A Knight In Cowboy Boots (7 page)

“Maddie, I—”

“Zach—” Maddie said at the same moment.

They both stopped.

“Go ahead,” Zach said. If she didn’t talk first, he was afraid he’d say something stupid, just to fill the silence.

Maddie’s voice had a smile in it. “Are you good with children?”

Zach took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “Kids love me.”

“Is that really true or are you just telling me what I want to hear?”

“Both. Does this mean I got the babysitting gig?”

Zach crossed his fingers in the long silence that followed his question. She was obviously hesitant about leaving her child with him. Given that she didn’t really know him, he understood that. But he wanted to see her again. Damn near craved it. In the silence, he could almost hear how badly she wanted the interview Rachel had set up. He hoped it was enough to get her to take a chance on him. Finally, she said, “Maybe. If I can’t line up a babysitter, I’ll bring Jesse with me, and you can watch him while I meet the bar manager.”

“I see. You don’t trust me to know where you live,” he teased, glad to be back to a place where he could.

“Well, I don’t have my gun back yet.”

“I can’t win, can I?”

Her voice was pensive. “I don’t know yet.”

“Maddie?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll be waiting when you get here.”

*

What with getting shot and being kept up another couple of hours until Rachel was done with him, Zach was short on sleep.

He looked longingly at the bed but he didn’t dare lie down. Instead, he took another shower and shaved. He should get his hair cut, he thought; it was curling under where it hit his collar. But maybe Maddie wouldn’t like it as short as he usually wore it. The curl did hide how ragged the ends were. Hard to get a good cut on an offshore oil rig. He’d wait until he was surer of her, he decided.

Zach shook his head. He hardly knew the girl and here he was, as concerned about showing off his plumage as any bedraggled peacock.

He dropped the towel around his waist where he stood and pulled a fresh pair of jeans from the bureau. Rachel always made sure he had new, clean clothes when he came off the rigs. Her consideration sprang more from concern that he’d reflect poorly on her than because all his clothes came back heavily stained with crude.

There was one thing he could show off—he grabbed a clean, white muscle shirt from another drawer.

The pristine white would set off his tanned skin nicely, but what he really wanted to display was the muscle he built up on the rigs. He clenched his left hand into a fist and watched the muscles up his arm spring into sharp definition in the mirror.

When he went to pull the shirt on, it caught on the bandage on his arm. “Dammit!” He kicked the fallen towel into a corner and threw the shirt after it. It wouldn’t cover the bandage. Folks would ask what happened. Maddie took his teasing surprisingly well, but even if he lied about it, she might be uncomfortable with others asking questions. He couldn’t risk it. She was skittish enough.

He went back to the drawer. Good grief! Was that a pink shirt in the bottom of the drawer? What the hell was Rachel thinking?

He found a bright yellow T-shirt with a Chinese dragon embroidered on the breast pocket. The bandage was high in the meaty part of his arm, so the sleeve covered it. If he couldn’t show off his muscles at least the yellow looked good against his tan.

Zach started for the door, but turned back to pick up the shirt and towel in the corner. No sense letting her see what a slob he was this early in the game, he thought as he stuffed them into an empty drawer.

*

He was right there, waiting for her, just as he’d said he’d be, slumped down on the love seat, his long legs stretched out in front of him, cowboy boots crossed at the ankle.

Except his eyes were closed and his chin rested on his chest.

As she stood over him, Jesse leaned from her arms, reaching for Zach, his little fists opening and closing with acquisitive glee. “You are so like your mother,” Maddie muttered at the child. “Wanting everything you see.” She shifted, moving unconsciously, and the pudgy little body swung back against her chest. She tugged Jesse’s bonnet back into place.

How long had Zach’s sister kept him up? she wondered. Maddie might have felt bad about waking him, but with a small child who liked to be fed early, she hadn’t gotten enough sleep either.

She had almost convinced herself to take Jesse to the interview with her, but she knew they’d wonder if she’d create scheduling problems if she couldn’t even get a sitter for the interview. Blast Peggy’s afternoon classes. That left her with only one option, and as much as she didn’t like it, her worries that Zach might have a connection to Derek were so farfetched even she recognized them as bordering on paranoid. Yes, he was a stranger, but so was everyone around her. She had to start trusting people again.

She bumped her foot against the sole of his cowboy boot. Zach’s entire body jerked, then he surged to his feet.

“You’re here.”

“This is where the interview is, right?”

“Yeah. Just go to the bar and ask for Claudia.” Jesse glommed onto the finger Zach held out. “This must be Jesse. Here, let me take him.”

“Ba-ya-ya,” Jesse said as Maddie reluctantly surrendered him.

“How old is he?”

“Six months.”

“He’s big for six months.”

“He’s always been big. Nine pounds, ounces when he was born.”

“Good natured, too, I bet.”

“Almost frighteningly so most of the time,” Maddie agreed. “But he’s going to be grumpy later. This is his nap time.” She set Jesse’s monstrosity of a travel bag on the seat next to where Zach had been sitting. Throwing the flap back, she said, “There’s a bottle in here if he wants it, and diapers and—”

“Wow! He doesn’t have a lot of hair, but it sure is red.”

An electrical charge ran through Maddie. Zach had pushed Jesse’s bonnet back and was stroking his hair.

“Don’t do that.” Maddie kept her voice soft as she snatched Jesse’s bonnet. She snugged it down onto his head, retying the strings under his chin. God, her hands were shaking. “He—he catches cold easy.”

Zach looked at her, as though she were some kind of mutated fruit fly, until Jesse grabbed his lower lip and pulled it out. Zach made unintelligible noises of complaint, but they were clearly token protests.

“Are you going to be here when I get done?” Maddie asked, afraid her tension was coming through in her voice.

Zach freed his lip. “I thought I’d take Jesse up to my room, if that’s okay.” He held Jesse’s little fist in his so it wouldn’t get into trouble while he talked to Maddie. “Maybe I can get him to sleep.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” A much better idea than sitting in the lobby with Jesse’s red hair shining like a beacon.

“You remember the room number?” Zach asked.

“Uh, no. Not really.”

“. Here’s a spare key card. Just come on in. In case he’s sleeping.”

Everything Zach said was perfectly reasonable. Was she imagining the speculative look in his eyes? She knew it was best to pretend it wasn’t there, to act as normal as possible, but it wasn’t easy.

“Thanks.”

“Take whatever time you need. I got no appointments.”

Maddie leaned over and kissed Jesse’s cheek. “Be good, Charlie Brown.” She always hated leaving him with someone new. What would she do if he wasn’t there when she got back? The thought made it hard to breathe.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him. Go knock ‘em dead.”

“Thanks.” Maddie turned resolutely and headed for the bar.

She pushed Jesse to the back of her mind and tried to focus on the job. I don’t need this job, she told herself. There are others out there.

Logical as that argument was, it didn’t calm her down. She hated lying but telling the truth was too risky. People couldn’t accidentally tell what they didn’t know.

Please, God, don’t make me have to do this more than once
.

The bartender gave her an application. When she had it filled out with her lies, he took it back to the bar manager. While she waited, Maddie studied the autographed pictures that lined the top of backbar’s mirror. She wondered who the rodeo fan was.

Claudia came out and invited Maddie into her office. A polished, confident woman somewhere around thirty, she tried to put Maddie at ease by chatting about the hotel for a few minutes before getting down to the details Maddie dreaded.

“Where did you learn to bartend?”

“A tavern in
Coos Bay
,
Oregon
, ma’am. A place called The Cove.”

“
Coos
Bay
? So you’re from
Oregon
?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You don’t have to call me ma’am. Claudia will do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Claudia smiled. “I guess we can work on that. How long have you been bartending?”

“Since I was twenty-one. My first job was in a beer and wine bar, but I only worked there a year. Then I got a job at The Cove. They had a hard liquor license. I was there three years.”

“What kind of clientele do they have?”

“In the summer, there’s a lot of tourists.
Coos
Bay
’s on the coast. In the winter, it’s mostly regulars.”

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

“I suppose it doesn’t help to tell you that you don’t need to be.”

“I wish it would but— no, probably not.”

“Okay, then let’s just get this over with so you can relax again. How big a bar is The Cove?”

“Legal capacity was ninety-five. Sometimes in the summer, we’d get close to that.”

Claudia brow furrowed. “Is the bar still in business?”

“No, ma’am. It closed last year. Mitch—the owner—he and his wife got a divorce. Kind of a nasty one. He shut the bar down and moved to
Montana
. He sold the building a few months ago, but the new owners are remodeling before they reopen.”

“Is he available to give you a reference?”

Maddie pulled a folded piece of paper from her purse. She opened it, pressing it flat on the top of the desk. There was only one name on it—Mitch Marshall with a
Bozeman
address and phone number. She passed it to Claudia. “He gave me his number before he left. I talked to him a couple of months ago so it should still be good.”

Claudia scanned the page.

“I know my references are thin but I’m a hard worker. I don’t date the customers, and I know my drinks. I—”

Claudia held up a hand to stop the flow. “It’s okay you don’t have a lot of references. At your age, more than a couple only makes you look flighty.” She refolded the paper and stuck it into the corner of her desk blotter then pushed her chair back and stood. “Let’s go back out to the bar. I’ve got a little test I like to give prospective bartenders.”