Battleship (Movie Tie-in Edition) Read Online Free

you growth and success. May this be a great year for you.”
    They both downed the shots. It wasn’t the world’s greatest whiskey, or even the tenth greatest whiskey. But it still caused a pleasant heat as it went down, and Stone briefly allowed it to dull his brain and take some of the edge off his normally edgy personality. Then he saw that, once again, he might as well not have been there insofar as his brother was concerned. Hopper was watching the damned girl, who was still locked in battle with Akau. At least
she
was locked in battle. Akau was ignoring her, so it was more or less a one-way fight.
    “Don’t you dare,” said Stone, knowing what was going through his brother’s mind.
    “What?” Hopper gazed at him with that patented look of disingenuous innocence.
    Stone pointed at the candle, indicating the flickering flame. “You actually need some wishes to come true. Some
real
wishes, big life wishes.”
    “It’s my wish,” he said defensively.
    “Don’t you waste it.”
    Hopper was smiling at the girl. “My wish.”
    “Do not waste your wish on a girl,” Stone warned him. “Not now. Especially not on a girl who is way, way above your pay grade. Wish for a job. A family, children. A job.”
    “You already said a job.”
    Stone wasn’t going to be distracted from the central theme of his premise. “Don’t waste it.”
    Hopper blew out the candle, never once removing his gaze from the girl.
    His brother sighed heavily. “You wasted your wish, didn’t you.”
    “Let’s find out.”
    Hopper slid off his seat … and nearly kept going,heading to an inevitable date with the floor. As far as Stone was concerned, that would have been far preferable. Having Hopper sprawled unconscious on the floor was definitely a better outcome than the certain train wreck that was going to result from him hitting on the blonde.
    Unfortunately Hopper managed to catch himself at the last moment and keep his feet. Very carefully, he stood up to his full height and began to half saunter, half stagger toward the bar.
    Stop him. For God’s sake, stop him
. Stone began to rise from his seat and then, with a resigned sigh, sank back down. His brother was twenty-six (not, as rumored, twenty-five). Sooner or later, Stone had to stop working overtime to keep him out of trouble. Perhaps if Hopper got his nose good and bloodied, he might wind up listening to Stone instead of disregarding his counsel.
    Besides, he was sitting in a run-down bar at just past midnight. One had to find entertainment where one could.
    “Policy change,” said Akau in his same, flat, disinterested voice.
    “Policy?
Really?
” The calmer the bartender got, the more agitated she became. “A policy is something that you have on immigration, education, invading a country.”
    He was not remotely persuaded. “Policy change,” he repeated monotonously.
    Hopper had a self-image of being smooth and charming. The reality would not remotely have matched up with what was in his head, had he been able to see it. Fortunately for the tattered remains of his self-esteem, he couldn’t. He slid in next to the blonde and said, in his best imitation of the guy from
Friends
, “How
you
doing?”
    “Hungry. Starving.” She wasn’t addressing her commentsto him. Instead she was lobbing them like poison spears at the bartender. Akau continued not to react in the slightest.
    “I’ve got a cupcake. It’s my birthday cupcake.”
    She still wasn’t even deigning to look at him. Instead she closed her eyes in annoyance, as if wishing she could open them and find herself someplace else, where eats were plentiful and available in an inverse proportion to the availability of drunken idiots. “I don’t want a cupcake. I want food.”
    “Can I buy you a drink?”
    With a sigh she finally turned and looked at him with those gorgeous blue eyes that a man could just get lost in. She didn’t seem to be losing herself in his, however. Instead she looked vaguely bored.