“Yeah, I feel like that with all the Duke offspring,” Jay agreed.
Blue looked down at her drink and then back at him. “Do you have family in Lyntacky, Jay?”
He shook his head. Family wasn’t something he ever talked about. Even the Dukes hadn’t known what went on at his house. Asher Dans had, but he’d kept Jay’s secrets.
“I’m sorry. That must be hard.”
She meant it. He saw that in her lovely eyes.
“I have plenty of people there I call family. After all, I am the honorary sixth Duke, which is an honor many covet but only I have.” Jay took a drink to ease the tightness in his chest.
“If I were going to be an honorary member of any family but mine, it would be theirs,” Blue conceded. “They’re just the right amount of good and badassery.”
He nodded. “Tell me what happened today, Blue. I’m good for it.”
“No offence, Jay, but I know nothing about you.”
“Fair point. But the Dukes know me, and you know if I was a bad person, I wouldn’t be the honorary sixth Duke.”
Her sigh was pitiful and made his chest ache because Blue had never been that.
“They stole from me, Jay.”
“Who?”
She told him her story then as they ate and drank.
Life was funny like that sometimes. You had small moments in time with people you never shared time or secrets with again. This moment was his with Blue Jay McAllister.
“And so, what? You just walked out of a job you loved and had been in for eight years?”
She glared at him, eyes narrowed and maybe a little hazy now, as she was at the bottom of her second Island Dream, which he knew had a lot of alcohol in it.
“I respect myself more than staying someplace where they think it’s okay for someone to steal my designs and take the accolades. I work hard at what I do.” She slapped a hand on her chest.
“Sure, I get that, but maybe if you’d stayed and dealt?—”
“I will never win this, Jay. Layla is a cousin of the people who own the business. They have no loyalty to me.”
“So what now? Are you going to sue them?”
“No.”
“You can’t just let them get away with this, Blue.”
“I can’t speak out against them because this is a small industry for all that it’s huge,” she said. “If I want to work again, then I can’t afford to be blacklisted.”
“Need someone to have a chat with them for you?”
Her eyes widened as she looked at him. “I’ve never thought of you as mean, but right then you sounded and looked just like Sawyer Duke.”
“Well, he is a hero of mine, so thanks for the compliment.”
She smiled then, and it was sweet and sad. The woman was cute, he realized, and disturbing. Funny how he’d never thought of her that way before.
They ate, they drank, and Blue Jay McAllister would need to be stuffed into a cab soon and sent home, as she was definitely on the tipsy side. But then Jay wasn’t a lot better, as he’d moved on to whisky.
He never drank much. Being raised by a mother who drank constantly soured things for you. But right then, seated with this woman who he thought he knew well but didn’t—not really—he found himself doing just that.
