For the Love of a Lush (Lush No. 2) (8 page)

"So the bottle ruin him or not?" she asks as she gives me the eagle eye.

"No," I say emphatically. "It did not ruin him. He’s stronger than that. He just doesn’t believe
we’re
stronger yet, so I have to convince him."

"You sure he isn’t just looking for an excuse to dump you?"

God, I wonder if Leanne realizes that little Mrs. Stallworth packs a vicious punch.

"Yes. He loves me. He just thinks we’ve hurt each other so much that we shouldn’t be together anymore."

"And what do you think?"

"I think we need to start fresh, and as long as we love each other, we can overcome anything."

"Men are stupid," she says matter-of-factly. "It’s up to us to tell them that. Sometimes that means using a frying pan over his head, and sometimes that means shaking your moneymaker his direction. Which you gonna do?" She sips her tea as if she hasn’t just suggested I either assault my ex-boyfriend or blatantly seduce him.

I smile. "The moneymaker, Mrs. Stallworth. The moneymaker. I’ve been taking the frying pan to people’s heads for too long."

"Good," she cackles. "You’ve got a grade-A moneymaker, girl. You might as well use it. But you’re gonna freeze it off if you don’t cover it up a little better. Less is more, dear."

I nod my head, looking down at my cleavage spilling out of the halter top I have on. "Yes, ma’am," I say solemnly. Maybe she’s got a point.

Walsh

A
FTER
I leave Tammy at the boarding house, I decide to go drag Mike’s ass out of The Bronco. Although there are days when it’s a place I shouldn’t be, I do go to The Bronco now and then. There’s not a hell of a lot to do in this town, and Mike and I get tired of working, eating, watching TV, and wallowing in our own crap. As stressful as my conversation with Tammy was, I feel a sense of relief. I’ve admitted my stuff. She’s admitted to hers. Maybe now we can both have a clean start at new lives. I decide that my new, lighter conscience will help me keep it together to go have an O.J. and club soda while Mike finishes chatting up whatever poor farm girl he’s victimizing tonight.

I walk into the big front room of the bar, and it’s packed, cowboys and women in tight denim from wall to wall. As convincing as I may have been with Tammy earlier, the men in this town are actually pretty damn polite to the women. Some sort of old-fashioned Texas-rancher thing. They open doors, pull out chairs, and say, "Yes, ma’am," quite a bit around here.

I can’t help but smile to myself. I shouldn’t have bullshitted Tammy like that, but at least I kept her from parading around town in that getup. I know she’s going to move on and meet someone else, and he’ll be a lucky son of a bitch, but I really hope that I don’t have to see it when it happens. I think I might hurt one of these guys if I saw him touching Tammy.

As I look around, trying to guess where Mike might have gone, that Florida Georgia Line song with Nelly comes on over the sound system. It makes me think of Mike’s truck, and I can’t help but shake my head.

"Hey, cowboy," a voice says next to my ear.

I turn and look down to see one of the waitresses, Marsha, giving me a smug little look, her curly red hair only moderately restrained by a bun on top of her head and her blue eyes crinkled at the corners as she grins.

I roll my eyes. "Hi, Marsha," I sigh.

"Just admit it. You’ve paid Jimmy to give you my schedule and now you’re stalking me."

I chuckle. It seems that I have an unnatural knack for only coming to The Bronco when Marsha’s working. The fourth or fifth time in a row that I showed up during one of her shifts, she started giving me shit about it, and she’s never let up. Day or night, workday or weekend, if I come to The Bronco, Marsha will be there. I’ve accused her of living here, but the owner, Jimmy, swears that she only works a standard forty-hour week. I’m not sure I believe him.

"You seen Mike around here?" I ask, scanning the crowd over as many heads as I can.

She gives me an odd look then purses her lips. "Yeah, I’ve seen him," she answers.

"Oh shit. What’s he done?" I ask, bracing myself to hear about his latest asshole maneuver.

"Come on over to the bar and I’ll get you your juice," she answers, shimmying between a couple of guys who take the opportunity to check her out and whistle as she goes by.

I give them a head tip but no smile as I follow her. I won’t be standing by if either of them decides to touch her instead of just look. But they seem to be just enough on the right side of loaded that they keep their paws in check.

When we reach the bar, Marsha motions to the old guy on the end stool, and he grunts at her and leaves. Then she tells me, "Have a seat, cowboy."

"You’ll make a lot more money off of him than you will me, you know," I chide her. "O.J. and club isn’t going to work out to much of a tip no matter how generous I am."

"I thought you famous rock stars just threw around thousand-dollar bills like they were candy.” She winks as she steps behind the bar and starts to mix my drink.

"Sshhh." I scowl at her as I look around to see who might be listening.

Mike and I didn’t know what was going to happen the first few times we went into town after we’d been on the ranch for a few weeks. We went to a lot of trouble and did all the clichéd things—wearing ball caps and sunglasses, slouching around in the dark corners of stores. Imagine how stupid we felt when we realized that no one here listens to our music or knows a damn thing about Lush at all. A few people like Marsha figured it out after a while, but they’ve kept quiet, and we’ve kept off the paparazzi’s radar for going on six months. I figure a little longer and we’ll be such has-beens that no one will care anymore. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

"Oh just relax," she sasses me. "No one here listens to anything but Luke Bryan and Zac Brown Band. You’re safe, rock star."

"So you were going to tell me what Mike’s managed to get himself into now." I change the subject abruptly as I realize I still haven’t seen my roomie.

She sighs and leans forward across the bar top. Marsha’s well-endowed, and I work really hard at keeping my eyes topside as her cleavage sort of splays across the wooden surface. All seeing it would do is make me long for Tammy’s anyway.

"He’s been chatting up one of the local gals."

I take a swig of O.J. and crunch the ice that slides into my mouth. "Nothing new about that," I answer.

"Well, this
girl
is different."

I raise an eyebrow. "What is she, like a virgin or something?" I slap the bar top and laugh my ass off at the very idea.

Marsha stands back and watches me, arms crossed, a disapproving look on her face.

As I see that she’s not laughing with me, I settle down. "Seriously, Marsha, what’s up? Is she older? Because I can tell you that’s never stopped him. Younger? Unless she’s lied to him about her age, I know he won’t go below eighteen. He may not have many scruples, but he’s got a deep aversion to prison."

Finally, she leans forward again and hisses out, "She’s the
pastor’s
daughter, you moron."

I swallow my O.J. the wrong way and start to cough. I pound myself on the chest as juice sprays out of my mouth, and the dude on the next barstool gets pissed off and turns his back to me. Marsha looks disgusted and pulls a bar towel from underneath the counter then wipes up the mess I’ve made.

"Well at least you get the seriousness of the situation," she mutters. "Pastor Turner will run him out of here with a shotgun up his ass if he messes with Jenny."

"Holy crap. Does he know? I mean, does he know who she is?"

"Yes, Walsh. I told him right away," she grits out.

"Well why the hell is he still playing with fire?

"How should I know? You’re his friend. I’m just the damn waitress that’s served them three separate times when they’ve been here all cozy in the back corner."

"Aw shit. Where are they? You’d better take me over there."

"Come on then." She motions for me to follow. "I’m sure he’ll be about as happy to hear it from you as he was from me last week."

M
IKE IS
pouting like a six-year-old as we drive in the darkness, bouncing along the dirt roads back to the ranch. He’s in the passenger’s seat, head thrown back against the headrest, mouth clamped shut, and boot tapping in the floorboards impatiently.

"Watch those fucking dips, man," he mutters as I hop us over a pothole. "Since you gave away all your damn money, I know you can’t afford to buy me a new suspension."

"Give me a break. I swear to God, this is a truck, Mike. A huge motherfucking truck. You’d have to haul through a dip six feet deep before you’d hurt the suspension on this thing. It was made to work. You treat it like it’s some sort of Italian sports car."

He snorts and turns to look out the side window. After a moment of silence, he tells me, "I’m not trying to get in her pants."

"Really? ‘Cause it sure as hell looked that way with you two practically on top of each other at that table in the darkest corner of The Bronco. You were sniffing her hair, for Christ’s sake."

"Shut the fuck up! I was not."

I can’t help but smile. It feels good to get him all riled up. Maybe I’m taking my frustrations out on him, but he’s done enough things to piss me off in the last twenty years that he deserves it.

"You were, dude. I saw it with my own eyes. Speaking of, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you giving googly eyes to a chick before. It was like you were a cat and she was covered in catnip. You looked stoned just from sitting with her."

I see the smallest hint of a smile play around the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t want to admit it, but I’m right.

"Okay, so she
is
hot, but I swear I’m not trying to get in her pants. It’s not like that."

"Tell me what it
is
like then, because from what I hear, you’re risking your nuts even talking to her."

He sighs and adjusts the vents in the cab, fiddling with the temperature control and directing most of the air in the truck at himself. "First of all, she’s twenty-three, so it’s not like I’m hanging around with jailbait. And yeah, I know all about her old man. She doesn’t live with her parents. She teaches at the elementary school, has her own place. The mighty reverend doesn’t get to decide who she’s friends with." I can hear the defiance in his voice. Mike’s nothing if not defiant.

I shudder to think how far he might take this and what the fallout could be. I briefly wonder if the reverend has a private hotline to God and could damn Mike—and me by association—to Hell. My head starts to ache at the idea.

"You still haven’t told me the part about not trying to get in her pants," I remind him.

"She wants to perform," he blurts out. "She’s got a voice like… Well, I know it’s really sappy to say, but like an angel. And she wants to make it in country music. She didn’t know who I was, but once I heard her sing at The Bronco one night, I told her. She’s got what it takes, and I want to help her, you know? Maybe, I don’t know, produce an album for her or something."

"No shit? You really want to take on producing? A country album?"

"Yeah, I was thinking…" He pauses and glances over at me as if he can’t quite decide whether to trust me or not.

"You were thinking what?" I prompt.

"I was thinking maybe I’d play guitar on it too. I mean, with the right arrangements, we could do something bluesy, with crossover appeal. Taylor Swift’s made the transition from country to pop like cake, and a girl like Jenny, with her looks and her pipes? I think she could hit it big in country
and
alt rock."

As I listen to his confession, I’m stunned. It’s like pod people have invaded Mike’s body. He’s actually thinking about—and
with
—something other than his dick. But it is about music, and that’s the one thing that can bring him out of his self-indulgent, hedonistic cave. Maybe the combination of a hot-as-hell blond preacher’s daughter and music is what Mike’s needed for years.

"Wow. I’d never have guessed, dude. You’re full of all sorts of surprises these days."

It’s pretty dark in the cab of the truck, but my guess is that he’s rolling his eyes.