by Mignon Mykel
The desert looked a little drier, was a little warmer, and was definitely browner, as I made my way back to the rental car.
Emily
This was all so surreal.
Rory was here.
Rory was here, in Arizona, at the house I was renting.
And he was walking away.
He was walking away and was going to head back to San Diego.
Did I trust that he could have changed? Well, yes, actually. I witnessed the small changes. Did I think he could keep those small changes?
Would I hate myself if I didn’t at least give it a shot?
Hell, I really didn’t have time for a relationship! But who was to say he’d still be around in three years when I graduated? The fact that he apparently waited a year and half was damn impressive.
I heard a car start and I shook my head, forcing myself back to the here and now.
He was leaving and it made me come to a realization.
I couldn’t let him leave.
I bolted out of my garage and ran down the slight drive, jumping in front of what had been the mysterious car, all while praying he wouldn’t gun it, leaving this place in his haste.
I stared at him through the windshield.
He stared back.
And when I smiled at him, he smiled back.
And he knew, just as I did, that I was giving him his chance.
We would figure it out. And if it didn’t work, it didn’t work.
But we could at least say we tried.
Because when his cocky side was gone, and my cold indifference melted, I really enjoyed being around him.
This wasn’t going to be easy.
We had hardly been anything other than friends over the past year and half, and we were jumping into something more.
…but it was going to be worth the ride.
ALL NIGHT LONG
book 3
For as long as I could remember, I’ve lived under the protective shadow of my older brothers. We were all fairly spread apart in age, at least in comparison to my friends who were one or two years, three years at most, apart from the other kids in their families.
But for my brothers and me? We had the four year gap.
Well, technically Rory and Conor were three years apart but their birthdates were on opposite ends of the year.
So pretty much four years.
That meant I never went to the same school as Conor, who is eight years older than me.
It also meant that there had only been two years in elementary school, no years in middle school, and one four-quarter period in in the space of life that was known as high school, that I had with Rory.
That did not stop the two of them from threatening every kid they ran across though.
People knew who I was.
If there were such a thing in our little beach town, I would have been considered royalty with the way my brothers watched over me.
By ten—ten!—I decided I needed to find a way to step away from the pampered role everyone saw me in, so I set out to do just that.
Away from my brothers’ eyes, of course.
Which only made their unwavering faith in me feel like a dagger through the heart, with every omission of truth I told them.
Or the little parts of my life that I didn’t tell them. The little parts that made the large sum of who I was.
The things that they considered rumors.
I pushed away good friends so I could fit in.
I’m ashamed to say I spread my legs to ruin that ‘good girl’ reputation my brothers molded for me.
By day, I was Sweet Brenna O’Gallagher, the girl who could do no wrong in her brothers’ eyes.
But everyone else knew who I really was.
They knew the slutty girl, the one who wore low cut tops and too much eye makeup.
The girl who was known behind hands as the one who fucked a senior in his van her freshman year.
Then rumors spread about other things.
STDs. Drugs. Pregnancies.
While most of those rumors I could give a big ‘fuck you’ to, there was one rumor that hit incredibly close to home, one that wasn’t a rumor at all.
And every time I heard it, every time I saw someone whispering behind their hands, their eyes avoiding mine but looking for the tell-tale signs, the pain in my gut, in my heart, was so incredibly agonizing that I could not bear to be that person anymore.
So I vowed off men the year I turned nineteen.
Nineteen.
The time most girls were starting to find who they were.
I had already found who I was and I didn’t like her. I didn’t like what she did to her body, what she did to her head, what she did to her heart.
I was successful at keeping men at bay for two years. Granted, the rumors turned into ‘cock tease’ but that was infinitely better than what they had been.
For two years, my vow of celibacy, of staying away from men, wasn’t even tempted to change. But then my brothers hired him.
Greyson Stone.
Stone to everyone. Grey to just me.
Behind closed doors.
Behind our hands. Away from public. Away from my brothers.
Just like every other aspect of who I truly was, I was extremely good at hiding this relationship from my brothers.
But Grey was threatening to change that.
Five years, he let me have him in secret.
Five years, and he knew who I really was, who I hid from my brothers. He knew and he wanted to expose me.
Expose us.
So what could I do but try and push him away?
Five Years Ago
Brenna
I walked into the pub that had been as much a part of my life as the family home had been, ready for my first shift working under my brothers’ reign.
Conor and Rory re-opened the doors to our parents’ pub last year, but between my age and, let’s be honest, the desire to not work for my brothers, I respectfully declined every offer they gave me to be a barmaid.
A barmaid!
In my family’s bar!
Just call me Cinderella, then.
At least give me a good job. Books or something. Don’t make me start from the ground when the two of them were just…handed the place!
They saw me as some weak creature in their world, but I suppose some of that was my own fault. They often mistook my pain of the rumors that swirled about me as just that—pain of rumors—when in all actuality, the pain was because the truth they all spewed.
But I needed a job and this was one I didn’t have to apply for.
I did the community college thing after high school. My brothers thought I got a ‘feel good’ degree, an associates in something like graphic design or something, but really I was now the proud owner of an Associate Degree in Business Management.
I was keeping that card close to my chest though.
I did also have some graphic design knowledge because come on, my brothers thought I was taking the classes—I had to actually take some.
I may not be telling them about my business knowledge anytime soon, I wanted to learn the ins and outs of our particular setting before I showed my hand, but I could at least prove my worth with menu and ad design.
If they let me.
In the meantime though, I was going to do the Cinderella thing and wait tables because goodness knew, my brothers didn’t want me to even think about getting my bartending license until I was twenty-one.
The law was twenty-one, yeah, but I could at least start looking at the materials.
This bubble they put me under?
It effing sucked.
But I went with the flow, letting them think whatever they wanted to think because that’s what I did best. It’s what made me…me.
Through the back door, I stepped into the kitchen and made my way to the office. There were pegs and lockers for other staff members, but Conor told me I could use the office with him and Rore.
It
was early yet, ten on a Friday morning. O’Gallaghers wouldn’t open for another hour and even then, it wouldn’t be hopping. The kitchen was devoid of people, but I could hear some sounds.
At first I thought maybe Rory turned on a game in the bar, but as I neared the office, I realized the sounds were coming from in there. Voices.
Two of the voices I recognized as my brothers.
The other was unfamiliar. It wasn’t as low as Conor’s, but certainly wasn’t a high pitched voice, either. It was a ‘just right’ kind of voice, the type that you knew would whisper gruffly in your ear one moment, and laugh jovially with you the next.
Not that I had any recent experience.
I walked into the office, realizing that my brothers were currently interviewing this beautiful voice.
Or had been.
The three of them were all smiling and laughing now.
“Morning boys,” I said, walking into the room.
The laughing faces all turned toward me, and Conor, in his office chair with his hands on his belly, grinned wide behind his beard. He started wearing it when he was seventeen; I don’t remember what he looked like without it anymore.
“Morning, Brenna. Stone, this is Bren, our sister. Brenna, Greyson Stone.”
Stone stood from his chair and stepped forward with one foot, closing the small distance between us in a respectable way, still close enough to his chair that he could sit after introducing himself to me.
With his hand held out, he flashed me a beautifully crooked smile, showing off straight white teeth in his square jaw. “Stone.”
I gave him a welcoming smile, taking his hand in mine. “Nice to meet you. Brenna.” I took in his clear, clear gray eyes. I had only ever seen the clearness in blue, the type of color you felt you could see right through.
But Stone’s gray eyes…
I could fall in the never ending clear depths.
I mentally shook myself.
I was done with men. Falling for this one wouldn’t do me any good.
Besides, my brothers probably gave him an ultimatum.
“You as well,” he said, pulling me from my thoughts. I slid my hand from his and smiled wide toward my brothers as Stone sat again.
Rory, at twenty five, was finally growing out of his baby looks and looking like a real live adult. If only he acted like one.
“What would you boys like for me to do?” I went to the filing cabinet, opening the bottom drawer in the metal monstrosity. I grimaced at the scratch of metal on metal. This beast was here when I was a baby.
I dropped my purse into the empty drawer and faced my brothers again.
“We’re just about done here with Stone. He’s our new bartender. He’ll be working with me and you this afternoon,” Conor said. I often felt that while this whole re-opening adventure was credited to both Conor and Rory, Conor was the one manning the expedition. Rory simply stood back and was a presence.
“In the meantime, if you want to get glasses set, that would be a great help.”
“Sure thing.” I turned back to the door to leave. I almost stopped to say something to Stone, something along the lines of ‘nice to meet you,’ but thought better of it.
Especially seeing as he and I would be working together.
Today.
I was going to have to repeat my no-men mantra over and over today, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
Stone
I tried to watch Brenna leave from the corner of my eye.
One of the first warnings I received was that the youngest O’Gallagher was starting today too, and that she was strictly off limits, which only made me want to meet her more.
I knew she was going to be gorgeous.
Her brothers weren’t bad looking dudes, so I had a feeling she was going to be right up there with them. I wasn’t prepared for the knock I received when she walked into the office, all raven-colored, wavy hair and bright smile. Her eyes were green and stood out against her face, framed by thick dark eyelashes.
She was one of the most gorgeous women I ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on. Staying away from her, on a personal level, was definitely going to be a challenge.
“So, we good?” Rory asked Conor. The kid looked like he had other places to be.
Conor nodded. “Sure, yeah. If you could just work on coming up with promotional things, that’d be great.”
“Will do. Great meeting you, Stone. Look forward to working with you.” Rory slid past the desk, seemingly in a hurry to leave.
When he left, Conor shook his head with a chuckle. “That kid. I swear—the actual act of working would kill him. But he’s pretty brilliant on the other side of things.”
I offered a crooked grin. “It’s the age. You’re either ready or you’re not.” Like Rory, I was twenty-five, but I definitely thought I was more adult than he was. The way he dressed stated he cared a great deal about what people thought. The way he held himself gave off the vibe that he put himself higher than others. And there was nothing wrong with any of that; everyone’s experiences shaped them differently.
Mine just included a dad who beat on me until my mom got the courage for us to leave when I was thirteen. You grew up fast in that life and learned that appearances were rarely what they seemed.
“You need to do anything, grab anything, before hitting the floor?” Conor asked as he stood from the desk. I took that as my cue to stand as well, more than ready to get started. I didn’t like sitting around doing nothing. I preferred being active as many hours of the day as possible.
I hadn’t gone to college so my options for working tended to be on the slimmer side. I started bartending at twenty-one, at a pretty busy bar downtown. Found I loved not just the atmosphere, but talking to the people. Some places were better than others, sure. One of the reasons I left the other bar was because a friend and I had come to this one a few months ago and I fell for the aura of the place. It was modern yet rustic. Hip but had a huge range of patrons.
I’d been at the other bar for two years but was ready for a change. I left on good terms, something that was incredibly important to me.
I didn’t believe in burning bridges.
You never knew when you’d need one of them again.
I had already done a walk-through of the pub when I first arrived, so Conor simply led me into the main bar area. I glanced at a table where Brenna was wrapping silverware and occasionally glancing up toward the TV. There was a hockey game on and I was impressed to see she was actually paying attention to it.
“The Enforcers have made this place their spot,” Conor said, nodding toward the television. “Occasionally we’ll see a Padres player or a Charger, but the place is almost always littered with hockey players.” He moved toward the end of the bar, where the coolers and such were. “When you’re on, feel free to organize all this however works best for you.” He went to one of the chests and pulled out empty containers, as well as a few that were covered. He took the covers off and revealed lemons, olives, and other condiments.
“I’ll leave you to this. Have some book work to do and need to get your paperwork submitted. You good?”
I nodded, stuffing the tips of my fingers into the pockets of my jeans. “Absolutely.”
Conor nodded once and moved past me, clapping me on the shoulder. “Good to have you here.”
As I began to prep the bar to my liking, I kept an ear on the game over my shoulder and an eye on the black-haired beauty semi-in front of me. She really was fucking gorgeous.
She had that classically beautiful face, the type that you couldn’t tell if she wore makeup or not. Her lips were the perfect cupid’s bow and her nose was a smaller, daintier version of the one that was on both Rory and Conor’s faces.
She wore a tight O’Gallaghers shirt that showed off her ample chest. She was large on top but didn’t look disproportionate. Her legs were encased in skin-tight skinny jeans and on her feet were heels.
She was wearing heels to a bar.
To work.
Her feet were going to kill her before the night was over. I chuckled and shook my head which, while not my intention, caught her attention.
Her eyes narrowed. “What’s funny?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I was just thinking to myself.”
She nodded upward once, slowly, her eyes assessing me. “Sure…”
Still grinning, I looked down and started cutting lemons and limes, the sizes perfectly similar. I heard as Brenna stood and gathered her box of wrapped silverware, just as I heard her heels clicking to the back of the bar where she deposited them in what I assumed was the basket that housed them.
Her clicking moved and glancing to my left, I saw that she moved to a lower fridge. She was kneeling now, her knees to her chest as she went through the fridge.
She glanced over at me with just her eyes before turning her entire head.
“Do you have a problem?”
The left side of my face was tight in a crooked grin. I turned my attention back to my task. “Nope.”
The door to the refrigeration unit shut with a solid thump and her clicking came close. It was difficult, but I kept my attention on task even though I could smell the vanilla peppermint combination of what had to be her soap or shampoo. There was no way that was a perfume.
She smelled sweet.
I had the feeling that sweet wasn’t who she was.
I continued my task even though I could feel her standing next to me, facing me, staring at me. I scooped up the last of my slices and deposited them in the tub before grabbing a towel and wiping my hands. I stuffed an end of the fabric into my back pocket and turned toward her.
Her arms were over her chest and her chin and nose were both angled up. Her body language said she was impatient with me, annoyed with me, but her eyes…
The green emeralds shining up at me showed she was intrigued, but more than that?
Curious. Want. Need.
And maybe a hint of timidity.
“What’s your problem?” she asked.
I mirrored her body, my arms crossed over my chest. Her eyes flickered to my forearms which were now exposed. When we were in the office earlier, the sleeves of my shirt were down but now after working with my hands, I pushed the sleeves of my long-sleeved tee up, exposing the intricate colorful designs on both.
