Page 27 of Live Love Steal
I took another sip. This time I didn’t cough. And hell, it went down smooth. “Where did you get this?”
“Kentucky,” Smoke commented, then slipped out from behind the bar and slapped Bear’s shoulder. “Hammer gets off at ten, Skinner is manning cams, and Rocket is pulling the overnight.”
Bear nodded. “If all goes well, Whoosh’ll be back before midnight. I’ll have him follow me home.”
Smoke eyed the glass in front of him. “Need me to leave the bottle?”
“Naw, take it. Just doing the one. And Sketch’s little lady here will probably pass out if she finishes that, so…”
I glared at him and took a larger sip just to prove him wrong. I would not pass out. It went down easy. And just like that, more than half the glass was gone. I stuck out my tongue at him.
Bear sighed, tapped the bar, and pointed at my glass. “Top her off.”
Smoke filled it higher than Bear had.
Whatever.
I sipped the excess off so I wouldn’t make an ass out of myself by spilling what obviously was very expensive whiskey. Hopefully not too expensive. I’d probably puke it up later.
“Since when did Sketch get a woman?” Smoke asked.
“The way he tells it, about nine o’clock this morning.
“Bullshit,” I muttered into the glass.
“What’s that?”
“I said, bullshit.”
Neither of them believed me. “It was almost eleven when I got out of the courtroom, and around noon when we found out my car was broken into.” I mulled that over. It had to have taken at least thirty minutes to get my stuff unlocked from those stupid bags. And tracking down someone to do it took another ten minutes…
“Wait, your car was broken into?” Smoke asked.
I nodded and took another sip before explaining how we came out of the courthouse and saw the damage to my steering column and the back window.
Bear and Smoke exchanged glances that I didn’t particularly like, so I continued. “Then, I followed Sketch to his house where he fixed it.”
Without asking me for money. Not even for the parts. And I was mad at him because? I couldn’t remember.
A woman slid onto the saddle seat next to me. “What are you drinking?”
“Whiskey. Wait, single-batch bourbon. From the Devil himself.” I got that wrong, so I ran that back through my head, but couldn’t think of a way it made sense otherwise.
“Bear, are you getting her drunk?” Tits asked.
I think he was. I told the woman that. Then got a little hung up on the fact that she was fucking gorgeous. Not someone I’d expect at a biker bar. She had platinum-blonde hair with an exceptional application of toning that somehow cut the brassiness to a pretty pillowcase white. I had to use a blue-violet toner to get anything remotely close to that shade. I sniffed the glass of whiskey. I’d heard of Beer Goggles before, but I didn’t know whiskey changed your entire sexual orientation. It couldn’t. Could it? This was hair envy.
“I’m Tits. What’s your name?”
I set the drink down and wiped my hands on my skirt. “Isobel.” I held one out, waiting for her to shake.
Instead, she leaned to glare at Bear. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I glanced behind me because if Bear was being a douchebag, I wanted to witness it myself.
“I ain’t doing nothing. She’s Sketch’s.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that? I’m not his. He doesn’t own me. I’m my own person. No one owns me.” There. Declaration done, I took a drink. Then it hit me. I was owned by that asshat of a boss who was going to fire me tomorrow over his ineptitude. And that pissed me right the fuck off.
