Page 33 of Accidental Baby For My Brother’s Best Friend

“I should have known,” Axel says, and I groan and gulp down the rest of my martini.

I put my head down on the table that we’re sitting at near the back of the bar.

“Everyone makes mistakes, okay?”

“I should haveknown,” Axel repeats. “He glared at me like he wanted to take my head off when I made a comment…”

The guitarist trails off and I lift my head and narrow my eyes at him.

“What kind of comment, Axel?”

“Uhh…” Axel changes the subject. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, Locke has had a thing for you since we were back in Tucson.”

I sit up at that revelation, unable to continue giving Axel attitude about what comment he might have made.

“What? No he hasn’t.”

“He kinda has,” Samuel agrees, and I look at him incredulously.

“What the hell are you two talking about? He’s hated me forever!”

“Locke hates everybody,” Axel says dryly, and Samuel nods in agreement.

“You guys are both crazy.” I dismiss this whole conversation because it’s making my head hurt, but at least it’s taking my mind off all the blondes swarming Locke. Does he have a thing for blondes? After all, that bartender had been blonde…

“The way he acted that night in Tucson, Gem - it’s obvious he was jealous,” Axel insists, his words jerking me out of my thoughts.

“Jealous? Why would he be jealous?”

Axel shrugs. “He’s just that kind of guy. You should have seen him with his ex, he got in a lot of bar fights over her in the early days.”

“The early days?” I ask, curious. I’m beginning to understand that as much time as I’ve spent with the Spades, I don’t know that much about their lives from before I was old enough to spend more time with them. After all, I hadn’t known that Axel is divorced, and I didn’t even know Lockehasan ex-girlfriend. The only girls I’d seen around Locke had lasted two weeks, at best.

“Yeah, when they first got engaged,” Axel explains, and my eyes nearly bug out of my head.

“Locke wasengaged?”

Samuel looks unsure. “I don’t know if we should be talking about this, Ax.”

“Shit. I guess not.” Axel looks down at his beer. “I really gotta stop drinking so much.”

“It’s okay,” I assure him, and for a moment, everyone shuts up, lost in their own thoughts. I keep trying not to order another filthy martini because my eyes keep wandering over to Axel at the bar with all those women. It makes my stomach roll. Lots of them seem to be his own age, too.

Is that why he was so quick to say “never again?”

“Hey, Gem,” Axel calls, and I look up, jerking out of my thoughts again.

“Hmm?” I ask absentmindedly, still staring over at Locke.

Axel grabs my wrist and I look up, not having noticed that he’s now up.

“C’mere. I wanna prove a point.”

---