Page 14 of Luck of the Draw

“Dottie knows I’m here,” she continued. “She said we could tell people we were her guests.” She looked down for a second. “She said I was exactly where I needed to be.”

Any doubt I’d felt, or thought I should feel, drifted away. Hadn’t Dottie said exactly the same thing to me a couple of months back?

She’d been right about me. Asheville was good for me. Much better than living in my hometown, running into Marisa nearly every other day. Marisa, with her new husband. Marisa, with the two kids I couldn’t give her.

My brother hadn’t understood, but for all her talk about crazy Asheville, my sister did.

She knew how much I’d wanted a family of my own, a big, loud home with children running around and sauce bubbling on the stove. A home like ours had been growing up.

Only I hadn’t wanted to stay in theactualhome I’d grown up in, with my parents and little sister instead of the kids I’d wanted. It was like some fun house version of the future I’d planned, and every day I’d spent there after getting wounded overseas had made it feel a little more like a prison.

Yeah, Dottie had been right about me. Maybe she was right about Cinderella too.

Cinderella must have taken my silence to mean something else, though, because she blurted out, “My friend and I are both going through divorces, and we needed something fun to do. Something to help us feel like we could still have fun. I didn’t actually realize this was what she had in mind until it was too late, but you know what? Ithasbeen fun, and it’s been so long since I had some adul–.” She cut herself off, as if searching for the right word, and finished with, “…real fun that I could hardly remember what it felt like.”

I found myself nodding, because it was almost like she’d read my mind. “I can understand that.”

“You can?” she asked in disbelief, like she’d actually expected me to throw her out on her very nice ass.

I smiled at her. “Yeah, except my way of working through my divorce was to join the Marines and move halfway across the world. Maybe I should have tried crashing a wedding first. Might have saved myself some time and a bullet.”

Her eyes widened. “You got shot?”

“Yeah, but I’m fine now.”

“But you got shot.” She looked worried about me, like she wanted to feed me chicken soup or something. I’d gotten plenty of those looks back home, but weirdly enough it didn’t bother me, coming from her.

“That’s what they tell me.” I shrugged. “It ended my deployment, and I was discharged for medical reasons. I spent the better part of a year trying to get back into shape at home…which wasn’t great. It was nice not having to worry about anything for a while, but after I got better I guess I was ready to worry about things again. To have something of my own. Then I came here on vacation and broke up a fight at the brewery. The next thing I knew, Dottie had talked me into taking a job there.”

When she smiled, it was like she put her whole being into it, not just her face, and it was impossible not to smile back. “She’s good at talking people into things.”

“Just like your blonde friend, the one who talked you into coming here.” I tilted my head, studying her, taking in her blush and the glimmer of excitement in her eyes, which appeared to have replaced the nerves. “Breaking the rules suits you, you know. Maybe you should make a habit of it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a surprised laugh. “Turns out it comes with a risk of being caught by the hot bartender.”

Her face went scarlet, and she lifted a hand to her mouth, as if she could shove the words back in.

She was a beautiful, lush woman, but the way she was acting, bashful and embarrassed, told me that she didn’t know, or maybe didn’t remember. And even though it was a terrible idea, maybe one of the worst I’d ever had, I thought I’d like to be the one to show her.

“Nope. Can’t take it back. You already said it.” I glanced at those glasses in front of her, noticing one of them was empty. So she’d been sneaking sips during our talk. “Fair warning. The other bartender said he made this batch much stronger.”

“Is that why it tastes like someone mixed a juice box with rubbing alcohol?”

“Drink a lot of juice boxes?”

Something flickered across her face, but she shook it off. “Not me, no. But you…how old are you?”

I laughed. “Does it matter?”

“It does if…”

She looked flustered, so I stepped in to help her out. “Iamattracted to you,” I said, slipping a hand over hers on the table, enjoying the familiar feel of her fingers beneath mine. I wanted to get better acquainted with them. “I’d argue that it doesn’t matter, but then again, I doubt you’re much older than I am.”

“Which is?”

I grinned at her. “I’ll tell you as soon as you tell me your name.”

She studied me for a moment, as if weighing how badly she wanted to know my age. Then she lifted a shoulder. “Deeandra.”

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