Page 15 of Second First Kiss

“I am a stickler for the law, but when someone abuses that power, I have no problem stepping in.”

“So it had nothing to do with the woman wearing your jacket?” Jax said. “Because according to Milly, you were pretty adamant that she wear it like it was your letterman jacket or some shit.”

He had been adamant. And he had felt like a stupid teen seeing her in his jacket, so he was disappointed when she had handed it back before getting into her car.

“What is this, high school?” Nolan asked, shoveling in a forkful of potatoes covered in homemade gravy.

“Speaking of high school, didn’t you invite her to prom?” Harris asked.

“No, he wanted to, but he chickened out,” Jax said around a mouthful of breakfast burrito.

He had wanted to ask her, but she’d just been suspended for hacking into a corporate server. He’d just been accepted into the ISB training academy. They were like vinegar and water, their lifestyles would never mix. “I wanted to go with Gabrielle James.” And that’s who he’d gone with.

“Did you know that Kat had heard around school that you were going to ask her?” the waitress, Denise, informed him while refilling his coffee.

“How do you even know that?”

“People talk,” she said with a wink, then went on her merry way.

The only person he’d told was his sister, who was overly interested in her hash browns. He should have known; she was always a tattletale.

“You stand her up for prom, then arrest her kid sister. Can you spell asshole?” Harris asked.

“N-O-L-A-N,” Jax said, and the whole table burst into laughter.

“First off, I didn’t stand her up. I never said I was taking her. Second, no charges were filed last night. It was more of a scare-the-shit-out-of-them tactic,” he said.

“Let me guess, your decision?” Jax said—again with the laughing. “Man, do you know how often Mom and Dad would have grounded us if the cops had busted us every time we were caught partying up at Sunrise Falls after dark?”

“You’d have never seen the light of day again,” Brynn, the baby of the family, said with a sunny smile. She was so petite her legs were dangling off the booth’s bench. And she was so loving, her brothers acted like invisible Bubble Wrap to protect her from the assholes of the world.

Today Nolan felt like that asshole. Which was why, after a long, hot shower, he’d joined his siblings at Bigfoot’s Brews, a bar and grill located next to Sierra Vista Lodge, his family’s hotel that he and his four siblings owned and ran, for their regular brunch.

Three months ago, his parents dropped the bomb that they wanted to sell the lodge and retire to Santa Barbara. While Nolan was all for them enjoying their golden years to the fullest, he couldn’t stomach some big corporation coming in and gutting the legacy that had taken the Carmichael family sixty years to build. So the siblings had stepped up and taken over.

Nolan oversaw every aspect of security, Jax secured event sponsors, Harris made sure that the buildings were properly maintained, Brynn worked closely with Search and Rescue and ski patrol, while Lucas was acting CEO—a position he was not happy to inherit. In fact, he was the only sibling who objected to their takeover and yet he’d been the one to make the most sacrifices for the family. Which was why he’d given them a year to get the company in order and train a new CEO, and then he was done.

Something Nolan and his other siblings hoped to talk him out of. Lucas was burnt out and needed to get a life, sure. But if he walked away from the company he’d spent the past several years growing, he’d regret it. Everyone knew it—even Lucas. He was just too stubborn to acknowledge it.

In a way, Nolan got it. Most days he felt like he was burning the candle at both ends, but standing alongside his siblings while they continued the family’s legacy was worth every sacrifice. This lodge and this town were home—and Nolan would protect them at all costs.

“Things are different now,” Nolan said.

Harris snorted. “Okay, Grandpa.”

“Yeah, did you have to walk to school through wind, sleet, and snow, going uphill both ways?” Jax asked, and the two high-fived.

Nolan flipped them the bird, then took a long swig of hot coffee. “The longer this case goes on the more I get this feeling that the answer is right in front of me. And the only reason I brought all the kids down for questioning is one of the kids said R. J. was bragging about having a gun.”

“Then arrest him,” Brynn said.

“No one will admit that they actually saw him with the gun. So the best I can do with that information is bring him in for questioning.” And R. J. would show up with his city councilman father and a team of lawyers. Been there, done that. He needed tangible proof.

“Well I hate to take your day from bad to worse,” Lucas said. “But the bookkeeper pointed out that we’ve either been shorted supplies from multiple vendors or someone is helping themselves to the bar’s storage room.”

Nolan pressed his palm to his forehead. He did not need this right now. “How bad is it?”

“We won’t know for sure until I look deeper into things,” Lucas said.

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