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“What?” She asked. “Just because he looks like that and has a few tattoos doesn’t mean he’s not smart or won’t make a good lawyer.”
Blake gave a slow nod. “True... Though with his incredible bartending skills, I doubt a law degree will come in handy.”
Skyla couldn’t help chuckling and Blake gave her a quick smirk that seemed to catch his eyes. Or maybe it was the lights overhead reflecting in his baby blues.
Of all the guys she’d ever known, Blake O’Connell was probably the hardest to figure out. Skyla didn’t trust anyone, and she always felt like she had to stay on guard, especially around men. But something about Blake made her think he could bring down the defenses of any woman with a pulse.
Any woman but her. Skyla straightened and cleared her throat. It was getting late, and she was still beyond tired from the healing she’d done a few hours ago. She busied herself with other customers and did her best not to look at Blake again.
She mixed drinks, served bar food, and made small talk with the patrons when they bothered to unglue themselves from the flatscreens overhead. But she didn’t miss how Blake seemed to be watching her every move, even when his gaze wasn’t even directed at her.
Had he always been this way? If he had, she hadn’t ever noticed. It made her skin warm and her toes curl inside her boots. The feel of his eyes on her was new and somewhat strange, though not in a bad way.
By the time midnight rolled around, she was exhausted and more than ready to go home and go to bed. To her real bed, where the odds of being woken up by shattering glass were significantly less. Though the same couldn’t be said for loud shrieks and obnoxious men.
“Have a good night,” she said to Blake over her shoulder, not sure he’d heard her, as she walked out of the bar area. Not waiting for his reply, she returned to her office, threw the old blue checkered blanket over the cot, and gathered her things. Her mind was swimming with thoughts of Blake and their conversation, but she pushed it aside as she stepped out of her office with her bag slung over her shoulder. Whatever Blake was going through wasn’t her problem. Even though she’d known him since he started coming to Madigan’s with the guys a few years ago, they’d never really become friends. And even though she was close to two of the women involved with his closest friends, it didn’t exactly make them friends.
No, she wouldn’t romanticize what just happened. Nothing good ever came of that. She’d learned her place in the world a long time ago, and now she just had to fight to keep it.
She turned to lock the door, but caught a glimpse of quick movement out of the corner of her eye. She jerked her gaze in that direction, but no one was there.
Not one to scare easily, she shook the feeling off. Being at AJ’s beck and call hadn’t exactly put her nerves at ease, but she was probably the only person in the world who had nothing to fear from him.
The last thing AJ would do is hurt her. He needed her alive.
Chapter 2
“What the hell are you doing?” Skyla demanded. She was exhausted, and walking in on her father, once again losing in a high stakes game of poker, was about to put her right over the edge.
The man, who looked a decade older than he actually was, glanced up at her with a furrowed brow like she was the one who was in the wrong.
“Are you trying to kill me?” She yelled, not caring that there were four other men sitting at the table with him in the lavishly decorated basement of their home. Back when her father was an award-winning architect, he’d built this house, designing every square inch of it. He’d wanted the basement to look like a saloon from the 1920’s, complete with a bar hidden by a fake wall in homage to the prohibition era. The house had been featured in multiple home and garden magazines, and dubbed an architectural masterpiece of the South.
He’d gone on to open Madigan’s after losing his established multi-million-dollar architectural firm in a horrible bet. Skyla and her dad had tried to get it back, offered to do almost anything, but the winner wouldn’t hear of it. The man was a skilled poker player and her father had played right into his hand. The once starving architectural student was now the CEO of a company he barely knew how to manage, while her father was left high and dry, and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Luckily, they’d managed to save enough money to live off, and opened Madigan’s. But when she’d walked in on her father placing a bet on a poker game using Madigan’s as collateral, she’d put her foot down and demanded he sign the bar and grill over to her or she was walking away from him, Madigan’s, and any debts she was repaying for him using her healing ability. He eventually agreed to put her name on the title and lease, but he still maintained controlling interest in the business.
“Skyla,” her father said, using a reprimanding tone. “It’s not what you think. This is just a friendly game among friends, isn’t that right?” He asked the four men.
When they grimaced and hesitantly nodded, Skyla wanted to scream, but the air racing through her lungs was leaving her nearly breathless with rage. This man had already almost gambled away their home last year, and now Skyla was barely keeping up with the debts he was acquiring. There was no way she could heal enough goons to buy back a two-million-dollar estate, which he’d ultimately refused to put her name on the deed.
“Get out.” She seethed through clenched teeth staring at the four other men. “I don’t care what you’re betting on, or who’s winning or losing. Get out or I’m calling the police and reporting this right now.”
All four men looked to her father, but he sat silently. Almost too silently. A war between father and daughter was brewing, but Skyla didn’t care. They had a deal and he’d gone behind her back and broken it. “Out!” She screamed at the other men. They stood, taking whatever money was lying in front of each of them and left. She listened for their footsteps as they made their way up the stairs, and then heard the front door slam shut. “How long has this been going on, Dad?” She asked, sitting down in one of the now empty chairs next to him. When he remained silent, she made eye contact with him, telling him everything he needed to know with just one stare. “How much longer do you plan on doing this to me? How much more money are you going to lose before you finally get some real help?” She was beyond patience. Exhaustion, frustration, and a general inability to handle any more excuses from him, she thought she’d reached her limit, but this, walking in on him gambling in their own home after everything they’d been through, was the last straw.
“I’m out,” she said, resignation bleeding through every syllable as she stood up to leave. He was the only family she had left in this world, but this had been a year from hell, and her body was reaching its limits. “You’re on your own. I’m done, Dad.” She started to walk away but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back until the backs of her knees hit the edge of the chair and she was forced to sit back down.
“No. You’re not. You’re my daughter and you owe me.”
Skyla let out a harsh laugh. “Owe you? For what?”
“For raising you. For putting a roof over your head when you weren’t even supposed to have survived that accident. For giving you every damn thing you ever asked for when you were a kid. You wanted a pink bike, you got it. You wanted roller skates. You got them. You wanted to go to that damn amusement park with your senior class, you went. You wanted a new car when all your friends were driving their parents’ old beat-up junk cars, you got it. I didn’t even walk away from you when you let your mother die, so you’re not going to walk away from me now.”
Skyla recoiled at his words. Who was this man sitting in front of her? He looked like her father. He had the same receding hairline, sunken brown eyes, and thick glasses. He wore the same plaid sweaters she remembered him in since she was in eighth grade, and he still had on the plain gold wedding band he never took off, even though her mom had died over a decade ago. She always thought it was sweet and romantic, but now, after hearing his ire against her, Skyla couldn’t help but wonder if his intentions for wearing it went deeper than just keeping his beloved dead wife close to him.
“I heal a goon once, sometimes twice a week for you,” she said calmly. “I’m strong, Dad, but I can’t keep up at this pace. What are you going to do when I can’t heal people anymore?”
Her father let out a bark of a laugh. “You can always heal people, Skyla. You always have and you always will. That’s all you’re good for. That and serving drinks. And that’s what you’ll continue to do until I say otherwise.”
