“The only thing is, my mom broke her foot, so I don’t know about the whole boat thing.”

“Well, shit,” I say. “How’d she do that?”

“Stepped off the curb wrong in town, twisted it in the storm grate.”

I wince. “That sucks.”

“Yeah. But she said she was maybe going to ask Rachel to help her out, so I guess Rachel could do it.”

You know the buzzer sound that signals the end of, well, anything? That’s the sound that just zapped through my brain.

“Wait, Rachel’s home?”

I try to make it sound like, “The Ducks have the early game?” or “You up for grabbing a pizza and a couple of beers?” but it still comes out sounding more like my sixteen-year-old self than I’d like.

Luckily Connor doesn’t pick up on the fact that I just insta-reverted to my teenage years. “Yeah. Some shit hit the fan for her and she’s regrouping.”

Rachel is Connor’s younger sister. Her hair is long and thick and not-quite-black. Her skin is a warm, light brown. She has dark brown eyes and a mouth that, in recent years, has made me think about blow jobs.

Okay, who am I kidding? Her mouth has made me think about blow jobs for way longer than I want to admit.

It’s the lower lip. It’s full and sulky and she licks it when she’s nervous. I’m not sure whether it’s the peek of tongue or the glossy sheen left behind that drives me so wild, but there you have it.

My life plan, since late high school, has been to avoid Rachel Perez at all costs, because that lip—her whole mouth, in fact—no, make that everything about her, inside and out—feels like a clear and present danger.

It is a threat to my sanity and, more urgently, to my friendship with Connor.

However, because life is what happens when you’re busy making plans, Rachel is everywhere.

She saw me last month when Len Dix taunted me in Oscar’s Saloon & Grill and I punched his lights out. She doesn’t even live here; she just happened to be in town from the East Coast to visit her mother. They were taking a family ski trip for her mom’s birthday.

And now she is, possibly, the only thing standing between me and a simple solution to my business problem.

Because I don’t think my sanity would survive being alone on a boat with Rachel.

“Do you really think Gabe would kick you out of the family business?” Connor asks.

Right. In corner one, we have the threat to my sanity from Rachel Perez. And in corner two, we have the threat to my livelihood and family life from Gabe Wilder.

Vegas has no idea where to put its money. God damn.

“You know what?” Connor says. “Forget I said anything. It’s a bad idea.”