The Bartender's Daughter Read Online Free Page A

there for long. Straightening, Sam pushed away from his warmth to look into his eyes. This close to him, she could see the specks of dark blue in the light blue depths. “What do we do now?”
    “ I don’t know.”
    ****
    He kept one arm resting on Sam’s shoulders. So many confusing thoughts rushed around him. Sam had left because she thought he’d betrayed her with Michelle. Disbelief and anger warred inside him. He thought back to those days and only remembered being deliriously happy. It had never occurred to him that Sam was suspicious of his background or his secrecy.
    “ Why didn’t you talk to me? I still don’t understand.”
    She pushed out of his arms. “You don’t remember. Whenever I asked you about your family, you told me that you didn’t want to talk about them. All that mattered was us. I knew you had joined the Marines and came out when you injured your knee. That’s it. Except for those few pieces of information, for all I knew, you didn’t exist until you came into my dad’s bar, asking for a job. Michelle filled in the blanks.”
    “ Oh and you were completely open. I didn’t see you jumping up and down to tell your dad that we were married.”
    “ I was looking for the right time to tell him I dropped out of the MBA program. It was your idea to tell him everything in stages. My dad didn’t want me to waste my time on a bartender. Imagine if he thought I quit the program for you.” Again her head dropped down between her knees. This time when she picked it up, there were no tears in her eyes. There was no hope either. “This is a wasted argument. We just have to move on.”
    “ It’s not that easy, Sam.”
    “ Yes, it is. We just go back to the way things were before my dad died.”
    His body tensed. He wasn ’t sure what they were going to do, but there was no way he’d go back to the purgatory of these last two years. He’d spent the first few days after Sam’s desertion wondering what the hell he’d done wrong. Then hate had slowly set in. She was like every other person he had been surrounded with. Michelle’s stories had cemented his belief that Sam had left him for all that Dylan St. James could offer.
    The biggest joke of all was that his family had more money than the St. James family could ever dream of.
    Sam pushed to her feet and walked to the edge of the bay, the lapping of the water just reaching the toes of her sandals. “What are you going to do with the bar?”
    The bar. She still thought he was the owner. He stood and followed her. He stood just close enough to catch the light smell of her sweet body lotion.
    “That’s up to you.” He stuck his hands in his pockets now. Whatever plans he had made before Ray died were shot to hell unless he could persuade Sam otherwise.
    She whirled around. “What do I have to do with it?”
    “ A few months ago, Ray came to me with a proposition. I think he already knew that his time was limited, and he wanted to make sure his affairs were in order. I suspected something wasn’t right but he seemed healthy. I should have pushed, but I didn’t.” He was too preoccupied wondering if Ray had found out about his relationship with Sam to worry that Ray had his own reasons for the business arrangement.
    “ He came up with two scenarios, two scenarios that very much have to do with you and your wishes. In the will, he gives you fifty-one percent ownership in the bar.”
    “ The bar is mine?”
    Their gazes locked. The way she handled this determined their future in ways he wasn ’t sure he felt comfortable with. “Yes and no. You own controlling interest. The rest belongs to me.” He raised his hands, palms out at the suspicion in her eyes. “I bought it at fair market value.”
    “ What about my sister? Do I share that fifty-one percent with her?”
    “ No. Your father left her the money from the sale of my half.”
    “ What did you mean about there being two scenarios?”
    “ You can continue to own the bar and