Bethany looked up with alarm as Duke shoved his chair back, out of reach of the beer that slopped over the edge of his mug.
“What the devil is wrong with you?” Duke bellowed. “You owe me another beer.”
“Ha,” Alexei said again, at a slightly lower volume. “You owe me a hundred bucks. You wanted proof of monsters, there you go.”
Duke rolled his eyes. “I don’t see how that cod is proof of anything other than the well known fact that dead fish smell. Jeez. Get that thing off my table, will ya?”
“Sure,” Alexei said with a grin. “As soon as you give me my hundred dollars. Look at that sucker mark and tell me that didn’t come from a kraken.”
“A kraken?” Duke guffawed, and his two friends joined in. “There’s no such thing as a kraken, you jackass. Maybe Robbie ran into a giant squid - they’re rare, but they do exist - but krakens are no more real that mermaids and fairies.”
“Some of my favorite people are mermaids and fairies,” Alexei said in a low rumble that would have signaled trouble to anyone who knew him better. “And even an idiot like you should be able to tell the difference between the sucker mark from a giant squid and one from a kraken that could eat it for dinner and still have room left over for a whale or two. A bet’s a bet.”
“Who are you calling an idiot?” Duke said in a threatening voice. He stood up so fast he knocked his chair over, and his friends rose to join him. “Because as far as I can see, the only idiot in this room is the one that thinks I’m stupid enough to pay him a hundred bucks for a dead fish.” He knelt down to pick the chair up, then swung it at Alexei’s head with all his might.
All right then! Finally, a decent fight. True, it was only three against one, so it wouldn’t last long, but at least for a minute, Alexei felt like himself again, instead of lost and untethered the way he had for months. “Son of a goat!” he yelled in Russian, turning over the table as he ducked away from the chair as it whistled through the air right over his head. “Is that the best you can do?”
Another chair connected with his shoulder, but he barely felt it as he picked up the man wielding it and tossed him across the room. More men joined into the fight as their drinks got knocked over, or more probably, just for the fun of it. Alexei roared, his blood pounding in his head and his muscles bunching as he held a sailor over his head with one hand.
A piercing whistle rang out and everything stopped as all heads swiveled toward the bar. Bethany stood on top of it like a red-haired avenging angel, a baseball bat gripped in both small hands.
“Put him down, Alexei,” she said through clenched teeth. “And the rest of you, you know the rules here - no fighting, and no breaking the furniture. What would Calum think of you lot, destroying the bar he worked so hard to build? Shame on you.”
All around him, men sheepishly straightened tables and chairs, sitting down and trying to act like they hadn’t all been trying to kill him a minute ago. Alexei carefully lowered the guy he’d been holding until the man’s feet were securely on the ground.
“But Bethany,” Alexei said.
“Do. Not. But. Bethany. Me.” She swung the bat in his direction. “I warned you. Didn’t I? No fighting I said. No breaking things. But no, you just had to do it.” She glanced around the room, her jaw set rigid with anger. “The place is a wreck. You’ve seen the way we live. Do you really think I have the money to replace all this stuff?”
The bat swung around until it was aimed at Duke. “Speaking of money, you owe Alexei a hundred bucks. He may be an ass, but he was right about the monster. I saw Robbie’s boat, and no normal squid did that. Pay him, and get out. You started this fight, so you’re banned for a month.”
Duke narrowed his eyes at her, looking for a moment as if he might argue, then reached into his wallet, pulled out five twenties, put them on top of the now three-legged table, and stalked out of the bar without another word.
“See, it wasn’t my fault,” Alexei said. “He started it. You said so yourself.”
Bethany hopped down off the bar and stood in front of him, five feet three of steaming fury. “You provoked him. And don’t think I don’t know you could have stopped him without creating this disaster area. I think you just like destroying things. I grew up with a man just like you, remember. And for now, I suggest you go back to the house and figure out a way to explain to him that you helped tear his bar to pieces. Maybe it will finally motivate him to get his ass back in here, so I can get on with what I laughingly refer to as my life.”
She waved the bat toward the door, and Alexei opened his mouth, closed it again, and left. He suddenly missed his brothers so much it made his chest hurt. Even fighting wasn’t fun anymore. Nothing was the same, and he had no idea what the hell to do about it.
Chapter 6
Bethany swept shards of broken glass and splintered wood into the pile she’d already amassed in the corner, muttering obscenities under her breath. The few customers left in the bar were clustered across the room in a section left reasonably untouched by the fight; wisely, they were all drinking quietly and keeping their heads down. Nobody wanted to mess with Bethany when she was in this mood.
While some of her curses were aimed at Alexei, she saved most of the choice words for herself. She was an idiot. It wasn’t as though she didn’t know better, with Calum as a role model. She’d grown up with a man who dealt with his frustrations by drinking and brawling, and yet she’d still somehow let herself feel even the tiniest sliver of attraction to a man who’d made no secret of the fact that he was exactly the same. Okay, maybe more than a tiny sliver.
The truth was, she’d been halfway to falling for him, even though he was completely different from the calm, controlled type she normally went for - boring, predictable, and completely safe, everything that Alexei wasn’t.
Just because he’d been gentle with a pregnant dog and surprisingly good with her father, that was no reason to believe he was anything other than the wild man he’d seemed to be on that first day he’d walked into The Hook and Anchor. She was a thrice-damned empty-headed shit-for-brains fool, that’s what she was. It was a wonder they’d ever let her into Harvard Law School, much less almost allowed her to graduate. She was a moronic nincompoop.
And she had four broken tables and nine smashed chairs to prove it. She’d bang her head against the bar a couple of times, but with her luck, she’d just crack that too.
First thing in the morning, she was going to call the agency and beg for another aide. Then she was going to kick Alexei Knight out of her guest house and out of her life. Absolutely, positively, resolutely. That was the plan, and she was sticking to it.
*