Page 5 of Crazy Little Thing Called Love

“Oh, cry me a river baby brother. You’ve got customers.”

A group of people entered the bar. Del shook his head at his sister, giving Cassie a wink as he turned and headed down to the other end of the bar where the customers waited. As much as they bickered, she knew the Jackson siblings loved each other. Often, over the years, she’d envied her friend. Having three brothers could be overwhelming at times, she knew, but she would have given anything for a sister or brother. Even now, she wished for some familial connection. The only living relative she had was her cousin, and well…it wasn’t exactly the Hallmark kind of relationship she craved.

Cassie took a sip of her martini. The alcohol hit her system, soothing her ragged nerves. “Oh yes, this is what I needed.”

“And so is this.” Charlie pulled her laptop from her bag. Opening it, she started typing away.

Not trusting the gleeful smile on her best friend’s face, she peeked at the screen. Her jaw fell open in horror. “Whoa, what are you doing? A dating site? I’m not that desperate.”

“Yes, you are,” her friend answered without pausing her furious clicking. “And it’s the twenty-first century. Everyone has an online dating profile now.”

Not her. She preferred to meet men the old-fashioned way. At a bar or the library or work. Seeing as how she worked from home, that made things a little difficult, which explained why she hadn’t had a relationship in… Oh jeez, had it been over a year? Perhaps she did need to get online.

“Okay, I got you set up at Meet My Match,” Charlie said. “There’s also More in the Sea and Farmers Only.”

“But I’m not a farmer.”

“So what? Farmers are hot.”

Cassie raised one brow, waiting her friend out. It didn’t take long. Charlie hated long silences.

“Okay, fine. No farmers. More for me.”

“You do not have a profile on Farmers Only…do you?”

Charlie didn’t answer, simply took a sip of her drink.

“I didn’t know you had a farmer fetish.” She chuckled, nudging her friend’s leg with a soft kick of her toe.

“Can it. This is about finding you a hubby, not my turn-ons.”

“Okay fine. Let’s do this—no, wait.” Needing the courage, she tipped back her drink, finishing the martini in one big gulp. “Okay, now let’s do this.”

“Impressive, but you better stick to water for the rest of the night. No yakking on the floors. We just had them cleaned.”

“No yakking.” She raised a hand in the air. “I swear.”

But her stomach turned over, threatening to break her promise. It wasn’t the vodka—she could handle much more than two martinis in a night—but the circumstances.

Charlie started typing in her profile: height, hair and eye color, what she was looking for in a man. Someone who will marry her so the house she’d always thought of as home could be hers forever. The only place she’d ever felt a connection to family. A connection to…herself.

And she only had six months to do it. Six months to find a guy she liked and marry him. Men loved needy women who rushed them into marriage, right?

Oh crap, she needed another drink.

CHAPTER 2

“Hey, Del, we’re almost out of gin.”

Del glanced over to Kelley Raheja, the distillery’s part-time worker, as she stood mixing drinks at the bar. “I’ll grab some from the back as soon as I finish this order.”

Normally the siblings ran the distillery and tasting room themselves, but on busy weekend nights—like tonight—they brought in help. They weren’t technically considered a bar, but thanks to some unique Colorado laws, the distillery could operate as a tasting room that served full cocktails.

“What’s up with Cassie?” Kelley nodded to the corner where Cassie occupied a small round top. Across from her sat a guy who had Tool written all over him, from the stupid wireless headset in his ear to the bottoms of his so-shiny-he-kept-staring-at-his-dumbass-face shoes. “Is she on another date? That’s like her third one this week.”

And judging by the shoot-me-now expression on her face, this one looked to be going about as well as all the others.

What are you up to, Sassy? He’d been asking himself that same question since she came into the distillery the other afternoon declaring her need for a husband. At the time, he thought it was a joke, but her manic dating schedule lately proved she might have been serious.

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