amber bottle, he wondered what she was doing in that house all alone tonight. But before he could swallow, he reminded himself that it wasn’t his business. Juliette had said she was welcome. Chelsea and whatever she was hiding wasn’t his concern. If he knew what was good for him he’d put her out of his mind.
Juliette was due home tomorrow afternoon. Since Ethan was watching her dog, maybe he’d help her out and take Franklin home and make sure everything was still copacetic, that Chelsea Allen hadn’t worn out her welcome.
It was the least a good neighbor could do.
When the TV network took a commercial break, Ethan relaxed. Inhaling the scent of booze, stale beer and fried food, he let his gaze sweep the joint to see who’d come out tonight. As he suspected, it was the regular crowd. Most of them had come to Murphy’s to watch the game and grab some dinner like he had.
Some had no interest in sports and danced to the music that played from the jukebox in the adjoining room. Others were crowded around tables, laughing and talking. Another subset, like his friend Aiden Woods, had come out to shoot pool. Looked like Aiden was beating Miles Mercer. Aiden’s wife, Bia, the editor-in-chief of the Dallas Journal of Business and Development, sat at a nearby table with Miles’s wife, Sydney, sipping red wine and sharing animated conversation.
All the other pool tables, which took up a good portion of the front room, were occupied. They always seemed to be in demand. As usual, Murphy’s was rocking with a good cross section of people from the Celebration community who kept the place buzzing with good energy.
“Hey, Campbell, I hear you caught the burglar.” Zane Phillips slid onto the empty bar stool next to Ethan and ordered a shot of bourbon, neat.
Good news traveled fast around this town. Since Zane had heard, that meant Ethan was going to be the butt of a few good-natured jokes for a while, but he still wasn’t sorry for making sure Chelsea was on the up and up.
“Yep.” Ethan took another long pull from his drink. “And she was hot.”
Zane’s right brow shot up. “I guess being the self-appointed neighborhood watch captain has some perks, after all.”
These days, everyone in Celebration was a little jumpier since the break-ins had started three months ago. Now neighbors were extra vigilant and took even more care to look out for each other. It was the decent thing to do, even if it meant calling in the occasional false alarm. Better safe than sorry.
“Just being neighborly,” Ethan shot back. “I told Jules I’d keep an eye on her place while she’s out of town. I saw a strange car in the driveway. I let myself in with the key she gave me and checked it out. No big deal.”
“But she was hot, huh? Are you calling dibs?”
Ethan slanted a sideways glance at Zane. Dibs? What kind of lame-ass question was that? Besides, Zane had a girlfriend. Granted, the relationship was probably nearing its expiration date. Zane was a serial monogamist. He tended to date one woman at a time, but he never could make a permanent commitment.
When Jack set a platter heaped with a bacon-mushroom cheeseburger and onion rings down in front of Ethan, he trained his focus on his meal.
“So, who is this chick?” Zane asked as Ethan bit into his burger.
He took his time chewing and swallowing. “An old college pal of Juliette’s, apparently.” Ethan turned his attention to the game on the big screen. He’d come to Murphy’s tonight to watch the game, not talk about Juliette’s houseguest. “You want to meet her? Go knock on the door.”
Zane Phillips was one of his best friends. They’d grown up together and Zane had even stood up for him as best man when he married Molly. He wasn’t sure why the thought of the guy getting his grubby paws on Chelsea rubbed him the wrong way. He signaled Jack for another round and hoped Zane got the hint that he didn’t feel like talking.
“All kidding aside, it’s too bad you didn’t catch the bastard,” Zane said in a rare moment of sober good sense. “Whoever has been committing these break-ins is still out there. We have to make sure everyone is still on their guard.”
Ethan nodded. The Cowboys scored and the place erupted in a cacophony of shouts and cheers.
“On another note, Rachel over at Bistro Saint-Germain said Lucy says she’s finally going to open that party barn she’s been talking about.”
Lucy was his baby sister. Since she’d moved back home from California last year, she’d been threatening to turn the old barn down on the lower forty of their family’s farm into an events venue.
Since she seemed to approach life in fits and starts, going gung ho until she lost interest on the project du jour, this idea had become known as the party barn.
“Yeah?” Ethan said, taking another bite. He’d stopped expending too much energy on his little sister’s whims. It was hard to take her seriously after the fourth or fifth time that she’d jumped into something with both feet, only to move on to the next big thing.
“Sounds like she’s serious about this,” Zane said. “Maybe the twelfth time’s a charm. I told her to invite me to the grand opening party.”
Ethan harrumphed. “Don’t hold your breath.”
He wasn’t worried that the party barn might actually become a reality. In all fairness, Lucy wanted to make the place a venue for weddings and other swanky events. She’d latched on to the idea after Juliette’s wedding planning business had grown legs and had become a runaway success. Juliette had offhandedly mentioned that the closest wedding venue to Celebration was the Regency Cypress Plantation and Botanical Gardens, which was on the northern edge of Celebration. Lucy swore their grandparents’ old barn was an untapped gold mine. Ethan didn’t get it. The dilapidated pile of kindling needed to be burned down, not cobbled back together.
It wasn’t that he didn’t support Lucy. She and their brother, Jude, had inherited some money and equal interest in the family’s 900-acre ranch. Since Jude was living the high life on the Professional Bull Riders’ circuit, he and Lucy had left Ethan with the task of reviving Triple C’s once floundering horse-breeding business. Ethan had worked hard to turn it around and breathe new life into it. Since the breeding arm of Triple C was all his doing, the siblings had mutually decided to divvy up the land, each claiming a specific 300-acre area. Ethan got the land with the stables and the home where they’d grown up. Lucy had chosen the plot with their grandparents’ old house and the barn. Jude’s was untouched acreage.
Lucy could do whatever she wanted with her piece of land. She was perfectly within her rights to turn it into an events venue. Hell, she could turn it into a zoo if she wanted. It was her call. However, over the past three years she’d had the attention span of a fruit fly. She’d already blown through every cent of the money she’d inherited after their parents died and she’d maxed out her credit cards and was left with the debt.
Ethan had helped her out financially until she could find a job with a steady paycheck that allowed her to start paying off her cards. As far as Ethan knew, she was still paying. Now that she was supporting herself, he wasn’t going to enable another whim. When she’d asked Ethan to cosign for a loan so she could have some party barn start-up money, he’d declined.
If he was completely honest, his refusal wasn’t just tough love. Ethan had often worried that his siblings might have the same alcoholic gene that had almost gotten the best of him. It ran in their family. In
