Page 17 of Old-Fashioned
As I stood there at the bar, something at the back of my mind tickled.
And when it did, I recalled a picture Miss Maggie had in her library.
Same eyes. Same jaw. Same small birthmark just underneath his right eye. It had been decades, but there was no mistaking those eyes.
I didn’t even stop to think, I abandoned the end of the bar and the drink order I forgot to place and speed-walked back over to him.
He saw me coming, and luckily read the situation, fast.
I had my arms around his middle, my face buried in his chest, and there I whispered, “Thank you.”
He stood there for a moment, stock still, it wasn’t until he whispered in my hair, “Just what are you thanking me for Darlin’?”
There against his burly chest, I whispered, “You gave Miss Maggie a fondness for Rod Stewart, pigs in a blanket, and a certain drink that she taught me how to make when I was fourteen years old.”
Only then did he wrap his arms around me and asked, “You mean Mag…”
I smiled into his chest, lifted my head, and finished for him, “Maggie May?”
He smiled, huge, “I’ll be damned. I haven’t seen that old girl in three decades. How is she?”
Only then did I feel tears hitting my eyes; therefore, I shook my head. Unable to get the words out even if I had wanted to.
Sorrow immediately hit his features, and he nodded, “Tell you what, next day you're off, you come by my place, I’ll tell you a few things I bet my Maggie May didn’t tell you.”
I grinned up at him, nodded, and said, “That would be wonderful.”
Then, I leaned up on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek, there I whispered, “Your next drink is on me. I hope the bartender knows how to make a Screaming Mimi.”
His boom of laughter followed me all the way to the bar.
Meanwhile, at the bar, Caelan muttered, “She’s something else.”
Abel Black did nothing. But what he really wanted to do was to nod his head, then round the bar, kick everyone out, and then lock the doors.
Lift her delectable body on top of the bar, and then ravish the fuck out of her.
After he had seen her kiss that old man’s cheek, somehow, she had found herself settled even deeper under his heart.
Once I found that Abel knew about the drink, I had him make one and then delivered it to Rich Stiles. The old man’s name had been burned in my brain ever since Miss Maggie told me about him.
It was an hour later when Rich gave me his address and we set up a time to hang out I was back at the bar listening to Caelan talking about a fight he couldn’t get out of because his sitter had to take her mother to the doctor.
Miss Maggie had helped me get a job as a babysitter when I was fourteen, so I knew the ins and outs of it, therefore I looked at Caelan and asked, “When do you need a sitter?”
Immediately he asked, “Please tell me you’re offering?”
I smiled at him, “Long as I don’t have to work, I can. I used to babysit for a single mother back home.”
“You’re hired.” He said immediately then looked at Abel, “You know the day. Do me a solid please?”
When I looked at Abel, it was to find his eyes not on his brother but on me, and when I lifted a brow at him, he asked. “You sure about this? His kids are fucking hooligans.”
I snickered, “Long as they don’t have dreams of burning a house down, I can handle them.”
And four days later, at four-thirty in the morning, Caelan Black walked into his home, saw his kids cuddled up with Birdie on the couch, and wished like hell he hadn’t seen that look his brother had given to Birdie.
If it had been Baker, he wouldn’t have thought twice about stealing her from him.