he was huffing and puffing beside me.
I decided it was best to ignore Cohen’s comment and deal with the issue at hand.
“Dwain,” I said, giving him a look that apparently expressed enough of my rage and willingness to kick his fucking ass if he persisted. He backed down.
“Fine,” he said through his teeth. “Five minutes.”
He stormed out just as our receipt started printing.
Thank fuck.
“Sorry about my brother. And about what happened last night.”
But I wasn’t sorry about that last thing, not even a little bit, especially now that I saw how wrong I’d been—he was gorgeous. If I were gay, the things I’d do to Cohen…
Wait. What the hell would I do to him exactly?
I’d only ever dated—hell, been in love with—women.
“I guess we’ll see you around town,” Cohen said.
“Yeah. We will,” I told him, wondering what that meant about his stay.
Walker and I took our bags back to the truck, and as soon as I climbed in, I got an earful from Dwain. I let him rag on me about it, then said, “Just don’t mention it to Big Daddy. There’s no reason to get him worked up.”
“Then don’t keep fraternizing with the enemy,” he barked.
“I’m just saying, Big Daddy has enough on his mind with the distillery right now. We don’t need to get his thoughts caught up in a bunch of town gossip.”
“Fine.”
“His friend Isaac seemed nice,” Walker said, and I turned to him, noticing again his interest—something Dwain was as oblivious to as Lee and Big Daddy.
“The one who called us inbreds?” Dwain asked.
“Dwain, Walker and I’ve always thought you looked a little too much like Aunt Mona…and you know how she loves to ply some moonshine in Big Daddy.”
He scoffed, shaking his head. “Here. Lemme help your hangover,” he said, amping the volume of his pop song.
As the talking subsided and Dwain took us farther and farther away from Murray’s, I just couldn’t get that Mitchell guy outta my head.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cohen
Seriously, what the fuck was up with that family and their genes? They were all tall, muscular, glistening with this rugged glow, and hot. Well, at least Brody and Walker. Dwain was sexy too, but if I never saw him again, it would be too fucking soon.
After our run-in with the O’Ralleys, we came back to the house, put the groceries away, and I called my mom.
She was the main reason I’d been willing to come to Buckridge. We had a strange relationship—or so it seemed to me—where she encouraged my curiosity about my past, and coming here was part of that. All I knew was that my biological mom had been great, my world, and then she’d died in a car accident. I went into foster care until I was adopted. After that I’d always had such conflicting emotions: wanting to discover more about my mom’s past warred with the guilt I felt about it, because my adoptive family had given me the world, in their own slightly reserved way. Then the mixed emotions about them keeping my last name Mitchell, and loving them but not always feeling like I fit, and getting lost in it all.
After the call, we’d headed straight back to the office. We’d been in here for hours, trying to make sense of everything, while I pretended the O’Ralleys didn’t exist and Isaac continued to bring them up every few minutes. I’d also put a call in to Byron and was waiting to hear from him.
“What did Lydia have to say?” Isaac asked as we sat in the office, surrounded by paperwork.
“Nothing really, which I expected.” I’d been hoping something might’ve been said to my mom over the years, buried in adoption paperwork or something, that could make sense of all this. “She’s got nothing.”
“You ask her about the feud?”
“No.” There was really no point.
I looked at the paper in my hand. There had to be some shit missing. He gave totals, but there were no bank-account numbers. I still couldn’t find any information except for the few years before he closed.
My thoughts went from that to the family feud, then settled on the tall, gorgeous, broad-shouldered man with those freckles that were cute as fuck. The guy I was supposed to hate without even knowing anything about him other than he could really fucking kiss. He seemed to be the most sane O’Ralley…and the sexiest, though Walker wasn’t bad either. Maybe if I could get Brody alone, I could get some information out of him…
“Think I can fuck Walker?”