On The Rocks (Love After Midnight Book 3) Read online

  On The Rocks

  Love After Midnight #3

  Elise Faber

  ON THE ROCKS

  BY ELISE FABER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are fictitious in every regard. Any similarities to actual events and persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. Any trademarks, service marks, product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used. Except for review purposes, the reproduction of this book in whole or part, electronically or mechanically, constitutes a copyright violation.

  ON THE ROCKS

  Copyright © 2020 Elise Faber

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-80-7

  Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-946140-79-1

  Cover Art by Jena Brignola

  Love After Midnight

  Rum And Notes

  Virgin Daiquiri

  On The Rocks

  Sex On The Seats

  Contents

  Love After Midnight

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Sex On The Sheets

  Love After Midnight

  Love After Midnight

  Also by Elise Faber

  About the Author

  One

  Anabelle

  I slipped out the front door of my friend Iris’s house, several containers of leftovers balanced in my hands, and struggled to close it behind me.

  The Christmas party inside was still going strong, but I had to head out. The only plus in having to leave early was that at least I was able to bring treats with me—albeit more of them than was polite. Still, I didn’t have any shame. Iris had offered—she was a brilliant baker—and I had accepted. Easy as that. Now, I was taking my stash to my car—the one I’d finally been able to afford to buy, in part because of the crew inside this little house.

  My boss and the owner of Bobby’s, the bar where I worked, Kace.

  My coworker, Brent, who was charming, even with the most annoying of customers.

  Their women—Brooke and Iris. Though maybe it would be more accurate to say that Kace and Brent were their men. Because those men no longer held their own hearts. They’d trusted them to Brooke and Iris’s safekeeping.

  It was great. I was happy for them.

  But also . . . it wasn’t for me.

  I wasn’t looking for a happy ending. I just wanted a safe place. I wanted to make a living and not rely on anyone else. I wanted to control my temper so I didn’t dump a Cosmopolitan in the lap of a handsy customer and instead carefully dissuaded him from being an asshole.

  Okay, that last one was a lie.

  I definitely didn’t mind dumping cocktails on handsy fucking customers, especially when those customers had an open tab I could charge said cocktail to.

  I kind of liked being an asshole.

  Just slightly less than I liked the crew inside. So, I wasn’t looking for an exit, an escape from the love and the happily ever afters inside. Rather, I’d offered to go in and meet the alcohol delivery at Bobby’s the next morning, to save the lovebirds from an early morning.

  Which meant it was time for me to go.

  I fumbled with the knob, shifting the containers to grab it. When that failed, I lifted a foot and tried to use that to close the door.

  Newsflash. I wasn’t a member of Cirque de Soleil, so it didn’t work.

  Sighing, I bent to place the containers down, something I should have just done in the first place.

  Always trying to take the easy way out, Ana Girl. Sometimes it’s better to just take the hard one from the beginning.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I muttered under my breath.

  Ten years gone and still chastising me from the wrong side of the grave.

  Still never failed to make me smile.

  She would like my friends.

  “Don’t.”

  I stopped mid-bend at the male voice.

  “I’ve got it.”

  Tall. Really tall. Dark hair with a reddish tint. Olive skin. Bright blue eyes. And, oh NBD, maybe also the most handsome man I’d ever met.

  I swallowed hard then frowned when he reached past me to close the door.

  Then frowned harder when he rang the doorbell.

  “Um,” I began, wanting to ask him what in the ever-loving-fuck he was doing. But the doorbell had been rung and footsteps approached, and the wooden panel swung back open to reveal Brooke standing on the threshold, smile wide. “Did you forget something, An . . . a . . . belle?”

  The smile faded from Brooke’s face.

  Her olive skin went pale.

  Her eyes widened. Her eyes . . . that were the same shape as those of the man towering over me on the porch.

  Kace came up behind her. “Everything okay—”

  Brooke didn’t answer him, just reached a hand out as though she expected to encounter a ghost, her voice shaking when she spoke.

  “Hayden?”

  Two

  Hayden

  I didn’t know why I expected this to be easy.

  Seeing my sister’s face pale, tears fill her green eyes, her mouth agape.

  She wavered on her feet but before I could reach her, before I could catch her like I had caught her so many times before—my younger-by-ten-minutes sister, my shadow, the girl who had been mine more than she’d been my parents—before I could close the distance, a muscled arm slid around her middle.

  A muscled male arm.

  With tattoos.

  Of course, I had tattoos, but that wasn’t the point. This was my sister, my baby sister, and no man would be good enough, least of all a tattooed, pretty boy who was scowling down at me.

  I’d seen this man in pictures. Kissing her. Touching her.

  I’d wanted to kill him then. Had only refrained because I could tell, even through photographs, that my sister was happy.

  Now, seeing his hands on her, the confident, familiar hold, and I wanted to pull out the gun strapped into my holster and threaten this man within an inch of his life.

  And then kill him anyway.

  “Brooke?” he whispered. “Are you—?”

  “Holy fucking shit,” Brent said. He had been my unit commander, but we were more like brothers. Close enough that it had been as difficult keeping my secrets from him as they had been to keep from Brooke. “Hayden—” A sharp shake of his head. “I—”

  Movement from my right, from the tiny, curved beauty who barely made it up to my chest. “Okay, clearly there is more going on here than I’m following,” she said, her voice soft on the surface, although I could sense the strength beneath. “Let’s take this off the porch and figure it out inside.” Her eyes, deep pools of hickory, flicked toward me and the soft flecked away to reveal the steel underneath. “You. Stay here.”

  “Ana—” Brooke began.

  “Stay,” that steel said, not letting her finish, “means to stay on this fucking porch. It does not mean you get to disappear, and it does not mean to come in unless you’re invited. Got it?”

  I had to bite back a grin.

  She was protective, this Anabelle, and I, for one, approved. I also approved o
f the lusciousness of her five-foot-nothing body, but then again, I’d never been a man who liked a rail-thin woman.

  Curves.

  All day, every day.

  And Anabelle had them—

  She cleared her throat, eyes narrowing, and I nodded. Because her curves were so not the point.

  Brooke was the point. Brent was the point.

  I’d been gone too long. I was tired. I wanted . . . my family again.

  Anabelle glared at me for one more minute before setting down the containers she’d been fumbling with when I’d walked onto the porch—the reason I’d first noticed her curves, had found my motion stilled on the driveway as I’d watched her contort herself in her attempts to close the door without setting anything down.

  Amused. Aroused.

  Neither emotion had been in the forefront of my mind in the last few years. Not since—

  I blinked, shoved that all down, and kept my expression placid as the door shut.

  Then again, I’d had plenty of practice with that as well.

  Shutting out the things I cared about. Pretending they didn’t exist.

  But it was done.

  I was out.

  Finally.

  I listened through the closed door as the volume of voices increased, male and female voices overlapping, becoming a muffled vibration that told me the conversation wasn’t going to end any time soon.

  My gaze drifted to the plastic containers of food, and my stomach rumbled.

  I was hungry, had skipped eating in favor of finally seeing my sister . . . and I knew she was going to be supremely pissed when she found out I’d been keeping tabs on her even as I’d pretended to be dead in order to . . . shit. None of my reasons seemed worth it now.

  And Brent—

  Fuck. I hadn’t missed the betrayal in his eyes.

  Not a hint, not inching in on the edges. It was there. Full-force.

  “Shit,” I muttered, aloud this time. Ten years ago, I hadn’t felt like I had a choice. I’d needed to do what I did, and the explosion, the subsequent injuries to me, the team, to Brent, had provided the cover I’d needed to slip away.

  Let them think I was dead.

  It was easier that way.

  Because it was more than likely that I would end up that way anyway.

  Instead . . . here I was.

  I shifted, my knee that had been injured in the explosion, which had taken several of my friends and injured Brent severely, aching from the long flight.

  Left with an aching knee when my friends had died.

  That was all the perspective I needed.

  All the perspective I needed to shove the memories out of my brain—also injured in the blast, though I’d recovered from that, too. So long as I didn’t pay attention too closely to the dreams that sometimes came on fast and furious, stealing my breath, putting me back into that place, making me remember the chaos and fear and death. Still, I’d chosen this path, chosen to live as I had been doing these last few years and that was what I needed to focus on now. Not the past. Not the future. But this exact moment because who the fuck knew whether or not the future would come, and being stuck in the past had absolutely nothing to do with me surviving in the here and now.

  I could only do what I could do.

  And today?

  Well, today, what I could do was bend over, grab one of those plastic containers of food, and start eating.

  “Apple pie,” I whispered reverently as I opened the lid.

  I’d just started to dip my finger into the warm, hot gooeyness of the filling—also, hey, no judgment, it wasn’t like there were forks around—when the door flew open, and I found myself trapped in the steely eyes of Anabelle.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  More sharp. More glaring. More of me trying to bite back a smile.

  More . . . cock-twitching.

  I stifled the last two, glanced over her shoulder and saw the space behind her was empty. I could hear the voices farther inside the house, but for the moment we were alone, and this woman made me feel something.

  Alive, you dumbass, my inner Brooke said. She makes you feel alive.

  Yes, alive.

  After I’d pretended to be dead—inside my soul as well as to the most important people in my life—for so fucking long. I didn’t need an inner Brooke to keep me on the straight and narrow. Not any longer.

  I had a real Brooke. A real Brent.

  And real women who wouldn’t stab me in the back the first chance it would serve them.

  Although Anabelle—my eyes traced her face, noting the fury in her gaze, the clenched jaw, the lips pressed flat—I couldn’t automatically discount that this woman might find the proper motivation to thrust a dagger right into my spine.

  I felt a sliver of mischievousness slide through me at the thought.

  Probably the wrong emotion, but I’d spent enough time with people who were wrong on the inside and out to not care that I felt humor at inappropriate moments.

  Alive.

  I’d made it through alive.

  Albeit with a devil on my shoulder.

  One that had me meeting Anabelle’s deep brown eyes and smiling slow and hot. One that had me saying, “Oh, I’m sorry, Bella, did you want my fingers inside you instead?”

  Her jaw fell open.

  My smile widened.

  Then she struck in a movement so fast and so unexpected that I didn’t have a chance to block it, not when my reflexes had been tempered, coated in honey by need and desire, by her sexy body mere feet away, by her gorgeous flashing eyes.

  I didn’t react in time.

  And I ended up with apple pie dumped all over the front of my pants.

  Three

  Anabelle

  “Stick your fingers in that,” I muttered, grabbing the rest of the containers and going back inside the house. “Get your ass inside and talk to your sister,” I called over my shoulder. “She’s wrecked.”

  A beat of quiet then, “What’s it to you?”

  Slowly, I set the containers on the cute little table Iris kept in the hall, having to squeeze them in between the copious amount of Christmas decorations that she had already placed there then spun to face the man who I’d learned was Hayden, Brooke’s supposedly dead brother. He was sinfully sexy with lush lips, a rugged jawline, piercing blue eyes, and all that brown hair laced with red. A fucking cover model.

  I should be leaving.

  I should go, to get out of here and let Brooke and Brent deal with Hayden. This man wasn’t my brother, wasn’t my friend.

  He was . . . the one who’d hurt my family.

  So, I was staying.

  To protect my family. To keep watch over the people who’d dragged me all but kicking and screaming into this little group. Who’d looked out for me, given me a job, baked me copious amounts of apple pie—my favorite, despite its current location on Hayden’s crotch. Although . . . my eyes dropped, as though they had a mind of their own, and my mind . . . well, that hussy considered what it might be like to lick that filling off naked skin.

  A snort. My gaze flying north to see the smirk on his face.

  Which was appropriate. Because seriously? Me, a tiny Filipino girl with this behemoth of a gorgeous white dude. He looked like he should be in Hollywood, and I was just me. Short, curvy when I was feeling kind to myself, fat for the other ninety-nine percent of the time. Okay, I mentally sighed, I wasn’t exactly fat. But I also wasn’t the waifish beauty of Brooke or the perfect 36-24-36 of Iris.

  I was—

  Enough, my baby. You’re always enough.

  My mom’s voice was the perfect bucket of ice-cold water . . . or reality in this case.

  Because, seriously. What. In. The. Fuck. Was. Wrong. With. Me? Letting a man quantify my worth? Pathetic.

  Sighing, I let my lips twist up into a smirk of my own. One I’d perfected in my years of bartending. One that perfectly encapsulated my disdain for the man still standing on the front porch, onl
y now with apple pie filling dripping from his pants onto the concrete.

  “If I liked what I saw,” I told him, my lie carefully hidden by my icy tone, “believe me, I would have made that clear. As it is”—a shrug—“all I can say is that it’s a . . . little cold, perhaps?”

  Size. As in, making fun of it was so cliché.

  And add another lie, aside from the whole not-liking-what-I-saw thing, to my repertoire. Because the wet cargo pants cupping his—

  Cough.

  Nope. Definitely not cold.

  I spun, started walking down the hall again, knowing the little insult only worked if I managed to keep my gaze to myself.

  Hot breath on my nape, husky words in my ear.

  “Actually, I find that I’m quite warm.”

  I jumped, knocking into the table, bumping the containers, rattling the sheer volume of Christmas on the wooden surface. It matched the quantity of decorations she had in every corner of her house. Shining gold bobbles, red and silver glitter, multiple decorative trees from the one on the tiny tabletop—which I caught and steadied—to a huge pine tree taking up the entire corner of her living room.

  But none of that changed the fact Hayden had moved and I hadn’t sensed him.

  That this gorgeous man was about six inches from my spine and every one of my nerves was on fire.

  I wanted him.

  Just like that.

  Well, from the moment I’d laid eyes on him.

  Which was wrong for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which was the pain he’d caused the two people in the other room. Two people who’d become integral to my life.