Page 12 of Until Forever

“Just go on and shoot me if that’s the only option left,” I chuckled.

“Better yet, why not skip the middleman and just go straight to marrying Lana Miller? You’ve charmed plenty of other women who swore they hated you.”

“That’s a different kind of hate altogether,” I told him. “Besides, I wouldn’t marry Lana Miller if my life depended on it. You can just go on and take the marina and the land and everything else I own, too, because that’s not happening.”

Jake was laughing at first, but suddenly—he tensed up. His smile quickly faded, and he stood there awkwardly, clearing his throat.

I wrinkled my brows at him. “What’s gotten into you?”

He bobbed his head to the side. I looked up and, much to my dismay, saw Lana had walked in. I wasn’t sure when she came in exactly, but judging by the look on her face, it was just in time to hear me say I’d rather die than marry her. But that shouldn’t have been a surprise, right? She would have said the same thing about me, and, in fact, had probably said much worse.

That didn’t stop her from scowling at me, though. If looks could kill, I would have burst up into flames right there on that bar stool and burnt the whole joint down with me.

6

LANA

Great. Just the person I wanted to see. That's what I hated most about Silver Point. There was no getting away from Keith Mullins, or anyone you were trying to avoid, for that matter.

I slid onto a stool at the opposite end of the bar and waited for Jake to skulk over to my order.

“Long Island iced tea,” I said in an icy tone.

Jake may not have been the one to say those things about me, but he was sitting there laughing right along with Keith. In my mind, that made him just as guilty. You’re only as good as the company you keep. Which probably meant I should have just left and gone to another bar, but there wasn’t another bar to go to.

After bringing my drink over, he kept his head down and started wiping off the counter even though it was already clean. That was just his way of avoiding both of us and all the tension.

“I heard you had a great talk with my brother earlier tonight,” Keith called out to me from his corner of the bar.

“Oh yeah. We’re good pals,” I quipped.

“Not good enough, apparently. Unless that’s how you learned to treat your friends while you were over there in California.”

I stared at the ceiling and sipped my drink, trying to ignore him.

A few seconds passed with him glaring at me before he finally appeared to give up. He huffed over to the jukebox and returned a few minutes later to order another beer. I didn’t think anything of it until his song started playing about a wickedly vile woman.

Keith swiped his beer off of the counter and started circling the room, singing along out loud. As he went, I could feel his eyes burning into my back. I let it roll off and didn’t say a word. I just sat there and let him make a fool out of himself, stumbling around and mumbling through the lyrics. After all three of his songs about what a wicked, awful woman I was finished playing, he went back to his seat.

Slowly, casually, I stood up and made my own trip to the jukebox. My first selection, of course, was “You’re So Vain.” I followed that up with “You’re No Good” and “Cry Me A River.”

“At least the soundtrack to y’all’s feud is pretty good to listen to,” Jake quipped.

“That’s just great,” Keith scowled. “I’m glad the music playing during my great demise is pleasing to everyone.”

That was it. I couldn’t bite my tongue any longer.

“Get over it, Keith,” I barked. “It’s nothing personal, okay? It’s just business.”

His face darkened. “Nothing personal?” He blew out a laugh. “Nothing personal!? How can you sit there and say it’s not personal!? You grew up here, Lana. You know damn well what that lake means to me and my family!”

“I’m not trying to take the lake away from anyone,” I fired back. “Quite the opposite, actually. I’m trying to breathe some life back into it.”

“Oh, so what…You expect me to believe this is some good deed of yours? That you’re a saint for having our grandfather’s business torn down?”

“It was just sitting there, rotting away,” I defended. “It wasn’t his business anymore. It was a death trap. You weren’t doing anything with the place!”

“I couldn’t afford to!” he shouted.

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