Old Archie sat at the end of the bar, dressed immaculately from head to toe, despite the fact that he’d probably been drunk for forty-eight straight hours. His real name was Archibald Brown, and he was from old money. He was also an alcoholic whose wife had left him twenty years ago and had taken the kids with her.
People had tried to help. Jack had tried.
It was no good.
Old Archie didn’t want help.
Jack had to learn to let the guy be.
“The Saints are looking good.” Old Archie gestured to the screen.
Jack nodded. They were playing the Minnesota Vikings. “Yeah.”
“Where’s Dana, Coop?” Old Archie asked. “She’s usually here for the first game of the season.”
At the mention of Cooper’s wife, Dana, Jack flicked his buddy a look. Cooper was pulling a pint, not looking at Old Archie as he replied, “She wasn’t feeling it tonight. She’s at home, watching some shit romantic comedy and having something she called ‘self-care time.’”
Jack looked up at the game, afraid the derision he felt was obvious. Self-care time? The woman worked eight hours a week at the salon as a receptionist and then did nothing else. She didn’t help Coop around the house. She didn’t help him at the bar. And she didn’t provide the guy with any kind of support beyond what she gave him in the bedroom. She bought shit Cooper had to work his ass off to afford, and Jack was afraid one day Dana would bury Coop in debt.
Or worse.
It would be fair to say Jack Devlin did not like Dana Kellerman Lawson.
In fact, she’d caused the first real argument between him and Coop.
Sometimes, Jack still couldn’t believe Cooper had disregarded Jack’s opinion.
For years, they’d joked about Jack’s superpower—his ability to smell bullshit on someone from a mile away. Perhaps it was growing up in a house like the one he had with manipulative bastards around every corner. But Jack had instincts about folks, and he wasn’t often wrong. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been wrong about someone.
And when Dana Kellerman came back to Hartwell from college and set her sights on Cooper, Jack tried to make his friend see sense. However, Coop couldn’t see past Dana’s beauty or that falsely sweet smile. Or the way she seemed to rely on him entirely, something that fed the protective, alpha-male shit Coop always had going on with the women in his life.
However, Jack saw right through Dana. He saw past her movie-star looks and what did he find?
A whole lot of nothing.
That woman only wanted Cooper because other women wanted him, and they failed to nail him down.
It probably didn’t hurt he owned lucrative property on the boardwalk.
She wanted a handsome husband who bought her nice stuff and took care of everything and that’s what she got in Cooper. Seriously, she didn’t lift a finger to do a damn thing. They even had a housekeeper to look after their average-sized, three-bedroom house, something Cooper complained about because his mom had raised him to clean up after himself.
Worse, whenever Cooper had a problem or was worried about the bar, Dana didn’t want to hear it. So Cooper laid that shit on Jack. What was the point of having a wife if it wasn’t a partnership, a support system? Jack had asked this, and Coop shut him down every time, so he stopped asking.
After he’d warned Cooper not to propose to Dana, calling her shallow as a kiddie pool, he and Cooper hadn’t spoken for days. Jack finally had to apologize, knowing he’d lose his friend if he didn’t just let him do what he needed to do with Dana.
Still, standing up as his best man at the wedding had not been an outstanding day for Jack.
Cooper was more brother to him than his own brothers, and Jack wanted the absolute best for him.
He deserved better than Dana, something that was becoming more apparent with each passing year.
She’d realized Jack didn’t like her, and Dana didn’t know what to do with that. She expected all men to fall at her feet in worship and the fact that Jack didn’t was a challenge.
Dana had been getting in his face lately, and Jack had been working overtime to avoid her, which wasn’t easy when she was married to his best friend.
“Self-care?” Old Archie snorted. “What the hell does she need self-care for? The woman spends all day every day self-caring.”
Jack’s lips twitched around his beer bottle as he stared