Christmas In Snowflake Canyon. RaeAnne Thayne

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СКАЧАТЬ pass. Now.” Larry the Jerk reached for Genevieve’s arm to yank her away from the jukebox. At the sight of that big hand on her white sweater, Dylan rose, his barstool squeaking as he shoved it back.

      “Sit down, Caine,” Pat urged, a pleading note in his voice. Dylan ignored him, adrenaline pumping through him like pure scotch whiskey. He didn’t necessarily like Genevieve Beaumont, but he hated bullies more.

      And she did have a nice ass.

      “You’re going to want to back down now,” he said, in his hardest former-army-ranger voice.

      The guy didn’t release Genevieve’s arm as he looked Dylan up and down, black eye patch and all. “Aye, matey. Or what? You’ll sic your parrot on me?”

      Dylan was vaguely aware of an audible hiss around him from locals who knew him.

      “Something like that,” he answered calmly.

      He reached out and even with only one hand he was able to deftly extricate Genevieve’s arm from the man’s hold and twist his fingers back.

      “Thank you,” she answered in surprise, straightening her sweater.

      “You’re welcome.” He released the man’s hand. “I suggest we all go back to our drinks now.”

      “I’m calling the police,” the woman blustered. “You’re crazy. Both of you.”

      “Oh, shut up,” Genevieve snapped.

      “You shut up. You’re both going to face assault charges.”

      “I might not be a lawyer but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t assault,” Genevieve responded sharply. “This is.”

      Dylan hissed in a breath when Genevieve drew back a fist and smacked the woman dead center in her face.

      Blood immediately spurted from the woman’s nose, and she jerked her hands up, shrieking. “I think you just broke my nose!”

      The contact of flesh on flesh seemed to shock Genevieve back to some semblance of sobriety. She blinked at the pair of them. “Wow. I had no idea I could do that. I guess all those years of Pilates weren’t completely wasted.”

      The words were barely out of her mouth when the woman dropped her hands from her nose and lunged at her, and suddenly the two of them were seriously going at it, kicking, punching, pulling hair.

      Why did they always have to pull hair?

      Dylan, with only one arm and skewed vision, was at a disadvantage as he reached into the squirming, tangled pair of women to try breaking things up. Larry, without a similar limitation, reached in from the other side but the women jostled into him and he stumbled backward, crashing into a big, tough-looking dude who fell to the floor and came up swinging.

      Everybody’s nerves were apparently on edge tonight, what with dysfunctional family dinners, early-morning shopping misery, puking-sick musicians. Before he knew it, the guy’s friends had entered into the fray and what started as a minor altercation over Christmas carols erupted into a full-fledged, down-and-dirty bar fight involving tourists and locals alike.

      Dylan did his best to hold his own but it was harder than he expected, much to his frustration.

      At one point, he found himself on the ground, just a few feet from the conveniently located jukebox power cord. He did everybody a favor and yanked it out before leaping to his feet again, just in time to see his brother wading into the middle of the fray, along with Pat and the three-hundred-fifty-pound Speckled Lizard cook, Frankie Beltran, wielding a frying pan over her head.

      “I can’t leave you alone for a minute.” Jamie grabbed him by the shirt and threw him away from the fight that was already abating.

      His own adrenaline surge had spiked, apparently, leaving him achy and a little nauseous from the residual pain. He wiped at his mouth where one of the tourists—a big dude with dreads and a couple of tattoos—had thrown a punch that landed hard.

      There was another new discovery that sucked. A guy had a tough time blocking with his left when he didn’t have one.

      “If you’d been here on time, you could have joined in,” he answered.

      “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, hitting a wounded war hero!” The woman who had started the whole thing had apparently turned her ire to the tourist who had punched him. Even though Pat tried to restrain Genevieve, she leveraged her weight back against the bartender to kick out at the dreadlocked snowboarder.

      He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about Genevieve Beaumont trying to protect him.

      “How the hell was I supposed to know he was a wounded hero?” the snowboarder complained. “All I saw was some asshole throwing punches at my friends.”

      A commotion by the door to the tavern announced the arrival of two of Hope’s Crossing’s finest. The crowd parted for the uniformed officers, and Dylan’s already-queasy stomach took another turn.

      Two people he did not need to see. Oh, this wasn’t going to end well.

      He had dated Officer Rachel Olivarez in high school a few times. If he remembered the details correctly, he’d broken up with her to date her sister. Not one of his finer moments.

      If that wasn’t enough, her partner, Pete Redmond, had lost his girlfriend to Dylan’s older brother Drew. He doubted either one of them had a soft spot for the Caines.

      He should have remembered that particular joy of small-town life before he moved back. Everywhere a guy turned, he stumbled over hot, steaming piles of history.

      Rachel spoke first. “What’s our problem here, folks?”

      “Just a little misunderstanding.” Jamie gave his most charming smile, still holding tight to Dylan. Predictably, like anything without a Y chromosome, her lips parted and she seemed to melt a little in the face of all of Jamie’s helicopter-pilot mojo for just a moment before she went all stern cop again.

      “They always are,” she answered. “Genevieve. Didn’t expect to see you here. You’re bleeding.”

      She said the last without a trace of sympathy, which didn’t really surprise Dylan. Genevieve didn’t have many friends in Hope’s Crossing.

      “Oh.” For all her bravado earlier, her voice came out small, breathless. Rachel handed her a napkin off a nearby table and Genevieve dabbed at her cheek, and her delicate skin seemed to turn as pale as the snowflakes he could see drifting past the open doorway.

      Rachel turned to him. “You’re bleeding, too,” she said, with no more sympathy.

      “Oh, I think I’ve had worse,” he said, unable to keep the dry note from his voice.

      “This is all just a misunderstanding, right?” Jamie aimed a hopeful charmer of a grin at Rachel. “No harm done, right?”

      “No harm done?” The woman holding a wad of napkins to her still-streaming nose practically screamed the words. She held up a hank of red hair Genevieve had pulled out from the roots, and for some strange reason, Dylan found that the most hilarious thing he’d СКАЧАТЬ