“Holt Jackson! Dear God! That’s who brought me home. Lord, he’ll think I’m a drunk and a slut.”
She’d slept in his arms and had not dreamed. Even with a hangover, she knew she hadn’t dreamed. She hadn’t seen Jonah’s eyes the night before, and she’d slept for the first time in years without the nightmares. She looked back at the tangled sheets on the king-sized bed, and the rush of what might have happened made her even dizzier than the hangover. She grabbed the wall and scanned each corner of the room.
“Did we? I can’t remember. Oh, shit! I can’t remember anything but getting into his truck,” she whispered. She reached for the knob to open the bathroom door. It swung to the inside and there stood Holt Jackson, drying his hands on a white hotel towel. She had to hang onto the knob for support or she would have fallen into his arms.
“Good morning,” he said.
She rushed inside, shoved him out, and hung her head over the toilet. When she finished, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She heard deep laughter and bristled. Sure, she was in misery, but he had no right to laugh at her unless he was a saint or an angel and had never had a hangover. When she opened the door, he was sitting on the end of the bed, putting on his boots and watching cartoons. He ran his fingers through his dark-brown hair, and green eyes looked at her from beneath thick, deep, dark eyelashes. His face was square with a slight dimple in his chin and his lips were full.
The anger left and was replaced with remorse. “Sorry about that. I haven’t been drunk in many years.”
“Not since Iraq, huh?” he said.
She glanced at the bed. “We didn’t… Did we?”
“You snored and I fell asleep. Didn’t mean to, but it had been a long day with the moving and then driving to Fort Worth for supper. I apologize. Other than that, nothing happened.”
“How did you know about Iraq?” she asked cautiously.
“You tried to convince me that if you could drive an army jeep to the barracks from something or somewhere named Shalma that you could drive your pink Bug to the hotel,” he said.
“That all I said?”
“There was something about sand and helicopters, then you passed out. What did you do over there?” Holt asked.
“My job,” she said. “Thanks for taking care of me. I appreciate it. I’m going to take a shower and go home.”
“Sure?” he asked.
“My head is throbbing and my stomach isn’t too sure about whether it’s going to punish me some more, but I’m sober. Still being drunk wouldn’t hurt this bad.” She tried to smile.
“Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow at the building site. Be careful.” He waved at the door.
She nodded and threw herself back on the bed.
Holt had seen her in her white underpants and heard her throw up. Nothing the day could bring could top that. She waited five minutes and went back to the bathroom. She stood under the warm shower for twenty minutes, shampooed her hair twice, and could still smell smoke so she washed it a third time.
A bass drum still pounded out a thump-thump-thump in her head when she threw back the shower curtain and wrapped a towel around her body and a separate one around her head. Using the back of her hand, she wiped a broad streak across the steamed-up mirror and checked her reflection. Dark circles rimmed her green eyes. Every freckle popped out across her nose. Kinky red hair peeked out from under the towel.
She shut her eyes to the wreck in the mirror and got dressed. The last bar where she and her friends had landed was located close to her hotel. She could easily carry her tote bag and walk that far. She didn’t need to waste money on a taxi.
The free continental breakfast offered doughnuts, cereal, milk, juice, and bagels. The thought of any kind of food set off her gag reflex so she bypassed all of it and checked out. The girls had said they needed to get together once a year from now on. Sharlene thought once every five years would be enough if she was going to feel like this the next morning. Hell’s bells, if she was going to suffer like this, she didn’t care if she never saw any of them again.
The noise of the heavy equipment doing road construction between the hotel and the bar ground into her ears like artillery fire in the desert. Her cowboy boots on the sidewalk sounded like popping machine-gun chatter, and the bag on her shoulder weighed twice as much as her pack in Iraq. The August sun was doing its best to fry her brain, and sweat beaded up between her nose and upper lip. It wasn’t anything compared to the Iraqi desert, but heat and hangovers did not make good partners no matter what country they met up in.
“If I ever get back to Mingus, I’m never drinking again. I may not even have my nightly after-hours beer,” she said.
Her hot-pink Volkswagen Bug looked lonely in the bar parking lot. The night before she’d had to circle the lot a dozen times before she finally found a place to squeeze the little car into, but that morning it was the only car in the place. She opened the door, slung her bag into the passenger’s seat, started the engine, and turned on the air-conditioning.
She bought a cup of coffee from a McDonald’s drive-by window before she got out on Interstate 20 and headed west toward Mingus. It was only forty miles from Weatherford to Mingus, but the way her head ached, it could have easily been five hundred miles. She hadn’t gotten relief when she parked her car in the garage behind the Honky Tonk. She carried her bags out across the grass to the door of her apartment located right behind the beer joint. She’d thought she’d move into the house in town that she’d inherited right along with the Tonk, but it was too convenient to walk through a door back behind the actual bar and be home at two o’clock in the morning.
Ruby Lee had built the Honky Tonk back in the sixties, and nothing had changed since then. The outside was rough barn wood with a three-level facade and a wide front porch. Inside, a long room served as poolroom, dance floor, and bar with a few tables scattered here and there.
Ruby had lived in the apartment in those first years before she bought a house in town. She died and left the Honky Tonk to Daisy, her bartender and surrogate daughter. Less than a year later, Daisy fell in love and married Jarod. She gave the joint to her cousin Cathy. Then Cathy and Travis got married, and she gave the bar to Larissa. Now Larissa was married to Hank, and she’d passed the bar and her house down to Sharlene.
By the time Sharlene inherited the Tonk, it had a reputation for having a magical charm that created happy-ever-after marriages. Women flocked to it with a gleam in their eyes that reflected three-tiered cakes and big, white wedding gowns. Sharlene could have made a fortune if she’d put a little statue on the bar and charged five bucks to rub the place where its ceramic heart was located.
In the beginning, Sharlene had come to the Tonk looking for a story that would get her a better office and a promotion at the Dallas Morning News. She’d offered to shadow Larissa looking for that human-interest story and they’d become friends. Before long she was living in the apartment back behind the Honky Tonk and helping Larissa out at the bar on weekends. When Sharlene got the pink slip from the newspaper, Larissa hired her full time. Going to Mingus for a story was the best thing Sharlene had done since she came home from Iraq. She’d found a home, written and sold a book instead, and wound up owning the beer joint.