Page 6 of Winning His Wager

She preferred a more sophisticated kind of man than one who used a hammer for a living. She’d been trying for days last month to get Brandt Barratt to even look at her, but she had given up when she saw him kissing that stupid Meyra Talley in the lobby and holding her hand. Treating Meyra like a stupid princess or something.

Of course, Meyra was one of theTalleys. So much better than everyone else because their grandmother owned the inn and everything. Talleys got all the really good guys. They always had.

Meyra was stupid. All that girl could do was cook. She barely even talked at all, and mostly, she only wore the Talley Inn or Diner polo or T-shirts, and pulled her hair into ponytails, and that was it. Meyra rarely even bothered with makeup either.

What was so special about Meyra that got her a millionaire? Meyra and Brandt had almost died together just this week. Now they were talking about getting married and everything.

MeyraTalleyand a millionaire? For real?

Abby didn’t understand it at all. She’d even asked Will why a guy like Brandt Barratt would want Meyra—and all he’d said was that Meyra was pretty and hot and would probably just do whatever a guy told her to do. Especially in bed and everything.

She’d gotten the impression that was what Will wanted from a girlfriend too. A pretty girl that would just lie there and do what Will told her to do and then give him all her money too. Pathetic.

Will was such a loser that he’d probably end up in jail someday. The way he always ran around with those losers in town that just kept getting in trouble. It was inevitable.

His friend Oliver was still in the hospital from when he’d tried to kill Chandler and Linsey Tyler and that cop Sage Tyler. Oliver had been burned really bad. Oliver would probably go to jail if he ever got out of the hospital.

Two other friends of Will’s had been arrested this week.

With that Judge Fisher guy. Everyone in town was talking about it. About how he had tried to kill Brandt and Meyra and everything.

Instead, Will’s friend Ashton had died. Brandt Barratt had killed him and everything. In self-defense. Abby had known Ashton his entire life. It was hard to believe he was dead and everything now.

There were a lot of bad things happening in Masterson. Abby was starting to get really afraid. First, it had been all of that stuff with her friend Braelyn’s cousins, the Rutherfords, and the drugs they were growing. And that weird war they had with Phil Tyler and his family.

Then it had been everything with her ex-boyfriend Desmond’s dad, Morris Preston, and now all of this with Ashton and Kurt. They had been Will’s closest friends for over a decade. Since he was in high school and everything. Everyone who knew them would know that.

Maybe…she should warn her brother not to be stupid or anything right now? Suggest he went to visit their mom’s sister in Iowa for a while?

She didn’tthinkWill would be like that, have anything to do with drugs or anything. But she was seven years older than Will. And since their mom had died fourteen years ago, he had really struggled. He’d just been a stupid kid in junior high back then. Maybe he had done something really stupid already? He was her younger brother. Didn’t she have like a responsibility to him somehow? She did not want him to be arrested.

And then she’d be all embarrassed, and her dad would be heartbroken, and she would have to find a way to fix everything all by herself. Like always.

Good old Abby, taking care of everyone else.

Tonight, when Will picked her up, she was going to ask him what he was involved in. And make sure her brother wasn’t doing anything stupid at all.

Abby hurried through her pre-shift routine. Most times, she was there fifteen minutes early, but Will had been running late.

He’d really been acting like a lunatic since Ashton had died. He wasn’t even planning to go to the funeral or anything. Ashton had been one of his best friends his whole life, and he wasn’t going to go to the funeral next week.

Abby didn’t understand that. If anything ever happened to Braelyn, or even Caitlyn, who was always kind of following Braelyn around, Abby would probably be devastated. Caitlyn was Braelyn’s cousin, and she was only a teenager. It was like having a little sister sometimes.

She and Braelyn had been best friends since junior high, for, like, fifteen years. Now that Caitlyn was there working at the inn with them, they kept an eye out for her too. That was what you did with your friends. You took care of them.

“Cutting it close today,” her shift supervisor, Lucy, said.

Abby hated Lucy nearly as much as she did the stupid blond bitch next to her.Dixie.

One ofthem.

Dixie Talley walked around like she thought her poop didn’t stink sometimes. Always telling people what to do, being the one in charge of the inn and everything. Dixie had it in for Abby. Probably because Abby was hotter, thinner, and far less of a bitch than Dixie could ever be. Dixie didn’t even have a boyfriend and hadn’t in, like, forever.

“My brother was running late. He was my ride. I’m sorry.” She knew how to handle herself with her bosses. Abby really needed the job at the inn. Her dad was counting on her salary to pay the bills. Will certainly wasn’t helping much at all. “I thought Dylan was going to be here tonight?”

Instead of Dixie. She hated working when Dixie was there just slightly less than she did when that little bitch Dylan was there.

Dylan got on Abby’s nerves constantly. Dylan wasn’t a boss or a supervisor or anything, even though she was a Talley. She never told Abby what to do, either. Not like Dixie did or anything. Dylan was just weird. Probably because she had been homeschooled, and everyone knew homeschooled kids were social idiots.