“They started about two years ago, and they’re triggered by stress, which apparently a boring stay at home mother finds in monotonous household chores and the daily ins and outs of raising human beings. Do you like it when people ask you about your asthma all the time?” Kimber asked pointedly, picking up her vodka and soda.
“Uh. No?” Remi stirred her drink and wished she had stayed at the cottage and suffered through her own company.
“And before you ask me about the kids, let’s talk about how even though she may not look it, a woman can be more than the people she brings into this world.”
Remi peered at her sister over the rim of her glass. “Okay. What’s a safe topic that isn’t going to get my head bitten off?”
Kimber let out a small puff of breath. “Sorry,” she said. “Things are…whatever. I don’t feel like talking about them.”
Her sister’s phone buzzed again. She didn’t look at it.
“You could tell me how great your life is,” Kimber suggested. “But then I’d probably resent you. Then I’d drink too much to compensate. And things would get ugly.”
Remi had never seen her sister hanging by a thread before. Kimber had been born responsible.
Every Friday, she’d marched home to finish up her homework for the weekend. She had tabbed binders with procedures for things like Christmas and meal prep and entertaining. She had planned every detail of her wedding down to packing a day-of emergency kit with stain remover, bandages, breath mints, and safety pins.
Remi, the maid of honor, had ended up needing both the stain remover and the bandages.
Well, hell. It was just another example of Remington Ford being incapable of taking care of herself or others.
“My life is…whatever also. I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said finally.
“Too many boozy brunches and first dates with men who find you wildly intriguing?”
Remi choked on her drink, and Kimber winced. “Sorry. I’m shutting up now. Let’s move to the bar. Brick can referee, and we can talk about something that doesn’t make me feel violent.”
“Any hints on what that might be?” Remi glanced over her shoulder to where the man in question stood in front of bottles of bad decisions waiting to happen.
“Like the initiative thing that Mom dumped on us.” Kimber rose, collecting her coat and drink, leaving Remi no choice but to follow.
She took her time, gathering her things and trudging toward the bar.
This was why acting on impulse was bad. She could have been at home in front of the fire with a bowl of macaroni and cheese in her lap streaming trashy TV. But nooooooo. She was too scared to be alone so she’d put on stupid pants and braved the frigid night air just to be annoyed by her sister and glared at by a bartender.
She really needed to look into making better life choices.
“We thought we could talk about your idea from last night,” Kimber was saying to Brick.
Remi busied herself by dumping her coat over the back of the stool.
“Go easy on that,” Brick said, nodding toward her drink.
She looked him dead in the eyes while taking several long swallows from the straw.
Darius hooted until Brick shot him a look. “It’s on you if she gets out of control,” Brick warned the man.
“It’s Remi. She’d get out of control on ice water and potato chips,” Darius insisted.
“Do not make her another one,” Brick warned.
“Do not start with the overbearing protector routine,” Remi complained. She was already feeling a lick of warmth spread through her. Though she wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the argumentative bearded bear in front of her.
“While you two are bickering, I’ll take another one,” Kimber said, waving her empty glass.
“What the hell, Kims? Did it evaporate?” Remi asked.
“The initiative,” Kimber insisted, more sharply this time.
Brick crossed his arms on the other side of the stretch of wood. “What about it?”
“Let’s talk how to organize it while keeping the entire thing as simple as possible,” Kimber said.
To be contrary, Remi polished off the rest of her drink with a noisy slurp while her sister and nemesis discussed things like how to drum up volunteers and frequency of visits. Brick looked like he wanted to slap the glass out of her hand. When he left to deliver two sandwiches on plates piled high with French fries, Darius put another vodka soda in front of Kimber and then slid a tall glass of pink, frothy liquid at Remi with a wink.
“What is this?” she asked, sniffing it. “It smells like grain alcohol.”
“I call it a pink flamingo,” Darius said. “Just don’t breathe near open flames.”
“You’re hauling her ass home when she can’t walk,” Brick announced, throwing a towel at Darius.
“You said not to make her another Tiki Tea,” Darius pointed out.
“Excuse me, gentlemen—and I use that term very loosely. But I can walk my own damn self home,” Remi argued.
“No, you can’t,” the entire bar chimed in.
“Can we get back to how to enlist volunteers?” Kimber asked.
Remi half-listened while they debated screening and enforcement.
“Are we boring you?” Brick asked, his tone neutral, but there was something happening behind those blue eyes of his.
She pointed her straw at both of them. “You’re overthinking this.”
“Okay, smarty-pants,” Kimber said. “How do you suggest we enlist volunteers to do the visits?”
Remi dunked the straw back into her pink flamingo. She was starting to feel pretty darn good. “The same way every organization gets them. We force them into it.”
“Elaborate,” Brick demanded.
“We get together with a couple of islanders. The ones who lay the best guilt trips. Mira Rathbun. Dad. Bill House. Mayor Early,” she said, ticking the names off on her fingers. “We ask them to help recruit volunteers. Within a week, we’ll have more volunteers than we know what to do with.”
“And what will the three of us do?” Kimber asked, her eyes narrowing in consideration.
Remi shrugged. “I don’t know? Take the credit?”
Brick didn’t quite cover his laugh with a cough. “You never change, do you?”
Um. Ouch. “That remains to be seen,” she said haughtily.
Kimber’s phone vibrated again on the bar. This time she glanced at the screen. “Since you two have it all figured out, I guess I’ll take this.” She slid off her seat and headed for the hallway that led to the kitchen, office, and restrooms. “What is so important I couldn’t have ten minutes to myself, Kyle?” Remi heard her snap as she disappeared around the corner.
All did not appear to be well in the Olson family.
A plate of cheeseburger sliders, fries, and broccoli materialized in front of her.
Two large, capable-looking hands appeared on either side of the plate. “Eat.”
The man just couldn’t stand back and let her self-destruct.
“I didn’t order these,” she said, despite the fact that her stomach was now audibly growling over the scent of fresh red meat.
Brick loomed over her from across the bar. “You’ve had two drinks strong enough to put down a full-grown man, and you barely touched anything on your plate last night.”