Page 40 of Fake Dark Vows

I stare at the walls inside the pub covered in dollar bills, and all I can think is that I haven’t thought about Kelly since we left Ruby Island this morning. That’s a first.

“Hi.” Rose takes control, approaching the bartender with her easy smile. “I guess you get a lot of folks come in here to take selfies, but we’re on a family treasure hunt, and one of our challenges is to take a selfie and guess the total amount of money pinned to the walls.”

“Sounds like fun.” The bartender’s gaze drifts to me and Georgie while he polishes a glass with a towel. “What can I get you guys to drink? On the house if it’ll help you win.”

Rose’s face beams up at him, and I can’t help wondering how it would feel to be on the receiving end of that smile. Then the image distorts into one of Rose and Damon. They’re lying on a beach, their skin slick with coconut oil and sprinkled with sand, and Damon rolls over, pinning Rose underneath him.

My fists clench and unclench. Rose turns to look at me in slow motion, the smile fading as it always does when she’s trying to preempt my next asshole comment.

“That’s very kind of you,” Rose says. “Thank you. We’ll take two sodas and a fruit juice for Georgie, outside if that’s okay?”

“Sure thing.”

I need to clear the images from my head. Need to get my brain back into gear, finish the challenges, and head back to Ruby Island, shower, and drown them in my father’s best whiskey.

“Do you know how much money is on the walls?” I ask.

Rose’s eyes narrow, and she appears to visibly shrink away from me like a dog sensing danger. For some reason, this makes me even angrier than the vision of my brother mauling her to prove a point and win a few bucks.

“We have a rough guesstimate.” The bartender—whose name badge says STEVE—pours two sodas at once, as comfortable in his role behind the bar as I am following the NYSE.

“Will you tell us what it is?” I ask.

“Brandon!” Rose sucks in a deep breath and shakes her head at the bartender. “Don’t tell him. It’s cheating.”

Steve grins at her and runs a finger across his mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

“Even for fifty bucks?” I wave my credit card at him across the bar.

“More than my life is worth.” Steve winks at Rose, then directs his question to me. “Want to take a punt?”

I turn away from the bar, sensing their eyes on me, and focus on the dollar bills covering every inch of the walls. The logical way to work it out would be to take a square foot, count the number of bills in that section and multiply it by the size of the room. But some parts of the walls have bills triple-stacked, while others have not so many.

I’m not accustomed to guesswork, but it’s the lesser of two evils. Pluck a figure out of the sky or waste time trying to count them. Steve said that they only have a rough estimate, so I can round it up to the nearest thousand, or potentially the nearest five thousand.

“A hundred grand,” I say. It sounds like the kind of figure that would look good on their website.

Steve’s expression is giving nothing away. “How about you?” he says to Rose. “Any guesses?”

“Hmm.” Rose taps her lips with her index finger and turns three-sixty slowly, as if she has her own personal guaranteed method of calculating the correct answer. “I think it’s lower. I’m going to say, eighty-five thousand.”

“So, what do you guys win if you get it right?” Steve asks, leaning over the bar to hand Georgie a fruit juice.

“No one knows yet,” Rose says.

Steve winks at her again, deliberately, even though he knows I’m watching. “What about between the two of you? You got a private bet going on?”

Rose watches me with a lopsided smile. “I don’t know. Do we?”

“I’m not a betting man.” So, why did I allow Damon to up the stakes on his silly little game?

“Maybe now is the time to start.” Steve moves along the bar to serve another customer, and we take our drinks outside.

“Thanks, Steve!” Rose calls out, raising her glass to him.

We sit under a large, faded umbrella overlooking the ocean and check out the food menu. It’s regular diner food: burgers, grilled chicken, pizza. We order a couple of burgers and a kids’ meal for Georgie, and Rose sits back in her seat as if this is where she belongs.

“Why did you leave us on Sombrero Beach?” she asks.