For A Goode Time Call... Read online

  For A Goode Time Call...

  Jasinda Wilder

  Contents

  1. Ink

  2. Cassie

  3. Ink

  4. Cassie

  5. Ink

  6. Cassie

  7. Ink

  8. Cassie

  9. Ink

  10. Cassie

  11. Ink

  12. Cassie

  13. Ink

  14. Cassie

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon!

  Also by Jasinda Wilder

  Ink

  Such a tiny little thing, this girl. I could pick her up one-handed. Toss her over my shoulder and climb up a ladder and barely even feel her weight. If I was gonna put numbers to her, I’d say she stood no more than five-five, but likely that’s generous by a few inches. Weight? Ehh, I ain’t really the type to care or know much about such things, but put a gun to my head and tell me to guess and I’d peg her at about a hundred pounds. Course, I could be off a bit simply because she didn’t look frail or slight despite being so short—she looked tight. That’s the only word for it. Hard. Strong. She moved, despite the limp, as if she is a powerhouse…smooth, lithe, strong.

  Hard to tell much about her build beyond her obvious height and leanness—she was wearing a baggy hooded sweatshirt that hung past her booty and it hid her whole torso. She was wearing those black leggings girls like so much these days, and damn me if I didn’t find myself wishing that sweatshirt was a little shorter, because I had a feeling she was hiding a mighty fine backside under it.

  But I shook off those thoughts like a dog shaking its fur dry. Every instinct I had told me loud and clear that this girl was in need of a friend, not someone hitting on her and staring at her body.

  I’d been ambling down the docks, watching the waters of the Ketchikan channel chuck against the pylons, thinking about my next piece—a spray of butterflies turning into sparrows flying up a woman’s ribcage to cover a mastectomy scar. Lost in thought, working out details mentally, preparing for the first session, outlining, which would begin after my lunch. For which I was headed to my cousin Juneau’s boyfriend’s cousins’ bar—Badd’s Bar and Grille. Sounds like a more complicated relationship than it is. I’m pretty good friends with all the Badds, and I frequently took my lunch break at the bar. Today, I had been angling away from the channel, about to head for the opposite side of the street and the bar when I noticed a girl. Young, beautiful. About my age, short, with long platinum blonde hair—and she was powerwalking as if she was raging about something in her head.

  None of my never mind, right? Just keep walking, leave her to her mental rant.

  Course, it became my business when I realized she was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t seem to realize the street she was walking down was about to come to an end—in the frigid waters of the Ketchikan channel. Which, even in summer, were cold enough to be life-threatening if you were in it for too long. And she was seconds from taking a very unexpected dip.

  I had hesitated another moment, hoping she’d glance up, but her gaze was on her feet, hands shoved into the pocket of her sweatshirt. Stomping angrily right for the water.

  Nope, she wasn’t stopping.

  Crap.

  I had darted forward, lunged, and caught her by the sweatshirt literally as she was falling forward into the water. Held her nearly horizontal, feet planted partially on the edge of the pier. Solidified my grip and my balance, and then I’d hauled her up. Turned her around, setting her firmly on her feet.

  And had caught my first glimpse at the most fiery, expressive hazel eyes I’d ever seen in my damned life.

  I hadn’t gotten much of a story out of her, only that she’d undergone a recent and life-changing trauma of some kind—a car accident, maybe? Something. And she was struggling with it. So, I’d suggested Badd’s, and she’d agreed, saying she needed to get blackout drunk, and comfort food. So, here we were, heading for Badd’s, and I was setting myself up to babysit a five-foot-nothing angry blonde beautiful girl I’d only just met moments ago, and I was wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

  I wouldn’t say I’d saved her life, really, but had definitely saved her from a nasty spill in the channel. I should’ve been done with her after yanking her back from the channel. So why was I inviting myself into her life? Into being her blackout drunk babysitter?

  Something.

  Something about her. Not sure what, but I just knew I couldn’t walk away yet. If I didn’t watch over her, if nothing else, I knew no one else would. I mean, the Badd clan would make sure nothing horrible happened to her, but some gut reaction was screaming that this girl just needed a friend, and that I was it.

  I wanted to be it.

  Why, I wasn’t sure, and didn’t care to think too closely about. But I did, so here we were, together.

  We reached the front entrance of Badd’s Bar and Grille, and I reached past her to yank open the heavy wooden door. She eyed me like I’d shot her cat.

  I frowned down at her as she sidled inside, letting her eyes adjust to the dim lighting within. “The hell was that look for?”

  She scanned the interior of the bar which was mostly wood—worn, squeaky, weathered wood planks on the floor, heavy tables and chairs, and a long wooden bar running the length of the building on the right side, the top of it polished to a shine despite the pits and scars and grooves. TVs played SportsCenter highlight reels, old football games, and talking head type shows. The house speakers played Delta Blues—Muddy Waters by the sound of it.

  I saw Bast behind the bar pulling a beer, and Kitty at a table taking an order from a foursome of biker types. At six feet four, Bast was tall, only three inches shy of my own height, with arms covered in tattoos, wearing a plain white T-shirt stretched around a physique most athletes ten years his junior would be envious of. His brown hair was longish and left messy over his dark eyes, and he had the beginning of a beard—new for him who tended to cultivate a heavy stubble most of the time.

  Kitty was on the taller end for a girl, brunette, a beautiful smile that lit up her face, dressed in blue jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt embroidered with “Badd’s Bar & Grille.”

  The bar was fairly busy for this time in the morning, albeit most of the clientele was here for an early lunch rather than anything like real drinking.

  “Which one is your cousin?” she asked.

  I pointed at Bast. “Cousin-in-law, not cousin.” I grunted noncommittally. “Well, sort of cousin-in-law. My cousin is serious with his cousin.”

  She blinked up at me. “Wait, what?”

  I chuckled. “Confusing, I guess. I got a cousin, Juneau. She’s dating a guy named Remington Badd, who is the cousin of the guy with the tats behind the bar.” I pointed at Kitty. “And she’s dating my cousin’s boyfriend’s identical triplet brother.”

  She blinked at me again. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” She indicated Kitty. “That’s Kitty, girlfriend of Roman Badd, son of Lucas Badd?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Why, you know ’em?”

  She tipped her head side to side. “I know Lucas. My mom is dating him.”

  “Ahh, now it all comes together,” I said. "So, your mom is dating my cousin’s boyfriend’s dad.”

  She laughed, an unexpectedly beautiful sound, light and merry and energetic, like a small handbell. “Does that make us related?”

  I hummed. “No…I don’t believe so, no. Not even by law, since they ain’t married.” I laughed again. “Well, they might be. None of these folk make too big a deal about the difference between being legally married and married in all but the legal sense.”

  “So, you don’t know.” She rolled her eyes. “Good to know.”

  I waved a ha
nd. “Don’t much matter to me, and it ain’t my business. They love each other, they’re happy, and that’s all that really matters.” I pressed my hand as gently as I knew how against the small of her back. “Come on. Bast may look like a scary-ass mo-fo, but he’s nice as anything.”

  She arched her back just slightly; enough to relate to me the fact that she didn’t want me touching her. So, I withdrew my hand and headed for the bar. We took seats near the service bar, where close friends and family tended to hang out.

  Bast saw me, dropped off the four beers he’d pulled on the service bar, and extended a closed fist to me. “Ink, how’s it goin’, big guy?”

  I tapped his fist with mine. “All right. You?”

  Bast nodded. “Can’t complain. Wife is down on the mainland with her dad for the weekend, so I’m batchin’ it.” He glanced at my companion. “You resemble someone I know. Related to Liv Goode, by any chance?”

  She nodded. “She’s my mom.”

  Bast took a thick stack of cocktail napkins, laid the stack flat on his open palm, and twisted his knuckles into them to spin them into a fan. “You could be her, except for the blonde hair.” He stuck out his hand. “You can call me Bast.”

  “I’m Cassie,” she said. “And the resemblance is in the eyes and the jawline.”

  Bast just nodded, and eyed us, one and then the other. “Well, pleased to meet you. What can I get you?”

  I looked to Cassie, who eyed the line of tap handles. “A light beer,” she said. “Light, but good.”

  Bast nodded, glanced at me. “For you, Ink?”

  I shrugged—I wasn’t much of drinker, but the situation seemed to call for a beer or two. “Surprise me, long as it ain’t that black shit you could stand a fork up in.”

  Bast laughed. “Guinness is amazing. You just gotta drink a whole pint to really get the flavor.”

  Within a minute, we both had pints of beer in front of us, and Cassie was eying the single-page laminated menu. “I’ll have…the entire appetizer section.”

  Bast blinked. “Really?” When Cassie just stared at him silently, Bast shrugged. “Okay.” A glance at me. “The usual?”

  I nodded. “Sounds good. Thanks.”

  A few moments of silence ensued as Bast left to ring in our orders, during which time Cassie focused entirely on her beer, ignoring me completely.

  “You’re judging me,” she finally said, without looking at me.

  I sipped my beer—Bast had brought me something red and malty and rich. “Nope.”

  “I just ordered the entire appetizer section.”

  I took another sip, and then wiped the foam off my mustache with the back of my hand. “Must be hungry, is all.”

  She eyed me, then. Her eyes were hazel—put gray, brown, and green on a Venn diagram and her eye color would be where the circles met. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m just hungry.” She tossed back her beer, finishing the pint in a startlingly short time.

  I laughed. “If I was gonna judge you, it’d be for how fast you just downed that beer. But, you did tell me at the outset that you plan on getting blackout.” I figured I’d help her out, finishing mine just as fast. “There. Now we’re even.”

  She just fixed those hazel eyes on me with unwavering intensity. “You don’t have to keep up, you know. Or babysit me. I can hold my own.”

  I swirled the last bit of red beer and creamy foam around the bottom of the glass. “Cassie, darlin’, look at me. I can drink an almighty, unholy amount of liquor. Between my size and a freak accident of genetics, it’s damned near impossible for me to drink enough to get more’n nicely buzzed.”

  “You are a freak accident of genetics,” she muttered.

  I nodded. “True enough. But my tolerance is bananas, even for a guy my size.”

  “What’s that look like? How much would you have to drink to get blackout?”

  I bobbed my head to one side, running my fingers down through my beard. “This one time, me, Fox, Andrew, and Royal were out in the deep bush, hunting moose.”

  “Clearly I know none of these people, but no matter. Carry on.”

  “Just friends of mine. Fox is the only one you may ever see in town, though. Andrew and Royal stay as far from cities as they can get. Anyway. We were way the hell out there, couple days’ hike from where we’d left Royal’s floatplane, which was the only way you could even get close to where we were. Far as fuck from any damned thing. Course, Andrew bein’ Andrew, had packed a whole damn crate of booze with him. We’d hike out from the plane, which we were using as our base camp. We’d hunt and hike and camp, come back to base camp to resupply, drop off our kills, and then head back out.”

  “How many moose did you kill?”

  I laughed. “Well, you go out for moose, come back with deer, rabbits, turkeys, grouse, whatever.”

  “Isn’t there some sort of law about what you can hunt and when?” Cassie asked. “I mean, I know literally nothing about hunting, but I just have that impression.”

  “We’re all indigenous, and Fox, Royal and Andrew all have subsistence hunting licenses.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Well, you gotta know what subsistence means, yeah?”

  Cassie nodded. “Sure.”

  “There’s still rules and regulations to it, but basically it exempts us from those wider regulations about hunting, provided we are only hunting to provide for our families, which this was, by the way.”

  “Hunting for survival, rather than mere sport.”

  “Yep. Fox is a trapper by trade, and Andrew and Royal both hunt as their primary means of providing food for their wives and kids. I was just along for fun, although I do keep my license up to date.”

  “When does this answer my question about you drinking?”

  Bast came by and refilled our beers.

  “Gettin’ there,” I said. “We’d been out there for about a week by this time, and we’d only indulged a little bit around the fire, but I’d heard a telltale clinking and rattling coming from Andrew’s bags, and I knew he was packing something with him, just biding his time to break it out.”

  I paused to remember.

  “Well, one night, we’d gone the whole damn day without seein’ a single animal worth shooting, and we was all frustrated. So Andrew says, ‘boys, I think it’s time we test the upper limits of Ink’s tolerance for booze.’”

  Cassie grinned. “Oh boy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Especially if you take into consideration that Andrew is famous, or maybe it’s better said he’s infamous—for his moonshine.”

  “Homemade moonshine?”

  I nodded. “Ohhh yeah. The most potent white lightning you’ll ever taste. It’ll sear the taste buds right off your tongue. I’ve seen grown men, hard-drinking boozers at that, get hammered off a handful of shots of Andrew’s shine.” I sighed. “Now, don’t go repeating this, since it ain’t exactly a legal operation, mind you.”

  “Can’t moonshine make you go blind?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, if you’re an asshole or an idiot. Andrew is neither—his shine is on par with some of the best in the country. It’s a real operation, with real equipment…it just ain’t legal, as he don’t have a proper permit. Point being, his hooch is powerful.”

  “How much did you drink?”

  I shrugged. “Lost track after about an hour. I wasn’t trying to chug it, as I ain’t interested in dying. All I remember is Andrew would refill my cup whenever it emptied. I know I saw him uncork a new bottle more than once, but they was all drinkin’ too. When I came to, there was three empty bottles, and Andrew, Fox, and Royal stayed passed out for a whole day. We were all sick as hell for three days. Wonder of it was that none of us were the worse for wear, but I know after that, Andrew never bugged me about drinking again. Said what he saw me do that night, in terms of the amount I drank, was just purely terrifying to behold.” I shook my head. “Don’t remember much, but when I woke up, my whole body hurt worse than the time I got hit by
a truck. None of my buddies would tell me what I done, but there was a whole hell of a lotta broken shit at the camp, so I figure…well, I figure it wasn’t pretty.”

  Cassie frowned up at me. “That’s crazy. Charlie and I did a moonshine tasting during a vacation to Tennessee, and it only took us a little bit to get crazy drunk.”

  “Who’s Charlie?” I asked.

  “My older sister,” Cassie said. “Real name is Charlotte but, like me not wanting to be called Cassandra, you just don’t do it. I don’t think even Mom has called Charlie Charlotte except maybe once or twice in the last…shoot, ten years? I think the last time Mom called her Charlotte was when she was sixteen and I was fourteen. We were out with some of Charlie’s friends, one of whom had a license and a car.”

  “Oh boy, that spells trouble,” I said.

  She laughed, nodding. “No kidding. So I talked Charlie into letting me tag along with her and her friends. Six of us, I think? Wasn’t even supposed to be more than one person in the car with the driver in the first place, but there we were, all six of us. Eleven at night, all of us out past our curfews. And our one friend says ‘hey, I know where my dad keeps his liquor. Wanna try some?’”

  I chuckled. “Ohhh dear.”

  “Oh dear is right. None of us had a clue about alcohol. All we knew was it was forbidden and illegal, and therefore exciting. So we snuck into Katie’s house, into her basement, and we started taking swigs right from the bottle.”

  I eyed her. “Swigs of what?”

  “We didn’t know. An old dusty bottle is all we knew. Figured, if it was old and dusty, it must mean her dad didn’t like it, so he wouldn’t notice any missing.”

  I palmed my forehead. “Oh shit. It was something rare, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Rare, meaning a bottle of hundred-year-old scotch worth hundreds if not thousands of dollars, handed down to him by his grandfather.”