The Cornerstone Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t free to collect intel.
    Shannon smiled, and for the first time, it was authentic. “Because they have crazy, filthy love for each other.” She wandered behind the bar and inspected every bottle in stock before selecting a Sam Adams. She leaned against the counter, staring at me while she sipped.
    Okay, so maybe she wasn’t too much of a socialite for beer.
    “Really? Do you even like beer?” I shook my head as she drained the bottle and reached for another. “And whatever happened to your blessed IPAs? You should know Barry’s off crying in a corner somewhere.”
    She held the bottle in front of her face and studied the label. “I’ll leave him a generous tip. Nothing a few months of psychotherapy won’t solve.” I couldn’t repress the surprised laughter that bubbled up from my chest. “Now explain to me why you have a problem with Matt.”
    “I don’t trust him,” I said. “It’s really fucking simple.”
    “Do you trust Lauren?”
    “Of course,” I said, reaching for my beard and once again finding it missing. “Without a doubt.”
    “Obviously not,” Shannon laughed. She tugged her sweater’s sleeves down from where they’d been bunched at her elbows, and now they hung over her fingers. There was absolutely no reason why I’d find that sexy, but…post-deployment horny. That’s all it was. “If you trusted her judgment, you’d also trust her choice of husband.”
    I leaned back against the counter, mirroring her stance. My goal was keeping my eyes on her face and away from her legs and fingers, but then I noticed the way her sweater was always sliding off one shoulder. That shoulder…I couldn’t stop staring at it. “I don’t trust any guy with my sister.”
    She tossed the empty bottle into the trash and went for another. “You’re a misogynistic meathead,” she said.
    “If you want to hit me with meathead, I’ll own that, but I’m not taking misogynistic. I can respect, admire, and champion the fuck out of women, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also protect my sister. That doesn’t mean I can’t make it clear he’ll have to deal with me if she’s ever harmed in any way.”
    “That was a lot of words for you all at once. I’m kind of impressed.” Shannon ran a hand through her hair, and I noticed we were completely alone. “Let me tell you something about Lauren: she is a badass chick. You want to talk about torture? She put Matt through all kinds of hell.”
    “Good,” I said. “It builds character. And he probably deserved it.”
    “While your last point is most likely accurate,” Shannon said, “you need to lighten up, commando. Not all womenfolk need looking after.”
    “Someone should be looking after you,” I murmured before draining my beer. Too often, the world wasn’t very nice to females, and yeah, we needed to deal with that shit straightaway. But no one was going to tell me to stop standing up for the women in my life.
    “Erroneous.” Her lips curled into a smile that walked the line between playful and demonic, and she shook her head. “If anything, I’m the one who does the looking-after around here.”
    “In other words, your brothers are lazy sacks of shit,” I said, and I knew there was a reason I didn’t like those guys.
    Her pale brows drew together in a vicious scowl, and I recognized I was wrong about Shannon. She wasn’t a socialite, not at all. She was a fighter, and a scrappy one at that.
    “In other words,” she said, “I run this town and I don’t need any help doing it.”
    She shrugged and now that shoulder was all the way exposed. A wild splash of freckles ran across her skin, and I was too tired, too fed up with this conversation, too tightly wound to do anything but imagine tasting her right there. I pushed off from the counter and stared out at the sea, all while searching for enough discipline to make it back to my room without doing something unbelievably stupid.
    But instead of leaving the bar right then, I