Hell, Yeah (7 page)

When he reached the Smokestack his cell phone vibrated but he was too tense to try to drive with one hand. At the Honky Tonk parking lot he pulled off, rolled a few kinks from his neck, and looked at the phone. He’d missed a call from Angel but she’d left a text message saying that she and Merle were in a hotel in Ranger, Texas. The whole town of Mingus was without electricity. Merle’s generator was out of gas. They’d been lucky enough to get the last motel room in the town.

Travis looked at the phone as if it were evil. Cathy was not going to be a happy woman when he woke her up. He got ready to beat on the door for five minutes and was surprised when she opened it the moment he hit it the first time.

She motioned him inside. “No vacancies?”

Thank the lord you are back. Now maybe I can go to sleep and get some rest without all that guilt trying to smother me. I can be a good neighbor even if I’m not willing for anything more than that.

Travis stepped into the apartment and shut the door behind him.

“You know the way into the Honky Tonk,” she said. Guilt might keep her from sleeping, but he was not staying in her apartment. The way he jacked her hormones into overdrive she’d wind up losing more sleep than ever just knowing he was only a few feet away.

“I didn’t bring a comforter this time,” he said.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Just go to sleep on the sofa. There’s a pillow and a blanket still there. I’m too tired to worry about it or you right now. Sorry, Ruby.” She looked up at the ceiling.

He wondered who in the devil Ruby was and why she was apologizing to her for him sleeping on her sofa.

“Hot damn,” Cathy mumbled as she threw back the quilt on her bed. The electricity was back on. The alarm clock flashed the same numbers over and over. Bright sunlight poured in the bedroom window and she could hear the drip from the roof as the ice melted.

She hopped out of bed and headed toward the kitchen to make coffee. The first cup took the beast out of her. The second one kept her from biting. After the third one she could pass for human.

The sofa was empty, so that meant Travis had awakened early, found the electricity working, and gone home. Life was so much better than it had been the night before. She picked up a few scattered tissues from the floor and tossed them into the kitchen trash before she started making coffee.

She hummed as she put extra grounds in the pot to make it stronger than normal. The battery operated clock on the kitchen wall said it was noon. No wonder she was so hungry. She reached up in the cabinets and pulled down a fresh box of strawberry Pop Tarts and tore open a package.

As soon as the coffee finished dripping she poured a cup and looked out the kitchen window. No deer. No rabbits. She hadn’t seen the possum or even a stray cat since the trailer arrived.

A moan and movement not three feet from her made her slosh the hot coffee out on her pajama top and drop a Pop Tart on the floor. She jerked her head in that direction, adrenaline putting her into flight mode as it plowed through her body like a bulldozer through a kid’s sandbox.

“Holy hell! You just scared the shit out of me,” she said.

“Didn’t mean to. I hope you’re cooking a pound of bacon this morning.” Travis sat down at the table and stared at her with big blue puppy dog eyes. “I feel like hell and I’m starving.”

“Electricity is back on. Go cook your own breakfast,” she said when she could breathe again.

“Please. It was a tough night. If you were starving and you’d driven on the ice to a motel only to find no vacancies, I’d cook you breakfast.”

He had a pitiful look on his face, which was even sexier without the wire-rimmed glasses.

She bit back a grin. He wasn’t about to see her smile after keeping her awake most of the night—partly out of guilt and the rest out of nothing but pure lust. “Stop acting like you are dyin’. Where were you anyway? You weren’t on the sofa.”

“I
am
dyin’. I ain’t got the energy to make it to the door much less across our yards and then cook my own breakfast. Nearly frozen and then starved. It’s a sorry way to die. Reason I wasn’t on the couch is the damned thing is too short. I curled up in the corner of the floor with the quilt and pillow. Call the undertaker. Tell the coroner that I died of starvation because you were too stingy to feed a hungry neighbor. God can decide whether to lay murder to your list of sins when you die,” he said.

“How hungry are you?” she asked.

“Just shy of passin’ plumb out.”

She poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of him. “You can stay for breakfast but only because I don’t want to drag your dead body out in the yard.”

“You are an angel. A pound of bacon and six eggs over easy might keep me out of the undertaker’s reach.”

She set the box of Pop Tarts in the middle of the table.

“That’s not eggs,” he said.

She opened it. “Pretend it’s one of Denny’s Grand Slam specials or a McDonald’s sausage biscuit meal deal. I really don’t care which. It will keep you from starving. I’m not cooking breakfast today.”

He moaned again and tore into the package. “They’re cold.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch. Coffee is hot. Dip ’em if you want a hot breakfast.”

“You are mean,” he muttered.

“Me? I let you sleep here when it was against the rules. I’m feeding you breakfast. You better play nice or I’ll throw you out in the slush pit in your bare feet.”

He dipped the strawberry flavored pie dough in his coffee. Pretending couldn’t make it bacon and eggs and he couldn’t stretch his imagination far enough to make it a warm cinnamon roll straight from the oven either.

“Talk to me while I eat this sumptuous meal,” he said.

“I cooked. You talk.”

“You already know about me. I told my family story at the dinner table on Sunday,” he said.

“And you know mine. Daisy and I are all that’s left of the family. Her dad died before she was born and her mother in a car wreck. Cancer got my dad. Heart attack got my mother. All died young. The end.”

“How long you been a bartender?” he asked.

“Legally, since I was twenty-one.”

“What does that mean?”

“Worked some dives that didn’t ask me how old I was before I was twenty-one.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How long before you were twenty-one?”

“I was sixteen. Momma got sick one night. She and Daisy’s momma were both bartenders. I filled in for her. Any time she was sick after that I worked. It just evolved.”

Cathy wished he’d eat his pseudo-bacon and eggs and go on home. It was too early to talk and way too early to answer questions.

“I couldn’t live like that,” he said.

“Hey, I don’t want a pity party. I don’t have a single complaint about the way I’ve lived. Well, maybe one, but it had nothing to do with what I do for a living. My dad was a wonderful man. He worked nights until he got sick and my mother was a great person. We weren’t rich but we had a lot of love in our trailer house. So don’t go judging me.”

“I wasn’t judging,” he said defensively.

“Oh, honey, you were. Your eyes judged me even if your words didn’t.”

Travis pushed the chair back and stood up so quickly that his movement was a blur. “Thank you for breakfast and the use of your quilt and pillow. I’ll try not to bother you again.”

“Well, lah-tee-damn-dah, if he hasn’t gotten his rich little under-britches in a wad. Pick up your trash before you go running off.” She pointed at the pastry wrapper on the table.

He grabbed it and shoved it into his pocket. “You really are a bear in the morning.”

“You were forewarned. You should have snuck out the door and left me alone,” she said.

He whipped around at the door. “Know what tames a bear?”

“Sure, I do. Honey. But you haven’t got enough and there ain’t enough in the whole state of Texas to tame me, so don’t go getting any ideas.”

He stormed out without saying anything else. She opened up a second package of Pop Tarts and carried the two strawberry flavored pastries to the sofa where she picked up the remote and pushed the power button.

“I’m not feeling one bit guilty for being a bear, Mr. Travis Henry. Not one single bit. Take it or leave it.”

On Friday night every able-bodied, beer-drinking partier from Mineral Wells to Abilene was out looking for a good time. Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” had folks on the dance floor. Cathy looked around as she drew up a beer. Toby was right. There were hookers if those women over there in the corner could be judged by their outfits and their wandering eyes. There were lookers, both good, bad, and ugly. Preppies sitting at the bar with Grey Goose martinis and hippies at a table with their tats and bandanas tied around their foreheads drinking their beer from Mason jars. And the thing that they all had in common was that they all loved the Honky Tonk and couldn’t wait to get there.

Merle came in early with Angel but Travis wasn’t with them. Cathy hid her disappointment and then got angry with herself for being disappointed anyway. Hadn’t she decided once and for all that she was not going to be attracted to Travis Henry even if he was tall, blond, and sexy?

She consciously stopped frowning and smiled when Jezzy, Sally, and Leroy arrived. All she needed was for Jezzy to start her matchmaking. She was every bit as bad as Chigger’s mother. If Cathy didn’t know better she’d swear those two were in cahoots and working together to get her married off.

Tinker checked at least thirty IDs in a group of young people who came in right behind Jezzy’s group. As soon as they were allowed in the place, they made a dash for the bar.

“Need some help?” Sally asked. “I’m not much good at mixing drinks, but I can sure draw beer and pop off lids.”

“Yes, ma’am, and thank you,” Cathy said.

She rounded the end of the bar, pushed the swinging doors open, and started serving beers. Cathy mixed two pitchers of hurricanes and set them along with six pint jars on a tray. A lady paid her and carried them back to a table where her friends waited.

“Pitcher of margaritas, please,” a fellow at the end of the bar yelled above “Honky Tonk Life” by Darryl Worley. He sang about the girls there being prettier than any place they ever played and an atmosphere of blue-collar come-as-you-are. Cathy nodded at the man who wanted margaritas but she was really agreeing with Worley. She loved the blue-collar atmosphere of the Honky Tonk too. If she didn’t, she’d be sitting behind a desk crunching numbers.

Sally pulled the handle marked “Coors” and said, “That song about slow dancing with a memory sounds about right, doesn’t it? I do that at night sometimes. I put on music and dance around the bedroom and pretend it’s with Kirk.”

Cathy barely nodded.

“Here comes Garrett with Merle’s empty jar. Guess she’s going to give him another lesson,” Cathy said.

“Merle loves her beer almost as much as Jezzy. Jezzy calls mixed drinks jacked up Kool-Aid and says that good whiskey should never be diluted with soda pop. I hear you parted with a shot of whiskey for your man during the ice storm,” Sally said.

“How’d you find out about that? And he’s not my man,” Cathy protested.

“Gossip vine. Travis told Angel who told Merle who told Jezzy. So did you sleep with him?”

“I did not,” Cathy said indignantly.

Garth Brooks started singing “Good Ride Cowboy” and a dozen lusty women hit the floor for a fast line dance. If Toby could sit at the Honky Tonk, he could easily write another song about them. There were the model thin ladies in their skintight jeans and boots with barely enough on the top to keep them out of jail. Then there were the ones who’d either given birth or indulged in too many beers and had a chubby rim around their tummies that jiggled when they scooted up and down the floor in a line dance. There were those who barely had passed their twenty-first birthday and were still young and bright-eyed and those who’d never see fifty again, whose eyes told stories about living hard and fast. Yep, old Toby could sure enough tell a tale in song about the boot-kicking girls on the floor if he’d been there.

Cathy hummed with the music as she made a blender full of hurricanes for a middle-aged lady who was showing off for the younger crowd. When the song ended she paid for the pitcher and carried it and six pint jars to a nearby table.

“Don’t Call Him a Cowboy” started playing and the woman hit the floor again, moving like a pole dancer without a pole.

Cathy sang along with Conway Twitty about not calling him a cowboy until she’d seen him ride. High color filled her cheeks as she thought of Travis and the way he looked that morning at her breakfast table. After a night of wild sex with him would she be able to truly call him a cowboy? Searing hot flashes set her on fire at a visual of him all tangled up in the sheets and her long legs.

“Now where in the hell did that come from?” she mumbled.

“What?” Sally asked.

“My mind was in the gutter.”

“Who was in it with you?”

Cathy didn’t answer.

“Was it Travis Henry?” Sally teased.

Cathy still didn’t answer.

“Hey, it would make sense. He’s the first man who slept in the apartment and you even gave him a shot of whiskey to warm him up. Cold man. Warm whiskey. Cold night. You really expect me to believe he slept on the floor?”

Cathy sputtered. “Yes, I do, and you know more than a little gossip. ’Fess up.”

Sally laughed as she drew up two beers and handed them to Garrett. “He and Angel came to the ranch for soil samples. Ate supper with us. He said you were an old bear in the morning.”

“She wouldn’t be an old bear if she’d marry me. I’d treat her so good that she’d be a sweetheart in the morning,” Clark said from the end of the bar.

“It’ll take someone just as mean as her to tame her and you ain’t that mean,” Sally said.

“Well, thank you so much,” Cathy said.

Travis grabbed a bar stool when a cowboy left it for the dance floor. “She’s speaking the pure gospel truth. I ain’t never seen anyone bite as hard as her in the mornin’.”

Cathy jerked her head around from the blender and swore under her breath. How in the hell had he gotten in the door without her seeing him?

“Give me a Coors please. Longneck,” Travis said.

Cathy wiped off a bottle and flipped the lid off. She set it on the bar in front of him. She wasn’t taking chances on their hands brushing, not after those naughty thoughts that had danced through her mind. He handed her five dollar bill. She made change. He carried the beer back to the pool tables where Garrett and Angel were in a heated game. Clark followed him and picked a cue stick from the wall. Travis racked up the balls and took a long draw of his beer.

“You ever been bow huntin’?” Merle asked.

“Yes, I have,” Travis said.

“Then draw that cue stick back like you was drawin’ back a bow. And move your body into the shoot for more power. Scatter them balls so the pickin’s will be easier,” she said.

“Think Travis will beat Clark if he listens to Merle?” Cathy asked.

“Guess if he loses his shirt and his home and his truck, he can always sleep on your sofa,” Sally said.

“It’s too short. He slept on the floor,” Cathy said before she thought.

“Shame on you. That sofa makes out into a bed. I know it does because I’ve heard you talk about sleeping on it until Daisy got married. I don’t even like cowboys and I would have at least let him have the sofa.”

Cathy shrugged. “He didn’t ask.”

Before Sally could shoot back a reply a lady popped a hip up on a barstool and said, “Martini, please.”

Cathy sized up the newcomer. “Shaken?”

“Stirred, please,” the woman said.

Cathy picked up the gin, vermouth, and the olive jar and set them on the work counter. The jeans were new, the western shirt looked like one of Merle’s creations, and the boots were scuffed. Had Hayes sent in a different buyer with hopes of getting Cathy to sell to a woman?

She set the martini in front of the lady. “Haven’t seen you around these parts.”

The woman sipped the martini. “Very good. Just right. You must be Cathy O’Dell?”

“I am and if you are here with intentions of making an offer for the Tonk you are wasting your time. It’s not for sale.”

The woman had brown eyes, straight black hair, high cheekbones, and a wide mouth. No doubt about it, she’d been dipped in an Indian genetic woodpile.

“This is a very good martini and I’m not here to buy this place. I just came in for a drink and a good time,” she said.

“Are you a messenger from Hayes Radner?”

“I’m not a messenger for anyone, honey. What’s he got to do with this place anyway?”

Cathy looked her right in the eye. “Hayes wants to buy the Honky Tonk and all of Mingus to build an amusement park.”

The lady smiled. “And evidently you are not interested in unloading your beer joint?”

“Hell no! The Tonk is not for sale. It’s mine and I don’t give a damn if he offers me every bit of the rest of the state of Texas for this beer joint. It still won’t be for sale. He can put that on his toilet paper and wipe his sorry ass with it.”

“Well, I’m not here to buy anything for Hayes Radner. I’ve never met or talked to the man. I came in for a good martini and now I’ve got one.”

“And you are?” Cathy asked.

“Larissa Morley.”

“You ain’t from these parts. Your accent isn’t quite right and you don’t usually wear boots and jeans,” Cathy said.

Larissa smiled brightly. “You’re good, girl. You ever think about doing detective work?”

“Comes from years of bartending. So what are you? A reporter doing a piece about women beer joint owners or something?” Cathy asked.

Travis leaned in between the woman and the man on the bar stool next to her. “Hey, I lost the first game so give me a beer for Clark. He says he’s spittin’ dust.”

Larissa’s eyes traveled from his boots up to his pretty blue eyes. “Hello, handsome.”

“Hi, who are you?” Travis asked.

“That’s a blunt pickup line,” she said.

“I ain’t pickin’ up. I’m playin’ pool. You know how to play?” he asked.

“Not me.” She shook her head. “I’m Larissa Morley—and you are?”

“Travis Henry. Nice to meet you, Larissa. Excuse me.” He picked up the beer and carried it carefully to the pool table.

“Don’t let him deflate your ego. He’s not housebroken yet,” Cathy said.

“Your boyfriend?” Larissa asked.

Cathy sputtered. “No, ma’am.”

“Hmmmm,” Larissa said.

“Where are you from?” Cathy asked.

“Mingus. I own a house right smack in the middle of town. Maybe I’ll stop by another night.” She downed the rest of her martini and set her sights for the door. A couple of cowboys asked her to dance on the way but she brushed them off coldly.

Sally poked Cathy in the ribs. “Did you see the way she was sizing up Travis?”

“Of course I did. I’m not blind. Why would anyone move to Mingus, Texas?”

“You did. Don’t judge the woman. And don’t judge Travis, either.”

Cathy cut her eyes around at Sally. “You taking up for him?”

“I’m stating facts. You’ve been all pissy lately. That cowboy has flat out got under your skin, hasn’t he?”

“Why are you asking? Are you interested in him?”

“No, I am not. I have a boyfriend who is in Iraq. When he comes home in six months we are getting married. Daddy doesn’t like the idea of me marrying career military but it’s my life. Larissa Morley don’t look like she was used to wearing jeans and boots and those nails weren’t used to hard work neither.”

Cathy looked down at her hands. “Wonder who she really is or if that’s her real name. Larissa? Sounds kind of fishy don’t it.”

“Sounds hoity-toity to me,” Sally said.

In a few minutes Sally touched Cathy’s arm and nodded toward the dance floor. Rudy, one of Garrett’s hired hands, was showing Larissa how to two-step to “Thunder Rolls” by Garth Brooks. She seemed to be picking up the steps easily and laughing good naturedly when she did something wrong.

Cathy frowned. “When did she come back?”

“Don’t know. I’m going to get a beer and leave it with you. Things have slowed down,” Sally said. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention the idea of a summer wedding. Daddy gets all riled every time I say anything about marrying Kirk.”

“Thanks for the help, and your secret is safe with me.” Cathy grinned.

Someone put more money in the jukebox and Billy Currington sang that God was great, beer was good, and people were crazy.

“Damn straight,” Cathy said aloud.

“Damn straight about what?” Travis asked.

“That people are crazy,” she said.

“You got that right. I need an apple martini for Angel. Merle’s going to give me some more pointers while we shoot a game,” Travis said.

Cathy made the martini and handed it to Travis.

She tried to ignore him by watching Rudy two-stepping Larissa around the room to a slow song. The two of them were as mismatched as… Cathy stopped herself from thinking as she and Travis were. Instead she told herself that Larissa was probably married to a rich man and they’d had a fight. Her husband was a two-bit cheating bastard and she was on the prowl to pay him back. Poor old Rudy might get lucky, but come morning she’d be right back in her little Porsche or Lexus or maybe even a chauffeur-driven limo sitting out in the parking lot, going home to her husband who had a fortune in oil money or owned an exotic resort island where she was really the queen.

Big and Rich began singing about being lost in the moment and Cathy felt sorry for Rudy. He might be lost in the moment with the rich lady who had her arms around his neck. Come morning, he’d be singing the blues worse than Hank Williams.

The movement of Tinker hurrying across the floor to a table in the far corner took her attention from Larissa and to where two young cowboys were bowed up like a couple of old roosters, feathers all fluffed out and eyeing each other through bloodshot eyes, daring the other one to throw the first blow. Tinker waded into them like a father about to thump two little boys’ heads together. He said a few low words and escorted them both to the door. He didn’t care if there was a bloodletting after they were out of the Honky Tonk, but it was his job inside the beer joint to keep stains off the hardwood floors. Two tomcats having a pissing contest didn’t faze him.

Cathy would love to know what he said to the rowdies that sent them outside without argument. Did he tell them how hungry the buzzards were back behind the Tonk and how they’d be right glad to eat pickled cowboy for breakfast?