paying a bill and trying to earn more money. Speculating to accumulate… But the only thing I fucking seemed to accumulate was more of Dad's gambling debt.

"One day," I said, "life will be better, and I'll have the money to pay all the bills when they need paying, right?" I grinned in the direction of the brothers, their once blond hair now shining more gray under my dim lights.

They were my most loyal regular customers. Always in the same corner like a pair of personal bodyguards. That they were both ex-police definitely helped keep trouble away from my place, too. Their tattoos were as intimidating as their quiet presence for the wrong people, that was for sure.

Well, maybe they couldn't keep the kind of trouble that answered to the name of Dad at bay, but not many others tried anything.

Harry nodded. "Hope so, cher." He cleared his throat and shifted in the booth, his bulky frame not quite as much muscle now as it must have been in his youth. "How are things going with…all that?"

He gestured rather than get specific with his words, which gave me the option to not really answer his question, but what the hell? Avoiding the answer didn't make my problems with cashflow any less real.

Things weren't good, and both Harry and Pierre already knew that.

"The same. I'm surrounded by threats of foreclosure and demands for money, and I don't see any of that changing soon." I hesitated as I grabbed a pair of dirty glasses from the end of the bar. "Well, I guess until I'm not surrounded by foreclosure letters and everything is just gone instead, right? That would be a change."

As much as the constant threat of losing both the bar and my home loomed over me right now, actually losing them both was going to be so much worse. Pierre made a sympathetic noise, but I tuned him out as I took the glasses to the sink before returning to wiping the surfaces. I couldn't afford to start feeling sorry for myself or to accept responsibility for soothing anyone else's sadness.

I just had to get by day to day with a heart that fractured a little more each time I remembered I was on the verge of losing everything—so much family history and the last connection I had to Mom. She'd worked so hard on building the bar before she died, and she wouldn't even recognize it now.

I'd failed her legacy somewhere along the line, and I wouldn't even get a chance to make that right if the bank took everything away. I paused my long sweeps of the counter, ignoring the patches where the varnish lifted and the scarred wood dipped and warped, and I glanced across the room.

This was my kingdom. I reigned here. The jewel-colored bottles on the shelves behind me were among my greatest treasures, and the stale beer odor that lingered here like perfume at all hours of the day and night simply smelled like home.

I'd invested so much of my life into this business—at the expense of making friends and boyfriends, or having any kind of personal life at all. I always had things to do. Tables to clean, order sheets to complete, bill roulette to play. Which utility company will get lucky this month? It was truly up to a wildly spinning chamber and fate.

Pierre exhaled a small sigh and stood, his gut hanging just a little over his belt. He drew a creased handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his glistening forehead. "I know you have your reasons, Leia, but damn, it gets hot in here when you turn off that AC."

I grinned in reply. I turned the AC off every evening after the last actual customer had left. Harry and Pierre were welcome to stay as long as they liked—or as long as they could stand to swelter.

"I'm glad you cracked first." His brother chuckled. "We'll see you tomorrow, cher." He offered me a brief hug.

Losing this place would be as tough on them as it would be on me. They'd been friends with Mom and Dad for many years, and The Pour House was pretty much their second home. Not to mention the fact they'd also more or less adopted me when it was clear Dad wasn't up to the role biology had gifted him with.

"Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow." I followed them to the exit and saw them out into the dark night before closing the door against the shadows and twisting the lock.

Then I blew out a sigh as I took the last empty glasses through to the kitchen and left them by the sink. I'd clean them in the morning. It wasn't like they'd run away overnight or I'd have a fairy godmother appear and twitch her nose or whatever. It would be just my luck to have a sudden problem with overfriendly mice, though.

Like I didn't have enough issues without adding pest control to my list of debts.

I trudged through the kitchen—old but clean—to the tiny back office where I could barely see my desk. One day I'd tidy this small space, but sorry office, today is not your day.

I sighed. Tomorrow wasn't looking good either when I considered how many tasks were prioritized above tidying the office. The atmosphere was different in here, though. Like something had moved or been moved. I just couldn't quite put my finger on it.

I glanced at the safe in the corner, every sense tingling. Forget tingling. My body was blaring an alarm. Nothing looked disturbed, but there was a hint of the bourbon Dad favored spicing the air.

That old bastard. He was the reason I changed the safe combination every week—often enough that I was in danger of not getting back into it myself one day, it was so hard to keep them straight—just so he wouldn't be able to open it and borrow the takings.

Because it was never stealing in his eyes. It was borrowing, or more likely investing.

But not this time.

For fuck's sake. I kneeled down on the old, threadbare carpet—held together only by dust and the power of persuasion—and keyed in the latest combination. I closed my eyes. Dammit. How long had I been using these numbers? Long enough that typing them in was muscle memory, anyway. Shit.

I'd been so distracted by mounting bills, I hadn't changed it on my usual schedule, and Dad had watched me empty the takings last week. Fuck. His beady little gambler's eyes missed nothing at all.

And now, I was missing everything. Where there should have been a neat but small stack of green, there was only the bottom of the safe.

I leaned my back against the wall and rolled my head as I looked consideringly into the empty safe. Well, fuck. Fuckity fuck, fuck, fuck. I would have liked to have an actual coherent thought, but all I had was curse words and a slow buzz of panic that was gradually building to something larger and far more destructive.

One single tear escaped the corner of my eye, and I brushed it away impatiently. Like every other moment, I couldn't give in to sorrow just now or I'd start crying and keep going all night. Harry and Pierre would find me as a dehydrated husk tomorrow.

Too many things ran through my head. Pierre would be disappointed with the lack of chicken wings on the menu tomorrow, but I couldn't even afford a chicken feather right now, never mind a full wing. Of course, the rest of the customers would probably be more disappointed when the beer taps ran dry, but I couldn't even prevent that.

Still, what did any of that matter when I couldn't afford the rest of the bills anyway? I'd raised money through so many loans over the years, always desperate to retain the deeds to what was ours, avoiding remortgage in case we lost the house and bar in various attempts to keep us afloat, but now my lines of credit had stretched so thin I could no longer see them.

I had nowhere left to turn, no more tricks left to try.

Soul-deep panic numbed me and made everything feel eons away as I looked around the office. I had paperwork piled up from years before, and red bills littered my desk. Nausea started a slow roll in my gut.

Powerless. I'd never truly experienced having nothing left before. But this office, The Pour House, was little more than a mirage now. It would be gone soon enough.

And I'd tried so fucking hard to hang on to all of it.

I'd failed. And that hurt.

I still hadn't moved when there was a shadow at the doorway and Dad stumbled into view, an oversized shot clutched in one hand. For a moment, I wanted to give in to the old hopefulness I used to have when I saw him—like he might suddenly have realigned his moral compass.

But I knew better than that these days.

"Not content with taking the profits? Drinking them too now?" My voice was hard but without real emotion. There wasn't a day Dad hadn't drunk at least part of our profits.

Today was no different simply because he'd stolen the takings, too.

"I had a tip on a Saints game." His eyes were bleary and unfocused when they met mine, and he slurred his words.

The slurring was bad. He was never a bad tempered drunk. But he was a remorseful one.

And the exaggerated slurring today meant he was particularly remorseful.

I rolled my head toward him, and he watched me warily. Yeah, that was right. He needed to be wary.

"You had a tip?" I kept my voice light as I stood. "Another good tip?"

He shrugged but avoided my gaze. "Turned out not so good."

"I bet." I could barely stand to look at him. He wore his weakness like an ID badge these days, and it was a source of my shame that the biggest reason Pierre and Harry spent so much time protecting me was because they knew Dad couldn't.

They never spoke of it, but we were all aware why they spent so much of their time quietly guarding my business.

"I needed the money. It would have made all of our problems go away." Dad reached toward me, his eyes pleading for my understanding, but I moved away.

"No, Dad. Just fucking no."

His eyes widened.

"What do you think you've done to our problems now? How do you think we'll manage when there's more alcohol in your piss than there is behind the bar?" I could barely contain my anger behind my clipped words and stiff movements.

Dad slumped into the chair behind my desk and it creaked ominously under the sudden weight. The drawer he pulled open groaned in protest, too.

"What are you doing now?" The last thing I needed was him to start interfering in my paperwork.

"My book of contacts." He mumbled the words, and the image of his well-thumbed, black leather notepad came to mind.

When I'd been a child and Dad had been full of smiles and reassurances, I'd loved to see that book in his hands because it always heralded the appearance of one fun friend or another. That was when I'd thought Dad ruled the world. Back before Mom died and Dad became something else. Before he became this.

I sighed and shook my head. I never thought about those early childhood days anymore. I could barely remember them and they were as far removed from the present as rainbow unicorns and fairytale castles. I'd taken responsibility for Dad's descent into ruin for so long that I'd stopped believing my Prince Charming might arrive and rescue me. Or any kind of royalty, come to that. But lower-level noblemen tended to avoid me, too.

Now, though, if I saw even so much as a hint of a crown and a royal monogram, or a knight on any kind of white steed coming, I'd lock the door anyway. I had nothing to offer any man—I hadn't even finished high school because I'd spent too many days covering for Dad, nursing Dad, being Dad via email to keep the business running.

Plus, I had no experience of any sort to offer any man. Being a twenty-eight-year-old virgin didn't really bother me. After all, some shit people just hadn't time to do yet—and having sex was vying with cleaning the office for priority on my life's to-do list. That said, virginity wasn't exactly a selling point these days. I was practically elderly at this point—and every day that passed made me less confident it was truly a good quality. Society was long past days of purity, after all—experience was definitely where it was at now. At my age, anyway.

Some days—on very rare days, when I had the time to spare—I wished I was like any other woman my age, with the ability to be carefree, maybe even a little sexy. Attractive. Desirable. I hadn't walked that walk yet, and I missed something I'd never had.

Dad was still fumbling around in the drawer, and I snapped my focus back to him. "Your contacts?" I spat the word. "What the hell good can your bookmaker do for you now? You've spent all the money, Dad. What you haven't gambled, you've tipped down your throat. You're literally pissing it away."

He flinched but didn't look at me as he continued to scrabble through the contents of the drawer. I shrugged as I watched him. What the hell did it matter if he ruined my filing system? We were ruined anyway.

He'd already made sure of that.

"I can't be here with you right now." I pinched the bridge of my nose and inhaled a shaky breath, trying to contain the tears that suddenly prickled behind my eyelids. Frustration rose through me but I expelled it as despair. "Look what you've done to us, Dad! We've got nothing left. You've taken it all, and I… I can't fix this."

The words left me empty, and I dug around in my pocket for my last few dollars and some change. Eight dollars and sixty-three cents. And it was all I had left in the world. I peeled the five-dollar bill off the top and left it on the corner of the desk. Dad looked up from where he was flipping through the pages of the notebook he'd found. He'd been lingering on each page like he needed to wait for his eyes to focus before he read the words.

He met my gaze briefly. "What's that for?"

"Your ride home, Dad. I can't do this with you tonight. I have nothing else in me. I can't take care of anything anymore." Exhaustion rang in my tone. I was bone tired and so weary.

Dad returned his attention to the finely lined pages. "I'll take care of it," he murmured.

I drove home almost in a daze. On autopilot. Not even enjoying the view of the Spanish moss draped over the live oak trees as I neared our home. Instead, tonight, even through the darkness, every flaw and crack in the paintwork of our house screamed out loud and proud. I knew exactly which rotten boards to avoid on the old front porch, and the way the water pipes clanked and rattled as I filled my bath was familiar even as it scraped over each of my nerves.

Dilapidation. Disrepair.

Bordering on fucking ruin.

"Oh, Mom." The sigh of regret slipped from my lips as I slid into a bath that was barely warm.

Once we'd had a house full of staff and lush gardens that spread out to the edges of a bayou. The crepe myrtles had been magnificent then, rather than twisted and overgrown as they were now. Try as I might, some of the maintenance work always slipped to the bottom of my list. Yard work was usually at the bottom.

Top of my to-do checklist was always Dad. Keeping him barely functioning was second nature. Then I had to keep The Pour House running to ensure we had a little money coming in as well as upholding Mom's legacy. Lastly, I cooked and did laundry, and that was pretty much it. Housework, yardwork, repairs. They just didn't happen. Either the issues resolved themselves or I learned to ignore them.

I lay perfectly still in the rapidly cooling bath water until my stomach rumbled. I wasn't even part way close to relaxed, but I climbed out before dressing and heading to the kitchen. On my way through the house, I passed my floor to ceiling bookcases and trailed my fingers over the books, but I had no desire to select one. Nothing could offer me an escape from reality today—not books and especially not TV. We'd lost cable last month after one overdue bill too many, and now my TV sat dark and silent in the corner like some sort of postmodern ornament. I was pretty sure it was judging me, actually.

I was certainly judging me.

And the judgement didn't stop when I practically hung inside the fridge, gazing over the empty shelves like something edible might magically appear.

I dug my hand into my pocket again, pulling out my remaining three dollars and sixty-three cents.

It wouldn't buy me a lot, but I should be able to get some pasta and the vegetables to make a sauce. Dad would probably be hungry when he got home as well. I was too angry with him to really take him into consideration this evening, but I did it automatically.

Even though he didn't deserve it.

I sighed as I grabbed my keys and walked back to my car. Working at the bar meant I kept the antisocial hours of a vampire, but at least the grocery store would be quiet.

I zipped around the store, familiar with all the aisles and the bargain areas, then paid for my purchases and left before shame ate me up at the meager selection I could afford. That shame burned within me stronger than any hunger. I stuck to the lit walkway as I returned to my car, although the low purr of an engine idling nearby alerted me to a limo at the curb. I paused for a moment because… hell, an actual limo, so dark in the back I couldn't see who was in there, even with the window partly open.

A limo. I didn't think people who rode in those even knew this part of town existed.

I walked by, forcing myself forward even as my legs slowed, feet hesitating to take the next step. Dammit. I had too much else to worry about to be curious about the owner of a way too expensive car in a cheap grocery store parking lot.

But a strange desire to know ripped through me, accompanied by a different sort of desire. The sort that whispered of the company of another on sweaty night, full of heat and touch and rumpled bed sheets.

I shivered as my body beat a sudden pulse of awareness, and hurried past the parked car. But I turned at the soft clunk of a car door closing behind me, and my throat dried as I gazed at the tall guy now standing by the limo. His hair was longer on top, and tousled, and the lights revealed an angular jawline and turbulent gray eyes that glittered with interest as his lips quirked in a slow, easy smile.

I parted my lips to speak but no words came out as he sauntered toward me, and I remained fixed in place, just watching him get closer. Part of me wanted to turn and run away like he was some kind of predator, but the other part of me wanted to…

Shit. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Watch him? Drink him in? Welcome him somehow? My body tingled like it knew exactly what kind of welcome to offer.

I backed up until my ass bumped against the brick wall behind me, and my small bag of groceries fell from my hand as the man's gaze remained fixed on mine, incredibly intense.

Something about him…

I shook my head, not sure where my tangled thoughts were leading. Then suddenly he stood in front of me, his fingers toying with the ends of my brown hair, and I lifted my chin to look up at him as he surrounded me like a shadow, his presence commanding, his scent masculine spice and exciting.

The first real touch was a light caress of his knuckles down my cheek. I closed my eyes, savoring something so unexpected and fleeting, melting into a spell meant only for me.

Then I jerked back at his soft mouth on mine, my head striking the wall before I relaxed and inhaled a breath of longing that allowed his tongue to slide past my lips—quiet, casual, exploring. He stroked the inside of my mouth before wrapping his arms around me and urging me closer to him as he groaned in a way I'd never heard. Somewhere between longing and satisfaction.

The tips of my fingers touched his cheek before I pushed them into his hair, gripping onto him as he controlled my mouth and pleasure twisted a slow spiral through me in a physical response I'd never experienced with anyone.

I sucked breath after quick breath, my breathing lost all rhythm and coordination, and I grew light-headed as I tried to answer the persuasion and teasing of his lips and tongue. My heart thundered in my chest, and my nipples hardened where they pressed against him. I'd never wanted a man more, and the thought rippled through my head in a blaze of desire and wantonness as I ground against his thigh.

When he released me, he rested his forehead against mine and sucked in deep breaths as his chest rose and fell before he dropped his head so his mouth hovered over my neck. As my heart beat faster, the pulse below his mouth turned suddenly wild, like something was trapped beneath my skin. I could feel it—as though it was answering some kind of call to make itself known.

Holy crap… This was… It was incredible.

Wait. No. It was actually insane. This guy was a complete stranger, and here I was, making out with him on the street?!

What the hell was I doing?

I shoved him. Before I even thought about it, I thrust my hands against the stranger's chest, and his mouth gaped as his eyes widened and he staggered back, leaving just enough space for me to run.

My chest ached with every breath I sucked in, and I couldn't hear anything but the blood pounding through my ears as I focused on my feet striking the sidewalk, running back into the store. Adrenaline fueled my panic. Fear tightened all of my muscles, but there was also something else. A fascination and enjoyment I couldn't hide from. Desire still coiled low in my body.

The limo was gone when I eventually left the store again, but my small bag of groceries sat on the curb like it was waiting for a ride, and after I'd collected it, my hands trembled all the way home.