Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
I’ve never referred to myself as sober because my stint with drugs and alcohol was short-lived and I didn’t feel I’d earned the right to say I’d been sober for eight years. Instead, I just told people I was teetotal. Plus, it was nobody’s goddamn business.
Shrugging off memories, I met Jared’s gaze and frowned at the bleariness in his eyes.
He was Drunk with a capital D. I’d never seen him drunk. Not even at Christmas.
“Hey, you, what’s going on?” I asked quietly.
He fumbled for his beer and shakily raised the pint glass to me. “Shrinking.”
I gathered he meant drinking.
Oh boy. “Jared … what’s going on?” I repeated.
The man frowned as if confused by my question and it was ridiculous that he was kind of adorable. How a man that sexy could be adorable, I wasn’t sure, but right then, he was both. “Ale.” He tapped his pint. “I am having.”
My lips twitched, my argument with Aria fading into the background. “I can see that. But why are you having ale at one o’clock in the afternoon? What about the farm?”
Jared’s handsome features slackened with anguish, and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest. “The farm. The farm.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and then just leaned his forehead into his palm. “That bashstard will take it.”
“What bashtard?” I teased, trying to lighten his mood.
Those green eyes met mine and hardened. “I’m failin’.”
Realizing something was seriously wrong, I shimmied my stool closer to his as the bartender set my drink down. I thanked her absentmindedly as I leaned in close to Jared. He reeked of alcohol. Had he been here since the pub opened? “Jared, what’s going on?”
“The farm,” he whispered, pain in the words. “I’m goin’ tae lose it. Everythin’ Granddad worked for. Gone.”
“What?”
“Too many disashters. Losht money. Cannae seem to get back on track. Gonnae need to shell it.”
“Sell it?”
He nodded grimly.
“Why can’t you ask Sarah for the money?” His cousin was wealthy. I knew that from Aria.
Jared shook his head, glaring at me through narrowed eyes. “No gonna dae that.” His accent had thickened with his drunkenness. “Ma dad did that. Abandoned everybody and ashed everybody to bail him oot. No gonna dae that. Ma problem to sholve.”
Suddenly his phone rang, drawing my attention to it on the bar counter. Jared ignored it, so I leaned over to squint at the screen. Someone named Georgie was calling.
“Not going to get that?”
He grunted and took another pull of his ale.
When the phone stopped ringing, I pulled it toward me and saw there were thirteen missed calls from Georgie. The name was familiar, and I suddenly remembered he worked on the farm with Jared.
I picked up his phone before he could protest and tapped on Georgie’s name.
“What are you doin’?” Jared grumbled but didn’t make an effort to stop me.
“Jar, where the fuck are you?” a man’s voice bit out angrily down the phone.
“Um, this isn’t Jared. This is Allegra Howard. I’m at the Gloaming and Jared is here. He’s … he can’t drive home in his current condition. Can you come get him?”
I heard him let out a beleaguered breath. “Aye. I’ll be there soon.”
I made small talk with a sleepy Jared for fifteen minutes or so until a man who couldn’t be much older than him strode into the pub, dressed much the same in a long T-shirt, jeans, and work boots. He thanked me for calling and helped a belligerent Jared out of the pub.
Just before they left, Jared looked back over his shoulder at me. He looked so lost. So young. As if all the years had melted away and he was just a kid again.
I knew the feeling.
A sense of kinship filled me as I gave him a sad little wave.
Then, as he disappeared out the door, the idea hit like a lightning bolt.
I gasped, anticipation and hope filling me.
It could work.
It could really work.
I’d just need Jared McCulloch to agree to it.
Four
Allegra
Call it shame mixed with guilt mixed with hurt. Call it cowardice. But I did not return to my parents’ beach house that day or night. Aria lived next door, and I knew she’d be waiting for me.
Instead, I turned to Sloane.
Sloane Ironside, despite the incredible wealth she’d inherited from her father, lived in a humble bungalow in a quiet residential area of the village. It was her husband Walker Ironside’s home, and when they got together, Sloane and her daughter Callie were only too happy to move in with him. Sloane used her inheritance to set up a bakery in Ardnoch. A very successful bakery that only opened a few days a week, much to the dismay of the locals.
Sloane (also born in Los Angeles) and I met when I was off the rails and dating her skeezy and dangerous ex-boyfriend Nathan Andros. Sloane had gotten pregnant by Nathan when she was sixteen years old. He was a thug, working his way up the hierarchy of a gang that traded in drugs and chopped cars. After a few years of his abuse, Sloane took Callie and got out from under him. Kind of.