Page 70 of Chasing the Sun

I nodded as we walked up to the bar. “Kit. I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Hey, fellas,” Kit greeted with a grin. “I don’t. Rusty was flailing behind here so I hopped over the bar to help.” Her head bounced toward Rusty, the Lantern’s resident crab-ass behind the bar who only grumbled at her. Kit cleared away some glasses as our group huddled around the barstools. “Heard the WarDogs didn’t go easy on you.”

Beside me, Brody scoffed. “More like bent us over the table and made us call them Daddy.”

Kit’s eyes flew to Brody, a hot flush staining her cheeks as Elodie, mid-sip, coughed and sputtered beside me. My temperature spiked. I could so easily recall Elodie on display atop her own kitchen table, wet and ready for me. My jaw flexed at the memory.

Was she thinking about it too?

With a half-smile, I thumped a hand on her back as she tried to clear her throat.

“Thanks.” She coughed again and offered a shy smile as I pulled back my traitorous hand. Our eyes locked, lingering far too long for a couple of people who were supposed to hate each other.

Before I could do something stupid, like give in to the pull between us, Hayes walked up. “We’ve got a table over there.”

Kit slid a bucket of beers to her older brother. He pulled one from the ice, taking a long drink.

“Get out of here,” she teased. “I need to flirt for some fat tips, and I don’t need my older brother lurking around. I told Rusty he can have my help for an hour, so the clock’s a-ticking.” Her eyebrows bounced playfully. “Then I’m going to go find some trouble.”

Hayes shook his head and sighed. I laughed at how easily Kit could get under her brother’s skin. “What about you?” My attention flicked to Ellie. “You looking for trouble?”

She hid the hint of a coy smile by rolling her lips and focusing her attention on the empty drink in front of her. “That’s the plan.”

Kit slid a fresh cocktail in front of Elodie, one that looked suspiciously like Sailor’s Doom. Elodie held out a small, crisp stack of twenty-dollar bills. “I’m a big winner already. Two hundred bucks!” Her eyes sparkled with a triumphant grin.

Kit laughed, wiping down the bar. “You won one round, and it was only because that one lady misheard the numbers.”

Elodie gasped, clutching her chest. “Howdareyou undermine my victory?”

Kit discarded an empty beer bottle and stole a fresh one from Hayes’s bucket. When he scowled, she playfully stuck out her tongue. “I’ll give it back when you’re done being so grumpy.”

Hayes laughed and shook his head as we turned to walk toward the table. “Sisters, man.”

I laughed and nodded, taking a pull from my beer bottle. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Hayes leaned back into his seat as he watched his sisters talk at the bar, mingling with friends and enjoying their night. It was rare to see the storm cloud above his headbreak, but there was no denying that Hayes Darling adored his sisters.

An uncomfortable twinge pinched beneath my ribs at the memory of how I hadadoredone particular sister of his.

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “One is so fiercely independent, she’s raising her own little hellcat. Another is engaged to a douche canoe who thinks he’s better than everyone else. Kit’s never met a stranger in her damn life, and then there’s Elodie.”

And then there’s Elodie.

I watched her as Hayes continued talking. “Since she was in high school, I had to watch the idiots fall hard and crash at her feet.” Hayes shook his head and chuckled. “It would have been a hell of a lot easier if they were all spinsters.”

I chuckled and shook my head with him. “Yeah, that’s probably so.”

Even a blind man could see the Darling sisters were all beautiful in their own right.

My eyes settled on one specific knockout.

Elodie wasn’t just beautiful. She was the kind of woman who got under your skin. The kind you couldn’t shake no matter how many reasons you gave yourself to stay the hell away. She had put on makeup and tried to tame the unruly curls by pinning one side behind her ear, but I could see evidence of exhaustion. Tiny half-moon shadows peeked under her eyes, and the tight, slightly strained smile proved she hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

I hadn’t, either, but I assumed it was for an entirely different reason.

Hayes’s low voice shook me from my thoughts. “You’re different, you know.”

I frowned at him in question.