AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She turned to him with surprise. “What are you doing?”
He took off his hat and set it on the bar. “I needed a stiff drink too.” He motioned for the bartender and ordered baby back ribs and whiskey, then looked at Belle. “And the lady will have . . .”
“The same.”
He squinted at her. “You sure you wouldn’t like something else to drink?”
She lifted her chin. “Are you saying I don’t know my own mind?”
He looked back at the bartender. “Whiskey it is.” After he left to fill their order, Corbin glanced at Belle. She was dressed in business attire—caramel-colored wide-legged pants and an off-white button-up shirt—like she had just come from work. Since she had been sitting on the road just outside Mrs. Fields’ property, he figured that was the case. “Jesse told me about you moving your office from Houston to the carriage house. He keeps asking me to stop by and see the renovations he’s done, but I haven’t had the time.” Plus, he didn’t want to run into the twins.
And yet, here he was.
“And you must see the renovations your brother did.” Her tone was dramatic and snide. “I’m sure you’ll lo-o-ove them as much as my sister does.” Their drinks arrived and she didn’t hesitate to take a big swig . . . and then choked as if she’d just scorched her throat with a torch.
“Easy there.” He patted her back until she caught her breath. “You sure you don’t want something a little weaker?”
Green daggers shot from her eyes. “Because I’m the weaker twin—the twin who can’t handle strong liquor or make my own decisions. I need to stick with elderberry wine and letting everyone else tell me what’s right for me.” She jabbed a finger at him. “Well, let me tell you something, Corbin Whitlock, I can handle whiskey and my own damn life!” She kept eye contact with him as she picked up her glass and downed the rest of the whiskey in one gulp. Her eyes watered and a shiver ran through her body, but she didn’t choke this time. After a deep, quivery breath, she held up her empty glass and yelled at the bartender. “Another, please!” Corbin opened his mouth, but closed it again when she shot him a warning look. “Don’t you dare say a word.”
He held up his hands. “My lips are sealed. But just for the record, I never thought of you as the weaker twin.”
She snorted. “Ha! Go lie to someone else. Everyone in town thinks I’m the weaker twin.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Yes, Liberty is the most outspoken between the two of you. She’s certainly more controlling. But that doesn’t mean she’s the strongest and you’re the weakest. Take me and Sunny, for example. Some people might look at us and say I’m the strongest because I’m more controlling. They might think I tell Sunny what to do and when to do it. The truth is that Sunny has a mind of her own. If she wants something, she usually gets it—whether I like her choice or not.”
He must have said the wrong thing because tears filled her eyes.
“But that’s the problem,” she said. “I don’t have a mind of my own. All my life, Liberty has made most of my decisions for me. Sadly, I wanted her to. I trust her decisions much more than I trust my own.” A tear rolled down her cheek and that grapefruit-sized knot returned to his throat. “Now, I realize that she’s not always going to be there to make those decisions . . . and that’s why I’m sitting here feeling totally and completely lost.” Her drink arrived and half of it was gone before he could blink.
He really didn’t want to get involved in Belle Holiday’s problems. But if he didn’t, he was afraid she was going to die from alcohol poisoning. He picked up a cocktail napkin and held it out. When she was too lost in her misery to notice it, he took her chin and turned her to face him.
“You aren’t lost.” He gently blotted the tears from her cheeks. “You’re just feeling that way because things are changing. Nobody likes change. It makes them feel uncomfortable and out of control.”
She sniffed. “I bet you’ve never felt lost or out of control. You’re like Liberty. Nothing shakes y’all.”
“Things shake us. We’re just better at hiding it.”
“What shakes you?”
At the moment, it was the mismatched teary green eyes that were staring back at him from only inches away. They held him captive and he couldn’t look away. Nor could he stop the truth from spilling out.
“Sunny being hurt or unhappy shakes me. And every time my mama dropped me and Sunny off with another relative. That shook me up real bad. Which was stupid. It happened so often you would have thought I’d have expected it. But nope. Every time she and Daddy came and got us, I thought they had fixed all the problems in their marriage and we would live as a happy family forever. A few months later, they’d start fighting and we’d be dropped off again. It wasn’t until she left us with Uncle Dan that the truth finally hit me . . . we weren’t a happy family and never would be.”
Two tears spilled from her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. This time, the knot that formed in his throat felt like a boulder.
Because this time, he knew the tears were for him.
Chapter Eight
Belle felt like a complete fool.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m sitting here whining about my own problems when your life was so . . .” She wanted to say heartbreaking, but she knew he wasn’t the type of man who would want sympathy so she chose another word. “Hard.”
He handed her the cocktail napkin. “You don’t need to be sorry. Sunny and I survived and are doing just fine . . . when she’s not driving me to drink with her dangerous exploits.”
“What kind of dangerous exploits?”
“Skydiving, race car driving . . . horseback riding. If it scares the hell out me, Sunny wants to do it.”
