After hurling him into the fire, and putting her in her place, I spun on my heel and strutted through the diner toward my usual booth. My heart pounded and adrenaline pumped through my veins. I hadn’t felt that frantic rush of attraction to a man in a long time. To be honest, I don’t think I ever had. It was safer to ignore it and push it aside. Thankfully, he’d given me reason to ignore and forget all about his devastatingly confusing presence. I shook all thoughts of him out of my head and dropped my gaze to the menu. I didn’t need to look at it because I always ordered the same thing, but focusing on the words stopped me from looking anywhere else.
A glass of diet coke appeared in front of me, and I smiled up at the waitress before she dashed back to the counter. I lifted the glass to my mouth, placed the straw between my lips, and sucked back. I distracted myself in the current scandal hitting Hollywood and swiped through a gossip site on my phone. Although I was doing everything to distract myself, the feeling of his eyes burning into my back became too strong, and I broke. I lost the battle. Shifting my head to the side, I looked over my shoulder and my eyes locked with his. The blonde furiously tapped away on her phone and seemed to be talking to him, but his attention was all mine. His brows pulled tight, his jaw ticked, and his seductive blue eyes became intoxicating. For a moment, I became drunk on all that he was, but then reality sobered me up.
“Hey.”
I jumped at the roughness of Drew’s voice beside me and broke my trance on Mr. Blue Eyes. My heart broke seeing my brother, and betrayal swarmed me. Our conversation the previous night played on a continuous loop in my head. I watched him closely as he slid in opposite me and unloaded his phone and keys from his pocket. He looked tired and on edge, and the usual stubble that covered his jaw had grown into a thick, light brown beard that now covered his entire jaw and edged down his throat. I could count on one hand the amount of times I’d see him over the past six months. Our relationship changed a year ago, and I had no idea why. Gone were the days of daily conversations, Sunday night dinners, and random text messages. He’d become distant, and I hated it. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my brother, and I had no clue where to find him. Now, he was asking me something that he should never ever ask.
The identical green eyes we shared went into battle in an intense stare off across the table. This could go on for hours before one of us broke. The Hamilton’s were blessed with resilience, but we were also cursed with being obnoxiously stubborn.
Drew was the first to break, and he did it with a long sigh. “We need to talk about Hamilton’s. I want to buy you out.”
It felt like shards of glass began stabbing me in the heart as I allowed Drew’s words to penetrate. I desperately wanted to believe that I hadn’t seen those forms last night, or that I misheard him now, but his eyes never lied to me, and now as I stared at him all I saw was brutal, honest truth staring back at me.
“You cannot be serious,” I whispered, my heart hurting, and my lungs squeezing painfully as I tried to control my breathing.
I couldn’t remember a time when Hamilton’s wasn’t a part of my life, and now Drew wanted me to sell my share?
“Why?” I asked as anger spiked through me. I could not believe he had the audacity to ask this. “Why the hell would you want to take away my last piece of Dad?”
He dropped his head and fisted his hair. Frustration rolled off him while his jaw ticked. Now, as I watched him, it hit me just how much I missed him. After we lost Dad, it was us against the world. Losing Dad had encouraged my hidden demons to rear their ugly heads. But I had a kick-ass brother who wrapped me in his arms, kissed the top of my head, and told me we were the Hamilton kids, and we would be okay.
I had that brother for a year. Then the distance began. The visits became less frequent. He started missing our Sunday night dinners, important dates no longer existed, and my calls went unanswered. He became a stranger to me.
“It’s not about taking the last piece of Dad away from you.” He sighed, and his eyes flashed to mine. “I promised Dad that I'd do right by you, and it might not seem like it, but I'm doing this for you. Every fucking thing I do is for you, Sasha. You've got to believe that.”
Once upon a time I did believe that.
“I need you to answer something for me.”
“Anything,” he replied.
“What did I do?”
His brow scrunched. “What do you mean?”
“There’s got to be a reason why you’re sitting opposite me asking me to sell the bar, and why you’ve pulled away from me.”
“Listen to me.” He leaned over the table that separated us and dropped his voice. “You’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. You’re the best thing in my life, Sash, so get that thought out of your fucking head.”
I sucked in a desperate breath as I took in his. He’d never lied to me before, and for my sanity, I needed to believe him. The simple truth was that I needed my brother in my life, however I could have him. I just had to pray that one day he’d fully come back to me. Clearly, his demons were screaming louder than I could have ever imagined.
I leaned over and grabbed his hand, and held it tightly in mine. His gaze dropped to our hands before his eyes came back to mine. Something only the two of us would share passed between us. The reminder of the worst form of rejection, and the heartbreak of cruel memories taunting us at the worst times had been thrust onto us. His eyes flickered and his jaw tensed, and I knew I was about to lose him again.
“I’ve got to get to a meeting. But please think about what I said. I’m doing this for you.”
Just as quickly as he arrived, he once again disappeared.
In more ways than one.
Standing at the counter, I tapped my nails loudly on the polished wood as I waited for Missy to finish with her customer. I needed to pay my bill and go back to Sass so I could concentrate on something other than my conversation with Drew.
The space beside me became occupied, and I knew exactly who it was. It was like a switch turned on and my body became hyper aware of him.
“You okay?" Mr. Blue Eyes asked in a low voice that hit every inch of me. "Was he giving you trouble?"
“I'm fine," I answered with a forced smile when I met his gaze. "And no, he wasn't giving me trouble."
“But here you are paying for his lunch,” he shot back just as quick, his eyes narrowing on the bill in my hand.
What could I possibly say to that? Instead, my mouth decided to speak without thinking. “What’s your name?”
He stared at me so powerfully, in a way that felt like he was looking directly into my soul and discovering all of my deepest secrets. It was unnerving, yet weirdly intoxicating.
“Hunt,” he announced, locking me into his stare yet again.
“Your name is Hunt?”
His lips twisted slightly. “Yep.”
“Short for Hunter?” I asked, intrigued by the name Hunt and wishing it didn’t sound as sexy as it did.
“Just Hunt.” His eyes twinkled.
Whoa, his baby blues were lethal. Sasha, he has a woman, I chanted silently to myself while nibbling on my lip. I needed Missy to hurry up. I needed to get out of here and away from him. I stared at her, hoping all of our years of being best friends had given us some kind of mind connection and she’d feel my desperation and come to my rescue. All I got was her laughter as she joked with Crazy John who’d obviously arrived after Drew left. She avoided looking up at me.
After what seemed like an hour of waiting and an hour of silent awkwardness, Missy sauntered toward me, smirk on her face, and her eyes bounced between Hunt and me. Why she was smirking, I did not know.
“Want to clear my bill today, Miss. I’m heading out of town for a few days on a job.”
What kind of a job would a man like him have? His body had the potential to be used as a life-altering weapon, and his eyes held the kind of intensity that could make someone admit their wildest secrets. As I sorted through potential jobs he could have, he spoke
and caused me to suck in a breath.
“I'll cover her bill too."
What the hell!
I whipped around to face him, my disbelieving eyes wide. “I’ll pay for myself.”
“Add it, Missy.” Hunt ignored me and focused on Missy.
No longer was she smirking. She was now smiling big.
“Sassy, let the man pay for your damn lunch,” Crazy John rumbled from the end of the counter. “When’s the last time you had a good-looking chap buy you lunch? We all know I don’t swing that way, but I know a good-looking chap when I see one.”
This was not happening.
I sucked in a deep breath. “We don’t live in the 1950s anymore. I’ve got money, and I can pay for myself.”
Crazy John looked over my shoulder and focused on Hunt, completely ignoring me. “Sassy's stubborn as hell, so you might need to buy her a few lunches before you crack her.”
Please, God, tell me this was not happening.
“No one is cracking me as you so nicely put it,” I huffed, rolling my eyes dramatically for good measure. “I will pay for myself.”
“Add it Missy,” Hunt instructed from behind me, clearly not listening to a thing I was saying.
Was I invisible?
“As I said, we don’t live in the 1950s anymore,” I stated firmly as I felt myself transforming into an independent woman. “I work hard, I own my own business, I have a savings account, and guess what, I can pay for my own lunch.”
“Sweetheart, whether it’s the 50s, 80s or twenty-fucking-twenty, you should not be standing here with an unpaid bill. Another thing, you sure as fuck shouldn’t be left paying the bill for a man who sat opposite you and made you look like you’ve now got weight of the world sitting on your pretty little shoulders."
My body tingled in all the right places at hearing him call me sweetheart, while my heart pounded at his observation of how I felt. How had he clawed into my brain so quickly, and how had he read my body language so well? He exuded alphaness from every pore, and he clearly didn’t give a shit about who witnessed it in all its glory. This was bad for my libido. No, this was extremely hazardous to my libido, because he had a woman.
I needed to pay my bill, leave, and forget about my encounter with Mr. Blue Eyes, who transformed into Mr. Intense, and was now Mr. Alpha.
“Oh, I like this one. He might be the only one who can handle the sass, and we all know the sass is humongous,” Crazy John hooted from down the counter.
Did the word humongous really just come out of Crazy John’s mouth?
Missy pinched my bill clean out of my hand and moved to the register. I was still trying to get my head around what was actually happening.
“Sixty-eight dollars and thirty-five cents,” Missy’s cheery tone announced, her attention on Hunt.
I focused on him as he opened his wallet, pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and slid it toward Missy. “Keep the change. You know I’ll be back.”
“Your lunch is covered,” he said softly, and it was the first sign of softness I’d witnessed from him. I'd be lying if I said I didn't like it. He dropped my stare and gave Missy a brief smile. “See you soon, Missy.”
Before he left he gave me one last look over, which allowed me one final glimpse at those blue eyes before he stalked out of the diner and left me speechless.
What the hell just happened, and more importantly, who the hell was this man?
3
BEN
After hitting Main Street, I slowed to a walk. My lungs screamed at me as I sucked in desperate breaths and tried to get my heart rate back to normal. Monroe was just waking up to start a new day, while my night was only just ending. As usual, I ended the night shift the same way: with a grueling run to try to clear my head and gain some peace.
This morning I pushed myself harder than usual. The night had been fucked. Simple as that. The case I’d been working on was getting hot, and now we were dealing with an unidentified body that turned up two days ago. Somehow, I knew it was all related.
My job was to work out how.
Since I was ten, I’d wanted to be a cop. I worked my ass off, and sacrificed a shitload to become Detective, and I spent my career working locally and in undercover jobs around the country. It suited me perfectly. Living on the road, not putting down roots, no commitments, and no distractions. I could fuck when I wanted, disappear when needed, and swing by Monroe when my mother decided I’d been away for too long. But being a cop meant I got a firsthand look at the worst of the world. I’d been around sick motherfuckers too many times, and I’d seen things that burned memories so far into my brain that I saw them when I closed my eyes. Death was something I faced more times than I wished to. I’d watched my colleagues go down, and I’d held people in my arms as they took their last breaths. Telling families that their loved ones weren’t coming home was like plunging a blade into my heart and twisting it to add a bit more pain. That was the cruelest part of the job, and it stays with you forever. But then there were the moments of gratification that made everything worth it. It was the feeling of complete peace when I put my head on my pillow at night after finding a missing child. It was when my nephew looked at me like I was a celebrity when my name hit the paper. It was the feeling of relief when I got the woman who spent years getting beaten by an asshole who didn’t understand the beauty of having a woman into a safer environment.
That’s why I did my job.
That’s why I put up with the bullshit I saw.
That’s why I’d continue to search for my own brand of peace.
Daily, I battled to make sure the good memories outweighed the bad.
For some people, people I loved and respected, that battle never ended well.
“Hunt.”
I stopped outside the bank and became alert at the sound of my name. There was no mistaking who owned that voice. It was the same voice that had been replaying in my head for the past three days.
Sasha Hamilton.
She was the kind of woman you wanted to get your hands on, and your dick in, and she was completely unexpected. Every single man that lived in Monroe was in danger, because the power in those green eyes could make you do just about anything.
But she was off-limits.
“Fuck me,” I muttered after turning around and watching her in all of her tight-skirt and fuck-me-heels glory strut toward me with hips swaying, blond hair flying behind her, and a look of thunder spreading over her face. Her mask dropped slightly as she got closer, but she quickly pulled it back in place. When she came to a standstill in front of me, I remained silent, my arms crossed over my chest, as her eyes roamed over my face before dropping to my body and focusing on the t-shirt clinging to my chest. I ran my hand through my hair and smirked.
“Mornin’,” I murmured, breaking the silence and taking a step into her space.
Her eyes immediately lifted and met mine.
“Gotta say, I’m enjoying these run ins we’re having.”
Her brow rose and she sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. I waited.
“I’d like to pay you back for lunch,” she said sharply, before opening her purse and pulling out some notes. She held out a fifty. “Will this cover it?”
Christ. “I’m not taking your money.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m also not arguing about this on Main Street. The whole fucking town will hear about this conversation within seconds.”
Her eyes darted quickly up and down the street, and she quickly dropped her hand. For a sleepy mountain town, Monroe was starting to wake up. Having run this same route countless time, I knew that I only had an hour of peace before Main Street was taken over by early risers going to Missy’s for their before work coffee fix, business owners setting up for a new day, and the local walking group that included all of the biggest gossips in town getting in their miles. And it was that walking group heading toward us who was watching us with invested interest.
She lowered her voice, after
giving a friendly, low wave to the group as they passed us. “I’ve got to pay you back.”
She was really going to push this. There was absolutely no fucking way she’d be paying me back. “What I said sticks. You go to lunch with a man, he pays. Your lunch date fucked up, so I paid. It’s done. I’m not taking your money.”
Popping out her hip, she folded her arms over her chest and stared at me. She was fiery and stubborn as fuck. It made my cock twitch just thinking of going head to head with her. If this is what she was like in public, I could only imagine what she’d be like behind closed doors.
“You must be broke,” she hissed, rolling her eyes at me for added insult, but all it did was motivate me more to dig deep.
I smirked. Fuck, this was going to be good. “Care to explain?”
“If you go around paying for random women’s lunches, you’ve got to be broke. There are a lot of us who get left with the bill, so you must either have a shitload of money, or you’re broke.”
I took a step toward her, breaking the distance, and suddenly Main Street and the gossip hungry residents of Monroe didn’t exist. Nothing existed but Sasha and her glossy red lips she was now gnawing on. “Sweetheart, you’re the only one I’ve done it for. So no, I’m not broke.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Her face softened, and her voice dropped. Her mask slipping slightly, and this time she wasn’t quick to pull it back into place. “Why me?”
“What makes sense is that you got my attention the second I saw you. Not going to lie to you, sweetheart. You are really hard to fucking miss. Clocked you as soon as I walked into Missy’s, so I watched. And you know I watched you. If I see you with an unpaid bill and looking like the weight of the world was sitting on your shoulders, I’d do it again,” I informed her, my voice low and deep. I gave her a stern look that I hoped like hell made her know that I was not fucking around. The sharp intake of air she took and the way her eyes glittered as they locked with mine told me it was sinking in. “I don’t want your money, but if you are determined to pay me back, you can give me another dose of your sassy mouth next time you see me.”