that Assassins was always his game of choice whenever they geared up and took to the field.
“Who’s in?”
“Kevin, Matt, Nat, Hayley, me and you.”
Jay looked at the papers on his desk again.
“You started this business because you wanted to have fun,” his friend reminded him.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “But I didn’t realize that fun could be so much work.”
“And that’s why you need a break.”
“Why can’t that break be tomorrow night?” he wondered.
“Because after the game, Kev wants to head over to Diggers’ to put his moves on the hot new bartender, and she doesn’t work Saturdays.”
“Kev has no moves,” Jay noted. “And what he thinks is hot is usually only lukewarm.”
“You’re right about the moves,” his friend agreed. “But his description of the bartender was actually ‘sizzling.’”
“Now you have my attention.”
Carter grinned.
Jay decided the unpaid and undocumented invoices would still be there tomorrow.
* * *
Alyssa loved her job at Westmount High School. Teaching was her pride and her passion, and helping young minds understand scientific laws and mathematic formulas was incredibly fulfilling. But despite a full timetable and the prep and marking to be completed outside of regular school hours, when she walked out of her classroom at the end of the day, she found that she had a lot of free time on her hands.
So she’d looked for opportunities to meet people and get involved in the community. She joined a book club, but the required readings and once-a-month meetings did little to fill her empty nights. She tried a pottery class but had more luck throwing her misshapen vessels into the trash than throwing clay on the wheel. She tried to teach herself to knit but got the needles hopelessly tangled—not just in the wool she’d bought for her project, but in the sweater she’d been wearing. As a result, she’d filled most of her empty hours through the long winter binge-watching Netflix.
Then one day, when she was picking up a few groceries at The Trading Post, she overheard Frieda Zimmerman (whose husband was the local mechanic and tow truck operator) tell Thomas Mann (the owner of Mann’s Theater) that her niece Erika had run off to Vegas to be a dancer. Alyssa hadn’t been paying too much attention to their conversation, but her attention was snagged when Mr. Mann commented that Diggers’ was going to be short a bartender. Because that was a job Alyssa had some experience with, having worked part-time at a campus bar while she was in college.
Her parents had acknowledged the value of their youngest daughter gaining some work experience and contributing to the cost of her education, but they hadn’t approved of the late hours or the work environment. It was the first time Alyssa hadn’t backed down in the face of their opposition, and although the job had been physically demanding, she’d enjoyed the work—and the chance to forget about her studies and everything else for a while.
Even on Friday nights, Diggers’ didn’t draw a crowd comparable to a college bar in Irvine, but Alyssa was eager for something—anything—to fill some empty hours. Duke Hawkins had been wary about hiring a schoolteacher to tend his bar, but as she was the only applicant with any actual experience, he’d agreed to give her a chance. In only a few short weeks, she’d earned regular shifts on Tuesday and Friday nights.
Sunday through Thursday, there was only one bartender on duty, but on weekends, there were two scheduled with overlapping shifts. Alyssa worked from seven until midnight and Skylar Gilmore came in at eight and stayed until closing. Sky was a couple years younger than Alyssa, but she’d been working part-time at the bar since she was of age and was now a master of the subtle flirtation that kept customers coming back without expecting anything more from the woman who filled their glasses.
Everyone in town knew Sky as the youngest daughter of David Gilmore, owner and operator of the Circle G—reputedly the biggest and most prosperous cattle ranch in Nevada. Few people knew that she was working toward her master’s degree in psychology. She was also open and warm and funny, and she knew everything there was to know about Diggers’ regular customers—and most of the less regular patrons, too.
Sky was the third of four kids. Her older sister was an attorney married to the local sheriff, Reid Davidson. In February, Katelyn and Reid had added a baby girl to their family, and proud Aunt Sky was always ready to pull out her phone and share recent pictures of her niece, Tessa. Liam, the second oldest, currently worked at the Circle G with his father and brother, though he’d recently purchased the abandoned Stagecoach Inn with the intention of renovating and reopening it as a boutique hotel and spa.
This plan had caused some tension with his father, who apparently insisted that Gilmores were ranchers, not innkeepers, which led to Liam spending less time at the Circle G and more at Diggers’—which was how Alyssa got to know him. Caleb, the youngest, seemed content to work on the ranch, though Sky remarked that he hadn’t been truly happy since a former girlfriend moved out of town a few years back.
“Liam said to tell you that one of the bulls broke through the fence bordering the south pasture,” Sky said when she joined Alyssa behind the bar Friday night.
“Does that mean he’s not coming in tonight?”
“He’s coming in,” her coworker assured her. “But he’s going to be late.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said, though she knew that if he was too late, her plan B would fall apart.
“What he didn’t tell me,” Sky continued, as if thinking aloud, “is why it was so important for him to show up tonight—or why you would have any interest in his plans.”
“It’s a long story,” Alyssa warned.
“We’ve got time—this place won’t get busy for at least another hour.”
So Alyssa told Sky about Diego’s impending visit to Haven. Ordinarily, she’d have no qualms about spending time with a family friend visiting from out of town, except that her mother had been less than subtle in her efforts to facilitate a romance between her youngest daughter and the nephew of her best friend, and Alyssa wasn’t the least bit interested.
“Is he a jerk?” Sky asked.
“No.”
“Unattractive?”
“No.” Because although she wasn’t attracted to him, she could appreciate that he had a certain appeal.
“Unemployed?”
“No,” she said again. “In fact, he works as a project engineer in the aerospace industry.”
“So why aren’t you interested?” Sky wondered.
“Because I don’t want to date anyone right now—especially not someone handpicked by my mother for the sole purpose of enticing me to move back to California.”
“How does my brother figure into any of this?”
“He
