I Love This Bar

Copyright © 2010 by Carolyn Brown

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All the air escaped Daisy's lungs in a whoosh when the cowboy collapsed on top of her body. She sucked in air and pushed at the weight, but her arms were pinned. She opened her eyes to see a head full of dark hair and felt the sharp bone of his nose pressing into her left breast.

   He raised his head and looked over at her, his face only inches from hers, his eyes zeroing in on her lips.

   
Hot damn! That's one sexy face
, they both thought at the same time.

   She shut her eyes and started to lean in for the kiss, then reality hit. She had fallen flat on her back on the floor of the Honky Tonk beer joint and taken the nearest cowboy down with her. She popped her eyes wide open and wriggled back away from the sexiest gray eyes she'd ever seen.

   
Oh, shit, who saw us?
Daisy looked up to find everyone staring down at them, the cowboy's body still touching her from breast to toe, even though he had rolled to one side. The blush that filled her cheeks had nothing to do with afterglow.

   The joint was as quiet as a tomb. It was a hell of a time for the jukebox to go silent.

   "You all right?" Tinker, the bouncer, asked. He was hovering over the two of them, worry etched in his face as he bent to touch her shoulder.

   "I'm fine. Make sure he is too," she panted.

   Tinker held out a hand and in one swift movement the cowboy was on his feet.

   Tinker picked up Daisy carefully and set her on a barstool. "You sure you're all right?"

   "My dignity is in tatters and I might have a bruise or two, but I'll live," she said.

   "I'd better get back to the door. Motion if you need me," Tinker said.

   She nodded and raised her voice to the customers, who were still watching the whole scenario as if it were an X-rated movie. "I'm fine, everyone. I promise. Get on back to having a good time."

   Someone plugged coins into the jukebox and George Strait's song "River of Love" filled the place. Several people started a line dance and by the time the song ended everything was back to normal.

   All except Daisy's heart. It still raced.

   She looked at the cowboy. He was just as sexy sitting on the barstool as he'd been lying on top of her. "Sorry about that. I hope you don't have anything broken."

   The cowboy barely nodded. "Just a little stunned. Stupid things like that happen so fast it's like it happened to someone else. Might have a bruise—but you broke
my
fall."

   Daisy forced a smile.

   "Guess we stepped in that beer at the same time. Where's the bartender? We both ought to sue the hell out of him." Jarod was amazed that he could utter a single word the way his pulse was racing. That was one dazzling lady he'd taken a fall with. One minute he'd been walking toward the bar; the next he was grabbing for anything to break the fall. Then as if in slow motion he'd seen the girl slip in the same slick puddle of spilled beer and grab for him.

   Daisy knew every rancher, cattle rustler, and hotblooded male and female in five counties, but she'd never seen that damn fine looking cowboy before. Snug fitting jeans covered one sexy tight butt hitched up on the stool. Bulging biceps underneath his snowy white T-shirt stretched the knit. His black hair and high cheekbones said that he had some Native American blood somewhere, but his eyes were the color of heavy fog. He could have played the resident bad boy in an old movie: maybe James Dean in
Rebel Without a
Cause. She remembered watching the movie with he
r grandmother back before Granny died. From that day forward, Daisy O'Dell had been attracted to bad boys, and that had been her downfall.

   For the first time she seriously considered breaking the rules and taking a man through the door into her apartment at the back of the Honky Tonk. She shook her head to remove the crazy notion. The man could be a serial killer or a drug pusher. Hell, he could be worse than either of those two things—he could be married.

   She blushed scarlet. She'd been ogling the stranger rudely.

   His straw hat had somehow found its way to the bar in front of him and she wished she could pick it up to fan her scorching face. Not that it would have helped a whole hell of a lot. The way her hormones were overreacting, she could have melted ice on the North Pole in December.

   Why did that dark-haired, broad-chested cowboy give her hot flashes? Maybe it was because when she felt him collapse on her for a microsecond she'd felt as if they'd just finished a hot bout of sex. She reached up and rubbed the back of her head to see if there were bumps or indentations. Something had to have knocked every bit of sense out of her brain. She couldn't find a bump or a sore spot, so maybe he'd rattled her hormones instead of her brain cells.

   "Is this a help-yourself bar or is there a bartender somewhere out there?" He motioned toward the dance floor. He thought about asking her for a dance, maybe as an apology for knocking her down. Anything to touch her again and see if the jolt that shot through him was something other than a free fall to the dance floor.

   She hopped off the barstool. "Guess that would be me. I was on my way back to the bar when we collided." Her heart kept up a steady beat in her ears like the drums in Garth Brooks's band.

   Jarod drew his heavy dark brows down in disbelief. Surely she was teasing. That exquisite woman couldn't be the bartender. She looked as though she might be the newest up-and-coming country singer taking a break from the stage. He glanced around the room and saw only two jukeboxes—no stage in sight.

   As she made her way behind the bar located the whole length of the back wall of the Honky Tonk, she shook her head hard enough to send her dark brown ponytail swinging. It didn't work. She was still picturing him naked except for scuffed up cowboy boots and maybe the hat.

   Good grief, she had to get control of her thoughts. She had a bar to run and he was most likely one of those rare strangers who was just passing by and stopped for a cold beer on a scalding hot night.

   The jukebox rattled the walls with Toby Keith's booming voice singing "I Love This Bar." It was Daisy's theme song. She had loved the Honky Tonk since the day she'd walked into the joint. Twenty-one years old, broken-down car in the parking lot of the Smokestack restaurant, not even a mile from the Honky Tonk and barely enough gas money to get back to Mena, Arkansas, she'd been looking for a phone and some help. What she found was Ruby Lee, a salty old girl full of spit and vinegar who'd given her a job and a place to live and taken her under her wing. Since then not a single one of the drinkers, smokers, lookers, or even hustlers had taken her eye until that cowboy collided with her and drove her mind straight into the gutter.

   
He's married and has six kids and a chain smoking
mother who lives with him in a double-wide trailer.

   Chigger, the Honky Tonk's equivalent of a hooker, caught her eye and winked. Daisy picked up her step and barely beat Chigger to the tall cowboy.

   "What'll it be?" Daisy asked.

   Chigger leaned forward on the bar, shoving four inches of cleavage and a big smile so close to his face that his eyes crossed. "Name it, darlin', and I'll provide it."

   "Coors," he said. He didn't want the hooker to provide anything. Now, if that bartender offered? Well, his heart skipped a beat just thinking about what he'd name in that case.

   "Tap or bottle?" Daisy asked.

   "Tap is fine. Is it good and cold?"

   Daisy nodded. His voice was so deep it gave her shivers. As if that wasn't enough, he had a dimple in his chin that begged her to lean forward and brush a kiss across. She felt like shutting the place down for a week and spending every moment of it in bed with him. Maybe she'd been standing too damn close to Chigger and her loose-legged morality had rubbed off on her. The woman's heels were so round that all a fellow had to do was push her and she fell backwards, dragging him down on top of her as she fell. Daisy wondered if "slut" was contagious.

   He raised his voice and said, "Hey, none of that light stuff either. Real beer with all the calories and taste."

   Chigger inched a little closer and laid her hand on his knee. "Now, what else would you be needin' this night? I betcha I can provide it and, honey, it won't be none of that light stuff. I've got a full menu with whatever you want."

   "Reckon beer is all I'll need for right now," he said. A hooker coming on to him and a barmaid throwing his heart into double-time. What in the hell was going on?

   Most of the time Daisy didn't mind Chigger hustling a good time, but that night it annoyed her like a pesky fly buzzing around her ears. Chigger was one of those women who had no morals. If she saw something wearing jeans and boots and wanted it, she set about getting it. These days she went home with Jim Bob Walker on Friday and Saturday nights, but Daisy remembered times when it was a different cowboy every weekend. And the way she was flirting with the new cowboy, Jim Bob might be sleeping alone that night.

   Chiggers in the real sense are little red bugs that burrow down into the skin and itch terribly. Chigger got her nickname because she said she was just like one of those little bugs. She could make a man itch so bad he had to let her scratch the itch for him. Most men fell all over themselves when Chigger took notice of them. Evidently the newcomer had put on bug repellent because she wasn't having much effect on him.

   Daisy filled a Mason jar, the standard beer glass at the Honky Tonk, from the tap and carried it to the cowboy. "That one's on the house if you don't sue me. I'm the bartender that should have seen that puddle of beer."

   "Deal," he said curtly. What he'd like to make a deal for didn't have a damn thing to do with a puddle of beer and a lot to do with finding himself back on top of the bartender. And without an audience. He touched his head—must've hit it harder than he realized to be entertaining such crazy notions.

   Jarod McElroy hadn't come into the bar for conversation and he'd have run a country mile if he'd known his first walk across the dance floor was going to net him a fall on top of the bartender. God knew he listened to plenty of talk from his eighty-six-year-old uncle, Emmett McElroy, who provided enough words in a day to make Jarod's ears hurt. And most of his words would fry the hair off a billy goat's ass.

   The family had known that Uncle Emmett was failing the past year, but a couple of months ago Jarod's mother had made a trip from Oklahoma to Texas to see him. When she found out that he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's in addition to a multitude of other ailments, she'd come home with the suggestion that Jarod move down there and help him run his ranch. He'd been more than willing, since he remembered Uncle Emmett and Aunt Mavis fondly and figured living on the ranch would be just as great as when he was a kid.