Page 8 of My Kind of Trouble
But as the sway of rich mahogany hair caught his eye in his periphery—the same shade of mahogany as his newly refurbished bar—that thought caught in his throat. He cleared it with a cough, and she turned to look at him, her beautiful bright blue eyes locking with his. Her glossy and perfectly plump lips dropped open, and it was then that he knew he was well and truly fucked.
With nothing but a curt nod in her direction, he turned quickly on his heel, making a beeline for the safety of his office—somewhere Noa Drake was not.
Since that awkward face-to-face, Alex had been working or maybe just hiding in the back office for the last hour. But he knew he couldn’t hide in there forever. So, he ventured back out into the main bar area with hopes of finding the blondehe’d ignored earlier to sweet-talk her into forgiving his rudeness. He needed to find a way to put some space between him and Noa without making things so obviously awkward, a way to stifle his thoughts and keep a purely platonic relationship with her for fear of being a shitty friend.
Guilt gnawed at him. He knew he was already a shittier friend than Ryan deserved for the less-than-savoury thoughts he was having about his best friend’s sister since she’d stepped foot in his bar an hour earlier like she belonged there. Not only that, but for the secret he’d kept from him for all these years. He’d always wanted to come clean to Ryan about what happened that night but, despite Noa’s insistence to keep it a secret hurting him, he respected and cared for her too much to break that promise.
He also knew Ryan would read him immediately and know that he’d wanted it to be so much more than one night. He couldn’t have risked that.
Ryan had warned Alex off his sister when they were teens, early on in their friendship, and he wasn’t naive enough to think Ryan would jump up and down with joy at the prospect of him and his sister.
They’d also both entertained their fair share of women over the years, with Alex earning his reputation as a non-monogamist. Ryan had made comments in jest about ‘pitying the girl who tried to get him to settle down’, and despite the joke in which they were intended, they’d made it perfectly obvious how Ryan would feel if he thought he was ever pursuing his little sister.
Ryan was more like a brother to Alex, his parents like second parents, and that alone made her off-limits. He just wished his dick, and more importantly his heart, would get that very important message.
The Drakes lived across the street from Alex growing up. His family life was never like the other kids in school. His dad knocked his mum up when she was seventeen, after only a few months of them dating. His mum said he tried to stick around but, in the end, he just wasn’t cut out to be a dad. When Alex was five, he just left, like it was a fucking opt-out programme.
Alex was an angry kid, and on the nights where his mum had to work late or leave early before school, Ryan’s family took him in. They made sure his belly was full and gave him a place that felt like home, like the normal family life he had always craved. Whether it was out of pity or not he couldn’t find it in him to care, because it was better that than face being alone. Better that than to face the heavy sense of rejection that his dad had left him with. Those scars ran deep and had often caused him to lash out, drink too much, smoke too much, and find himself in places he had no business being. But the Drakes never judged him or wiped their hands of him, despite how often he pushed them to, as if testing them to reinforce his belief that people just didn’t stick around. Instead, they gave him the space he needed whilst making sure he knew he always had a safe place to come back to.
Besides this, amongst all the darkness, the anger, and hostility that often felt like it could swallow him whole as a lost teenage boy, Noa Drake was always the light in the dark. Even at his worst, she’d been there for him. Even that night, when he was seventeen, when he’d thrown a plate across his kitchen at his mum. Alex had asked if she could help him find his father. She’d just looked at him, with a pitying look that he hated and made clear his dad didn’t want to be found. He’d seen red, letting anger win out, and he’d run, hiding in a tree house in the park down the road. His mum must’ve called the Drakes, because Noa found him. She’d known he’d be thereand had looked up at him with understanding in her eyes—not pity, not fear. When she reached out a hand for him to come down, he couldn’t help but follow. As he landed back on solid ground, she smiled and he thought, maybe, he wasn’t such a terrible person. He’d internalised his dad’s downfalls over the years, letting them seep into his psyche, convincing him that he could not be much different if the same blood ran through his veins. But she made him believe he was more, that he wasn’t his dad. He couldn’t be if someone like her could look at him like that.
He doubted she had ever known she did that for him and that just her smile could set his whole chest on fire. He’d spent his teenage years in absolute awe at how she radiated such a carefree aura, a hopefulness, and a sense that everything could be better.
When he was around her, everything felt lighter. A calmness would wash over him, and after the day she had found him, he often hung around at their house on days that Ryan wasn’t in, just to be close to her, to bask in that aura whenever he could.
He'd worked hard to hide those feelings. Until one night, when he had dared to believe that maybe he wouldn’t have to anymore. But he wouldn’t be that naive again.
Like a bucket of iced water coming down on him, Alex was ripped from his wandering thoughts the moment Ryan patted him on the shoulder, and he worried he had spoken his thoughts out loud.
‘Hey man, where’s your head at tonight?’ Ryan asked on a laugh. ‘You not gotten laid recently or what? Youseem so uptight.’
Alex quickly feigned a strangled laugh and, with a quick flick of his wrist, gave his best friend a whack on the head with a bar towel to distract him.
‘Owwww,’ Ryan grumbled.
‘I have more success with the ladies than you ever could, and you know it. Now stop pestering me. I’ve got work to do, and you’ve got a sister to save,’ he shot back at him, pointing at where Noa stood with a crowd of nosy locals surrounding her.
They never could read when to stop with the twenty questions in this town. And, because no one could mind their own business, the return of Noa Drake would be like headline news.
Ryan rolled his eyes, just like his sister always did, and walked toward her. As he disappeared from view, a perfectly manicured hand tapped impatiently on the bar from a few seats down, pouty lips and scowling eyes directed his way. Deciding he was up to the challenge of winning the blonde beauty he had likely pissed off earlier, he headed in her direction. She stood with Suzie, a woman who had been trying her chances with him for years. And tonight, he might be able to look past his rule against flirting with locals. Because, if her friend decided to hold a grudge, he would happily take her brand of distraction.
Keeping himself busy proved to be a fruitless task. After the blonde left with a group of her friends, Alex began wiping down the already-spotless bar. He’d absent-mindedly wiped the same spot for at least ten minutes, likely just wearing down the wood more than cleaning it at this point. Suddenly the deep brown of the wood rippled and swayed, and he realisedhis eyes had involuntarily found Noa’s perfect waves again without his permission. It was instinctive, like any control he usually had was completely gone.
It was always that way when it came to Noa. It was that way eight years ago, when he’d thought all his Christmases had rolled into one and that she’d finally noticed him as something other than Ryan’s tag-along best friend. And clearly, not much had changed now. Back then, he’d thought they’d finally moved past that into something more. He was wrong. And when the lights came on after one of the best nights of his life, and she looked at him with those steely eyes and made him make that pact, he had agreed. He hadn’t fought it, not when the last time he’d asked someone to stay, he’d watched the back of his dad’s head walk out the door.
As much as he’d known that swallowing his feelings and watching her leave would be hard, asking her to stay only to watch her leave anyway would be crushing. It would risk reinforcing the voice inside his head that had been there since his dad left, the one that told him he wasn’t worth sticking around for. Fear stopped him from finding out if that was true.
So, he knew that he had to turn it off. And he had. For the past eight years, he had done everything he could to avoid thinking about her. And he had been successful… for the most part. He purposely filled his days with work and his nights with whichever gorgeous woman crossed his path that day. He was the one in control, always. He liked it that way—no, he needed it that way.
But now, she stood in his bar. Her rich, chocolate brown hair tumbling over her bare shoulders in waves, settling over her strapless orange playsuit that accentuated her every curve. She wore barely any make-up, which meant the freckles painting her face were on full display. She was perfectionpersonified, and she was here in his bar threatening to ruin him again. And the thing that terrified him the most? He might just let her.
Chapter 6
Noa
Noa stood in the family kitchen that had barely changed since she was a little girl. Her bare feet padded on the same taupe-coloured linoleum floor as she pulled a mug from the cupboard and put it down on the oak countertop. The kettle whistled, sounding like nails on a chalk board in Noa’s fragile state. She turned off the hob, poured the boiling water into her cup, and let the smell of bitter instant coffee soothe her. She hoped that this would be the miracle cure for the world’s worst hangover she was sporting this morning. It was almost noon and the throbbing between hertemples had still not subsided thanks to her brother’s bad example and far too many IPAs last night.
God, why did she drink so much?
