Chapter Three
Andrea
I didn’t like having a guard following me around everywhere, but I understood the need for one, naturally. And as guards went, this one was fairly easy on the eye. Hunter was one of Luke’s club brothers and he was fine if you liked tall, tattooed and seriously sexy long-haired bikers.
Which of course I did.
I mean, who wouldn’t?
The shack was busy for a Sunday night but Serena and I had managed to get a table near the bar. Hunter went to sit with Coop and a couple of their biker buddies I recognized but didn’t know too well. We were about halfway through our first drink when Faith walked in, heading for Coop’s usual table, but when she caught sight of me, she changed direction.
“Hey!” she greeted as she reached our table. “I didn’t realize you were coming in tonight. You should have said. We could have made a night of it.”
“I wasn’t planning to come,” I told her with a shake of my head. “It was a spur of the moment decision. Serena called me at the last minute to invite me out.”
“Oh, okay.”
An uneasy expression slid into place on Faith’s face before she turned to Serena and offered up a half smile.
“Hey, Serena, how are you?” she asked politely.
The faintest trace of a smile ghosted over Serena’s lips as she tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. Her lips were thin when she finally replied. “Oh, hey.”
I rolled my eyes.
The two of them couldn’t have been any more awkward around each other if they’d tried. They didn’t dislike each other exactly, but Faith had briefly dated Serena’s best friend, Jackson before she got together with Coop and it hadn’t turned out well.
Serena was holding onto a grudge against Faith for breaking Jackson’s heart.
Which was crazy, really.
After all, you couldn’t help who you fell in love with.
Faith hadn’t set out to intentionally hurt Jackson. She liked him. She just hadn’t been in love with him and no amount of time spent with him would have changed that. Coop, on the other hand, she was batshit crazy about and I got the impression that the feeling was mutual.
But of course, being Jackson’s best friend, it was easy to see how Serena might view Faith as the bad guy—no one wanted to see their friends get hurt. I could understand the argument clearly from both sides, but that didn’t mean I agreed with one over the other. As a matter of fact, I hated being stuck in the middle. They were both good friends of mine and I didn’t want it to seem as if I was taking sides.
“Where’s Violet?” Faith asked.
I scowled. “Having a night in with my brother.”
I suppressed a shudder.
I still couldn’t get used to the fact that my best friend and my brother were in a relationship. It grossed me out to think of them together, but whatever. They both seemed to be happy so who was I to judge?
Faith was still standing uneasily by our table so I pulled out a chair and motioned for her to sit down.
“Are you going to join us or are you going to stand there like a statue all night?”
I glanced at Serena who plastered a smile on her lips which was friendlier than I’d seen her use in a long time with Faith.
“Yes, join us.”
Faith’s eyes widened and if I was being honest, I was a little surprised by her invite, too. Serena would never stoop as low as to be bitchy to Faith, but she had never gone out of her way to offer the olive branch, either. And as Jackson had been in love with Faith for as long as any of us could remember, that uneasiness had existed between them both for a very long time.
Faith composed herself. “Um, well, okay,” she said hesitantly. “Coop is with his friends so I’m sure he won’t mind if I sit here with you for a while.”
She took off her jacket and placed it over the back of her chair before sitting down next to me. When the new waitress that Coop had just hired finally made it to our table, Faith ordered a round of beers.
I drank my beer in silence for a few moments and they were quite possibly the most uncomfortable moments I’d ever spent. Any conversation that any of us started, died after a couple of sentences and neither Faith nor Serena seemed overly interested in beginning something new. I was struggling to come up with a safe, neutral topic that wouldn’t put Faith and Serena at odds when Ethan walked into the bar and I breathed a sigh of relief for the distraction.
Hunter might have been pretty to look at, but there was something about Ethan that made my belly lurch and my breath catch in my damn throat every damn time I looked at him. Dark hair framed a strong, tanned face. A dusting of stubble on his chin added to his masculine demeanor. He was tall and wide without being bulky and had the lean, sinewy muscles of a swimmer or world-class athlete. But more than that, there was a confident swagger about him that pressed every one of my buttons.
Exactly as Faith had done not five minutes before, Ethan headed for Coop’s table, but when he caught sight of me, he changed his course.
“Andrea,” he greeted with a nod.
I shivered.
He’d only spoken one word but it had been enough to put me into a spin. There was a quality to his voice that had always had the capacity to turn me on. It was deep and husky and one hundred percent alpha male.
“Ethan.”
As he held my gaze, something passed between us.
Was it my imagination or was the air around us crackling with electricity? It sure as hell felt like it. I licked my lips, powerless to look away from his entrancing eyes.
“Can we talk?” he asked. He glanced at Faith and Serena then added, “In private?”
The question sounded more like a command and I fought the urge to wince. He wanted to talk about the kiss. I was sure of it. Was he upset about it? Did he want to chastise me for it or did he want to kiss me again?
Because I was pretty sure I’d let him.
I opened my mouth to reply, but the only word I could get out was, “Um…”
“Ethan,” Coop said as he arrived at our table. “Glad you could make it. Come and join us. Tilly, grab the man a beer, would you?”
The new waitress nodded in reply to his command then rushed to comply.
I let out a long breath.
I couldn’t work out if I was pleased by the interruption or annoyed.
Probably both.
“Be right over,” Ethan replied.
Coop bent down to kiss Faith full on the mouth. “Hey babe,” he said when he pulled back. “You okay here with your girls for a while? Ethan and I have got some business to discuss.”
At first, Faith seemed a little dazed by the kiss but she was quick to recover. “Yes, of course. I’ll catch you later.”
He kissed her again before going back to his table.
Ethan met my gaze again and there went that flippy floppy feeling in my stomach that I couldn’t seem to control.
“I need to talk with Coop,” he informed me. “We’ll have to have that chat another time, okay?”
I nodded, my mouth suddenly as dry as a bone. “Sure thing. See you around.”
When he walked away, I reached for my drink to take a sip, only to realize it was empty. Then I reached for the other glass that Faith had ordered for us, only to discover that it too, was empty. How on earth had I managed that? As I looked up to catch the waitress’ attention, Faith and Serena’s gazes were fixed on me and both had eyes as wide as saucers.
I narrowed my gaze, looking between them with suspicion.
“What?” I asked. “Why are you both looking at me like that?
Faith leaned in close to my ear and whispered. “Did I just imagine that? Is something going on between you and Ethan?”
My mouth opened and closed like a damn fish. “No, of course nothing’s going on between us.”
Why was I so worried that they wouldn’t believe me?
There was nothing going on between us, after all. Was there?
“Are you into him?” Serena asked.
“He’s attractive,” I hedged.
She gasped. “You are into him.”
I tried to deny it but the words I wanted to utter didn’t feel like the truth.
“Why don’t you go after him?” Faith asked. “Tell him how you feel. Trust me on this. It’s best to be honest with each other from the beginning. It will save you years of wasted time and heartache.”
“Yeah, nab him before someone else does,” Serena added.
I sighed. “You’re both being silly. My relationship with Ethan isn’t anything like you had with Coop.”
“So, you’re admitting that there is a relationship?” Faith asked.
I heaved a sigh. I guess I had just implied that, hadn’t I? I tried again.
“Look, Ethan isn’t into me. At all. He’s just, we’re just…”
I couldn’t come up with a suitable word to describe what we were, which was nothing, really, so I left the sentence hanging. When I looked over at Coop’s table, Hunter winked at me, his mouth pulled up into a suggestive grin.
Then I glanced at Ethan.
He was giving Hunter the stink eye.
Serena burst out laughing. “Not into you, huh?”
“He’s so into you,” Faith added.
I glared at them both. “Since when did you two agree on anything? I think I liked you better when you hated each other.”
They both laughed.
Faith leaned in conspiratorially. “Leave it to us,” she said. “We’ll come up with a plan for you to get your man.”
Serena nodded and looked at Faith with a secretive grin as if they’d just come up with the plan together.
I sighed.
I got the feeling I was not going to like what they came up with.
At all.