Brick loomed over her from across the bar. “You’ve had two drinks strong enough to put down a full-grown man, and you barely touched anything on your plate last night.”
“Stop looking at my plate.”
“Start eating.”
Remi pretended to rub at the corner of her eye with a middle finger.
“Play nice,” Darius coughed into his elbow.
Brick and Remi both paused long enough to glare at him.
Kimber interrupted the glaring contest. “I have to go,” she said, sliding her arms into the sleeves of her coat. “Apparently Kyle feels unequipped to feed the kids dinner.”
“Are you serious?” Remi asked. She caught the subtle shake of Brick’s head and shut her mouth. “I mean. Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Why?” Kimber frowned, pulling on her jacket.
“Because we’re sisters, and if Kyle needs an ass-kicking, I want to be a part of it,” Remi told her.
Kimber paused, and for a second, the mask slipped from her face. There was something softer and sadder in her eyes.
“Thanks, Rem.” Her sister turned to the men behind the bar. “Boys, it was a pleasure as always.”
She reached for her wallet, but Remi waved her off. “I’ve got the tab. You go save the day.”
Kimber eyed her as she tugged her braid out of her coat. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Go be Super Kimber.”
“You’ll get home okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” she insisted.
“‘Cause you’re listing pretty hard to the right,” her sister observed.
Remi did her best to straighten up and overcompensated, jostling the plate into her empty glass.
“I’ll make sure she gets home safe,” Brick promised.
“Thanks for taking up babysitting duty,” Kimber said.
Remi was too fuzzy-headed to be properly offended. “Do you know what that’s all about?” she asked Brick after the door closed behind her sister.
He shrugged and turned around to key something into the order screen.
“A fount of information as usual,” she complained, picking up the dredges of her pink flamingo and slurping at the ice.
He turned around and removed the glass from her hand. “Maybe you should have been paying closer attention to things at home.”
“Question. Does everyone on this island have a problem with me, or are you and my sister the only members of the Remi Sucks Club?”
Darius elbowed Brick out of the way.
“So, Ms. Artist. Catch me up. What are you painting? Studly nude gentlemen?” he demanded.
She knew he was redirecting her. But the nice man had given her such good alcohol. It couldn’t hurt to share just a little bit of the truth, could it?
“I’m painting music. Well, what I see when I hear music.”
“Girl! Good for you!”
“Really?” Brick’s mouth was still pursed in a frown, but his eyebrows showed his interest.
“I started to dabble with it in art school. Apparently there’s a market for what weird brains see.”
“What’s the coolest place a Remi Ford original hangs?” Darius demanded, leaning in to snatch a French fry off her plate.
“There’s one in the mayor’s house.”
“Chicago or Mackinac? Because one of those is much more impressive than the other,” he pointed out.
She grinned. “Chicago. The mayor saw it at a gallery and liked it.” Actually, the woman had “fallen in love with it,” according to the gallery curator. But repeating that just felt like bragging.
“I always knew little Remi Ford would be going places,” Darius said as he poured a pint of lager from the tap.
Brick disappeared without a word.
Without his disapproval hovering over her, she snuck a bite of burger. It was so good she ate an entire slider in four neat bites.
She did feel pleasantly woozy. Enough so that she’d forgotten about the envelope and the man who’d sent it. Crap. Now she was remembering it.
“What?” Brick demanded from across the bar.
She jumped, slapping a hand to her heart to make sure it restarted properly.
“Jeez. Warn a girl!”
“Why are you so jumpy? And what’s wrong with your face?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my face, ass!”
She could feel the breeze from his exhale across the bar.
“I meant, you made a face like you were upset,” he clarified. “Do you want something else to eat?”
She propped her elbows on the bar and put her face in her hands. “No. The sliders are great. And the broccoli is necessary. Thank you.”
“It concerns me when you’re agreeable.”
She dropped her hands. “Brick, I just need to escape for a little bit tonight. Okay? No questions. No worrying about consequences. I need out of my head.”
He gave her a long, charged look. “Fine. But you’ll eat. You’ll drink an entire glass of water between every drink. And you’ll let me walk you home.”
“And you won’t try to pry anything out of me?”
“I won’t try.”
“Promise?” she pressed.
“As long as you let me walk you home,” he agreed.
14
Remi Ford was shit-faced. She was one of those charming, adorable drunks who just got happier and more excited to talk to people until she fell asleep.
By Brick’s guesstimate, she was about ten minutes from falling facedown on the bar and snoring.
She didn’t notice when he took the half-empty glass out of her hand as she questioned the Ashburn twins about island gossip.
“I’m going to walk our little problem home,” he told Darius, nodding in Remi’s direction. She was so close to Walter Ashburn’s face, it looked like she was trying to breathe the same air.
“Sure you don’t mind?” his partner asked.
Brick shook his head. “She’s less of a pain in the ass when she’s drunk.”
Unlike Sober Remi, Drunk Remi let him take care of her. Besides, there was no way he was letting anyone else see her home. He didn’t trust anyone else to pour her into bed.
He ducked into the office to grab his gear. When he came back out, she had wandered over to a table of two couples on their monthly date night. Apparently they were discussing the craziest things they’d ever done and whether or not they’d do them again. A topic no doubt broached by Remi.
It was yet another thing he appreciated about her. She abhorred small talk. If she walked up to a stranger at a party, she was more likely to ask them about the complexities of their relationship with a parent or what had been the best thing to happen to them that week. They’d had a lot of those conversations in his first year or two on the island.
“Come on, Remi,” he said, steering her back to the bar. “Time to go.”
She leaned way back to look up at him and then grinned. “Hi, Brick,” she said in a singsong voice.
“Hi.”
“You’re so tall,” she said earnestly.
“You’re very observant,” he said dryly, stuffing her into her coat and zipping it up to her chin.
“It’s one of my favorite things about you. Do you want to know what the other ones are?” she asked.