by Score, Lucy
“Oh, for Pete’s sake —”
“Would you two knock it off?”
“For the love of — get a damn room!”
Carter pulled back, smiling when she followed. “Have a good time. Be safe.”
Dazed she would have stepped right off the porch if he hadn’t caught her by the shoulders.
“Bye, Carter,” she whispered.
“Bye, beautiful.”
They drove off with Joey’s truck leaving a plume of dust in its wake. Carter watched them go. When he turned back to his brothers they were both grinning like idiots.
“What?”
“Be safe, my little love muffin,” Jax said in a voice a few octaves deeper than his own.
“I’ll miss you, my handsome sex biscuit,” Beckett said with a girlish giggle.
“Hey, asshole, that’s your girl out there, too. They’re gonna get a lot of attention together,” Carter said, rubbing it in.
Jax frowned. “Maybe we should cancel the game?” he suggested.
Beckett slapped him in the back of the head. “Can you two stop thinking with your dicks for five whole seconds?”
“Why aren’t you thinking with yours?” Jax asked. “You break it?”
“I’ve sworn off women for the rest of the year,” Beckett sighed, taking a seat in one of the rocking chairs.
“What happened to what’s her name? Judith? Judy?” Carter asked.
“Trudy. It was all fun and games until she starts telling everyone who’d listen to her that she’s going to be first lady of Blue Moon. Like that’s even a thing. Then she starts telling me how I’d make a great congressman.”
“Like that’s even a thing,” Jax joked.
“She had her eyes on the prize. Only the prize wasn’t me.”
“How’d she take it?” Carter asked.
“Let’s just say Cardona knows not to let her lurk near my place. She was a mean one.” He shivered with the memory.
“Not all women can look adoringly at us like Summer looks at this guy,” Jax said, batting his eyelashes.
“You guys are assholes,” Carter sighed.
“It’s in the DNA. We just learned it from our big bro. Didn’t we, Jax?”
“I thought this was supposed to be bust on Beckett night?” Carter grumbled.
“There’s plenty to go around,” Beckett grinned. “So, what the hell am I doing here early besides bringing beer?”
“Hollywood has something he’d like to discuss,” Carter said, taking the chair next to Beckett. “You have the porch,” he said with a sweeping gesture.
“Yeah, now don’t fuck it up,” Beckett warned him.
Jax leaned against the railing. “I’ve been thinking about coming home for a while. Since you two came out to visit last year.”
“That was a good trip,” Carter said, remembering.
“What was that beer you brewed? The coffee stout?” Beckett asked, taking a drag from the bottle. “That was a good one.”
“That’s why I’m back. I want to start a brewery. Here. With you.”
“A brewery?” Carter repeated.
“More like a brew pub I guess. We could do food, too. Farm to table stuff. People love that shit. We’ve already got the farm. We just need the table.”
“Where exactly would this magical brewery be?” Beckett wondered.
“In the stone barn. It’s just sitting there begging to be used. We could set up brewing equipment on the first level.” He paced while he painted the picture. “We could turn part of the fields around it into parking. Those top two floors are big enough that we could host events. Weddings and parties and stuff.”
“Sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this,” Carter said.
“The idea is all well and good. But there’s a hundred other things that have to be looked at,” Beckett reminded him. “There’s permits, construction, suppliers, equipment, start-up capital, ownership.” He ticked them off on his fingers.
“We’d own it outright. The three of us together. I’ve got capital. I’ve got more than enough cash.”
Carter tipped his beer at Jax. “We could grow some of the hops here,” he mused.
“Yes, we could.” His brother grinned.
“This is something we’re going to have to think about, talk about,” Beckett said. “I need some time to wrap my head around all this.”
“It’s a big decision.”
“And there’s the question of how do we know you’re not going to bail again?” Beckett asked.
Jax leveled his gaze at him. “I’m sticking.”
“Then we’ll talk about it,” Carter decided.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Since when did you start wearing lipstick?” Sheriff Donovan Cardona asked, as he dumped two bags of chips on the island.
Carter swiped a hand over his mouth and swore. He’d spent the last thirty minutes with Summer’s lip gloss smeared all over his mouth and neither of his brothers thought to mention it. Beckett and Jax snickered.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot, dicks.” Carter grabbed a paper towel and started scrubbing.
“It’s a nice color on you,” Fitz offered.
Bill “Fitz” Fitzsimmons was closer to Franklin’s age than the rest of them. Bald on top, he had an impressive braided rattail that hung down the back of his Save the Whales t-shirt. He owned and operated Bill’s Books, a used bookstore that trended toward conspiracy titles. He had also smoked more than his fair share of pot back in the day.
Donovan had a theory that in its earlier days Bill’s Books sold more weed than books. But after a short jail stay courtesy of Uncle Sam and the IRS, Fitz claimed to have righted his ways … mostly.
Donovan cracked open a soda.
“You on call tonight?” Carter asked his friend.
“Yeah, ‘til midnight.”
“I should have pocketed all of your money by then,” Beckett said, tearing open one of the bags of chips.
“You wish,” Donovan said, slapping the chips out of his hand and sending them flying.
“Hey! Keep it clean in here,” Carter warned them.
“Yeah, he’s got a live-in lover to impress now,” Beckett said.
“You talking about Summer or Jax?” Donovan asked blandly.
Carter sighed. So much for secrets.
The doorbell rang and everyone yelled, “Come in.”
Franklin, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and khakis, bustled in carrying six to-go boxes that smelled gloriously of garlic.
“I hope everyone is hungry,” he said sliding the containers on the granite.
“Thanks for coming, Franklin,” Carter said.
“Thanks for inviting me. It’s been years since I’ve had a poker night.”
“Running a restaurant probably doesn’t leave a lot of spare time in your day,” Beckett said, looking pointedly at Jax.
“Well, neither did raising three daughters. But I’d do both all over again if I could.”
“That’s good to hear,” Jax said, shooting Beckett a sneer.
Beckett stalked into the great room.
Carter made the introductions, which in Blue Moon were purely perfunctory since everyone already knew everyone else by sight if not by name.
“You want a beer, Franklin?” Jax offered.
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Jax grabbed one out of the fridge and handed it over.
“Fitz, these aren’t the special brownies like last time are they?” Donovan demanded, frowning at the aluminum tray on the island.
“I told you a million times, man, I got the labels confused. It won’t happen again.” Fitz waited until Donovan took a brownie with him into the great room before picking up the tray and checking the bottom. He gave Carter a relieved thumbs up.
“Table’s in there, gentlemen. Let’s get some food and lose some money,” Carter announced.
Joey pulled into the gravel lot of Shorty’s Sports Bar. “Is here okay?” she asked, shutting off the engine.
“Sure,” Summer shrugged. With its stone and wood exterior, it reminded her of the Vermont ski lodge that her parents had taken her to one winter.
Joey hadn’t been particularly talkative on the drive over, so Summer followed suit. She could deal with silence sometimes easier than she could a Chatty Cathy.
They took seats at the bar where the bartender greeted them both by name.
“Summer, this is Ed Avila.”
“Nice to meet you, Summer. You can call me Shorty.”
“Ed’s the runt of the family,” Joey explained.
Summer estimated his height to be at least six-feet four-inches. “My brothers are six-five and six-six,” he explained. “What can I get you ladies to drink?”
Summer revised her martini order to a glass of wine when Joey ordered a beer.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why we’re here?” Joey said, after Ed delivered their drinks.
“I figured you’d tell me in your own good time,” Summer said, taking a sip of her house red.
“I guess it was a better option than me spending the evening alone and you spending it with a houseful of men whining about beards and chips.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Summer nodded.
“You really like him, don’t you?”
“Carter? I really do. What’s not to like?”
“I’m just saying, you’d better really like him. He deserves good things, and if you’re not one of them, you’d better move along.”
“Point made. You two are close,” Summer said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.
Joey shrugged. “Beckett, too. We grew up together.”
“And what about Jax?”
Joey’s eyes narrowed.
“Now before you go and shoot eye daggers at me, what’s a ladies’ night out if we aren’t talking about emotionally scarring relationships?”
“I should have played poker instead,” Joey grumbled.
“Very funny. Okay, let’s skip over He Who Shall Not Be Named. What about you? What do you do outside of horses?”
“There’s not much room for anything besides horses. Carter and I were just talking. It’s time to hire on some part-time help in the stables. Operation’s big enough now that it warrants the extra hands.”
“What you do, what you all do, here is pretty impressive,” Summer said.
“What about you? Do you spend all your time prancing around in heels in the office?”
Summer rolled her eyes. “I am deeply offended. I don’t prance. I saunter. And yes. I work and that’s about it. Not enough time to do anything else.”
“So what exactly does an associate editor for Indulgence do?” Joey asked, reaching behind the bar and snagging two food menus. “I Googled you, by the way.”
It was Summer’s turn to shrug. “I write, I edit, I proofread, I work with photographers, models, advertisers.”
“Your blog,” Joey said. “It’s a lot different than the stuff you write for the magazine.”
“You did do your research.”
“The stuff you write in the magazine is like shiny and fluffy. Annoying. But I didn’t hate the blog.”
“Thanks?”
Joey shrugged. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It sort of sounded like a compliment. Moving on. How about families? Is that a safe topic?”
“As long as you’re not asking me when I’m going to start one?”
“Do people still do that? Where I’m from, people think it’s an accident if you have kids before forty.”
“Different worlds.”
“So, families?”
“My parents live an hour from here. They wanted to stay close to my sister and her kids.”
“Are you close with them?”
She shrugged again. “I wouldn’t call them up if I needed a place to stay, but we do the holiday thing, the birthday thing.”
Summer waited.
“My dad doesn’t understand why I work for Carter,” Joey said, taking a deep drink of her draft.
“Because?”
“Because of Jackson.” Joey didn’t quite choke on his name, but it didn’t flow out either. “Dad isn’t his biggest fan. He’d rather I go run someone else’s operation.”
“But you stayed.”
“The Pierces are more family to me than my own. Carter’s a fair boss and I call the shots when it comes to the horses. Plus, Blue Moon is home. Crazy, weird, bizarre home.”
“Do you ever wish you would have gone somewhere else?”
“I went away to college. Centenary for their equine program. It was a solid program, good school. But Blue Moon was always home.” She shook her head. “And I’m not going to be chased out of my home by ghosts of relationships past. You?”
“Only child. My parents are …” How could she describe them? Distant? Disappointed? “They should be somewhere in the heart of Alaska right now. Last year they sold their house in Brooklyn and bought an RV.”
“What are they doing in an RV?”
“My father was a journalist and then a journalism professor. He’s always dreamed of writing a book on the ‘faces of America.’ So he and my mom are driving around the country. He interviews local people of interest and my mom does the driving and the editing.”
“You see them much?”
Summer shook her head. “Not since they bought the RV.”
“Good enough. Sharing time is over,” Joey decided.
Summer opened her menu. “What’s good here?”
They ordered food from Ed and Summer settled back to enjoy her wine. The bar was starting to get busier. She recognized Willa at a table in the corner with Bobby from Peace of Pizza and another woman with turquoise and violet streaks in her hair. Willa waved and raised a pink frothy concoction. “Ladies night,” she yelled over the music.
“Same here,” Summer mouthed and held up her wine glass.
“Excuse me?” A string bean of a guy with freckles and glasses touched the back of the stool next to Summer. “Would you mind if I joined you for a few minutes?”
“Ummm …” Summer looked at Joey for help. Joey looked entertained. “Sure?”
“Great.” He took a skinny notepad out of the back pocket of his khakis and perched on the barstool. “So, I only have a few questions for you both.” He produced a pencil from the pocket of his starched plaid shirt and flipped through a few pages scrolled with notes before finding a blank page.”
Up close, he looked like he was twelve years old.
“I’m sorry. Are you old enough to be in here?” Summer asked.
“What do you mean you have questions for us both, Anthony?” Joey demanded.
He flushed to the tips of his ears.
“I’m twenty-eight, and I’ll get to you in a minute Joey. Now, Summer, I have here that you’re only in town for a few more days, is that correct? What’s been your favorite thing about Blue Moon so far?”
Summer blinked. “Is this an interview?”
Anthony pushed his glasses up his nose. “It’s just a little Q&A that will run in The Monthly Moon.”
“You want to interview me because I’m here doing an interview?”
He seemed pleased by the question. “Exactly. Now back to the questions.”
“Can I get you something to drink, Anthony?” Ed asked, swiping a towel over the bar.
“I’ll take a diet soda, please. Now back to the questions. What do you think are the highlights of visiting Blue Moon?”
“I’d have to say it’s the unique people that live here that has been the biggest surprise,” she said diplomatically.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” Anthony scribbled furiously. “Have you had the chance to patronize many of our small businesses?”
“I’ve enjoyed Peace of Pizza and Blue Moon Boots. Shorty’s is also turning out to be an interesting experience.”
Ed dropped off Anthony’s soda and winked at Summer.
“What kind of qualities are important to you in a man?”
“Excuse me?”
Anthony was frowning intently at his notepad. “You know like, smart, kind, good with animals, broad shouldered, chiseled jaw …”
“I guess all of those.”
“Great. And how many kids do you plan to have?”
Summer choked on her wine.
“Gee, isn’t that funny? We were just talking about that, Anthony,” Joey said. “I think Summer settled on an even half dozen.”
Summer’s eyes widened as Anthony continued to scrawl notes. “Half dozen,” he mumbled. “Got it. Now according to your blog you state that ‘Farm life is a very large leap from Manhattan.’ Is that a leap you’d be willing to make for love?”
“You know what? I think I have to go to the bathroom. Excuse me.” Summer shoved away from the bar.
“No problem. I’ll just squeeze in Joey’s interview while you’re gone. So Joey, now that Jackson Pierce is back in town, are you off the market?”
It was Summer’s turn to laugh.
“Ed, we’re going to need that food to go. Now,” Joey called.
“Rumor has it that Jackson is back for good. What does that mean for you?”
“Ed!”
“People don’t really read this The Monthly Moon, do they?” Summer asked, watching the cornfields fly by her window. Their untouched, hastily packaged dinners were sitting in the bag on her lap.
“What do you think?”
Summer groaned.
“How do you think I feel? You get to go back to the safety of eight million strangers who don’t give a shit what you do day in and day out. I live here,” Joey grumbled. She passed the farmhouse lane and continued on, turning down the lane to the stables.
“Can Anthony be bought?”
“Not only is Anthony the editor-in-chief of The Monthly Moon, his parents are Rainbow and Gordon Berkowicz. He’s second-generation BMBC.”
“Crap.”
Joey stopped the truck in front of a stone and timber cabin.
“Where are we?” Summer asked.
“My place.”
Joey led the way up the porch to the front door where she fiddled with her keys. “Welcome to Casa Awesome,” she said, pushing open the door.
The whole first floor was wide open. A seating area was arranged around the stone fireplace and behind it was a wide plank table surrounded by charmingly mismatched chairs. The kitchen was compact but had all the essentials. Slate blue cabinets and white countertops broke up the wood tones of the walls and ceiling. The kitchen island was flanked by four backless metal stools and held a neat stack of magazines and books, all on horse topics.
