Claimed Hard by My Best Friend novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Free Rides End

Dane walks into Flanagan's to collect her father's note and claim her for the summer, she pours iced tea over his head, and the man who walks in is the best friend who left, and Dane's brother.

On the first Friday in June, three men walked into my father's bar at noon and locked the door behind them.

I was behind the counter with a tray of clean glasses.

Flanagan's sat on the Atlantic City boardwalk between a fudge shop and a shuttered arcade. It had nine stools, a jukebox, and my mother's name on the lease.

Eight regulars were eating lunch.

"Nobody panic," Lucy said from the end of the bar. She had a rag in one hand and a pint glass in the other. "That's the guy."

I knew the guy before he turned around.

Four years had made Dane Mahoney broader through the shoulders and better dressed. His blond hair was combed back, and his watch was gold.

His smile was the same.

"Kate Flanagan," he said. "Look at you."

He looked at me slowly, from my face down to the apron tied over my hips and back up.

I was twenty-six now. My body had filled out in every place it had been flat on that quad.

I put the tray down.

"We're closed," I said.

"I know. I closed it." He pulled out a stool and sat. "My father's note on this place comes due. Three hundred eighty thousand dollars. Your dad knows."

My father came out of the back office with a bar towel over his shoulder.

He was fifty-eight and sober for six years. His hands were not steady.

"Dane, you and I can talk in the office," Norman said.

"We can talk here. I like an audience."

"Kate, go in the back."

"No, Dad."

Dane laughed. "She hasn't changed."

"You're the one who's changed," Lucy said. "Last time you at least waited for a camera."

A regular snorted into his soup.

Dane's smile thinned, and he kept it.

"Norman, you've had a free ride for four years," he said. "Free rides end. My father had a stroke in April, and I'm running collections now."

I heard the words free ride and didn't stop on them.

I was looking at my father's shaking hands.

"We'll get you the money," I said.

"With what? A fudge shop's rent?" Dane turned on the stool to face me properly. "Here's my offer, and it's generous. I was an idiot at twenty-three. You were a sweet girl and I was a jerk."

"You said that to a phone."

"So let me make it right." He opened his hand toward the room, so everyone could hear. "Be my date to the Gilt tonight. Be on my arm at every event this summer. I'll tear up the note in front of your father."

My stomach turned over.

"You want me to be your date," I said.

"I want you to be mine. For the whole summer." He looked at my chest, not my face. "I have a type now, Kate. It turns out it's you."

Nobody in the bar made a sound.

My father said, "Dane, don't."

"No, it's okay," I said.

I took the pitcher of iced tea off the counter. It was full, with lemon slices floating in it.

I walked around the bar and stopped in front of his stool.

"I'd need a better man," I said.

Then I poured the whole pitcher over his head.

Tea ran down his hair and his collar, into his jacket and onto the floor. A lemon slice hung on his shoulder.

Lucy clapped once. A regular started laughing and then all eight of them were.

Dane didn't laugh.

He stood up slowly and wiped his face with his hand. His eyes were flat.

"That goes on the note," he said. "Fifty thousand for the jacket."

The two men with him moved toward me.

"Touch her," my father said, and stopped, because his voice broke.

Then somebody knocked on the locked door.

It was one knock, slow and heavy. The men beside Dane looked at each other.

One of them unlocked it.

The man who came in had to duck under the neon sign. He was tall, in a black shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, and ink covered both forearms and the backs of his hands.

His hair was cut short. His jaw was sharper than I remembered, and there was a scar through one eyebrow.

I knew his eyes.

They were grey, and they went over the room once and did not stop on me.

"Mal," Dane said, and wiped tea off his jaw. He turned to the room with a wide smile. "Everyone, meet my brother."

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