CHAPTER THREE
“Eight ball. Corner pocket,” Everett said as he bent over to make his shot.
Eli stood off to the side with his arms crossed and a smug expression on his face. “Never going to happen, bro.”
“You just watch.” He pulled back on the pool cue then pushed forward, hitting the white ball at the perfect angle and with enough force to have the ball roll into the pocket.
His brother discarded his pool stick on the green felt and then swiped his beer off the table. “Lucky break.”
Everett chuckled. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Anyone care to play a game?” Deanna’s voice rang out across the bar as she strut over to their table, Lucky and Georgia in tow.
Damn, Georgia looked good with her long blond hair curled and hanging down over her shoulders. She was wearing a fitted pair of dark-blue jeans and a peach sweater that clung to her perfectly sized breasts in a way that made it hard not to notice, but wasn’t so blatantly sexual to seem crass. She had more make-up on than he’d seen her in before and it worked to emphasize her blue eyes.
“Well?” Deanna asked, her gaze switching between him and Eli.
“Not a chance, cuz,” Everett said.
“I already got my ass handed to me by him.” Eli nodded to his brother. “My ego can only stand so much.”
“Pretty sure you have enough ego to spare,” Lucky chimed in.
Georgia laughed. “You still hustling people at pool?” she asked Deanna.
“You know it. I had to teach these boys a thing or two when I first came to town.” She pretended to dust her shoulders off.
“All right, hustler. Why don’t I go order us all some drinks,” Lucky suggested. Then he kissed the end of Deanna’s nose. “What do you all want?”
Everyone called out their orders, and he sauntered off to the bar to place the order with his brother, who she knew, owned the place.
“Georgia, come let me introduce you,” Deanna said, tugging on her arm. “Some of the guys from the fire station are here.”
Eli made the round of introductions, and Everett noticed that a couple of Deanna and Eli’s coworkers were blatantly checking Georgia out.
He didn’t like it. Not one bit. Though it shouldn’tmatter to him at all.The fact was, seeing the men gathered around the table checking out Georgia’s ass while she was faced away from them pissed him the hell off. And made him feel territorial. Like he had some kind of right to tell all the horny pricks to back off.
He clenched his fists and, rather than schooling the Neanderthals on their caveman ways, slid into the booth they’d claimed next to Eli’s work crew, and reached for his Coke. Everett was on designated-driver duty tonight—something he took seriously. Especially after—
No. He pushed the thought from his mind, unwilling to venture there. It wasn’t the time or the place.
“Okay, everyone. Gather round,” Lucky said as he slid into the booth across from Everett, drinks strategically held in his hands.
Deanna and Georgia ended their conversation, and his cousin took the seat beside her fiancé while Georgia sat in the booth next to him.
She’d kept her distance—there was probably more than a foot separating them, for which he was thankful. Not that he didn’t want her closer to him. Quite the opposite—but nothing could happen between them. She was off-limits. His cousin’s friend. Everett wouldn’t use her to get his rocks off and then toss her aside. He might not know her well, but it was clear in the way she carried herself that she wasn’t the kind of girl who fooled around without some kind of commitment. And commitment wasn’t something he could offer her—or anyone.
It’d been too long since Everett had enjoyed the company of a woman—which his little brother liked to remind him of often. Every red-blooded-male part of his body screamed at him to reach out and touch her. To see if her hair was as silky as it appeared, to find out if her ass was as firm as it’d looked in her running pants that morning. He wanted to know if her ample breasts would fill his hand or prove too much and spill out over them.
Damn it. He was just as bad as the guys in the booth next to them.
Lucky distributed the girls’ drinks and pushed Eli’s beer to the end of the table. Everett glanced away from the booth and saw his brother busy chatting up a table of women on the other side of the bar. Typical Eli.
“How’s your knee?” Everett asked Georgia, shifting in his seat to see her better.
A pink hue flooded her cheeks, and she looked down to the table, where she picked at the label on her beer.
“What happened to your knee?” Deanna asked with her forehead scrunched.
Georgia sighed, and Everett pretended he didn’t notice how it pushed her chest out and stretched the fabric of her sweater.
“I had a bit of a mishap this morning on my run.”
“What kind of a mishap?” Lucky asked.
“I ran into one of those giant planters on Main Street.” She shrugged, trying to play it off, but Everett wasn’t about to let her off quite so easy.
“What Georgia means is that she dove head first into the planter.” A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
“Oh my God. Georgia, are you okay?” Deanna asked while trying to hold a laugh in.
Georgia laughed herself and smacked him across the arm in a scolding manner. “I did not dive. It was a graceful fall at worst.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he retorted, reaching for his glass so she couldn’t smack him again.
Georgia rolled her eyes in a playful way, and it made him want to say more things that would cause a similar reaction because it was so damn cute.
“Anyways…I banged my knee on the planter when I fell. Everett saw what happened and was nice enough to drive me back to your house.”
Deanna’s gaze darted between the two of them before she spoke. “That was nice of him.” Then she looked at Lucky. “Honey, wasn’t that nice of him?”
Lucky shrugged and took a sip of his beer.
“To answer your question, though, it’s feeling much better, thank you. A little sore, and I’m sure I’ll have a bruise, but no big deal.”
“What’s no big deal?” Eli asked as he slid into the seat beside Georgia.
She shifted down to make room for him, forcing Everett’s and Georgia’s thighs to touch. He suppressed the shudder that almost ran through him. Since when did sitting this close to a woman have him sporting a semi? It was like he was back in grade school again. Georgia gave Eli a brief rundown on what had happened that morning and Everett used the opportunity to adjust himself.
“You sure you don’t want me to look at your leg for you? I am trained in delivering the finest emergency medical care.” Eli waggled his eyebrows.
A giggle escaped Georgia, and instead of focusing on how cute it was, Everett found himself envisioning taking his brother by his collar and tossing him out of the bar so he wouldn’t be close enough to touch Georgia’s anything.
“You haven’t changed.” She shook her head and leaned forward to sip her drink. “Those lines didn’t work back when I was in college. They’re certainly not going to work now.”
Eli, Deanna, and Georgia all laughed while he and Lucky exchanged puzzled looks.
“What am I missing?” Lucky asked.
Deanna took a moment to compose herself before responding. “Eli here”—she motioned to him with her hand—“wouldn’t stop hitting on Georgia when he came to visit me at college. He was incessant, trying to show what a player he was, until Georgia knocked him down a few pegs and Eli realized it was never going to happen.”
The image of his little brother trying to score with a younger version of the woman sitting next to him clawed at his brain and his gut tightened. The muscles in his arms grew tense as he bunched his hands into fists on the tabletop before reaching for his glass. Everett didn’t want the fact that his little brother had hit on Georgia way back when to bother him, but if the iron grip he held his glass in was any indication, it didn’t matter what he wanted. What was it about this woman that stirred up all of these emotions in him? Especially when he’d been doing pretty damn well at not feeling anything for the past few years.
Georgia laughed, which dragged him from his thoughts.
Eli feigned offense. “I’ll have you all know that I was emotionally scarred for years from that experience. It took a long time to recover and get my mojo back.”
Georgia twisted her lips and looked up into the air. God, her lips were so pink and plump that Everett had a hard time removing his gaze from them. He wanted to know what they’d feel like on his own.
“I seem to recall you making out with some brunette in the corner of the living room at a frat party later that night. I’d say you managed to get over your heartbreak pretty quickly.” Georgia rolled her eyes.
The entire table erupted in laughter, including Everett. It pleased him to see that Georgia and his brother obviously had no sexual tension. On the contrary, they had more of a brother-sister vibe going on.
Deanna’s laugh was cut short when her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Her eyes went wide, and panic flashed across her face as she gripped her stomach with her other hand. Before anyone could ask what was wrong, she’d sprung up from the seat and ran to the bathroom.
“Was it something I said?” Eli asked.
“I should go check on her,” Georgia said as she motioned for Eli to let her out of the booth.
“Was she feeling okay before you guys got here?” Everett asked Lucky as Georgia raced to the bathroom.
“Seemed to be. I’m not sure what’s going on.”
Georgia returned a few minutes later, worry clouding her expression. “I think Deanna caught a bug. She’s in the bathroom, throwing up.” She looked at Lucky. “She needs to go home to bed.”
Lucky was already gathering their coats and halfway out of the booth before she’d finished speaking.
“If I go warm the car up, can you meet me out there?” he asked.
“Of course.” She reached forward. “Here. Pass me both of our coats.”
“I can drive you home later if you want to stay.” The words had escaped Everett’s mouth before he’d had a moment to give them much thought.
What had possessed him to say that? Clearly the smaller of his two heads was doing the talking for him.
Georgia darted her gaze over to his. She shifted on her feet and bit her lower lip.
“You should stay,” Lucky said. “I can take care of my girl.”
“You just got here,” Eli chimed in. “Besides, how much fun are you going to have listening to my cousin bow down to the porcelain god all night?”
“Hmm...sure you don’t mind?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Not at all,” he replied. The strangest thing of all was that he meant it.