Hot As Sin (2 page)

His next realization was that nuns weren’t supposed to look so warily at the human race. In particular, he didn’t like this one looking at him so distrustfully. She adjusted her glasses as if stalling for time, and then she swept a look down and back up as much of him as she could see above the bar. Gabe got the distinct impression that she disapproved of him; of haircuts that weren’t above the ears and off the collar; and of his five o’clock shadow that was a couple of days old by now.

Stepping back and suddenly wary himself, Gabe paused a half-second before he prodded her again. “Can I get you something to drink, Sister?”

She climbed on one of the empty stools and arranged her coat in her lap. “I’ll have some juice.”

He reached for a clean glass from the racks above him. “Orange or tomato?”

“Tomato.”

“One Virgin Mary—” Gabe froze. He cursed silently at his slip and at how easily one little nun could make him so conscious of good and bad. He thought he’d given up feeling guilty. With a shake of his head he reached for the Bloody Mary mix. “Sorry, Sister.”

“For what?” she asked distractedly, then gave him a sharp look. “Oh, I see what you mean. Don’t worry. If you walked into my place and heard the Scriptures quoted, you wouldn’t expect an apology. Well, neither do I, but if you still feel the need to apologize, I suggest you appeal to a higher authority.”

He set the glass in front of her. “Why bother? The last time I did, he wasn’t listening.”

“God helps those who help themselves.” Gabe smiled. This was an old argument. One he’d
had a hundred times in the orphanage. “Those who help themselves don’t need God’s help.”

“No, they don’t. They have faith. They don’t need proof.”

“Ah … that explains it. I was never much good with faith.”

“It takes practice.”

“Oh, I practiced,” he assured her softly. “That’s how I know I’m not any good at it.”

Suddenly the challenge in her expression was gone, replaced by an almost imperceptible regret. With precise, efficient motions she picked up the salt shaker and sprinkled a large quantity of salt into her tomato juice.

“What time is sunrise tomorrow?” she asked abruptly.

“Excuse me?” he said, dragging his eyes away from the sight of her spiking her drink with a lethal dose of sodium.

“I assume the sun is going to come up in Washington tomorrow.”

“It always does.”

“See there,” she insisted quietly as she put down the shaker. “Everyone believes in something. Even you.”

Stunned, Gabe realized he’d just been had by a nun. Before he could figure out how to regain the ground he’d lost or why he cared, Marsha Jean drew his attention by waving her fingers in his peripheral vision. “Darlin’, if you can terminate this fascinating conversation about theology long enough to get me some drinks … well then, I might just be able to serve a few customers, who might pay us, which means you might make payroll this week.”

He tossed a white towel on the bar and began to wipe it down. “Haven’t missed a payroll yet, Marsha Jean.”

“Yeah, but you’ve come real close. Maybe this week you won’t have to cut any trees to do it.” She looked at the nun. “The man’s got a thing about his timberland. Of course, around here it’s like money in the bank, so most people don’t get all weepy about thinning it out now and then. Excepting this one here.”

“Marsha Jean, I don’t pay you to chat with the customers,” Gabe told her bluntly. “Have you got an order, or what?”

“When you ask so nicely, how can I refuse?” she asked as she put a round tray on the counter. “Three Jack Blacks with beer backs and three shots of tequila,” she rattled off, and turned to the sister. “Now, what’s a nice Catholic girl like you doing in a place like this?”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Waiting for someone in a bar?” Marsha Jean’s tone implied everything that was wrong with the scenario without actually criticizing. “All we got around here is lumberjacks, pretend cowboys, and a bartender with attitude. Surely you aren’t lookin’ for one of these fellas? Except the bartender, they’ve all been drinkin’!”

The sister smiled. “God finds nothing wrong with spirits as long as they aren’t allowed to weaken the spirit.”

“Amen, to that!” Marsha Jean giggled. “But we got some pretty weak spirits in this town.”

“Order’s up,” Gabe interrupted as he finished pouring the last shot. “You keep an eye on them, Marsha Jean. I don’t want to have to close early tonight.”

At his warning the sister leaned forward, eyebrows raised and concern on her face. She cast a glance around, let her attention linger over the empty barstools and the few couples on the tiny dance floor. “It’s a quiet crowd. Why would you close early?”

“It wouldn’t be by choice, honey,” the waitress explained as she pulled the tray toward her. “Around midnight the customers who chase whiskey with beer usually chase the beer with a fight. Chair-throwin’ and fight-startin’ is sort of a sport in this neck of the woods.”

“Oh, I see,” the nun said faintly, but a moment afterward her nod of understanding turned into a confused head-shake. “No, I don’t see. Why would you have to close because of a fight? Don’t you expect an occasional fight?” She looked at Gabe like a fight promoter assessing his potential as a boxer. “Can’t you handle it?”

Marsha Jean laughed as she hoisted the tray. “You gals really don’t get out much, do you?”

When she walked away to deliver her drinks, Gabe—knowing all too well that nuns didn’t get out to bars much—furnished an explanation. “Around here when they fight, it’s usually with a broken bottle in one hand and a knife in the other. After I ‘handle it,’ I might have to drive down to the hospital in Arlington for an X ray or stitches or both.”

“Oh, I see,” she said again. But the answer didn’t seem to satisfy her. Not by a long shot.

She worried her bottom lip with perfect white teeth and watched Marsha Jean deliver the platter of drinks. Gabe followed her gaze to the group of men who looked
entirely too edgy to be mixing whiskey and beer. He wasn’t any happier about the situation.

Then her gaze shifted to the door, and she began to watch the clock. He couldn’t see if her hands were clasped, but Gabe would have sworn she was doing some heavy-duty praying. Puzzled by her reaction, he tried to fathom why she was suddenly so concerned with the time. Traffic began to heat up, and each time the door opened she stared with hope at the new arrivals, as if matching them against a mental picture. Each time she frowned.

An hour later she’d switched to orange juice and to a stool next to the wall, out of Marsha Jean’s traffic pattern. She said it was to rest her back, but Gabe decided it was to escape Marsha Jean Petit’s questions. His waitress was a hothouse transplant from the South with a heart of gold but not one ounce of subtlety. People who grew up in small southern towns tended to have a warped view of individual privacy. Her questions made the good sister nervous, which confirmed Gabe’s suspicions that the good sister had something to hide.

If he’d been less involved in trying to figure out the nun, he might have seen the fight brewing. Instead, his first clue was the unmistakable sound of a beer bottle being smacked against a table edge and turned into a weapon. Instinctively his head whipped around, his eyes searching the scene in front of him to locate the culprit, but everyone in the place was standing up, obscuring his view.

By the time he’d rounded the bar, the crowd was backing away. Some were already out the door. With good reason.

“
Dammit
,” Gabe whispered when he saw what sent all the smart patrons scurrying out into the parking lot or heading for home.

Sawyer Johns and Clayton Dover, normally the best of friends, were circling each other. Both of them had a nasty, decidedly unfriendly gleam in their eye and a hard set to their mouths. If someone had asked him for a list of patrons who could cause serious damage in a fight, these two would have been at the top of his list. Hell, these two
were
his list. Big, mean, ugly drunks. Both of them. That’s why he always watched them carefully when they started backing whiskey with beer. Until tonight.

Until a nun with secrets distracted him.

An expectant hush fell over the crowd as he shouldered his way through. The morbid anticipation and excitement that gripped the bystanders was almost palpable. Several of them shot him looks of encouragement, urging him into the fray.

Gabe knew better than to let fools or the first rush of adrenaline trick him into situations too quickly. Military service had taught him something the orphanage never could—patience. He waited. And rolled down his shirtsleeves, protecting his arms as best he could with the thick red flannel.

As he casually buttoned his cuffs, he asked, “You boys care to tell me what’s goin’ on here?”

Sawyer answered him with a voice so rusty from whiskey that it was more of a hoarse whisper. “Just a little disagreement, Gabe. You don’t want a piece of it.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” He took the large silver and turquoise ring off his finger and slipped it into his jeans
pocket along with the silver chain he wore around his wrist. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to take your disagreement outside?”

“Right here suits us fine,” Clayton said as he made a halfhearted preliminary lunge, testing his reflexes and Sawyer’s.

“Look, I’m asking you nice, boys. Do me a favor and take this to the parking lot before someone ends up bleeding all over my floor.”

Neither of the men answered this time. They were too busy circling, measuring the distance, and kicking furniture out of the way to give themselves plenty of room. Their heavy leather work boots crunched the glass on the floor and ground it in.

They outweighed him, but he was taller with more reach. They had knives and broken beer bottles, but he was sober and trained in hand-to-hand-combat tactics. He liked his odds, but he swore that he was going to get around to buying a baseball bat to keep behind the bar. Yeah, that’s what he needed. Or a shotgun. Or classier clientele.

“I guess we’re going to do this the hard way.” Gabe sighed. The bar was about to close early.

He waded in, knowing he needed to take one of them out quickly, and Clayton was closer. In a motion that was second nature, he avoided the drunk’s sloppy lunge and slammed his boot heel into the man’s kneecap. The nasty snapping sound reassured Gabe that Clayton wasn’t going anywhere but down. The drunk bellowed and folded like a broken lawn chair as Gabe spun to take on the other one.

Sawyer paused at the sight of Clayton crashing to the floor in agony. The crowd was equally impressed.

“Damn, that had to hurt!”

“This ain’t a fair fight.”

Gabe had to agree. Bar fights never were; integrity seemed to go out the window right alongside sobriety.

“Aw, Clayton, you fool, stay down,” exhorted someone in the crowd.

Disbelief made Gabe flick a glance over his shoulder to see if Clayton had actually dragged himself up. The brief moment gave Sawyer the courage to charge, but the crowd ruined his advantage by sucking in a collective gasp. Their warning saved Gabe from a nasty cut as he whipped back around and realized Sawyer was smarter than the average drunk. He led with his knife instead of his chin.

Simultaneously evading the slicing motion and grabbing Sawyer’s forearm, Gabe pulled him closer, off balance. Then he twisted Sawyer’s arm and bent the wrist back until the pain penetrated his alcohol-fogged senses. Sawyer suddenly grunted in pain and let the knife fall to the floor, but not before Clayton delivered a sledgehammer punch to Gabe’s ribcage.

Ignoring the sensation that exploded at his side, Gabe smashed an elbow into Sawyer’s cheekbone and sent him reeling. Tired of the game, he rounded on Clayton and added a little character to his face by rearranging his nose with two swift jabs. Then he swept Clayton’s feet out from under him and dumped him to the floor again.

“Look! Sawyer’s just as stupid as Clayton,” someone said. “They shouldn’t get up.”

Dammit!
Gabe thought, turning to Sawyer. The crowd was right. These boys shouldn’t get up. They were about to make him angry. He wheeled and planted a boot squarely in the center of Sawyer’s chest, drilling him with enough force to send him backward six feet and into a chair that flipped as soon as his butt landed in it.

The crowd loved that, giving him a chorus of “All right, man!” and discussing the fight as though they were watching cable. “Where’d a bartender learn all that stuff anyway?”

“Ben Lawson says he did some time in Leavenworth,” someone volunteered loudly as they made space for Clayton, who was crawling toward the door.

“Hell, he ain’t never done time in prison! He spent some time in
Lebanon
, for crying out loud! He was one of those Navy SEAL guys they send on rescue missions. That’s where he learned all that ninja crap.”

By slow degrees Gabe relaxed. When Sawyer stayed down this time, he stepped back and jerked his head toward the door. “I don’t want to have to explain the house rules to you again. You take your fights outside, or next time somebody’s going to get hurt.”

At his intentional understatement, several of the spectators couldn’t hold back snorts of appreciation or nervous chuckles. Sawyer glared at a few of them before he staggered to his feet. When he looked at his knife on the floor, Gabe advised softly, “I’d buy a new one if I were you.”

Sawyer decided to take his advice.

“The rest of you go on home. The show’s over, and
the bar’s closed,” Gabe said wearily without looking at what was left of the crowd.

Spearing his fingers through his hair to drag it back out of his face, Gabe expelled the tension inside him and a curse in one breath. The adrenaline faded, and a bruised rib made its presence known. Carefully he put a supporting hand over the spot where his ribcage screamed the loudest. He was getting too old to be the only one on his side in a bar fight. His body had thirty-five hard years on it.

He shook his head at Marsha Jean’s offer to stay and waved her out with the rest of the stragglers. “Go home and watch your kids sleep.”

Tired and hurting, he was in no mood to deal with anything else. So when he found the nun still lingering behind the others and staring at him with the same disappointment he’d seen a hundred times before, he said a few things he shouldn’t. “It was a bar fight. Plain and simple. I didn’t break the Fifth Commandment. I just bent it a little, so don’t start the sermon, Sister. Not all of us are saints.”