Page 5 of Broken Vows (Marital Privileges #4)

Emerson

B ehind a bar that’s seen better days, I wipe down a sticky counter. My family’s once-thriving business is now run down, but every creak of the worn floorboards initiates memories of laughter, love, and heartache.

As I glance around at the faded photos on the walls, the chipped paint, and an old, barely working jukebox, warmth spreads across my chest.

Despite its condition, this bar is my home. It is my family’s legacy.

My first paid position was peeling the potatoes for the meals we served by the hundreds every Friday and Saturday night.

I pulled my first pint of beer here just shy of my sixteenth birthday, and this is where I met the man I thought would be the love of my life when he selected the corniest song on the jukebox and asked me to dance.

Mikhail spent as much time here as I did during our late teens and early twenties. We fucked on almost every solid surface and are wholly responsible for the jukebox’s first lot of hiccups.

God, that feels like a lifetime ago.

What I wouldn’t give to go back ten years. My time-traveler wish isn’t solely to stop my heart from being smashed into smithereens, but also to educate my mother on early intervention and how passive smoking is worse than smoking itself.

When the entry door of the bar creaks open, now an unusual sound for this time of night, I look up. A wave of anger washes over me when I recognize the devilishly handsome face and icy gaze of the man entering.

He has no right to be here, not after everything he’s done, and I’m too angry to pretend otherwise.

“You’re not welcome here,” I say to Mikhail, my voice cold and unwelcoming.

I hook my thumb to the wall of banned patrons behind my left shoulder. Most are abusive drunks, but I reserve the space front and center for the man who broke my heart.

“The wall of shame says so.”

“Damn.” Mikhail’s smile makes me want to forget all the horrid things he has done. “I was quite the looker back in the day.”

He speaks as if he already has two feet in the grave. He will if he doesn’t adhere to my silent warning to leave now or peer down the wrong end of the barrel of a shotgun as per the warning above the banned patrons’ mugshots.

“Though still shocked you said yes.” He flashes me a wink that almost buckles my knees. “Do you remember?—”

“No, I don’t.” I shake my head, my grip on the dishcloth tightening. “Nothing overly memorable has ever occurred here.”

Grinning, he moseys to the counter and plops his backside on a barstool. I hope his jeans are thin. The cracked leather on the stools is famous three towns over for its skin-shredding capabilities.

“I can think of a time or two that were extremely memorable.”

When Mikhail’s eyes lower to a section of the bar that will forever conjure wicked thoughts, I throw my dishcloth in his face before twisting to face the only bartender we’ve managed to keep on the books.

Abram is hopeless but loyal.

“I’m heading out. Close early if no one comes in within the hour.”

When Abram jerks up his chin, I gather my coat from the rack and head for the exit.

I barely make it halfway to the lot when the clomp of a heavy-footed man echoes in the quiet. Mikhail is tall and athletically built, but his feet slap the ground like the floorboards insulted his deceased mother.

“Go home, Mikhail.” I twist to face him, stupidly desperate to see his eyes before finalizing my reply. “Go back to your wife and unborn child.”

He recoils as if I sucker punched him, and then the most panty-wetting grin crosses his face. “Do you mean my sister and unborn niece?”

He homes in closer, like he’s forgotten about the shotgun we keep behind the bar and how I can’t absorb anything when his cologne lingers in my nostrils.

Did he say sister and unborn niece?

“Stands about yay high”—he fans his hand across his nipple—“blonde hair, blue eyes?”

I’m tired. I get snappy when tired. “Are you still describing your apparent sister?” I air quote apparent because Mikhail has no sisters.

His brothers are endless, but there’s been no mention of a living sister, much less one old enough to have boobs bigger than mine.

“Or one of the many women you’ve been photographed with over the past ten years? ”

He smirks, and I grunt, hating that he can still make me jealous after all this time.

Refusing to let him see that he’s upset me, I recommence walking. “Go home, Mikhail. I don’t care who it is to, as long as it’s far from here.”

“I’ll leave…”—he delays long enough for my stomach to gurgle—“when you agree to come with me.”

I wiggle my finger in my ear, certain I am going deaf. When it rewards me with nothing but a sore ear, I crank my neck back. Mikhail is standing in a kitchen that hasn’t been used in years, smirking like he has the entire world at his feet.

I have news for him.

“And why would I do that?” I steal his chance to reply. “I have a life here. Family. My husband might also be opposed to the idea of me going home with an old flame.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire!

The last guy I went home with still lived with his ex-wife and drove her minivan.

That was a shameful three years ago.

Upon spotting my disgusted expression, Mikhail laughs, grating my last nerve.

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that I’ve moved on?”

His eyes flash, pleased that he forced me to react. “It isn’t that I don’t believe you, Emmy?—”

“Don’t call me that.”

He acts as if I never interrupted him. “It is the fact his”—he nudges his head to Abram—“eyes haven’t been gouged that calls you out as a liar.

” Again, he steps closer, killing both my sinuses and my senses.

“It doesn’t matter how fancy the packaging is.

If it is taken, you’d never look or let them look.

” A flare of jealousy darts through his eyes as he mutters, “He’s been ogling your ass all night.

If you were married, which I sure as fuck know you’re not, he’d be bleeding from his sockets, because when Emerson Morozov’s goods are claimed, only the man she let claim them is permitted to gawk. ”

Every word he speaks is true, but I act ignorant. “Abram is?—”

“A douche.” His smile… Kill. Me. Now. “I know.”

Mikhail’s expressions are simple to decipher. It is merely the chaos associated with them I struggle to understand. He looks like he hates me and loves me at the same time—like I’m the one who broke his heart.

My pulse throbs for an entirely different reason when Mikhail says, “He’s also a thief.”

He sinks back enough to expose Abram slipping a wad of cash out of his pocket and placing it into a backpack under the bar. It isn’t the one we use to do a once-a-day bank deposit. It is the backpack he arrives with for each shift.

The puzzle pieces are already slotting together, but Mikhail gives them a gentle nudge. “Let me guess, you’re not making enough to cover expenses on the nights he’s rostered on?”

I nod, too shocked to speak.

Mikhail smiles, appreciative of my temporary wave of the white flag. “Because he’s taking a fifty percent cut on all takings and a paycheck. Watch.”

Seconds later, a regular walks in, orders a bourbon, and slaps down a twenty.

He’s given his change with his drink, but the twenty never makes it into the cash register.

It falls into Abram’s pocket before he replaces it with a lower denomination.

His cut is far more than the tips some patrons leave, and it doesn’t get close to the tip jar.

I usually avoid confrontations, but this thief needs to be taught a lesson.

“You’re a thieving piece of shit!”

Abram’s eyes twinkle with amusement when I march back to his side and demand that he empty his pockets. He follows my order. I doubt that would be the case if Mikhail hadn’t traced my stomps.

Fury erupts on my face when he pulls out the twenty I watched him pocket. “Oops. How did that get in there?” He flattens out the crinkled twenty and places it into the cash register like that is the only money he stole today.

I fold my arms under my chest and arch a brow. “What about the rest?”

Abram peers at me in daftness, his expression hardening when I snatch his backpack from under the bar and rip open the zipper.

His cheeks twitch and his nostrils flare as he shouts, “Hey! That’s my property. You have no right to search my property without a warrant.”

He tries to rip his backpack from my grasp, but a stern rumble stops him. “If you fluff up a single strand of her hair, I will end you where you stand.”

Mikhail’s protectiveness isn’t surprising, especially considering our location. He was the self-appointed unpaid bouncer here for almost three years. The staff respected him, the patrons feared him, and I loved him with every fiber of my being.

But he doesn’t get to play that role now. He walked from the role he never applied for and the one he signed up for when he asked me to be his girl. Enough said.

After removing enough takings to pay the electric bill and our alcohol supplier’s abhorrent delivery fee, I shove Abram’s backpack into his chest and then give him his marching orders.

“I better not see you back here. Ever!”

He scoffs, but since Mikhail’s narrowed gaze is burning a hole in his temple, he snatches his now-flat bag out of my hand and storms through the front exit doors.

“No, please,” I beg when the regular follows his departure. “Your next drink is on the house.”

He continues walking because he’d rather follow Abram to another drinking hole than receive a free drink. Abram can be overly generous with his servings since he doesn’t have to pay for the alcohol he wastes.

With my humiliation as high as my anger, I slam shut the door our sole patron since 8 p.m. exited through, lower the bar that will keep our limited supplies safe, and then barge past Mikhail, standing frozen near books that haven’t left the red for years.

“Emmy…”

I couldn’t feel more embarrassed than I do at this moment, and it flattens my tone. “Don’t. Just don’t. This isn’t your responsibility. It never has been.”

My tears are close to spilling, so I double the length of my strides.

They nearly topple when I trip over my feet from Mikhail calling me out as a liar for the umpteenth time tonight.

“That isn’t true. I purchased half of this bar from your mother as a wedding present for you.

Since we never got married, it is still in my name.

” He waits for me to face him before continuing. “I didn’t know it had gotten this bad.”

The disgust in his eyes when he drags them across the paint-peeled walls and warped floorboards guts me. We once treated this bar as if it were ours. Keeping it alive and thriving was one of the many promises he broke when he walked.

“If I had, I would have…” His words trail off to silence.

I refuse to let him off so easily. “You would have…?”

He doesn’t answer me. He can’t. Because that would require him to admit that he wouldn’t have done shit. He would have still left, and I still would have put too much concentration on my heartache instead of the business that once kept my family’s stomachs full.

“Go home, Mikhail,” I repeat for the third time tonight while breaking through the back exit door. “And never come back.”