That Thing Called Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

her agreeing to it. And given her opinion of him, that was one big-ass if.
    Suddenly recalling the Anchor, he headed for the narrow walkway that was cut between the General Store and Swanson’s Ice Cream Shack. The pedestrian shortcut led to Eagle Road, which paralleled the long curve of Harbor Street and comprised the rest of the town’s business district, and to the parking lot behind that. As Razor Bay’s sole bar, if you didn’t count the one off the lobby at The Brothers—which tonight he definitely did not—The Anchor was one place still bound to be open.
    He spotted the white-framed mosaic sign he remembered the instant he cleared the tiled walkway connecting the two streets. It spelled out the bar’s name in sea-hued bits of tile on the bump-out over the marine-blue building’s three front windows. The same twin neon anchors from his youth flashed yellow and blue on either end of the sign, and what he’d swear were the same neon beer signs dotted the windows.
    He felt an edge of anticipation and had to admit he was curious. He’d left town before he was old enough to be allowed in the bar. Back in the day, he’d tried to lay hands on some fake ID with the thought of going there, but it hadn’t panned out.
    He snorted. Hell, even if he’d scored the best fake identification ever produced, it wasn’t as if there’d been a hope in hell he’d have gotten away with using it. Not in the Anchor. In a town this size, everyone pretty much knew who everyone else was.
    Pulling open the door, he walked in.
    Dimly lit, the interior sported dark wood-plank floors scuffed from years of foot traffic, and matching, if less beat-up, walls covered in black-framed photos that appeared to be black-and-white shots of midcentury Razor Bay. He wouldn’t mind taking a closer look at those.
    A long bar with tall stools took up most of the back wall, and the two blackboards behind it, whose chalk menus were highlighted by art lights, showed a surprising selection of microbrewery beers and ales. A jukebox, pinball machine and a couple of dartboards took up a small slice of real estate down at the end of the front wall to his right. Tables and chairs took up the rest of the floor, and a few small booths occupied the wall opposite the gaming section.
    He didn’t know what he’d expected, but this was a bar pretty much like you’d find anywhere, if a touch more hip than he’d anticipated. But at least he could kill a little time here with a beer and those photos.
    “Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in,” a deep voice drawled from one of the booths.
    Jake froze midstride, and for a single hot second he was a fourth-grade boy again, forgetting for a moment that his dad had walked out on him and his mom, because he was finally on the much-coveted big kids’ fourth-to-sixth-grade upper playground at Chief Sealth Elementary. He’d had one perfect moment—until a boy two grades older came up to him, gave him a shove that almost knocked him off his feet and said, “Heard you got what you deserved. If your tramp of a mama hadn’t got herself knocked up, my dad would still be with me and my mom.”
    It had been a shock on every level because how many darn families did his until-recently-adored father have? And Jake sure hadn’t started the new school year expecting to be pushed around by his previously unknown half brother. A brother, he’d learned over a course of several school-yard confrontations, whom their mutual father, Charlie Bradshaw, had totally ignored even when they’d lived in the same town—the way Charlie ignored him now that he’d moved on to a new family.
    But the little flash down memory lane was just that—there one second and gone the next. Shaking off the mix of confusion and rage that dealings with Max Bradshaw had always given him, he strolled over. “Well, hey, big brother,” he drawled right back. “Long time, no see. I hear somebody thought it was a good idea to give you a gun. Tell