Page 99 of Knocked Up in Alaska

Izzy’s brows lifted. “You know. Don’t be…what’s the word I’m looking for, Bridge?”

“Foolish.” Violet eyes flashed at him. “Or maybe scared?”

Shit. “I don’t have time for discussions.” He waived his hand down the bar. “I have customers.” Even as he said so, Owen served two of them and smoothly removed empties from in front of another group.

“You can spare us a few moments. One of the perks of being your own boss,” Izzy insisted.

“Yah.” Jorg nodded. “True.”

“All right. What I should have said was I don’t have time to explain things that are none of your business. Do you want drinks or not?”

“He is testy,” Jorg said to Izzy and Bridget. “It is a side effect of his condition. Ogift…ah…no sex.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “I’m not testy. I’m just…” He wadded the towel and tossed into the bin on the counter behind him with a moody burst of energy. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, okay?”

Izzy merely tapped her index fingernail on the bar and waited until he met her deep, brown, deceptively patient gaze. “The right thing for whom, Ford?”

And this was what he didn’t plan to get into with them. “The right thing for everybody. Now, if we’re done here—”

“Everybody?” Bridget craned her neck to look around the entire bar. “Like…everybody? That’s an awfully big responsibility, don’t you think? Did we elect you the decider of what’s best for everybody? I must have missed that ballot measure.”

“Fuck you, Bridget.”

“There was a time you might have, honey, but we both knew better. We both knew who you wanted to fuck. And then you did, and now—”

“Hey.” What the hell…? “That’s none of your—”

“Newsflash.” Her eyes raked him. “Women have their own version of locker room talk. We know the score. You wanted her, you had her, and now…what? You’re done. Is that how it is? If that’s the case, stop saying you’re doing what’s best for ‘everyone’ and start admitting you’re doing what’s best for you.”

“Jesus.” Momentarily speechless at her ugly and entirely off-the-mark accusations, he dragged a hand through his hair. “Jesus, you’re a bitch sometimes. I mean it,” he added when she simply smiled her mile-wide smile.

“Part of my charm.”

“That Archer’s a lucky guy. Tell him I said so.”

She shrugged. “He knows.” Still smiling, she planted her forearms on the bar and leaned over. “Best for who?”

Something cracked inside him. Something deep in his very foundations. “Fine, you want me to say it? I’ll say it, and I’ll stand by it. I’m doing what’s right for Lilah.”

Izzy sighed.

Bridget crooked a finger. “Come here.”

He stepped to her. “What?”

“Closer.”

He rolled his eyes, then leaned in so they were face-to-face. “What?”

She flicked her middle finger off her thumb and thwacked him in the center of his forehead.

“Ouch! Goddammit.” Backing away with the kind of speed he’d use to evade a charging moose, he touched the abused spot and aimed his notoriously withering stare at her. The one that never worked on Mia…or Shayla…or Lilah…or Bridget, who aimed her own withering stare right back at him. She had a pretty good one, he had to admit.

“That’s for thinking you have the right to decide for a grown woman what’s best for her. That’s Lilah’s job.”

Why was the room so damn hot? And the bar suddenly too closed in? He grabbed a fresh towel and started wiping down the smooth surface even though it didn’t need wiping. “Lilah is not a grown woman. She’s barely old enough to drink. She went from sheltered kid so single mom in about a minute, and she’s not looking at her future the way she ought to—”

“Ford?”

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