“I’m glad I’ll be roofing a barn. I hate to sit behind a table at a bake sale.” Mia pushed back her chair and carried her plate to the sink.
“Better get used to it, darlin’,” Pearl said. “This job gets passed down. I inherited it from both my mother and mother-in-law. Addy gets it from me, and you’ll get it from her.”
“But she’s not your daughter or daughter-in-law,” Mia argued.
“She is in my heart, and that’s as important as DNA.” Pearl smiled.
“Thank you,” Addy said. She truly hoped that what she and Jesse had wasn’t just a flash of heat in the pan, but that someday she would be a real daughter-in-law to Pearl and Sonny.
Guess that blew the bottom out of going slow, the voice in her head giggled. You’re thinking marriage, and he has yet to say that he loves you.
Chapter Twenty-Three
May I have this dance?” Jesse held out his hand to Addy.
She slipped her hand in his, and he led her out to the dance floor. The cover band was playing Chris Stapleton’s “Millionaire.” The lyrics talked about love being more precious than gold and having it made a cowboy a millionaire. Jesse wrapped his arms around Addy’s waist, and she draped her arms around his neck.
Jesse sang along about the times when his pockets were empty and his cupboard was bare, he still felt like he was a millionaire.
Addy leaned back a little and smiled up at him. “Do you really believe that?”
“I do,” he said. “I’m a rich man because I’ve got you in my arms tonight.”
She leaned her cheek against his chest. “That’s a romantic line.”
“It’s the absolute truth. I’ve never felt like this before, not even that night before I left for the Air Force,” he assured her, and meant every word of what he’d said.
When that song ended, fiddle music started, and Jesse grinned. “Looks like the band is singing just to us tonight. Listen to the words of this one.”
“I could probably crawl up on that stage and not miss a beat,” she told him. “Alan Jackson is one of my favorites, and I love ‘Livin’ on Love.’”
Jesse took her hands in his, swung her out, and brought her back to his chest. “He’s right, you know—without somebody, life ain’t worth a dime.”
“Yep,” she agreed.
He was about to say that he was in love with her when Grady tapped him on the shoulder. “Mind if I cut in?”
“Of course not,” Jesse said with a smile. But he really wanted to grab Addy’s hand and run away from the dance with her. He went to the bar across the room, sat down on a stool beside his brother Cody, and ordered a beer.
“Lost your woman?” Cody chuckled.
“Just for one dance,” Jesse answered.
The bartender set his beer on a paper coaster. Cody handed her a bill and pointed to his empty. “I’ll get the first one for my brother.”
“Thanks,” Jesse said.
“So, you and Addy had a little fling before you went to the Air Force? Why didn’t you ever mention it to me? I thought we pretty much shared everything,” Cody said.
“One night,” Jesse said. “I left the next morning and didn’t know about Mia until I got home this time. Best-kept secret in the history of Honey Grove unless you’ve got one to share about you and Stevie.”
“Nope,” Cody told him.
Jesse turned up his beer and took a long drink. “She and Grady were good friends until his girlfriend got jealous of their relationship.”
“Maybe he split with the nurse, and he’s ready for more than friendship with Addy,” Cody suggested. “Have you told her how you feel?”
“She knows,” Jesse said.
“Maybe so, but until you tell her, she won’t be sure. Good God!” Cody said.
Jesse followed his brother’s eyes to the mirror above the bar and saw Stevie coming right toward them.
“You going to ask her to dance?” Jesse asked.
“Hell, no!” Cody whispered.
Stevie sat down on the stool next to Cody and ordered a double shot of Jameson. When it was set before her, she nodded toward Cody.
“Put that on my tab,” Cody said. “I’ll buy this pretty lady her first drink.”
Jesse nudged him with an elbow. “So much for that ‘hell, no.’ I bet you five bucks that you dance the last dance with her.”
“I’d forgotten how cute she is.” Cody laid a bill on the bar without looking at her. “What brings you out tonight? You plannin’ on doing some dancing?”
“Maybe.” Stevie turned up her drink. “If a good-lookin’ cowboy who thought he was too old for me at one time was to ask me, I might show him up on the dance floor.”
“Y’all excuse me,” Jesse said when the female vocalist in the band took the microphone and began to sing an old Shania Twain song, “From This Moment On.” He slid off his stool. “I want to dance with Addy on this one. He lowered his voice and said, “You’re on your own, brother, but I’ll expect a full report tomorrow morning.”
“You son of a bitch!” a man screamed over the top of the music, and the sound of a breaking glass followed. “Don’t you come in here trying to take my woman away from me.”
The singer didn’t miss a note, but suddenly, Jesse felt a spray of something warm across his face. He reached up and swiped his hand across his cheek and brought back bloody fingers. “What the hell?”
“I’ll kill you,” he heard so loud in his left ear that he whipped around to see who was threatening him.
“You bastard,” Patrick O’Malley said as he held his hand over a cut across his cheek.
“She only goes for the handsome ones, so I’ll fix your face so she don’t look at you again,” the first guy said as he took another swipe toward Patrick with the broken bottle.
Patrick squared off with him and held him at bay with the legs of a bar stool. “You idiot. I wasn’t flirting with your woman. I asked her which way the bathrooms were.”
“You’re a low-down scoundrel, Patrick O’Malley. Everyone in town knows you cheat on Lylah.” He knocked the bar stool out into the dance floor, causing two couples to trip and fall flat on their butts. “Well, your lies ain’t goin’ to work on me.”
Jesse got between them and managed to wrestle the bottle from the big burly guy’s hand, but in the process he got a cut on the back of his hand. Now, he and Patrick were both bleeding.
“You idiot,” Cody yelled as he waded into the melee. “That’s my brother you just sliced open. Someone call 911 and the police.”
Suddenly, Addy was beside Jesse and shaking her finger at the guy who had been holding the bottle. “You fool. You’re drunk, and you’ve injured two men. Charges will be filed against you as soon as the police get here.”
“Come on, Dolly.” He motioned for his woman. “It’s time we left.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she declared and dropped down on her knees beside Patrick. “I’m so sorry, honey. He wasn’t supposed to be here. He told me he had to work tonight.”