“You’ll get no argument out of me,” she said.
* * *
He made sure the little thirty-eight revolver was loaded, and then he eased back into the office, tiptoed around the desk, and peeked under it. One critter was awake now and eyeing him. It would likely strike if Cameron tried to pull the office chair back. He took aim from halfway across the room and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went right through the snake’s head and the back of the desk, and imbedded itself in the doorframe. He sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly, then aimed and fired again before he dragged the chair back out of the way.
Both snakes were dead, but Cameron had been around old barns enough to know that sometimes they brought more than one friend with them. He dragged the first carcass out with the broom handle, picked it up by the tail, and dropped it into the open garbage bag, and then did the same thing with the second one.
After that, he checked every crack, corner, and crevice in the whole room. When he was satisfied that the area was clear of both snakes and spiders, he carried the bag with the dead critters out to the dumpster. That’s when it hit him that he and Jorja had been seeing everything in twos since they arrived at the Honky Tonk. Doves, dogs, owls, possums, snakes—surely that had a meaning of some kind.
He was back inside and headed toward the apartment when the adrenaline rush hit. Until then he’d been acting on impulse, killing something harmful, but now he thought about how far he and Jorja were from a doctor or hospital. He jogged the rest of the way, burst into the apartment, and stopped in the middle of the floor when he saw her sitting in the chair—which was on top of the table.
“Are they dead?” she whispered.
“Yes, ma’am, and in the dumpster, and I checked under and around everything to be sure he hadn’t invited a friend to come in with him. All clear.” He nodded. “I need a beer. How about you?”
“I need a double shot of Jack Daniel’s. No ice.” Her eyes were as big as saucers even yet. “Are you sure it’s safe for me to go to the bar?”
Cameron crossed the room, scooped her up out of the chair like a bride, and carried her through the door. When she was settled on a barstool, he poured a triple shot of whiskey and handed it to her, then opened a beer for himself. He carried his beer around the end of the bar and sat down beside her. “I guess we’ve both eaten our bullfrog today.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“My nanny used to say that if you get up and eat a bullfrog first thing every morning, nothing will faze you after that for the rest of the day. You’ve saved my life by killing a spider…”
She butted in before he could go on. “That little, fuzzy black spider wouldn’t have killed you, and you know it.”
“Maybe not, but it could have caused me to fall, hit my head on the foot of my bed, and kill myself,” he disagreed.
She took a sip of her whiskey. “On the other hand, that snake could’ve bitten me or you, and as big as he was, the venom…” She shivered and turned up her glass again.
Cameron laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve proven that we are survivors, no matter what anyone says.”
“Are you really afraid of spiders?” She clamped a hand over his.
“Yep,” he admitted. “When I was about five years old, I woke up one morning and this big-ass tarantula was sitting on my pillow, not three inches from my nose. I froze. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t make a single peep until the sorry little sumbitch crawled over and put one of his hairy feet on my cheek. Been afraid of them things ever since. How about you and snakes?”
“Don’t know that anything catastrophic like your spider thing ever happened, but I’ve always hated them. I shut my eyes if there’s even one on television.” She threw back the rest of her whiskey. “Should we go back in the office and do some more work?”
“Let’s put it off until later. It’s not like we have to have it all spick and span today,” he said. “It’s after three now. Let’s have a burger and get cleaned up to face the crowd tonight. Think we should stay open on Christmas Eve or close up shop?”
“Why don’t we ask Chigger and Frankie what they’ve done in the past? I can’t imagine that we’ll have much business.” She removed her hand and wiggled free of his. “I’m going to have one more shot and then we can make burgers.”
“You can hold your liquor pretty good there,” he said.
“Yep.” She grinned. “You know what they say about preachers’ daughters.”
“That they’re the wildest of the lot?” he answered.
“Oh, yeah.” She giggled. “Except I was never really wild. I just happen to like whiskey like my granny Lila. She was an O’Malley before she got married and is second-generation Irish in this country. I inherited my red hair, my temper, and my ability to hold my liquor from her. She always thought it was a shame that her son, my father, decided to preach rather than to run a good old Irish pub like her grandfather did in County Cork.”
“Must’ve skipped a generation,” he said as he fired up the grill and started making burgers.
She hip bumped him as she turned the knob to start the deep fryer. “Does that mean my son will be a preacher?”
“If he grows up in the back room of the Honky Tonk, I kind of doubt that,” Cameron answered.
“Would you raise a child in the back room?” she asked.
“Nice room back there, so I don’t see why not, but I’d rather raise him on a ranch where he’d have plenty of runnin’ room.” He turned at the same time she did, and suddenly, their noses were just inches apart. Seemed like the only thing to do was lean in for a kiss. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and his mouth had barely touched hers when her phone rang. She jumped backward like a little girl who’d gotten caught messing around with her mother’s makeup. She jerked the thing out of her pocket and said, “Hello, Abigail. Am I forgiven yet?”
Cameron could hear her sister’s shrill voice even though he was two feet away.
“I will be there this weekend for an intervention so get ready for it, and I’m bringing you home with me. I will not take no for an answer, so have your things packed and ready to leave.”
“Today Cameron killed two snakes.” Ice hung on every word Jorja spoke. “I’ve faced off with the devil and lived through it, so I’m not afraid of you or your intervention bullshit. I’m not going anywhere with you or with anyone else, so bring an army or come by yourself. You are welcome to come see me, but you need to make reservations at a hotel, or else you’ll be sleeping on the floor of the bar. Now I’ve got stuff to do, so goodbye.”