Broderick (Sabine Valley #2) - Katee Robert Page 0,70
exact opposite, as sweet as she is tiny. She’s the one who waves when we walk through the door and into the dim interior. “Go ahead and sit wherever.”
The place is the same superficially as it was the last time I walked through the door. The bar still stretches across most of the wall across from the door and there are a scattering of tables and chairs, mostly empty. But it’s changed. This place used to be a dump, exactly the kind of bar a person would expect to find minors drinking in because they don’t bother to card. Sticky floors, smoke perpetually gathering in clouds against the ceiling, all sorts of unsavory types lingering in the shadows created by not enough light.
It’s still dim in here, still welcoming in that specific way, but it smells faintly of lemon cleaner, and there are actual framed pieces of art on the wall. They’re all stylized drinking glasses and bottles, nice enough to look at, but they don’t try to make this place anything but what it is. A dive bar, if a cleaner and safer one than it used to be.
Even the clientele seems different, though it’s still too early in the day to say for sure. But the few people already here are wearing clothes that suggest they’re stopping by for a drink on their way home from work.
Things really have changed.
I try for a smile at Renée. “Is the back room open?”
She grins. “I knew you looked familiar. Broderick Paine, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s been a while. For you, it’s open.” Renée jerks her thumb at the doorway in the back. “You want me to come back and get your orders, or do you need privacy?”
“Privacy, please. I’ll grab our drinks and take them back myself.”
Her grin widens as she takes in Monroe and Shiloh behind me. “Go on ahead, then.”
The women slide past me and head toward the doorway. Shiloh looks nervous and jumpy. Monroe is all wicked smiles and a loose-limbed stride that somehow manages to scream sex without her doing anything overt. I give our drink orders to Renée, wait for her to fill them, hand her some cash, and follow the women into the back room.
Shiloh and Monroe have their heads close together when I push through the door. The room is exactly like I remember it, if a thousand times cleaner. My shoes don’t stick to the floors as I cross the half-circle booth that takes up most of the space. It’s been reupholstered sometime in the last decade with leather, and the tabletop has been replaced with shiny wood that isn’t cut all to shit. The last time I was back here, there was a knife sticking out of the center of the table.
Monroe grins. “Right on time. I was thinking we’d have some fun and play a game.”
I carefully set the glasses down and eye her. “A drinking game?” I am fully on board with seducing Shiloh, but I’m not going to touch her if she’s drunk. I would assume Monroe is the same; if she hadn’t also been buzzed out of her mind the other day, I don’t think they would have hooked up in the bar’s bathroom. In fact, I’m certain of it. Monroe is too damn protective of the people in her sphere to take advantage of someone like that.
“No, silly man. Drinking games are best done with shots and a determination to get into trouble. This is just a fun little game for friends.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“I couldn’t begin to say. That sounds like a you problem.” She holds up a hand, her expression the very picture of innocence. “Don’t you want to play with me?”
Shiloh makes a choked sound. “You’re so much sometimes, Monroe.”
“You aren’t the first person to say it.” She tucks a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “It strikes me that neither of you had a proper childhood.” She pats the spot next to her. “Stop looming and sit down.”
“I’m not looming.” But I sit, curious on where she’s headed with this. “I had a childhood.”
“You had Bauer Paine as your father, a dead mother, and five younger brothers that you mostly raised.” She snorts. “You had to grow up fast.”
Monroe isn’t exactly wrong. My mother died a long time ago, and my father was hardly the poster child for good parenting. Abel did his best, but he always had his eyes on the role of leading the faction. It inevitably