“Bar and grill.” Claudia pointed to a place just across from the train tracks.
“Let’s do it.” Beck threw his arm around her shoulders and they started walking across the street to the bar.
Feeling Jake’s eyes on me, I turned to him. “What?”
He nodded at Claudia and Beck. “Do you think that’s a good idea right now?”
“I think we’re on a road trip to scatter Beck’s dad’s ashes and that it’s a small miracle I’ve heard him laugh and seen him smile as many times as I have. Claudia helps him. As much as I’m worried for them both, I won’t be the one to take away the balm that she is for him.”
Without waiting to hear Jake’s reply, I hurried across the street to catch up with our friends.
The place was pretty packed but we managed to get a table in the back. After we ate, I felt much better, my hangover finally dissipating.
Beck and Claudia took their turn to have beers while Jake and I stuck to soda. We’d been drinking for a couple of hours when Beck and Jake managed to grab one of the pool tables. Claudia and I played against them but we lost, and then I lost in a one-on-one against Beck. I hadn’t spent much time around a pool table and neither had Claudia, so we decided it would probably be more interesting to watch Jake and Beck go head to head.
During one of their games, I headed over to the bar to get more drinks. The bar was busy, so I waited while a group of ladies in tutus, jeans, and glittery pink cowboy hats—a bachelorette party?—ordered another round. After a few minutes I glanced back across the bar at my friends.
I felt unease shift through me at the sight of the young woman leaning against the pool table. Claudia was talking to Beck while this girl, who had come out of nowhere, flirted with Jake.
Jake didn’t seem to be flirting back but I knew him well enough to know that his eyes were definitely taking in everything about her. I could understand why.
She was gorgeous.
Tall with long, wavy dark hair, a golden tan, and pretty, fresh features that weren’t caked in makeup like so many of the other women in the bar. She wore a casual but short T-shirt that showed off her curvy bosom and toned midriff. Her blue jeans showcased her lean legs. She was wearing very cute worn brown cowboy boots.
Everything about her screamed, “I am Jake Caplin’s type!”
I felt sick.
Physically sick.
I studied Jake for a reaction as she reached out and touched the iron fist logo on his Pearl Jam shirt. He’d been holding himself aloof from her but whatever she said, it brought forth that smile that could floor a woman.
And it floored her. I could tell in the way her smile widened and her body relaxed, as if she were melting under his attention.
I turned away, feeling a little breathless.
And then the berating commenced. Jealousy was something I wasn’t allowed to feel where Jake was concerned. I gave him up, and giving him up entailed having to watch other women flirt with him.
Shit.
What if he spent the night with her?
The thought froze me to the spot.
You’re being crazy, Charley! He’s not going to hook up with a random stranger on a road trip to scatter his best friend’s dad’s ashes.
I looked back over at him and my eyes narrowed. The girl was standing even closer and they seemed to be having an actual conversation.
“Blondie, what can I get you?”
I whipped around at the voice and was confronted by a cute bartender. He was a couple of years older than me with dirty-blond hair, sexy stubble, and twinkling bright blue eyes. He grinned as I blinked at him, coming out of my panic over Jake and the girl.
What could he get me?
For one: a stool. I did not want to go back over there until the girl was gone.
I glanced at the filled stools in front of me, frowning.