Her Dirty Bartenders (Men at Work #5) - Mika Lane Page 0,33

was a secret I held close from everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

Marni knew. She always knew.

My sister had uncanny powers of observation, even when she was just a kid. She comprehended the things she saw with a maturity well beyond her years. And even now, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear from time to time she could read minds.

And being the awesome sister she was, even when we were fighting like cats and dogs, she never breathed a word of my infatuation with Stell to a single soul.

Although she’d admitted to me what she knew. But she never told anyone else.

I’d always suspected she’d also observed Stell’s interest in me. I may have pretended to see nothing, but I wasn’t blind. And again, out of the same loyalty to her friend that she also had for me, she said nothing.

Those years of pretending to ignore each other turned into longing glances, and still neither of us acted on our feelings. Partly because we didn’t know how to, and partly because it would have been so predictable.

Not that we knew that then.

We’d known each other so long that the familiarity between us was almost painful.

When we’d finally spent time together, just the two of us, we danced around our attraction until the night we fell into bed together—out in my parents’ pool house—and my father caught us. He hadn’t walked in on us or anything like that, but the next day he could see it all over my face. He nipped things in the bud real fast by putting me on the next plane out of town.

I’d been warned to never contact her again.

He’d told me she wasn’t a nice girl and came from an even worse family. That all these years he’d just tolerated the Klines because the girls were such good friends, and that he despised the congressman going back to some dispute my father had been on the losing end of so long ago no one remembered exactly what it had been over.

His interference was horrible, but my acceptance of it was even worse. I’d never forgive myself. I didn’t know how to make it right. Or if it were even possible to do so.

This was the same father who wanted to pull the plug on Tableau in order to force me back to Philly to take over the reins of his hedge fund business.

Something I had no aptitude for, and no interest in.

But he didn’t care about that.

He wanted to keep the family money in the family, and the only way to pull that off was with a succession plan that included me.

No matter what the cost.

23

Cab

“Dude. You look like you just lost your best friend,” Robbie said, smacking me on the back the next day.

I looked between him and Maze, who’d just arrived for our weekly meeting. We were in a booth in one of our private rooms where we could speak undisturbed and uninterrupted. The support staff that buzzed around cleaning and preparing knew that this was our time and that the only reason to interfere was if the building was on fire.

I rolled my head around in an attempt to stretch some of the tension out of my neck. I’d had a damn headache for hours that no amount of aspirin would chase away, and it was making me seriously pissy.

“I’m fucked guys. Just totally fucked,” I said.

Maze tried not to laugh, because he could be a dick that way, but Robbie’s face was crossed with concern.

It was a good thing that he was a father and not Maze.

“Okay, Cab. Tell us what the hell is going on. It is your dad again?” Robbie asked.

Dad. I still had to deal with his bullshit. But at that moment in time, my main concern was Stell. And the guys needed to know.

“I... I’m not sure you guys are aware, but Stell and I have some history between us.”

Maze slammed his hand on the table between us and looked at Robbie. “I told you, didn’t I? I knew there was something going on.”

Robbie nodded slowly. “Yup. You told me, Maze.”

I buried my head in my hands. “Is it that obvious?”

“Actually, no, it’s not that obvious, Cab. It’s just that I know you, and when I saw you watching Stell, and knowing that you all pretty much grew up together, it wasn’t hard to figure out there was a story there.”

“She lost her virginity to me.”

The room was silent for a moment before Robbie let out a long, low