Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)

by Aubrey Irons

  “This place is a dump.”

  I laugh. “Aww, careful now, you’ll hurt my feelings.”

  She gives me a look.

  “It’s also why you looked like I puked on your bible when I said the word cock.”

  She visibly stiffens, her mouth going sour.

  “See?”

  “I do not, I just don’t need to see that or hear that sort of vulgarity.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “The key? Please?”

  “Not at all thrown off or flustered, huh?”

  “I told you, I am not the sheltered little-”

  “Fuck am I hung over as shit!”

  We both whirl at the sound of Jade’s voice from the back hallway.

  I snort.

  Jade, wearing just a pair of boxer-briefs and a sports-bra as she shrugs a t-shirt over her disheveled hair.

  “Fuck me fucking sideways,” she croaks out.

  Evangeline peeps — an actual peep sound, like a baby bird.

  Jade’s head jerks up. “Oh, hey,” Jade says groggily at her, turning and giving me a half grin and a raised brow before glancing back at church-girl. “You spend the night too?”

  The front door slams open as Evangeline goes bolting out of it.

  I sigh and take a sip of my beer.

  Like I said. Master of first impressions.

  Chapter Three

  Evangeline

  I’m ten steps away from that horrible bar, that girl, and from that horrible man when I stop.

  Because I also realize that I’m heading back to the rental house without the key that we need to actually get inside of it. And I don’t have the key because I totally just ran out of there like a freak show.

  What am I going to do, not go back with the key?

  “No Dad, I didn’t get the key from the nice minister’s son because his penis was hanging out.”

  My mother would faint.

  My father might.

  “Hey, hang on!”

  I spin around to see Rowan jogging down the sidewalk, still in just a pair of jeans, barefoot.

  “What?” I snap.

  He laughs as he comes to a stop in front of me. “Did you want the key?”

  “I asked you ten times for it.”

  “Well, but then you left without it. Sort of sends a mixed message.”

  I level my frown at him and he grins, shaking his head. “Sorry about Jade.”

  “And I am sorry for waking you and your- your- girlfriend.” I let the words tumble out. “I just needed the key, and your father said you had the only copy, and that you knew I was coming over, and-”

  He laughs. “Jade? Trust me, not my girlfriend. Nothing like that.”

  I turn redder, frowning at the thought of, well, whatever they are.

  “It’s none of my business, I just-”

  “Believe me, I’m not exactly her type.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I don’t have a vagina.”

  My eyes go wide before I can stop them, and he laughs. “Uh oh! You’re in Massachusetts now! Better watch out! We’ve got gays up here you know,” he smirks, like he thinks he’s hilarious. “I know you guys don’t really do the whole gay thing down in Bible-land, but up here-”

  “I don’t not do the gay thing.”

  I can see the shot I’ve set him up for before the grin finishes unfurling across his face.

  “No,” I say sharply, pointing a finger at him. “Don’t.”

  He laughs. “What?”

  “Whatever crude, disgusting comment you were about to make.”

  “My lips are scissored. Uh, sealed.”

  I roll my eyes, looking away.

  “Okay, look, I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

  “Did you get that impression as well?”

  He smiles. “Let’s try again, huh? I’m even wearing pants this time.” He holds his hand out. “Hi, I’m Rowan. Our dads are friends and I think we’re probably going to be working together a lot this fall on this church shit.”

  I sigh. “This church shit-” I bite my tongue at the swear, forcing myself to be cordial. “I’m Evangeline. You can call me Eva.”

  He takes my hand, and I resist the sudden urge to shiver. “Nice to meet you, Eva. You want that key now?”

  “That would be great.”

  He pulls it out of his back pocket and drops it in my hand. “All yours. Don’t throw too many parties in the place. I know you bible-thumpers like to get wild.”

  I grin in spite of my best efforts not to as I turn and march away from him.

  “Oh, right, welcome to Shelter Harbor, church-girl!” he calls after me.

  I bite back the grin as I round the corner.

  “Did you stop for lunch?” My father snaps at me as he stands from the front steps leading up to the porch of the rental house.

  “No, sorry, I just-”

  What, I just had to navigate the most obnoxious, crude, disgusting man I’ve ever met? Not to mention the most naked one?

  I smile at my father. “Rowan was doing his paperwork for the business — taxes and payroll and stuff. I didn’t want to disturb him until he was done.”

  My father’s frown softens. “Good girl, Evangeline. That was good. The Lord smiles on patience.”

  I nod, smiling back at him as I hand him the key. I have no idea why I lie about Rowan to my father’s face like that, but there it is.

  Welcome to Shelter Harbor indeed.

  “You father’s just tired from the trip, dear,” my mother says quietly, placing a hand on my arm before picking up her suitcase and following him up the steps into the house.

  “This town smells like fish.”

  I smile as I shake my head at Chastity. “It’s just the smell of the ocean. There’s a fully working seaport down in the harbor, you know.”

  I’d petitioned to take the ferry to Shelter Harbor from Boston, where we flew into. Father vetoed that in favor of the highway, which I guess is a lot faster. It would have been nice to take in the ocean though.

  “Well, it’s a fully working seaport that smells like dead fish.”

  Chastity is…intense at times, but we’re friendly enough to a certain degree. She’s my age, and the daughter of one of my father’s parishioners who’s joined us for our stint here in Shelter Harbor before she marries her minister of a fiancé back home. This trip is apparently a way of “getting closer with God” before she joins her future husband in his lifelong commitment to tending his flock.

  “You smell like beer, by the way,” she says, frowning as she sniffs at the air around me like she’s some sort of bloodhound.

  “No I don’t,” I say quickly.

  “You do.”

  I start to wrack my brain before suddenly words just come tumbling out. “Oh, right. Rowan was helping a homeless man out front of his restaurant when I got there. Giving him soup and all that. It’s probably that.”

  Chastity’s eyes narrow at me. “Restaurant? I thought it was a bar.”

  “Oh, is it?”

  “You were there.”

  “Oh, I’m not sure then. I didn’t really notice, I guess.”

  Chastity rolls her eyes as she grabs her bag and heads up the stairs.

  I turn, letting the air out in a thin stream as I look down the hill at the harbor. I shiver as my mind flies back to him — of stepping into that office, of seeing, well, what I saw.

  The illicit, wicked temptations that came with being around him. I quickly shake those thoughts from my head as I pick up my bag and glance once more at the harbor before turning to the house.

  Well, it’s nine-thirty in the morning, and I’ve already lied twice, harbored lust, and had very impure thoughts about a man.

  Heck of a way to start the morning.

  Chapter Four

  Rowan

  “Can I get…” The girl taps her lips thoughtfully with a perfectly manicured nail. Her cheeks blush bright crimson as she swallows the obvious lump in h
er throat.

  I already know at least vaguely what she’s going to order based off the sparkling tiara on her head, the “bride to be” sash over one shoulder, and the penis necklace around her neck.

  Most people — especially people who work in or own bars — find bachelorette parties to be obnoxious. Groups of drunk, excited women hopped-up like drug fiends on the idea of love, marriage, and the idea of a “last night of freedom”?

  Yeah, I find them to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

  “What can I get you, sweetheart.”

  I amp up the Boston townie accent, playing into the fantasy I already know is playing in her head. The Ben Affleck in The Town, or Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting fantasy.

  That’s why girls like her come into places like O’Donnell’s. We don’t have a cocktail menu. We carry one wine. We don’t have a DJ or pretty guys in designer jeans hustling to buy cute girls drinks. This place is a townie dive bar through and through, and girls like her who come in here want that. They want the dirty fantasy, the grunge of a place like this, the rakish charm of a guy like me.

  Girls like her, with the enormous rock in her engagement ring, the flawless makeup, the designer dress and heels and four-thousand-dollar clutch know exactly who I am. They know I’m not the preppy hedge fund manager trust-fund boy they’re marrying next week. They know I’m not going to take them to Morton’s in the city, or buy their love with diamonds and a lap dog.

  They see me for exactly who I am, and that is exactly why a guy like me makes for the best kind of “last night of freedom” escape.

  She bites her lip playfully as her eyes center on me, and I can just about see her courage building to a crescendo behind those eyes.

  “Can I get a sex on the beach.”

  She practically explodes in nervous, alcohol fueled giggles as soon as she says it, and I can see her girlfriends camped out in the booth behind her dissolve into fits of giggles and “She actually said it!”

  I just grin though, holding her eyes and not even flinching. “Bar closes at two. It should be low tide then if you’re interested.”

  Her eyes go wide as her jaw drops.

  I’m teasing her, but I’m not altogether kidding either, and she can see that.

  “Oh, I- I’m-”

  She stammers, her face growing red as she suddenly looks at her hands. “I’m, uh, I’m getting marr-”

  “Relax darlin,” I say with a chuckle. “I’m just giving you a hard time.”

  She looks up quickly, her face relaxing a little as she smiles awkwardly. “It was a-”

  “Dare? Yeah, you’re not the first bachelorette party to come in here.”

  Hers is actually the fifth one I’ve had blow through O’Donnell’s in the past two months.

  “What do you really want to drink?”

  She laughs nervously. “Actually, just a gin and tonic. I don’t even know what a sex on the beach is.”

  “Offer still stands to show you if you want.”

  She looks up quickly again as I wink at her, letting her decide for herself this time if I’m just teasing or not as I turn and grab a glass from the shelf behind me. I flip the gin bottle up in the air before catching it and pouring it over the ice. A little Tom-Cruise-Cocktail flair never turned a girl off, let me tell you.

  “It’s on the house,” I murmur as I pass it her way.

  “Oh, thanks,” she blushes.

  “Look, if you want, you can go tell your friends that I promised to meet you on the beach later and fuck the single right out of you.”

  Her eyes go wide, flashing over me in something like lust as I grin.

  “Trust me, it’ll make for an awesome bachelorette party story.”

  “Thanks,” she blushes, sipping quickly on her G&T before turning and scurrying back to her gaggle of friends.

  “A sex on the beach? Really?” Jade groans, and I turn to catch her rolling her eyes behind the bar with me. “I love how every girl thinks that’s the most original line in the world because one of her friends found it on Google.”

  “Aww, what, jealous you didn’t get the line?”

  Jade flips me off before grabbing a couple cold pints from the fridge and filling them from the Sam Adams taps.

  “She had clingy trust-fund case written all over her. Hard pass from me.”

  “Quitters never win, Jade.”

  She snorts as she makes change for the guy buying the beers before nodding her chin at the next person lined up to the bar.

  It’s Saturday, and we’re fucking cranking. The bar is three deep, the music is rocking, and this place is actually filled with more than just drunk townie locals who’ve been coming to drown themselves at O’Donnell’s since before I was old enough to drink, let alone before I owned the place. We’re slowly moving from “actual dive bar” to “fun dive bar,” and while the purist in me would be just fine keeping it the sticky, smoke-filled, grungy shit-hole I fell in love with at the age of sixteen with my fake ID, the business owner in me is pretty okay with the change.

  So, as a business owner, I’m pretty pleased with the night. As a man still nursing an epic hangover from the night before though?

  It’s a goddamn nightmare.

  “Drink?”

  Jade elbows me in the ribs and I turn to see her handing me a half-pint of beer.

  “The responsible business owner in me is frowning at the employee giving away free booze and encouraging drinking on the job, you know.”

  “The same responsible business owner who just gave away that gin and tonic and keeps a bottle labeled ‘Rowan only’ behind the bar?”

  I grab the glass from her hand and raise it up. “Sláinte.”

  Jade tosses the Gaelic toast back my way, and we drink. The beer chases some of the lingering headache, and I’m tossing it back to finish the rest of the glass when my eyes land on the front door swinging open.

  Well, huh.

  Because there in the doorway is the very last church girl I’d have ever expected to see back in here.

  “Excuse me sir, but do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior?” Jade snickers in my ear.

  “She’s Baptist, I think. Or like, Evangelical Calvinist or, whatever.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Lord and Savior stuff is Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

  Jade gives me a look. “Right, well, good luck.”

  I turn back to see Eva nervously slipping her way through the crowd, and for a minute, I’m actually wondering how she managed to get past Jon, my door guy. As much fun as I had in this place back in high school with a fake ID, Massachusetts’s stance on serving minors is no fucking joke these days. My once-over of her this morning would not have put her at legal drinking age.

  And however much Jade was kidding, she practically looks like she’s going door-to-door with the good word. She’s wearing khakis and a freaking tucked in t-shirt with some sort of ministries slogan and logo on the front of it. It’s a far cry from the white-dressed angel I woke up to.

  “You got this?” I nod at Jade and the crowd at the bar, which actually seems to be thinning slightly.

  She shrugs. “Sure.”

  I slip out under the service bar and meander through the crowd towards a very lost, very freaked out looking Eva Ellis.

  “You even old enough to be here or should I be calling the cops.”

  She whirls, her face white and her eyes wide. “Oh, no, I’m old enough.”

  She fumbles in her pocket and starts to yank out an ID before she sees me grinning.

  “Oh, you’re joking.”

  “Just a little. Seriously though, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  I raise a brow, shrugging. “Well okay then. What are you drinking?”

  She blushes. “Oh, no, I don’t drink.”

  Of course not.

  “Well if you’re here for the cuisine, you’re probably in for a let-down.” I nod at the bowl of pretzels on the bar next to me.

/>   Eva smiles, and I can’t help but grin back.

  “I actually need your help with something.”

  “Oh?”

  “The water’s off at the house?”

  “The rental?”

  She nods.

  “Shit. Let me guess, you called my dad-”

  “He told me you could fix it.”

  Part of me convincing my dad a few years ago that buying an investment property in a place like Shelter Harbor was a smart move was promising to be the go-to maintenance guy for the place.

  I groan, glancing around the still-full bar.

  “Don’t suppose this can wait until tomorrow?”

  She makes face. “There’s literally no running water in the house.”

  “Right, right. Okay, fuck it.”

  She stiffens at the language, and I roll my eyes as I turn and lean over the bar.

  “Hey, you okay back there if I ditch for a while?”

  Jade raises a brow at me, smirking. “Bible study?”

  I flip her off. “Water main.”

  “Please don’t tell me you’re going to go help her fix a pipe.”

  I grin. “You might be the most non-dude dude I know.”

  “Penis envy.”

  “Good luck with that. Seriously though, call me if this place gets nuts.”

  “Praise be.”

  I roll my eyes again as I turn back to Eva. “Let’s go get your shower working.”

  Chapter Five

  Evangeline

  “My father and mother and Chastity are up at the church with your father.”

  I immediately have no idea why I felt a need to explain to him why the house is empty as I open the front door.

  Rowan chuckles. “What, is he doing another one of those hilarious Saturday night youth ministries things up there?”

  “Oh, I think they’re just going over stuff for the week for the project.”

  He nods as he moves through the kitchen to the basement door before he stops and glances back at me. “Wait, who’s Chastity?”

  “Oh, she came with us. She’s a friend from our parish back home.”

  “Is your friend a stripper?”