Mad About Moon (The Whiskeys: Dark Knights at Peaceful Harbor #5)(8)
“I am excited,” Tracey said. “I’m also kind of scared. And are you sure you don’t want to do it? You worked at a bar.”
“Yeah, and that ended so well for me,” Josie reminded her. She’d lost her job when Hail’s flu had lingered for two weeks and she’d had to miss work. “Besides, if I can manage it, I want to work during the day so I can be with Hail at night.”
“That makes sense. I’ve been a waitress, but what if I screw up?” Tracey asked. “I don’t want to disappoint Bones or Sarah. They’ve been so good to me.”
Sunny stuck a peppermint on the roof of Tracey’s gingerbread house and said, “You can’t disappoint them because they aren’t judgmental.”
“You don’t know that,” Tracey said.
“Actually, I do. My father is a Dark Knight. I spent years getting into trouble and rebelling against being protected so vehemently. I owe my life—and my parents probably owe their sanity—to Bones.” Sunny told them about how even after she’d given up on herself, Bones refused to give up on her. He’d shown up at parties she attended to watch over her, drove her home, and stood guard outside her place at night, keeping sketchy people from seeking her out. “Bones is the man. I was a rotten kid to him. I was snarky, and I ridiculed him for babysitting me. But he never relented. He was everywhere I was, and he didn’t try to scare me by telling me I was on a path to kill myself, or try to bully me into line. He was just always there, letting me run myself into the ground, and at the same time making sure that ground was too solid for me to dig too deep of a hole. Eventually he got through to me, and I realized I was running from the shame of the life I’d created. If not for Bones, who knows where I’d be today.”
“My husband was like that,” Josie said. “More so before he became my husband, because by the time we got married I was eighteen going on thirty.” She glanced at Hail and knew she couldn’t say much in front of him because he’d hold on to every nugget and dig into it later, wanting to know the whys and hows of all of it. So she said, “He had a way of being around at all the right times, stopping me from making mistakes. He wouldn’t ever let me disrespect myself in any way.” Which, as a teenager who was hot for him and had tried—and failed—to seduce him, was very frustrating.
“When you worked at the bar, did guys get handsy with you? That’s my other worry,” Tracey asked.
“Guys hit on women at the grocery store and the gas station,” Josie said. “That’s just life. It’s up to us to put them in their place.”
Sunny grabbed a cookie from a plate in the middle of the table and said, “The guys who work at Whiskey Bro’s won’t let anyone bother you. Trust me on that. Neither will Dixie, for that matter. She’s Bones’s sister, and she is one bada—” She glanced at Hail and Emily and said, “She’s a tough biker. You’ll like her. Besides, you could use some toughening up, Tracey. Maybe then you won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”
The buzzer sounded, indicating someone was at the front door. Sunny jumped up and said, “Be right back.”
After she left the room, Josie said, “I hope you don’t feel like you have to take the job at the bar because of me or Sarah.”
“I’ve been filling out online applications for stores around here since I arrived weeks ago,” Tracey explained, “and I’m still coming up empty.”
“Tell me about it. I’ve been doing the same.”
“I’m grateful for the opportunity, and I want to take it. I just don’t want to have to dodge guys pawing at me. But it sounds like the Whiskeys try to keep that under control.” Tracey shrugged and said, “What’s the worst that can happen? If it’s uncomfortable, I’ll quit.”
Sunny came back into the kitchen and said, “Josie, Jed’s here to see you.”
“I don’t know a Jed.”
“He’s a friend of the Whiskeys,” Sunny said. “He said he’s here on behalf of the Dark Knights. Sounds to me like Bones has put you under the DK umbrella of protection.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “I don’t need to be protected by them. It was bad enough when he sent Bullet after us. The guy terrified me. If it weren’t for his wife, Finlay, I’d have called the police. I’ll get rid of this guy. Be back in a sec.” She bent down by Hail and said, “Think you can behave for a few minutes, bean?”
He nodded. His face was streaked with frosting, and his lips were sticky with sparkles of sugar from Sour Dots.
Josie washed her hands and went in search of the guy who was about to get booted off the premises. She didn’t care how nice the Whiskeys were. She wasn’t a piece of property that needed protecting. As she entered the hall that led to the lobby, she saw the guy standing with his back to her, his hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket. He was leaning forward, reading something on the bulletin board, and she couldn’t help but notice the way his jeans hugged his hamstrings and ass. God, when did I turn into one of those girls? Ridiculous.
She crossed her arms and said, “Hi. I’m Josie.”
He turned, and his eyes connected with hers with the shock of a thousand volts, rendering her mute. Her mouth went bone dry, and her pulse sprinted. It was Moon, and he was even more rugged, more handsome, than she remembered. But it was his sharp, spirited, and somehow also piercing blue-gray eyes that beckoned her like an old friend. They stared at each other for a long silent moment, every interminable second pulsing with heat. She had the strange urge to run to him, and he must have seen it, because his eyes darkened with the savage inner fire she remembered.