Forsaken (The Netherworlde Series) Read Online Free Page A

his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
    “But I…I thought…” She blinked at him in bewildered if not somewhat suspicious surprise. “I want to make sure the drinks were paid for.”
    Jason shook his head again. “Don’t worry about it,” he said again. “Consider them on the house.”
    Again, she sputtered. “But we drank a lot. There were twenty of us.”
    “I know.”
    “But we drank a lot,” she said again, helplessly.
    Fifteen hundred dollars worth of a lot, to the best of his recollection. Sam and her twenty friends had liked top-shelf brands and plenty of them.
    “It’s all right,” he told her.
    Again, her expression grew wary. “Won’t you get in trouble if your boss finds out?”
    “Oh, sure,” said the bartender, Eddie, as he passed by, wheeling a large dolly full of beer crates. He’d overheard this last, and to judge by his smirk, found it amusing, and cut Jason a sideways glance. “He’s a real asshole, the boss.”
    Jason laughed, but Sam grew anxious. “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” she said, reaching for her pocket, pulling out a small change purse. “Here.” She unzipped the purse and pulled out her credit card. “Run it again. You can do that, can’t—”
    “It’s okay.” Jason caught her hand. “I won’t get in trouble, I mean. I know the owner.”
    “Yeah,” Eddie called, as he ducked into the kitchen. “He’s a real prick, too.”
    “Really,” Jason told her. “It’s all right.”
    He’d walked her out to her car. They stood on the sidewalk beside her Jeep, facing each other in a comfortable proximity that had suggested the attraction he felt for her was reciprocated.
    “This is your bar, isn’t it?” she asked, with a quick glance at Sully’s, then back up at him again. Her brow arched slightly, in tandem with the uplift of the corner of her mouth. “You’re the asshole owner.”
    He laughed. “I prefer to be called the prick manager myself.”
    When she’d laughed along with him, he’d fallen in love with her, hook, line, sinker and all that other bullshit. There had been no doubt at all, not in his mind or his heart. I’m going to marry this girl someday, he’d thought.
    “Thank you, then,” Sam had told him, reaching out and hooking his hand with her fingertips. “For the drinks that night. I wish you’d let me pay you.”
    “Not necessary,” he interjected.
    A small, aggravated crease formed between her brows, yet she continued to smile. “I wasn’t finished.” He laughed, holding up his hands in concession and she went on, “I meant, I wish you’d let me pay you back for the drinks. Buy you dinner or something.”
    Jason had cocked his brow. “Are you asking me on a date?”
    Still that wry smile, her lips pressed together, a soft seam he’d longed to lean down and kiss. “I guess maybe I am. Are you accepting?”
    Loose strands of her dark hair had worked loose of her ponytail in the light breeze, flapping into her face. He’d reached out with his free hand to brush that wayward hair back behind her ear. I’m going to marry this girl someday, he’d thought again.
    “I guess maybe I am,” he’d told her out loud.
    ****
    This has to be a joke, Jason thought, leaning heavily against Sam as he shuffled through the front door of the upstairs apartment above the bar. It was his apartment, but like the tavern below, nothing but the floor plan was remotely recognizable to him. His hand-me-down furniture was gone—the metal-framed futon with faded black upholstery, the ugly standing chrome lamp that Sam had always teased about being “circa 1980s chic.” The oversized wooden crates he’d stacked for a TV stand, arranged horizontally for a coffee table and upturned vertically on either end of the futon were gone, along with his bookshelves and stereo, his drafting table and computer, the faded and threadbare Oriental rug that had covered the hardwood floor.
    “Here,” Sam murmured, easing him down against a stack of