“But we have to leave in a couple of hours,” Holt had protested further.
“Sharlene will help watch Judd and Waylon. They’ll be fine,” Claud said.
Now he was walking out across a pasture toward a creek over there by the willow trees and wishing he was back in the barn with Sharlene. She was probably ready to wring his neck and he couldn’t blame her. Last night he’d come so close to making love with her that he ached from the desire after she’d fallen asleep in his arms; now he was arm in arm with Dorie. This was much worse than sending flowers to a woman and she’d threatened to help bury Bart because of much less. He made a mental note to hide the shovel when he got back to Mingus or else he might be planted beside the old tomcat by the end of the week.
“So tell me, do you like living in a small town? I understand you live in the same place that Sharlene has a beer joint. That girl was mouthy and sassy in school but I never figured she’d go out and buy a beer joint. I bet Molly and Claud are heartsick over that news,” Dorie said.
Some friend you are! he thought.
“They seemed to take it pretty good. That and the book she’s written too. You did know that she’s sold a romance book and it will be on the market in November?”
Dorie toyed with his fingertips. “I heard she was into trashy romance.”
“You ever read that kind of book?” Holt asked.
“I do not. It’s only one step down from porn. I wouldn’t have it in my house for the kids to see,” Dorie said.
“So what do you do for fun?”
She stopped walking long enough to look up at Holt and smile brightly. “Fun? Well, I’m a mother so that leaves out most fun, doesn’t it? The kids go to school. They’re in the first and second grades. Then I go to work at the convenience store. When Jim died there was a big insurance policy and the farm was paid for instantly so I lease it all but twenty acres. Someday I’m going to remarry. Jim wouldn’t have wanted me to be alone the rest of my life and maybe my new husband will want to farm. Farming is part of me and I’ll get back into it someday, but I can’t keep up the whole section of land without help.”
“I see. Where is this creek?” Holt asked.
“Right through those trees.” She started walking again. They passed through a copse of pecan and willow trees and sure enough, a small, bubbling creek ran through the land. She sat down and patted the ground. “It’s pleasant and quiet here. All that noise back there is enough to drive a woman to Sharlene’s place of business. But the kids are having a wonderful time and I’d do anything for them. I expect you feel the same way?”
“Not really. I’d do most anything for Judd and Waylon but I love all the noise and confusion of a big family. I even like going to the Honky Tonk when Chad and Gloria take the kids for an evening,” Holt said.
“Well, that could change if you found the right woman,” Dorie said softly.
“I doubt it. I’m too old and set in my ways to do much changing,” he said.
“So tell me, if I gave you my phone number would you call me sometime?” she asked.
“Didn’t Molly tell you? I’m involved with another woman right now.”
“Who?”
“A lady I met in Mingus.”
Dorie scooted in close enough to him that her body was glued to his side. “Does she have children?”
“No, she’s never been married,” Holt said.
The woman toyed with his fingertips and yet there was no friction. Not a single spark. No jolts that shot desire through his veins. Just a nice smelling body next to his that didn’t put his nerves on edge.
Dorie pulled a pen from her shirt pocket and wrote her number on his palm. “Well, she’s a lucky lady but just in case, you can always call me if things go south between you and her.”
Judd and Waylon sprang through the trees like windup toys with Ruth and John right behind them. “Hey, guess what, Uncle Holt. Creed and Christina are putting saddles on two horses and they’re going to let the little kids ride ’em. And guess what, they’ll be leading them so we won’t have a runaway and can we ride ’em. Please, please, please?” Judd said in a whoosh.
“We want to ride too, Momma. Creed said me and Judd can ride together. Did you ever know another girl named Judd? I like her name, don’t you, Momma?” Ruth said.
Holt could have kissed every one of the four kids.
“Where’s Sharlene? I thought she was going to watch you while I came to see the creek?”
“I’m right here,” Sharlene said.
He looked up to see her leaning on a willow tree not ten feet away. Good grief! What all had she heard and how would she interpret it?
Sharlene covered the distance between them in a few easy strides. She’d heard enough to know that Dorie had changed drastically. Dorie would have never, ever said those things back when they were best friends.
“They ran on ahead. It’s almighty important to get your okay. I wouldn’t give them permission without asking you, and I couldn’t let them come running down here without me. Wasn’t sure which part of the creek Dorie would take you to. So can they ride or not? If so, we’ll get on back up to the barn. If not, you can deal with them.” Her voice was even but cold.
“Of course they can ride,” Holt said.
“You can too,” Dorie told her children.
Four shouts went up and they tore back toward the house in a flurry of little legs chasing through the pasture grasses.
“That’s good.” Sharlene turned around and started after them.
“Wait,” Holt yelled.
She stopped and slowly looked over her shoulder. He was standing up and offering his hand to Dorie, who looked as if she could put his hand against all her beautiful cleavage and enjoy every minute of what it might do there.
“I want to see their faces when they’re on a horse for the first time,” he said.
Dorie latched on to his hand and hung on when she was on her feet. “Me too. Of course, my kids have ridden all their lives but I’d like to see yours.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Sharlene asked bluntly.
“Don’t be testy,” Dorie said.
Sharlene looked at Holt and almost giggled. He looked like a cottontail rabbit already caught between the jaws of a starving coyote. His expression pleaded for mercy and begged her to rescue him from Dorie’s claws.
“They’ve got a head start on you, Holt. If you want to see them you’d best put on your running boots. You’ve got longer legs than either of us and you don’t want to miss Judd’s squeals, so get to running. We’ll come along behind you,” Sharlene said.
Holt dropped Dorie’s hand and took off in a jog.
“That was just plain mean. He’s just what I’ve been looking for and you’re being hateful. You can’t have him. You are a bartender. For God’s sake, Sharlene, why did you buy a beer joint? Didn’t you embarrass your family enough by joining the army?”
Sharlene set her jaw and said through clenched teeth, “Holt would never be happy in Corn and you aren’t leaving that farm and your family and moving to Mingus, so why are you doing this? And I did not join the army or buy a beer joint to embarrass my family.”
“How do you know what will make him happy or make him move either one? At least I’ve got a farm that looks pretty damn good compared to a beer joint,” Dorie said.
“That’s a low shot,” Sharlene said.
Dorie gave her a go-to-hell-on-a-silver-poker look. “It’s the truth. What happened to you? When we were in high school we were going to marry our sweethearts. You broke David’s heart when you turned him down. It was only last year that he finally gave up waiting for you to come to your senses and married. Now you are a bartender. God Almighty, Sharlene!”
Sharlene shrugged her shoulders. “I wanted more.”
“Why? What is out there that’s better than the love of a good man?”
“Life,” Sharlene answered.
Dorie took two steps, stopping only when her nose
was inches from Sharlene’s. “I love Molly and Claud. I should’ve been their daughter instead of you. And I know a good man when I see one. He won’t have you anyway. No decent man hooks up with a cheap barmaid.”
That said in a voice so cold it would have kept icicles frozen in Hades, she stormed past Sharlene, leaving her standing there beside a willow tree.
“You only met him two hours ago. How do you know he’s such a good man?” Sharlene yelled.
Dorie spun around and pointed a finger at Sharlene. “I know what I want when I see it. I don’t have to go to Iraq and back and still not know.”
Sharlene slid down the backside of the tree and sat on the ground. Dorie should have been the Waverly daughter instead of Sharlene. She had the same ideals and played by the same rules. She was a farm wife from skin out and when the right man came along she’d make him happy. She had enough fire to keep him on his toes and to fight for their relationship if he ever sent flowers to a strange woman.
Anything worth having is worth the fight to keep it. Wasn’t that essentially what she’d said to Fiona the night before? Stand up and fight for Bart. Don’t let him walk on you and if you want your marriage to work, then be the woman he married.
Holt made every fiber of her being come alive when he kissed her, but could it ever develop beyond satisfying a physical need? She didn’t know the answer to that question. There was only one way to make double sure that Dorie didn’t mess it up before she could figure it out and that was to keep Holt in Mingus away from the woman. Dorie was a brazen widow in her stomping ground but she’d never chase Holt all the way to Texas. She might make some phone calls but she would not sit in the car or truck five hours with two kids to run after him.
Sharlene stood up, straightened her back, and started back to the barn. As soon as the kids had a turn on the horse, she and Holt were going to Mingus. She’d have room and time to figure it all out there without Dorie’s smart-ass attitude and cleavage getting in the way.
Chapter 10
One mile was exactly like the next. Miles and miles of cotton and wheat; cattle and oil wells; scrub oak and small towns. Sharlene watched familiar landmarks speed past at seventy-five miles an hour and peeked through the pickup bucket seats every few minutes to see if the children were still sleeping.
The events of the past day and a half played through her mind like a movie in full living color. She hit the imaginary replay button several times when it came to the scene with Dorie. How could her mother and grandmother encourage a relationship between her and Holt? Sure, they each had two children but that’s where the common ground ended.
Miranda Lambert was singing “Gunpowder and Lead” on the radio. The song was actually about an abused woman who was going home to load her shotgun, but Sharlene applied it to her friend.
What do I shoot her for? Pretending to be my friend all these years or blatantly trying to take Holt away from me? Damn it, Dorie, I could smack you for showing your true colors today. Now I’ve got to decide where this man fits into my life.
She shivered at the thought of really shooting anyone, even Dorie, who’d made her mad enough to chew up a full grown bull and spit out cellophane wrapped packages of hamburger meat.
Holt yawned, turned off the radio, and looked over at Sharlene. “Too much good food in the past twenty-four hours plus a very late night. You’re going to have to entertain me or I’m going to fall asleep like those two kids in the backseat.”
“What’d you have in mind?” she asked.
His grin was pure devilment and the lust in his eyes fried the sleepiness from her instantly. “I could think of some pretty interesting things.”
“Well, that’s not possible going down the highway at seventy-five miles an hour with two kids who could wake up at any minute,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Got your mind in the gutter, do you? Mine spent part of the day in the same place but I was thinking that maybe you’d tell me the story of the Honky Tonk angels. Or maybe the plot of your book. Not that I’m above anything kinky while driving down the road. But not with two kids in the backseat who might wake up and embarrass the hell out of us.”
She slapped at his arm. “Honky Tonk angels?” she asked. “Why would you want to know about Dolly and those women?”
Holt shook his head. “Not the singers. The ones that owned the place before you did. Start with Daisy.”
“Why not Ruby Lee? She had it the longest.”
“Then start with her,” Holt said. Anything to get her talking and keep her going until they got home. He’d never get enough of her voice. It was smooth southern bourbon mixed with just enough honey to make it sweet and easy on the ears. She’d said repeatedly that she talked too much but Holt didn’t care. Her voice was one of the things he liked best about her.
“Okay, Ruby Lee built the Tonk back in the sixties. I’ve already told you this, haven’t I?”
“Parts of it but if you start there and build the whole thing up to when you inherited the joint, it’ll make better sense to me,” he said.
She told him what she knew about Ruby Lee again and then paused.
“Now Daisy,” he said.
“Okay, this is the way I heard it. Daisy O’Dell had a bad experience with a boyfriend and left Mena, Arkansas. She pulled into the Smokestack parking lot because her car overheated and Ruby was getting out of her Caddy about the same time. Ruby wound up buying her lunch and putting her to work at the Honky Tonk. Daisy was a vet-tech by trade so it wasn’t long until everyone with a sick rooster, dog, cat, or goat was on her doorstep wanting advice or medical attention so she was essentially working two jobs. In those days, Emmett McElroy and his wife used to come in the Tonk real often. Then his wife died and Emmett got dementia among other things and finally his nephew, Jarod, came down from Cushing, Oklahoma, to help him run his ranch.
“Daisy had been going out to the ranch to help vaccinate cows and do whatever a veterinarian does to cattle and dogs. So anyway, Jarod comes in the Tonk one night because he and Emmett don’t do anything but fight and argue and he’s thinking about going back home to Oklahoma and leaving the old fellow alone. He and Daisy clashed in the middle of the floor. I mean literally, not figuratively. They ran smack into each other and the way I got the story is that she fell right on top of him. Then he brought Emmett to the Tonk one evening and Emmett made Daisy promise she’d come to dinner the next Sunday after she worked the cattle. With his problem he forgot all about the cattle part so she arrived in the corral ready to do a job and no one had gathered up the cows. By the time she got to the house, she was sweatin’ and her temper was even hotter. She was loaded for bear and the only person in her sights was Jarod. They were already fighting a physical attraction so they locked up horns right there on the porch at the ranch.”
“And?” Holt said immediately when she paused.
She went on. “And they clashed again, only this time it was over Emmett thinking they were married. He’d gotten it into his head that they’d snuck off to Oklahoma after a fishing trip that their friends had planned the previous Sunday. To make a long story short, Jarod talked her into pretending to be his wife. Then Emmett died holding both their hands and there was the house to clean out and the place to get ready for Jarod’s nephew to take over. That would be Garrett McElroy, who fell in love with Merle’s niece, Angel, and they met in the Honky Tonk too, by the way. It was a rocky relationship between Daisy and Jarod but they finally got over all the obstacles and Daisy admitted to herself that she loved Jarod more than the Honky Tonk.”
“Angel and Garrett?”
“Relationship wasn’t rocky. They fell in love over a pool table, didn’t fight it, and are married now and living on the ranch. Angel is the head engineer for the oil company where Luther and Tessa work in the daytime.”
“And the Chigger woman you all talk about sometimes?” he asked.
“She was Daisy’s friend. She wound up married to Jim Bob Walker. He was one of the Walker t
riplets—Jim Bob, Joe Bob, and Billy Bob.”
Holt was getting more and more into the story. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”
Sharlene shook her head. “No, I’m not. I’ve met all three of them. They are identical and that’s really their names.”
“So she married Jim Bob. What happened to the other two?”
“Back up a little here. After Jim Bob and Chigger got married they had a wedding dinner out at Chigger and Jim Bob’s place. Chigger’s momma said she would find the other two brothers a wife before the end of the year. Be damned if she didn’t. She also told Cathy that she’d see her married too but Cathy didn’t believe her.”
“Okay, now Cathy is Daisy’s cousin? Right? Was she at the dinner?”
Sharlene nodded. “Yes, she was. She had had a row with her boyfriend up in Mena too. He’d tried to beat her up but she worked him over instead. Kind of like Miranda Lambert’s song we just heard about gunpowder and lead. She’d come to Mingus to get away from the situation and Daisy gave her a job in the Honky Tonk. By then she was trying to be Jarod’s pretend wife and run the place all by herself too. Oh, and back then Hayes Radner was trying to buy the place.”
“What in the hell would Hayes want with an old beer joint?”
Sharlene laughed. “Got to do a flashback in history here to get that straightened out. When Ruby Lee built the Honky Tonk she wanted to be close to Henry Wells. They’d met and fallen in love in Dallas. So when her aunt died and left her a wad of money, she decided to build a beer joint. Erath County is dry and Palo Pinto is wet, and Henry lived in Palo Pinto and she wanted to be close to him. So she and Merle came to Mingus. Merle was her best friend and could do her work anywhere and Ruby Lee liked bartending. Henry threw a fit and told her he wouldn’t marry a barmaid. I guess she told him he could squat and fall backwards,” Sharlene said.
“Go on,” Holt chuckled. “I’m finally beginning to understand this soap opera. You sure had plenty of material to work with for a book.”
She giggled. “The truth is stranger than fiction.”
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