She jerked her hand out from under his and held both of them in her lap. “This isn’t going to work for me, Holt. It’s bad enough that you run all over creation with that job of yours, but now the kids…”
He leaned back in the booth, lowered his chin, and looked at her from under thick, dark brows. “You knew what I did when we started dating.”
“I guess I thought you’d change for me. I love Dallas and Fort Worth. You could do your little construction jobs in Dallas until you could find a decent office job,” she told him.
He frowned. “I don’t want a decent office job. I love my job and my business, and I don’t like big cities.”
The waitress brought their salad in a big chilled bowl and set it on the table between them, along with a basket of warm garlic breadsticks. She placed chilled bowls and plates in front of Nikki and Holt.
“Would you please bring my meal in a to-go box?” Nikki said. “I won’t be eating here.”
Holt put both hands on the table. “Nikki, I’m all they’ve got. I can’t forsake them,” he said.
“There are dozens of good boarding schools. Couple right here in this area where they’d be taken care of and given a wonderful education. I attended them when I was their age. You don’t have to have them underfoot twenty-four seven.”
He sighed. “But I like them underfoot all the time. That’s why I take them to work with me. I wouldn’t put them in a boarding school even if I had the money.”
“I’ve got the money and I’ll pay for it. You commit. I’ll pay. Last chance. Going, going…” She hesitated.
He shook his head.
“Gone!”
She picked up her purse and slid out of the booth. “I’ll pick up my dinner at the front counter. Have a nice life, Holt. You’re a good man, just not good for me.”
“Goodbye, Nikki,” he whispered.
* * *
“One more tequila shot and I’m calling it a night,” Sharlene said.
Her four friends all hooted.
The tall blonde patted her on the arm. “You’ve been saying that for the last six. I haven’t seen you this wasted since the night we had the party in New York when you came home. Remember when you sober up that we are holding you to your promise to come see each of us and sign books in our town this winter. That’s only three months away, and we aren’t going to let you back out.”
“I deserved to get plastered out of my mind when I got back stateside. You fair-weather friends left me over there the last two months all by myself. And I’ll be there. I’ll feel like a big celebrity signing books. Three months? What month is this anyway?” Sharlene slurred.
The short brunette giggled. “It’s August 15, darlin’. Four years to the day since we left you in Iraq and came home without you. It wasn’t very nice of us to leave you like that, was it? But if they’d have given me a choice of staying and sleeping with Brad Pitt every night or coming home, old Brad would have been sleepin’ alone.”
Sharlene laughed with her. “We got to do this more often.”
“What? Get drunk?” Kayla asked.
“No, get together and talk about it. No one but a vet understands what went on over there. Was it hard for you to leave behind?” Sharlene rubbed her eyes and smeared mascara.
“Hell, yeah,” Kayla said.
Sharlene nodded. “I still hear the helicopters in my sleep.”
“We all do,” Kayla whispered. “Bringing the dead and maimed to the hospital.”
“That sound of them buzzing around haunts my dreams and…” Sharlene clamped a hand over her mouth. Not even her four best friends were privy to the classified ops she and Jonah shared. She’d been in hospital administration, and only she and a handful of top officials knew what else she did.
“It’ll get better with time.” Kayla patted her arm.
“When I’m so old I have demen…dement…whatever the hell that word is that means I can’t remember, I’ll still hear them,” she said.
“Well, it’s midnight and I’ve got to drive this bunch to the airport in five hours so I’m going to call it a night for all of us,” said Maria, the short, dark-haired one of the group.
“Not me. I’m going to sit right here and watch you all go. Just like I did back then. I’m going to drink one more beer and then go to my hotel. It’s just a couple of blocks from here. I’ll be fine,” Sharlene told them.
“You sure?” Maria asked.
“Sure as sand will sneak into your underbritches.” Sharlene laughed at her own joke. “Call me when you get home, all of you.”
Group hugs. One more toast with one more round of tequila shots. One more suck on a lime wedge. And they were all four gone.
Sharlene looked at all the empty bottles and shot glasses on the table. “Shhhtory of my life,” she muttered. She pushed the chair back, staggered to the bar, and slapped it with her fist. “One more Coors.”
Holt could hardly believe his eyes. It couldn’t be Sharlene Waverly of Mingus, Texas, slapping the bar right beside him. He’d just visited with her yesterday and moved into her rental house that very morning. The kids had been elated to have a house again. Judd had done a jig all the way to the front porch when she saw the hideous multicolored house.
“I’ll give you one more beer for your car keys. I can call you a taxi, but I can’t let you drive as drunk as you are,” the bartender said.
“Over my dead body. I can drive an army jeep back to the barracks through a sharqi windstorm after an all-night mission. I can drive anything with four wheels and can shoot the eyes out of a rattlesnake at fifty yards, so give me a beer and I’ll drive myself to the hotel. Besides, it’s only two blocks from here,” she argued loudly.
“She’s with me,” Holt said. “Give her a beer and I’ll see to it she makes it home.”
“And who the hell are you?” Sharlene turned bloodshot eyes at him. Was there one or two fine-looking cowboys sitting on the stool? Dear God, was that Holt Jackson, the man she’d hired to add the addition to the Honky Tonk?
“Don’t you remember me? I’m Holt, the man who’s going to put an addition on your beer joint in Mingus,” he said.
“Well, slap some camouflage on my sorry butt and call me a soldier, I believe it is.” She picked up the bottle of beer and turned it up. “And you’re going to take me home?”
“Wherever you need to go. Boss gets killed, I don’t have a job.”