Zoe leaned against the bed. “I hope it continues.”
“You and me both. Nothing worse than policing my best friend’s brother.”
The image of her father shot to her head. “What about your best friend’s dad?”
Jo lifted an eyebrow.
“He’s up for parole in a couple of months.”
“He never makes it.”
The tension in Zoe’s shoulders tightened. “He’s not in jail for murder. He’ll eventually get out.”
“He has a hard time staying out of fights, Zoe. Which adds time to his existing sentence and doesn’t make the parole board happy. I don’t think he’s going anywhere soon.”
The two of them never spoke about her dad. To hear Jo speak with such conviction told Zoe that Jo knew more than just the basic facts of how the parole process worked. “You’ve been keeping up on his case, haven’t you?”
Jo simply shrugged. “You’d do the same if you were me.”
Zoe leaned down and hugged her friend. “I love you.”
She felt Jo’s hand rest on her back, and then it offered a little shove. “I’m horny, but you don’t have the right parts.”
Zoe hugged her harder before letting thoughts of her father drift away.
“You’ve got that James Dean thing going . . .”
The woman beside Luke at the bar had short dark hair, an easy smile, and slurred words. He’d offered to buy her a drink before realizing how many she’d already had going in.
“What do you know about James Dean?”
She reached forward, pushed hair from Luke’s forehead, and nearly fell off the bar stool.
Beside him, Wyatt laughed into his beer.
“It’s the hair.”
Luke caught her before she ended up in his lap.
A prospect he might not have minded if she were sober.
Her glazed eyes passed over him and on to Wyatt. “Your friend is kinda cute, too.”
Wyatt wiggled his fingers in the air in a wave. “Hey, darlin’.”
“Oh . . . that’s cute.”
Seemed like everything was cute to this one.
“It’s Trish, right?”
Trish slapped a hand on Luke’s shoulder and leaned close enough for him to smell the alcohol in her pores. “You remembered.”
“Ah-huh . . . right. Did you come with friends tonight?”
Trish twisted a little too fast and wobbled while pointing to the far side of the bar, where two similarly dressed women were playing pool with several men.
Instead of suggesting that Trish meet up with her friends, Luke used the excuse of a need for the bathroom, leaving Wyatt to fend for himself.
He approached one of Trish’s friends, who held a pool cue in one hand, a beer in the other. “You came with Trish?” he asked, pointing behind his back toward the bar.
The woman offered a toothy smile. “Is she getting into trouble?”
“She’s pretty hammered. Think maybe she should have someone watching out for her before she ends up in a truck bed with a stranger.”
Toothy Smile rolled her eyes. “Hey, Jen. We need to rescue Trish.”
The woman she called Jen swung her gaze toward the bar and moaned. “Not again.”
The two of them handed off their cues and wove through the crowd. Once they had Trish’s attention, Luke watched Wyatt pick himself up off the bar stool and make his way across the room.
“You wouldn’t believe what she offered to do to both of us.” Wyatt was grinning.
“I can imagine.” Luke tilted the rest of his beer back and set the empty bottle on a nearby table.
“What are you drinking?”
Zoe forced a smile over her shoulder. The man asking her the question had been beside the guy who was now getting his ass beat on a dartboard by Jo. Military short hair, thick shoulders, thick neck . . . and from what she could see by the grin on his face, thick ego.
“Perrier with lime.”
His smile wavered.
“I’m driving.” Not that she needed to explain, but she did anyway.
“Jack and Coke,” he told the bartender as they passed by.
Zoe looked at her nearly empty drink and didn’t comment.
“You live around here?”
She shook her head. “Wisconsin,” she lied.
The smile that attempted to manifest for half a second quickly became a flat line between his lips.
“So you’re here on vacation?” As he asked the question, the leggy blonde walking by caught his eye.
Zoe took great pleasure in delivering her next lie. “Missionary work, actually. Where do you go to church?”
The bartender set down his drink. He tossed a bill on the bar, downed his beverage in one swallow, and stood. “Great talking with you . . . uhm . . .”
They hadn’t exchanged names.
She let him out with a smile. “Great talking with you, too.”
He walked away, and a deep chuckle beside her diverted her attention.
“This is the third bar we’ve been to.”
“This didn’t used to be so hard,” Luke said.
Wyatt waved a beer in the air as he spoke. “I’m practically married and you’re not available.”
“I am very available,” Luke protested with heat in his voice.
“The tipsy woman at the pool hall?”
“Drunk, not tipsy.”
“The blonde at Shiners?”
“Blonde,” he said, as if the color of her hair explained everything.