And therein was my problem, right in a nutshell. Since cloning wasn’t possible, something had to give, just like Ryan had said. “You need to worry about your schedule and leave me to worry about mine,” I growled, teasingly of course.

“I thought you were trying to go to Italy the week before that?”

“No. Ryan’s not sure if he’ll have to go to L.A. earlier. He’s waiting to hear.”

I dug around in my purse for my calendar. “When are you coming back then?”

“July twenty-eighth.” Her voice did an excited upswing, making it sound like a question. I could tell she was treading lightly. She also knew that I had no one to fall back on.

“You’ll come back a lean, mean fighting machine,” I joked, trying to let her know I was totally supporting her decisions.

Marie gave me a weak smile. “I don’t have to go for this session, Taryn. I could put it off. Give it a year, maybe. I dunno. I know I’m putting you in a tight spot.”

I adjusted my ring. “No. Definitely not.”

“Taryn, I’m rushing this. I don’t even know if Mike wants a relationship with me. I’m fighting with Gary over who gets to keep the damn toaster and shit. I shouldn’t be making any big moves.”

“If this is what you want then you go for it now. Time to do what you want to do for once.”

“But—”

“But what? Are you going to doubt your desires because you’re unsure of Mike’s intentions? You want to be a bodyguard, knowing what it entails, then do it. And no buts. I haven’t seen you this excited about something in years. You want to forge a new career path, then now is the time. You’re wasting your education and talents being stuck behind the bar.”

“I’m not stuck . . .”

“Yes, you are. We both are. It’s time for the next chapter.”

“I need an income, Taryn,” she countered. “I can’t go without a job.”

I sighed. “We’ve had this discussion already.”

“Taryn, you can’t pay me a salary that I didn’t work for. You’ve already loaned me money for the lawyer. And it’s going to be a while until I see a settlement from my divorce so I can pay you back.”

“Marie, what did I say?”

She huffed. “It’s not right. You can’t keep bailing your friends out.”

I turned in my seat to look at her, keeping the fact that I was going to cash out some of my inheritance to cover things if I needed to. The bar was making more money but not enough to cover several full-time salaries. “You would do the same for me and you know it.”

“You’re going to have to hire another bartender or two and someone will have to be there to manage the place. And I can’t expect you to hire someone for only two weeks and then fire them when I get back.

Cory is great, but you know as well as I do that he’s young and isn’t ready to take on that amount of responsibility. And what happens if I get down there and find out I can’t handle it? Mike said this is pretty intense stuff—like combat training, firing a gun while rolling on the ground and stuff. I mean, what the hell do I know about disarming someone or kicking someone’s ass? Last time I was in a fight was when we were in high school and I punched Sophie Lithgow in the face for calling me a slut.”

I laughed. “It’s a start. And that was classic, by the way. She deserved that—calling both of us sluts.”

“Yeah, but I at least earned the title,” Marie boasted.

“No you did not.”

Then she gave me a crooked stare, insinuating that she did.

We were silent for another half mile when I finally said what was swirling in my thoughts. “Ryan sort of hinted again that I should sell the bar.”

Marie’s mouth popped open. “Why?”

“Because I can’t be in two places at once.”

She groaned softly. “You sure you want to do that?”

My knee-jerk answer was no, but I said, “I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”

She shook her head adamantly. “I don’t think you should sell it.”

I was thankful she said that. “Is it wrong of me to want to have a fallback plan?”

“Hell no! Look at me. Bastard locked me out of my own damn house! I barely escaped with the clothes on my back and now he’s threatening to smash our china that his aunt got us just so I don’t try to take it in the divorce. I don’t know where I would have ended up if you hadn’t taken me in. That’s not to say Ryan would do any of that nonsense to you. Honestly, I think you’d be just fine doing something else if you did sell the bar but the part of me going through a shitty divorce says you should keep your safety net.”

The smart woman inside me had been burned too many times by men, and so maintaining self-preservation was a moral imperative. “I hate feeling like that.”

“I know,” she muttered. “What did your mother always tell us?

“The one where you can find trash on any street corner, but you should always hold out for a man with a heart of gold?”

“No, no. That was a good one, too, but the one where she always said that you should make sure the man loves you more than you love the man,” she said. “According to Ryan, the sun rises and sets on your ass so I think you’re good.”

Thinking back to those times when my mom gave me her little quips of wisdom spread warmth up from my heart. “My mother was a wise woman.”

Marie grinned. “Yes she was. Too bad I didn’t listen.”

I scratched my head. “Yeah, that makes two of us. This time I am, though.”

“Yes indeed. Trading in the bad boy for the badass boy.”

For some reason, a picture of a shirtless, beefy Mike Murphy flashed through my thoughts. “Mike’s pretty badass.”

“Yes he is.” She smiled. “He’s the reason why I’m sure things need to end between me and Gary. I didn’t realize just how bad I had it until Mike came along. Gary has never made me a priority. Not once did he ever put my needs ahead of his own. When I look back at our relationship, even before we got married he never made me feel as if I was important. You’ve seen it. After a while, that shit starts to wear on you. But Mike . . . I know he’s pulling in a few favors to get me into this school. He hasn’t hesitated once about taking care of me. Not once.”

“Mike’s been really grumpy,” I told her. “Ryan’s ready to ship him here—soon. Fortunately, they’re just about wrapped on Slipknot.”

Her face lit up. It was such a beautiful thing. “Really?”

I smiled just as broadly. “He thinks Mike’s in love with you.”

“Really?”

“Really, really.”

After a few seconds of grinning from ear to ear, she said, “Ryan’s madly in love with you, you know.

Still . . . please don’t sell the bar.”

I bristled a bit.

“I’m sad that I’m going to miss your engagement party at Ryan’s parents’. I’m sure Ellen will stuff you full of food.” She didn’t have to tell me that those words hurt her to say.

That reminded me of one more thing I had to do: time to see if my next bright idea would pan out.

“I went to visit Pete today,” I told Ryan when we Skyped later that night. Poor Pete. I could completely relate to the torturous itching that came from sporting a cast. His new limp also didn’t go unnoticed.

“How’s he doing?” Ryan asked while lying on the bed with his laptop on his legs. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and obviously had just gotten out of the shower, as his skin was flush and deliciously dewy. Damn, it was a beautiful sight on my computer screen.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to talk to you while you’re looking like that?”

Ryan’s face scrunched. “Like what?”

“Naked and all . . .” My hand waved since I was at a loss for words.

Ryan grinned, running a hand over his bare chest. “You like what you see?”

“You know I do.”

He flipped his laptop to the side, making sure the camera was showing what he was now stroking in his hand. Like a teenager watching a porno, I had my very own Ryan Christensen nudie show. “See anything else that you like?”