Page 23 of Unstoppable Love

God. I really needed to figure myself out.

“What brings you two here?” Cameron asked. He shifted on his stool, and his knee bumped into mine. “Any plans in the works that will end up with your brother having to arrest one of you? Or both?”

“Aren’t you the one with the arrest record?” I teased.

He smirked at me. “Warnings. I only had warnings. So, what’s up? What did we catch you two in the middle of gossiping about?”

As if girls sat around and had nothing better to do but gossip. Okay, fine. We did it quite a bit, but he didn’t need to know it.

Lydia flashed him a ridiculous grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“It was baseball or quilting with the parents, so I chose the bar. Why are you here?”

“Isaiah said he’d be up here after work. Apparently, he decided to risk Regina’s wrath.”

As he said it, I found myself swiveling to catch a glimpse of her behind the bar. She wore a smile for everyone in town, but whenever Isaiah stepped into her bar, a storm cloud followed her.

It’d been like that since as long as I could remember, and on the occasion I was tipsy enough to brave Regina myself and ask her why she hated him, she scowled at me and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

That was it. No ranting. No explanation. She wouldn’t talk about it.

Refused.

It only made those of us who knew Isaiah more curious. He was a harmless, hopeless, and usually useless goofy mess, but one of the best guys I knew. He never spoke a mean word against anyone, at least unless they deserved it.

The whole thing was strange.

Even stranger was the way Cameron and Gavin so easily joined us. Stranger still, Cameron wasn’t being a jackass.

That was, until he bumped my leg with his knee and asked, “So, Sunshine. Any idea when you want to get on the road tomorrow?”

Sunshine. I despised that nickname. Mostly because I loved it so much.

So much for him not being a jackass.

I turned to him and sneered, “I don’t know, Tam-tam, what time would you like to leave?”

Across from me, Lydia barked out a laugh. “Don’t you mean Tampon?”

Gavin spit out his beer and quickly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Cruel,” Cameron muttered, but he was laughing.

“Damn. That was some of Josie’s best work,” Gavin said, still laughing and shaking his head.

When his daughter was little, she had problems with her “c” sounds, so they came out as T’s. Cameron’s name was harder than most, so she started calling him Tam-Tam. That eventually changed as she worked on it, and then he was Tampen.

But to the rest of us, it sounded more like tampon.

Every time we’d called him that name, I’d end up tossed in a creek, once in their horse paddock, far too close to a pile of fresh horse crap for my liking.

“Laugh it up. I’ll get even with you for that.” He grinned around the rim of his beer bottle, shaking his head.

Lydia caught my eye and winked. See? She mouthed. Like she was trying to impart some worldly wisdom, proving her point.

It was ridiculous, and it was a dream I had to squash.

“Excuse me.” I climbed off my stool. “Need the restroom.”

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