Honky Tonk Christmas (7 page)

“Two pints of Millers. Holt don’t know what he’s missin’ out on,” Kent said.

“So you and Loralou gettin’ on pretty good?” Tessa asked.

“Better than pretty good, I’d say. Is there something wrong with her that I should know about?”

Sharlene shook her head. “Is there something wrong with you that she should know? If you have a woman up in Wichita Falls, tell me now. I don’t want her heart broke.”

“No woman. Cross my heart and hope to die. Chad has Gloria, but I’m free as a bird,” Kent said.

“You heard of the curse of the Honky Tonk?”

Kent’s smile vanished. “What?”

“We don’t usually tell the cowboys. You think we ought to clue him in on the curse?” Tessa asked Sharlene.

“Well, he does work for me and we probably should.”

“What?” Kent asked.

“Women come in here to find husbands. There’s this charm on the Honky Tonk put on it by the first owner. To the cowboys it’s a curse; to the women it’s a charm. I’ll tell you up front, the cowboys don’t have a chance. When a woman sets her sights on him, he’s as good as bitin’ the dust,” Tessa said.

“Ah, y’all are joshing me,” he said.

“Yeah, we are. It’s an urban myth,” Sharlene giggled.

“Whew! I was about to tell you to pour the beers down the drain and that I was goin’ to light a shuck for home.”

“Naw, we was just teasing,” Tessa said.

He carried the beers back to the table where Loralou waited.

“How long before he realizes we were telling him the truth?” Tessa asked.

Sharlene shook her head. “Hell if I know. I just hope that fat naked little cupid keeps his arrows away from me.”

It was a busy Friday night with customers standing in line outside and the dance floor crowded. The jukebox hadn’t been silent a single minute. Sharlene put six beers into a bucket, shoveled ice in on top of them, made change for the customer, and went on to the next one. It was routine work and she’d loved every minute of it from the time she first set foot in the bar and Larissa had put her to work drawing beers behind the bar. The story she’d intended to write never did materialize but everything had worked for the best because when she lost her job at the newspaper she already had the bartender job to fall back on. She’d had time to write a book, which had started out to be a loose biography of the first owner of the Tonk and evolved into a paranormal romance about an enchanted bar with a beautiful bartender named Rose who was a secret matchmaker. The only trouble was she forgot to take a dose of the antidote and wound up falling in love with a charmed man who was determined to prove his power was stronger than hers.

“What are you thinking about?” Tessa asked when their paths crossed from one end of the bar to the other.

“Why?”

“You looked so serious.”

Sharlene drew up beers as she talked. “Probably my mother. She’s the only one that can make me look serious.”

“Still haven’t told her, have you? It ain’t goin’ to get any easier. Especially when she finds out how long you’ve been doin’ it. Besides, it’s on the back of the book. You showed me the jacket cover and it’s right there under your picture that you own the Honky Tonk and it gave you the inspiration for the book. Does she at least know about the beer joint?”

“No. I haven’t been home since I inherited the place. The book comes out in time for Christmas. I figure I’ll tell her before then,” she said.

A customer pushed a shoulder between two barstool warmers. “I need two martinis and a bucket of Miller.”

Thirsty, hot customers lined up four deep at the bar after a line dance that lasted through four songs. While Tessa filled the orders for daiquiris and two buckets of Miller beer, Sharlene made single pints and pitchers of mixed drinks.

Sharlene had done the job so long that she could think and work at the same time so her mind went back past six years. Her relationship with her parents had hung by a thin frayed thread after she joined the Army rather than staying in Corn, Oklahoma, and marrying the boy she’d dated all through high school. He’d proposed on graduation night but she couldn’t accept the little diamond ring he had in his pocket. There had to be more to life than wheat fields, cotton plants, tractors, and cows. And she intended to experience part of it before she settled down.

“It’s not as bad as the other stuff, Momma,” she muttered.

“What’s not that bad?” Holt asked from a stool.

She blinked three times and he was still there. He had kids at home in the evenings and… what in the hell was he doing there and where was Judd and Waylon?

“Telling Momma that I own a beer joint,” she spit out and immediately wished she could reach up into the air and cram the words back into her mouth. “I’ve got ’til November to tell her and I’m putting it off until the last minute.”

“Be glad you got a momma to tell. I’d like a Coors, longneck, please,” he said.

She pulled a beer out of the cooler, dried the cold water from the outside of the bottle, removed the top, and set it in front of him. He handed her a bill and their fingers brushed. Something tingled down her spine but she attributed it to going-home nerves.

“Where are the kids? They’ve talked about going to the movies all week. What happened?” she asked.

“Chad and Gloria took them for the night. Gloria likes kid movies. They’ll be home about midnight. I thought I’d come take a look at this place when it had noise in it. You were right. Those are
old
songs.” He nodded toward the jukebox where Buck Owens was singing about there being blue skies again when she opened up her heart and let his love come in.

“It’s just for an hour. We usually don’t plug up the old box on Friday night but the customers begged. Luther is putting the other one into play at ten o’clock.”

George Jones’s “Who Shot Sam?” put the line dancers back on the floor in a frenzy of back kicks, shuffles, and hip slapping.

“Back when that was recorded they didn’t do that kind of dancing,” Holt said.

“The beat of pure country music doesn’t change all that much. A few instruments get added but the solid beat is the same so the dance steps are pretty easy to adapt,” she said.

She heaved a sigh of relief when Tessa hollered at her that she needed two pitchers of strawberry daiquiris. She mixed ingredients in the blenders and hoped that Holt being in the Tonk was a one-night thing just like her visiting Waylon’s gravesite.

“Is that the one?” Tessa asked out the side of her mouth.

“What one?”

“Holt Jackson?”

“Well, it’s Holt Jackson all right and he’s the one who is making the Honky Tonk bigger,” Sharlene said.

“But he’s not your cowboy?” Tessa teased.

“I’ve only known the man a week,” Sharlene snapped as she poured a blender of daiquiris into a pitcher and set it on the tray with half a dozen empty pint jars. Tessa had finished with half a dozen quarts of Coors so she left her to figure up the bill and went on to the next customer.

“Where’s my carpenter?” Merle asked from the end of the bar.

“Chad is off to the movies with Holt’s kids and his girlfriend. Was he any good at pool?” Sharlene asked.

“He made me sweat worse than a cowboy in tight jeans and a duck tail haircut back when I was a young filly. That boy could go pro if he ever got tired of hammerin’ nails in two-by-fours,” Merle said.

“Well, Holt is sitting down there at the other end. Don’t know if he’s any good but…”

Merle started in that direction before Sharlene could finish talking.

“It’s worth a try,” she threw over her shoulder.

Sharlene stole glances toward the tables as Holt and Merle battled it out with cue sticks and wooden balls. He looked almighty fine stretched out over the table to make a difficult shot in those tight jeans and turquoise plaid western shirt. His face lit up when he put the ball in the pocket and he frowned when Merle got the best of him. He made one trip to the bar for two beers before Luther plugged in the new jukebox. Half an hour later she looked up to find him standing there with a boot propped up on the foot rail as Blake Shelton sang “Hillbilly Bone.”

“That’s me,” he said.

“You aren’t a hillbilly,” she argued.

“Oh, yeah, I am. Every bone in my body just like Blake is singing. I need two more beers and then I’m going to call it a night and Merle can keep her crown.”

She wiped off a couple of longneck bottles of Coors and set them on the bar.

“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you here tonight,” Kent said.

“I work here.” Sharlene wiped her sweaty palms with a bar rag.

“Yep, but Holt… oh, yeah, Chad and Gloria have the kids. Why are you buying two beers? You already got a woman picked out?” Kent asked.

“See that woman over there at the pool table?” Holt nodded in that direction.

Kent’s lower jaw dropped. “You got to be kiddin’ me.”

“That’s Merle Avery.”

Kent swiped a hand across his forehead. “She as good as Chad said?”

“Better,” Holt said.

“Playin’ for beers or money?”

Holt held up the two beers. “Want to give it a try? I can’t beat her.”

“But I’m better than you. Hey, Sharlene, is Loralou here yet?”

“Haven’t seen her,” Sharlene answered.

Kent clapped a hand on Holt’s shoulder. “Then introduce me and give me one of them beers. I been savin’ your sorry ass all our lives. Guess I can do it again.”

Holt’s green eyes glittered as he led the way to the pool tables. “We won’t discuss what happened in Jolly two years ago in front of Sharlene, will we?”

“Hey, now, don’t air dirty laundry on a Friday night when we’ve got a pro waiting.” Kent almost blushed.

Tessa wiped her hands on a bar rag and asked, “What’s the difference?”

“In what?” Sharlene asked.

“In those two cowboys. Kent tried to put the make on you before he got interested in Loralou. He fills out them jeans real good. He’s handsome and he can dance, plus he ain’t afraid of good old hard work. Holt fills out his jeans just as good. He’s not a bit more handsome. I don’t know about the dancin’ part but he ain’t afraid of good old hard work either. So why does Kent make you smile and Holt makes you sweat?” Tessa asked.

“I’ll admit he’s attractive and I admire him but it will go away if I ignore it. Lust, like stupidity, isn’t fatal and can be cured,” Sharlene said.

Tessa threw back her head and laughed. “When you find a pill for either one, call me. We’ll patent it and make so much money we’ll build Honky Tonks all over the state of Texas.”

Just before midnight Sharlene told Tessa she was stepping out on the front porch for a breath of fresh air. “Be back in five. I’ll see how many we got standing in line and dancing in the parking lot.”

“Take ten. I can handle it that long,” Tessa said.

A tailgate party was going on not far from the front porch. A group of young girls wearing jean shorts, halter tops, and boots were dancing with a bunch of guys about the same age. Sharlene could see a red and white cooler filled with beer and ice and the smell of fried chicken wafted across the lot on the hot night breezes. It brought back memories of that night when she’d come home from her final tour and danced with her friends out by the river. They’d had cold beer and watermelons one of the boys had brought straight from the patch. And they’d danced to country music from a radio in a pickup truck. Her best friend and new bride, Dorie, had been there with her husband. Jason, the boyfriend she’d turned down when he proposed, danced with her and whispered it wasn’t too late for them to start over. But it was. She couldn’t tell Jason what she’d done and she couldn’t marry him without telling him. And she still didn’t want to live in Corn, and… the ands outweighed the buts.

She noticed a couple of trucks with fogged up windows on her way across the lot and giggled. It had been a very long time since she’d found a handsome hunk and gotten in all kinds of positions in the front seat of a pickup truck. Suddenly she felt old at twenty-six.

She sat down on the foundation blocks and pulled a knee up to rest her chin on. Was the addition a mistake? Would it put a hex on the charm of the Honky Tonk? Would it make it more modern and less vintage? Would her customers stop coming and would the few that still hung on look like a dozen marbles rattling around in a big old watering tub?

“Penny for your thoughts,” Holt said from the dark shadows next to the Honky Tonk.

She jumped and shivered at the same time. “You scared the devil out of me. My thoughts aren’t up for sale, and if they were they’d cost a hell of a lot more than a penny. I’m not sure there’s enough money to buy them. When did you leave the Tonk? I didn’t see you go.”

He’d been sitting with his back to the Tonk, facing the road. He moved down to where she was and sat down beside her. “Few minutes ago. Needed some fresh air and besides, I didn’t know if I could even hear my phone in there in all that noise. You didn’t see me leave because you were so busy filling orders at the bar. You could use at least one more bartender. Two would be even better. Then you could get away and check out Weatherford bars once in a while.”

“For the record, I don’t drink like that very often. My friends came for a reunion. We hadn’t seen each other since… well, in several years. We let the moment get ahead of us. And Tess and I do pretty good most of the time keeping up. This is just a bumper crop tonight.”

“Is that what you were thinking about?” Holt asked.

“Okay! Put your shiny new penny away and I’ll tell you my thoughts for free. I was thinking about whether or not I’m making a mistake building this addition. Would Ruby like it? Will it destroy the ambiance of the place? It’s gotten a reputation for an old western type honky tonk with vintage music most of the week. We’re packed almost every night. When more can get in is it going to wreck the aura?”

Holt pointed to the parking lot. “Look, Sharlene. They’re bringing their own beer and dancing under the stars. How can you let doubts rise up when you think about how many more drinks and beer you’ll sell? You should be charging a cover charge too.”

Sharlene shook her head emphatically. “The old saloons in the western movies didn’t charge the cowboys to push open the swinging door. If I had my way I’d pay you to install that kind of door but it’s not a smart thing in today’s world. It would invite vandalism.” The night was scalding hot even at that late hour, but it was nothing compared to the heat that sucked the oxygen from her lungs when Holt was that close. It had to be his shaving lotion and the black hat he had tilted down over his eyes. She’d always been a sucker for Stetsons, both in shaving lotion and hats.

Tessa was right. He did make her sweat.

“Install a folding wall. If it becomes more space than you need then you can move the jukeboxes and the pool tables back to their original places and use the big room for storage,” he suggested. She was a cute little thing in those jean shorts, that bright pink stretchy top, and cowboy boots. The kids talked about her every night over supper and Judd thought she was the grandest thing since Barbie dolls. It would be easy to let her get under his skin but she was a bartender for heaven’s sake.

She clapped her hands. “That’s a wonderful idea. I’ve been wondering how in the devil I’m going to keep it closed off until the grand opening at Christmas anyway. That solves the problem and I like your idea of being able to shut it off if it becomes more room than I need.”

“Why Christmas?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” she said.

He swatted a mosquito. “Heat don’t seem to affect the bugs. I swear that one was as big as a buzzard. It would have sucked all my blood out in five minutes. Now about that long story, I’ve got at least half an hour until Chad and Gloria get here with the kids.”

She giggled nervously. “Promise you won’t laugh.”