“I thought I’d come here and see if you wanted to throw darts at my balls instead,” Connor said, tipping his beer bottle back and taking a long drink.

“If I were drinking, I would absolutely take you up on that,” Jack said.

“Remember the time we were hanging out at the house,” Connor asked, “and we thought we’d play darts? But there was nothing to hang the board we found...and you, you put the board in your lap? And told me to hit the bull’s-eye?”

“I still have a scar on my thigh,” Jack said. “So yeah, I remember.”

“We did really dumb stuff.”

“You two did dumb stuff,” Eli corrected. “I mainly watched.”

And told no one because there was no one who would have cared. Jack’s mom was too exhausted from work to look his direction more than once a week, and the Garrett patriarch was usually passed out in his own vomit by 6:00 p.m.

They used to joke that if their parents got married they could be the world’s most fucked-up version of the Brady Bunch.

That hadn’t happened, because their individual parents had been too busy wallowing in their problems, but Jack basically lived at their house anyway, simply by virtue of the fact that it was bigger and there were more places to find trouble.

Jack liked trouble, and trouble liked him. Typically, female trouble.

He had no issue shitting where he lived, so to speak.

“We were badass,” Connor said, a wistful look on his face. He took another sip of beer. “And you,” he said, pointing at Eli, “were not blameless. You’re the one who thought to build a ramp that went off the hayloft. And ride your bike down it.”

“Ah...how did we not die?” Eli asked.

“Hell if I know,” Connor said, tapping the side of his beer bottle. “But then, I’m sort of mystified by how those decisions are made.” And just like that, the brief light on his face dimmed again.

Dammit. It was way too easy to say the wrong thing when someone had a ghost following them around.

“We all are,” Jack said, slapping Connor twice on the back. “And when we’re too mystified, we drink and talk crap at the bar.”

“Damn straight,” Eli agreed, knocking back another drink.

“With friends like you guys...I’ll have a hangover in the morning,” Connor said, making a weak attempt at a smile.

“You could have been painting Liss’s toenails. You’re paying for your own awesome choices,” Jack told him.

“And you could have had beer,” Connor said. “But you drew the short straw.”

“It’s a stupid tradition. We should just take turns.”

“And you’d bail every time it was your turn,” Eli said.

Jack smiled and shrugged in the boyish manner that got him out of situations that would have seen lesser men castrated. “Probably.”

“And that’s why we draw straws. Because one out of three men at this table is a piss-poor friend,” Connor said.

“Guilty.” Jack looked over Connor’s shoulder and frowned. “Isn’t that your hot new tenant?”

“What?” Connor asked, turning around completely unsubtly. The motion would have made a bull look graceful.

Eli looked up and saw that it was definitely Sadie, blonde, petite and, yeah, very hot, walking into the room and over to the bar. She leaned in, and he couldn’t help but look, really look, at the way her jeans fit her rather fantastic ass.

“She really is hot,” Jack said, his eyes getting that keen, focused look that he got when he was on the hunt.

“Not in this lifetime, Monaghan,” Eli said, the words coming out a whole lot more threatening than he’d intended them to.

Jack sat back, dark brows shooting up. “Oh, really?”

“Damn straight,” Eli said, hooking his hand around his beer and tugging it back, holding it against his chest.

“You’re not for real,” Jack said. “Sleeping with a woman who lives on your property is almost the same as marriage.”

Marriage. That was the last thing he wanted. A little sex on the other hand...

Heat streaked through Eli’s gut. He hated that his desire was that transparent, especially when he was still trying to pretend that he wasn’t attracted to her at all.

He looked over at Sadie again. “I wasn’t even thinking of it.”

“Liar.”

Connor was noticeably silent during the exchange. Eli managed to tear his eyes away from the view to look at his brother.

Connor looked up, his expression hostile. “What?”

Jack looked at him, too. “You’re not commenting.”

“Didn’t notice she was hot,” Connor said. “I was thinking about it, trying to decide if she was or not. Then I realized my dick is fucking broken.”

Hell, maybe Eli’s was, too. Because this was a total departure from his usual rules. He hadn’t fully realized it until Sadie had pointed out the sheer volume of sexual innuendo he missed on a daily basis when he was with her, but his normal course of action was to just shut his libido down until he was ready to do something about it.

He had great luck with women—when he was pursuing one. Otherwise...otherwise he lived his life with blinders on. And it wasn’t by accident.

He kept his life classified in very careful segments. And maybe the problem now was he’d left one segment neglected for too long. And now things were...intertwining that definitely shouldn’t be intertwining.

And beyond the intersection of his personal life and his love life, the fact that it was Sadie whom he wanted when she was the most infuriating, irritating woman...well, that just proved that his dry spell had reached Saharan proportions.

“She is hot,” Jack said. “But I have a feeling Eli is marking his territory.”

“I am not,” he said.

“You don’t like her,” Connor pointed out. “She’s a criminal. You arrested her.”

“She’s not a criminal,” Eli said, gritting his teeth. “And it was ten years ago.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Marking his territory.”

“Don’t say it like that. She’s a woman, not territory. And she’s definitely not mine. You sound like a jerk.”