Page 45 of Tragic (Lark Cove 3)

Jackson just chuckled and leaned over to give her another kiss.

“I can’t remember exactly what happened, but this woman . . .” Thea rolled her eyes. “She was relentless! She followed Jackson around all night like a little puppy, trying to nip at his heels and hump his leg.”

Jackson’s face flushed as he shook his head. “What happened next was not my fault.”

Thea laughed. “She was so sad that he wasn’t paying her any attention. So she decided to make a scene. She walked up to this group of guys who’d just ordered a pitcher. She swiped it off their table, shouted ‘Wet T-shirt contest, woohoo!’ then poured it over her head.”

“Oh. My god.” I snorted, laughing along with Thea.

Jackson groaned. “So I bring her one of the bar T-shirts we used to sell.”

“Which happened to be white,” Thea added.

“I get the shirt pulled over her head,” Jackson continued. “And I’m thinking she’ll take the opportunity to wise up. Or at the very least one of her friends, who’d been sitting in the corner booth, would intervene. But they didn’t. Those bitches just sat there laughing and watching as this drunk chick struggled out of the drenched tank top she was wearing underneath the T-shirt I’d just pulled over her head. She threw the tank top across the bar—”

“And then came the bra.” Thea finished for him.

“Landed right on the antlers Hazel’s dad had hung up there thirty years ago.”

“Why didn’t you take it down?” I asked.

Jackson hung his head again as Thea kept laughing. “Things got worse.”

Willa giggled. “How?”

“There was still another pitcher on the table.”

My eyes widened. “Noooo!”

“Oh yes!” Thea nodded. “And that’s why we don’t sell white T-shirts anymore.”

We all laughed, even Jackson, causing a ruckus in the bar. None of the other patrons seemed to care, and a couple of the regulars were even listening in.

“She came in the next day and apologized,” Jackson said. “I’ve never seen anyone that green before. I asked her if she wanted her shirt and bra back, but she said she never wanted to be reminded of that night again.”

“Obviously, we never did take down the bra.”

Thea shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I like it up there. It reminds me of all the fun times we’ve had in this place.”

Jackson moved closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “That was a fun night.”

“Sure was.” She patted his stomach, then stepped away, going around the bar to check on some customers in the booths.

Thea had told me that things were different at the Lark Cove Bar than they’d been years ago. It wasn’t just her and Jackson working as Hazel’s employees anymore. They’d bought her out a year ago, making sure she was set for retirement with her husband Xavier, the retired town sheriff. And because both Thea and Jackson had families, neither one of them wanted to be tied to the bar every night.

They had another bartender who covered most of the later shifts. They put a heavier emphasis on food items, making it not only a bar but a full restaurant to rival the one other in town. They’d turned an old beer and whiskey joint into a must-stop attraction on the tourist route around Flathead Lake.

Thea and Jackson had somehow turned a bar in the miniscule town of Lark Cove into a raving success.

A huge part of that success was simply because it was fun. Pure, unbridled, laugh-until-your-sides-hurt fun.

A lot of my moments in Montana had been fun.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t had good times in the city. But things were different here.

There were no expectations to keep quiet. If I stood on my stool and did a happy dance, people would cheer me on. No one cared if you got too drunk and made a fool of yourself. A bra was left hanging on the antlers so patrons could share a laugh years later.

Would Kaine like it here? Would he ever want to come down and split a pizza?