I Love This Bar (3 page)

   The night air was blazing hot, but he drove slowly with the window down. The beer and the day's hard work had made him sleepy. Even if it was hot enough to fry the brains out of a lizard, he didn't dare turn on the air conditioning. If he got that comfortable he'd fall asleep and run off the road. That would give Emmett enough griping fuel to last two lifetimes. The only thing worse would be if Jarod went back to the ranch and started talking about a bartender.

   "That'd stroke him out for sure," Jarod said aloud.

   In an attempt to keep his mind off Daisy, he thought about his third fiancée. Emily had a business degree and was the head she-coon in the admissions office at Oklahoma State University. He'd figured the third was the charm and Emily would be with him right up to "death do us part." Two months before the wedding she got a job offer to go to New York City and expected him to leave the ranching business and go with her. After the argument, she went, he stayed, and a third engagement ring was tossed into a dresser drawer with the first two.

   Not a one of the three had caused the physical reaction that Daisy had those few minutes when he was tangled up in her arms on the floor or when their gazes locked up across that bar. How old was she, anyway? Billy Bob never had told him. If he'd met her anywhere other than a bar he would have definitely flirted. But Billy Bob had done everything but tell him to back off and the Walker triplets were his only friends in the whole state.

   Besides, Jarod had sworn off women until he was forty. Hopefully at that age he'd have enough sense to pick one that would last. Until then he'd be content with an occasional romp in the hay.

   "Wonder if Daisy would be interested in a one-night stand?" he asked aloud as he parked the truck in front of Emmett's two-story house. He doubted it. That look she gave him when he was studying her up and down to figure out her age said that she wouldn't abide any kind of nonsense like getting hay in that long dark hair.

   He opened the door to the truck and shut it as quietly as possible. Easing the front door open to the loud snores of his uncle coming from the twin-sized bed that had been set up in the corner of the living room since he had trouble navigating the stairs, he tiptoed into the house. Jarod froze when the noise stopped. When the loud snores continued, he removed his boots and padded upstairs in his socks, heaving a sigh of relief when he was safely in his bedroom. Thirty-five years old and he felt like a teenager sneaking back into the house after a night of skinny-dipping with his girlfriend.

   
What would it be like to skinny-dip with Daisy?
Would she look as good out of those tight fittin' jeans as
she did in them?

   The house had been built back in the fifties when Mavis and Emmett first married. Four bedrooms and a bathroom were off a landing upstairs. Living room, dining room, and a kitchen were downstairs. At least four children were supposed to fill the house with laughter and arguments, but they'd never come along in the marriage.

   He yanked his boots off and set them beside the bed and turned on the computer and checked his emails. If only he could convince Emmett the value of getting his business out of his hip pocket and entered into a reasonable program on the computer, he'd feel like he was getting somewhere.

   What was it Daisy told Billy Bob? "Don't hold your breath."

   Jarod felt her words rather than just heard them. Emmett would let him make changes the day that nuns danced on the bar in the Honky Tonk. He took a quick shower and crossed the hallway naked to stretch out on his bed. His fingers laced behind his head and he stared at the shadows on the ceiling. Daisy had put Billy Bob in his place with the bare minimum of words. Jarod didn't figure she'd take sass from anyone, but then she was a barmaid and no doubt she'd had lots of experience dealing with drunks.

   
Is that all the experience she has? Surely she has a
boyfriend or a fiancé with those looks.

   The words to Toby's song began to rattle around in his head. Like Toby said, Jarod had seen it all in the bar that night. He'd seen smokers. A fine fog of smoke hung about two feet from the ceiling. If secondhand smoke was as detrimental to health as folks said, then the Honky Tonk was cancer central. He'd seen boozers sitting at the bar and gathered around the five or six tables in the corners. A hooker if he counted Chigger. What on earth Jim Bob saw in that rough old gal was a mystery. She'd been rode hard and put away wet far too many days. She looked fifty at least. Toby mentioned cowboys. Well, Jarod had seen more boots, silver belt buckles, and hats that evening than he'd seen since the last barn dance at his folks' place up in Payne County, Oklahoma. Toby had sang about brokenhearted fools and suckers. If he'd taken time to talk to anyone other than Billy Bob and Daisy, he'd have found some of those too. He fell asleep to the melody playing and words about drinking his beer from a Mason jar running through his head.

At two a.m. Daisy shoved the Walker triplets and Chigger out the front door. The Honky Tonk was their home away from home on the weekends. They were good-natured fellows for the most part, except when Billy Bob started that nonsense about marrying her. She picked up a longneck Coors from the ice chest, wiped it off, and pulled out a chair at the nearest table like she did every night at closing. She propped her long legs up on the table and crossed them at the ankles. After a lengthy draw on the beer she looked around at the damages. Not bad for a Friday night. Few beer bottles left on the tables but Tinker had racked the pool balls and left them ready for the next night. There was one cue stick still on the nearest pool table that he'd forgotten to put back in the cabinet. Floor needed sweeping and she noticed a circle on the wood where she and Jarod collided.

   She'd clean it all up the next day. That was one thing Ruby taught her from the beginning. Shut the doors and go to bed. Clean up the next morning when she wasn't dead tired from running up and down the bar refilling Mason jars or mixing drinks.

   Daisy finished off her beer and put some coins into the jukebox. She pushed the right buttons and Toby's voice filled the room as he sang, "I Love This Bar." To sing that song with conviction like he did, he had to have spent some time in a bar in his lifetime, just like Daisy had.

   "Some time, hell," she muttered.

   She'd spent her whole life in and around bars. Her mother had gotten married at sixteen and had given birth to Daisy when she was barely seventeen. Widowed before Daisy was even born, she'd lied about her age and got a job as a bartender in a dive south of Mena, Arkansas. Daisy stayed with her grandmother most of the time until she was nine and then Granny died suddenly. After that she went to work with her mother every evening and spent her time during the school year doing homework in the stockroom. She had a sleeping bag, books to read, and a television that picked up no stations but had a VHS player attached so she could watch movies. At two o'clock her mother awoke her and they went home to a trailer on the outskirts of town. At seven the alarm went off and Daisy got herself ready for school, packed a lunch, and boarded the school bus at the entrance to the trailer court. She always left her mother sleeping and always hoped she was alone in the bedroom. Sometimes she got her wish; more often it was wasted.

   She set the beer on the table and danced alone in the middle of the floor as Toby sang about liking his truck and his girlfriend, liking to take her out to dinner and a movie now and then. Daisy pretended she was dancing with Jarod McElroy on the banks of a river after a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant and giggled at her own silliness.

   How had he gotten into the bar without her seeing him in the first place?

   She made her way around the pool tables and the bar to the door leading back into her living quarters in the dark.

   Ruby had built the Honky Tonk back in the early sixties and it looked like an old-time saloon with weathered wood on the outside. It had a wide wraparound porch around three sides. Rocking chairs for those who'd gotten too hot dancing or needed a breath of fresh air were scattered on the porch. A big neon sign on the roof flashed HONKY TONK.

   Double doors led from the porch into a large room with a bar across the backside, pool tables to the right, and half a dozen wooden tables with chairs on the left. Two jukeboxes provided music. The antique one was Ruby's favorite and had only the old country music artists on it like George Jones, Lefty Frizzell, Waylon Jennings, Willy Nelson, and Merle Haggard. The other was modern and offered the newer artists like Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, Josh Turner, Jim Currington, Sara Evans, and Sugarland.

   Through the locked door at the back lay a modern one-bedroom apartment that had been Daisy's home for more than seven years. She headed across the living room floor to the galley kitchen and made a ham and cheese sandwich. She carried it to the table in the corner of the tiny living room and pulled out a chair.

   Was Jarod McElroy married? How long did he intend to stay with Emmett? Why in the hell had he come to Texas anyway?

   "Damn," she swore. "This is ridiculous."

   The biggest question was why in the devil was she interested? Every kind and shape of testosterone had come through the doors of her bar and not a one of them had made her think about breaking rule number one in Ruby's agenda: Men were not allowed into the apartment.

   She showered, dried off, and headed for her bedroom where she crawled naked between the sheets. Her cell phone rang just as she shut her eyes. She checked the caller ID before she answered it.

   "Hello, Merle," she said.

   "It's Rack. He's got a terrible cough and he's hacking like he's about to die. Can I bring him over?"

   "Sure you can. I'll get the hair ball medicine out and be ready for you," Daisy said.

   In ten minutes Merle carried her enormous orange and white cat through the doors of the Honky Tonk. She had him wrapped in a blanket and he had another hacking attack when she laid him on the bar.

   "It's not his heart, is it?" Merle asked nervously.

   Daisy pulled a stethoscope from her black bag and listened to the cat's heart. "No, his heart sounds pretty good for a cat that's three times the size he ought to be. You really should stop giving him scraps."

   "But I can't stand it when he looks at me if I'm eating steak or cheese. He loves his food. So it's just a hair ball?"

   "That'd be my guess," Daisy said as she squeezed toothpaste looking substance from a tube onto a tongue depressor.

   "He'd scratch my eyeballs out if I put that in his mouth," Merle said.

   "Rack has got your number. He knows I've got the stuff in that bag to fix it so he'd never have another chunk of your rib eye steak, don't you, boy? Open your fat little jaws and there we go." Daisy rubbed his neck and the medicine went down in a couple of swallows.

   "Now it's back home so he can puke it up on my carpet," Merle said.

   "Or your bed," Daisy laughed.

   "You are a doll to get out of bed and help me at this hour." Merle laid a bill on the bar. "The day Ruby found you was the best day this county ever saw."

   "Merle, I'm not a real vet."

   "Shhhh, don't tell Rack. He thinks you are a highdollar specialist. Vet. Vet tech. Ain't no difference in my books. See you tonight." Merle picked up her cat and carried him out the doors into the hot night.

   Daisy turned out the lights for the second time and went back to bed.

Daisy was semi-awake when a hard knocking on the back door startled her into a sitting position. She grabbed a kimono-style robe and stumbled barefoot across the bedroom and living room and peeked around the curtain.

   "Well, shit," she mumbled and checked to see if Chigger was holding a dog or cat or goat—nothing but Chigger leaning against the porch post and smoking a cigarette. When she saw Daisy looking out the window, she stabbed out the butt on the heel of her boot.

   Daisy slid the chain lock back and opened the door. "Mornin', Chigger. What brings you out this early? You got a cow or a horse needin' help?"

   "Darlin', this ain't early. It's almost dinner time. And the only thing I got needin' help is Jim Bob Walker. I 'bout wore him out last night, but I guess a bartender or a vet neither one would have anything for that unless you keep them little blue pills in your black bag."

   "Good God, Chigger."

   Chigger giggled. "Got any coffee?"

   Daisy motioned her inside. "I can make a pot. Come on in."

   Chigger held up the cigarette butt. "Thanks. Where's the trash so I can get rid of this?"

   Daisy pointed.

   Chigger opened the pantry door and disposed of it before she pulled one of the two chairs away from the table and slid into it.

   "You couldn't get Jim Bob to make you a pot of coffee this morning?" Daisy asked as she measured grounds into the coffee machine.

   "He brought me breakfast in bed. Bacon, biscuits and gravy, coffee, juice, pancakes. Whole buffet on a tray and then I gave him breakfast in bed, if you know what I mean."

   Chigger was taller than Daisy by at least four inches, making her about five feet ten inches. Slim built except for a set of enormous breasts that she swore were all hers and without a drop of silicone implanted in them. She wore skintight knit tops that accentuated her Go
d
given assets as well as her small waist. That mornin
g she'd borrowed one of Jim Bob's chambray work shirts and it hung outside her jeans. Her blond hair had a bedroom tousled look to it and her face was clear of any makeup. She looked more like a soccer mom than a beer joint hustler.