She smiled for the first time that day.
Chapter 2
“So who’s the new family moving into your hideous house?” Merle Avery set her custom-made cue-stick case on the bar and motioned for a pint of Coors.
Merle had seen customers come and go in the Tonk for more than forty years. She and her best friend, Ruby Lee, had blown into Palo Pinto County at the same time. Ruby built a beer joint, and Merle got rich designing western shirts for women. She was past seventy, still shot a mean game of pool, could hold her liquor, and spoke her mind. She wore her dyed-black hair ratted and piled high, her jeans snug, and her boots were always polished. She was part of the fixtures at the Honky Tonk, and anyone who could whip her at the pool table had something to go home and brag about.
“That would be Holt Jackson and two kids,” Sharlene said.
“The carpenter, Holt Jackson? The one you’ve been trying to hire for weeks?”
Sharlene blushed. “Yes, that’s the one. He needed a house and no one was living in mine. Rent is his bonus if he finishes my job by his deadline. He says it’ll be a piece of cake with his crew. Tell the truth, I don’t care if he nails up every board single-handedly or if he gets a hundred people to work for him. I just want it finished in time for the holidays. Did you see all those pink strings and little yellow plastic flags? The flags mark the electric and telephone buried wires. The string is where the foundation will be.”
“I didn’t know he was married, much less had two kids,” Merle said.
Sharlene looked down the bar to make sure no one needed anything. “It’s his niece and nephew. I thought they were his kids when he mentioned them, but they call him Uncle Holt. I don’t know the story behind why he’s got them. Don’t really matter to me, long as he gets the job done.”
“So who’s keeping them while he works?”
Sharlene wiped the already clean bar. “He is going to bring them with him. Today they stayed with some friends up in Palo Pinto because he and his crew had to get the equipment down here. Tomorrow they start coming here.”
Merle frowned. “He’s the best carpenter in the area, and from what I hear he’s damn fine looking, but he’s not that good or that pretty.”
“What does that mean?” Sharlene asked.
“You will figure it out the first time two little kids wake you up before noon. There’s Tessa. Ask her what she thinks of that situation. And hot damn! There’s Amos. He’ll give me some competition tonight.” She picked up her beer and cue case and nodded at Amos. He headed in the same direction and they reached the pool table at the same time.
“Ask me what?” Tessa asked.
Larissa hired Tessa back when she owned the joint, and Sharlene kept her on when she inherited the place. Tessa and Luther, the bouncer, lived together out on a ranch between Gordon and Mingus. Someday they’d get married and the Honky Tonk could add another notch on one of the porch posts out front.
Sharlene pulled clean mason jars from the dishwasher as she explained. “Holt Jackson is willing to put the addition onto the Honky Tonk. He needed a house so I threw in my Bahamas Mama house for free rent if he will get the work done by mid-December. Only thing is he’s raising a niece and nephew and they will come to work with him.”
“So?” Tessa asked.
“Merle thinks that’s going to be a big problem.”
“I disagree with Merle. I used to go to work with my dad. He ran a bulldozer and dug farm ponds for folks. We played and he worked. Don’t remember it causing a problem,” Tessa said.
A customer called from the end of the bar, “Hey lady, could we get six pints of Bud and a pitcher of tequila sunrise down here?”
Sharlene looked at the tray where Tessa already had six pint jars and a pitcher of tequila sunrise waiting. Her eyebrows rose and she cocked her head to one side.
“How’d you know what they’d order?”
“I’m not blessed with ESP, believe me. I heard them talking when I was on that end of the bar a while ago. They couldn’t decide whether they wanted tequila sunrise or margaritas with their six beers. They’d made up their mind about the mixed drinks and were deciding whether they needed five or six beers. We’ll just get these filled and it’ll be ready.” Tessa laughed.
Tessa was taller than Sharlene’s five feet three inches, standing five feet eight in her stocking feet. Add boots to that and it pushed her up another two inches. Her nose was a little too big for her face, and she wore black-rimmed glasses that made her green eyes look enormous. She was slightly bottom heavy with wide hips and narrow shoulders. That evening she wore a sleeveless red western shirt with pearl snaps tucked into denim shorts.
“Love that shirt. Is it new?” Tessa drew up the beer and made change for a fifty-dollar bill.
“Thank you. I bought it yesterday in Weatherford.” Sharlene’s shirt was white with pink rhinestone buttons and the traditional Texas longhorn symbol in pink stones across the back yoke.
“So how did the big reunion day and night go?” Tessa asked.
“Fun. Hangover. Never again,” Sharlene said.
“Girl, something happened. You told me the first time I met you your biggest failing was that you talked too much. Now you tell me in four words about the reunion you’ve talked about for a month. I figured you’d be gushing and all I get are four measly words. What happened? So you got drunk. Did you dance on the bar or take a cowboy home to the hotel with you?”
Sharlene blushed.
“That proves it. ’Fess up. What’s his name? Please don’t tell me you did a one-nighter and don’t even know his name.”
“Got customers. Nothing to ’fess up about. Didn’t do a one-nighter, and why does everyone think all roads lead to a member of the male species?” Sharlene hurried to the other end of the bar.
“Apple martini,” a middle-aged woman said. “Where’s all the good-lookin’ cowboys? I was told they were six to every woman over here.”
Her light-brown hair sported blond highlights straight from a bottle. She wore a slinky little gold-sequined top that didn’t have enough material in it to sag a clothesline and tight-fitting jeans. Her boots had sharp toes and walking heels and they didn’t come cheap. Eel seldom got put on a sales rack. The best makeup in the world couldn’t fill in the crow’s-feet or the lines around her mouth, but the dim lights in the Honky Tonk were kind. She might pass for forty after four beers. After six she could probably convince a cowboy that she was thirty-five. It would take a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label to make her twenty-nine.
“Got to give ’em time to wash the dirt from behind their ears and brush the hay off their boots. This is hay season. They work until it’s all in. They’ll be along in a little while and you can take your pick. Got bikers until they get here.” Sharlene motioned toward a table of Amos’s friends. “And those Harleys they rode in on cost more than a custom-ordered pickup truck, darlin’.”