Normally I am Katie Clean, but I settled on a quick brush of my teeth, a French shower, and lipstick. I considered calling Emily to tell her I was no-showing, but I knew she would understand when I explained later. I race-walked to the elevators and cursed them as they stopped on every other floor before the Rooftop Grotto.
Ding. Finally. I stopped to catch my breath. I counted to ten, took one last gulp for courage, and stepped under the dim lights above the stone-topped bar. I stood near a man whose masculinity I could feel pulsing from several feet away. Heat flamed in my cheeks. My engine raced. Just the man I’d come to see.
Nick was of Hungarian descent, and he had his gypsy ancestors to thank for his all-over darkness—eyes, hair, and skin—and sharp cheekbones. He had a muscular ranginess that I loved, but he wasn’t traditionally handsome. His nose was large-ish and crooked from being broken too many times. He’d once told me that a surfboard to the mouth had given him his snaggled front tooth. But he was gorgeous in an undefined way, and I often saw from the quick glances of other women that I wasn’t the only one in the room who noticed.
Now he noticed me. “Hi, Helen.”
“Hi, Paris,” I replied.
He snorted. “Oh, I am definitely not your Paris. Paris was a wimp.”
“Hmmmmm. Menelaus, then?”
“Um, beer.”
“I’m pretty sure there was no one named Beer in the story of Helen of Troy,” I said, sniffing in a faux-superior way.
Nick spoke to the bartender. “St. Pauli Girl.” He finally gave me the Nick grin, and the tension left over from our elevator ride disappeared. “Want one?”
I needed to gulp more than air for courage. “Amstel Light.”
Nick placed the order. The bartender handed Nick two beers beaded with moisture, then shook water from his hands. Nick handed mine to me and I wrapped a napkin around it, lining up the edges with the military precision I adored. Nick sang under his breath, his head bobbing side to side. Honky-tonk Woman.
“I think I like you better in Shreveport than Dallas,” I said.
“Thanks, I think. And I like seeing you happy. I guess it’s been a tough year for you, losing your parents and all. Here’s to that smile,” he said, holding his beer aloft toward me.
The toast almost stopped my heart. He was spot-on about the tough part, but I did better when I kept the subject of my parents buried with them. I clinked his bottle but couldn’t look at him while I did it. “Thanks, Nick, very much.”
“Want to play pool?” he asked.
“Let’s do it.”
I was giddy, the sophomore girl out with the senior quarterback. We both loved music, so we talked about genres, bands (his old band, Stingray, and “real” bands), my minor in music at Baylor, and LSD, AKA lead-singer disease. Over a bucket of beers, we swapped stories about high school, and he told me he’d once rescued an injured booby.
“An injured booby?” I asked. “Implants or natural? Eight ball in corner pocket.” I sank it.
He gathered the balls out of the pockets and positioned them in the rack while I ground my cue tip in blue chalk and blew off the excess. “You’re so land-locked. A booby is a bird, Katie.”
I rolled his use of my real name back and forth in my brain, enjoying how it felt.
“I was out surfing, and I found a booby that couldn’t fly. I carried it back home and took care of it until I could set it free.”
“Oh, my gosh! How bad did it smell? Did it peck you? I’ll bet your Mom was thrilled!” I talked fast, in endless exclamation points. Embarrassing. I was a Valley Girl on acid, like Oh-My-Gawd. “It was in shock, so it was calm, but every day it got wilder. I was fourteen, and my mom was happy I wasn’t in my room holding some girl’s real booby, so she was fine with it. It smelled really bad after a few days, though.”
I broke. Balls clacked and ricocheted in every direction, and a striped one tumbled into a side pocket. “Stripes,” I called. “So, your mom had caught you before holding a girl’s booby, huh?”
“Um, I didn’t say that . . .” he said, and stuttered to a stop.
I was more smitten than ever.
“Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” was playing in the background. I hadn’t heard that song in years. It got me thinking. For months, I had been fighting off the urge to slip my arms around Nick’s neck and bite the back of it, but I was aware that most people would consider that inappropriate at work. Pretty small-minded of them, if you asked me. I eyed the large balcony outside the bar and thought that if I could just maneuver Nick out there, maybe I could make it happen.
My chances seemed good enough until one of our colleagues walked in. Tim was of counsel at the firm. “Of counsel” meant he was too old to be called an associate, but he wasn’t a rainmaker. Plus, he wore his pants pulled up an inch too high in the waist. The firm would never make him a partner. Nick and I locked eyes. Until now, we’d been two shortwave radios on the same channel, the signal crackling between us. But now the dial had turned to static and his eyes clouded over. He stiffened and moved subtly away from me.
He hailed Tim up. “Hey, Tim, over here.”
Tim waved to us and walked across the smoky bar. Everything moved in slow motion as he came closer, step by ponderous step. His feet echoed as they hit the floor, reverberating no . . . no . . . no . . . Or maybe I was saying it aloud. I couldn’t tell, but it made no difference.
“Hey, Tim, this is great. Grab a beer; let’s play some pool.”
Oh, please tell me Nick didn’t just invite Tim to hang out with us. He could have given him a short “hey how ya doing have a nice night I was just leaving” shpiel, or anything else for that matter, but no, he had asked Tim to join us.
Tim and Nick looked at me for affirmation.
I entertained a fleeting fantasy in which I executed a perfect side kick to Tim’s gut and he started rolling around on the floor with the dry heaves. What good were the thirteen years of karate my father had insisted on if I couldn’t use it at times like these? “Every woman should be able to defend herself, Katie,” Dad would say as he dropped me off at the dojo.
Maybe this wasn’t technically a physical self-defense moment, but Tim’s arrival had dashed my hopes for the whole neck-bite thing, and all that could have come after it. Wasn’t that reason enough?
I cast out the image. “Actually, Tim, why don’t you take over for me? I was in trial all week, and I’m exhausted. We have an early start tomorrow. It’s the last day of our retreat, the grande finale for the Hailey & Hart team.” I handed my pool cue to Tim.
Tim thought this was a fine idea. It was clear women scared him. If I had hoped for an argument from Nick, though, I didn’t get one. He reverted to his outside-of-work “Katie who?” act.
All I got from him was “Goodnight,” with neither a Helen nor a Katie tacked on.
I grabbed another Amstel Light from the bar for the plod back to my room.
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Excerpt from Heaven to Betsy (Emily Mystery Series #1)
Chapter One
I wedged myself up to the bar between an urban cowboy and a sequined octogenarian with a cigarette dangling from her lips. Is that a gun in your holster or are you just glad to see me? I shied away from Little Joe Cartwright or Brett Maverick or whoever the heck he thought he was while also trying to avoid the business end of Grandma’s cancer stick. I looked up at myself in the mirror behind the premium liquor bottles, a head shorter than the cowboy and a head taller than the little old lady—and a damn sight more harried looking than either of them.
Why did everything have to be so hard? All I wanted was one teensy-tiny little drink. Well, that wasn’t completely true. I also wanted as far away from my mother as I could get. Siberia-far, or maybe even Pluto-far. Oklahoma City-far would do in a pinch. Across the lobby from her in a hotel—which now called itself a Wyndham but which everyone in Amarillo
would forever know as the Ambassador—wasn’t nearly far enough. Especially since we were there for the wedding reception of my high school boyfriend, Scott, to his third wife—who was nineteen and pregnant.
I raised a finger and leaned across the wooden bar, trying to catch the attention of the bartender. Too late, I felt the wetness. I looked down. I’d plopped my breasts into someone else’s spilled drink. Great. Just then, the bartender’s blue-shadowed eyes swept over me.
“Virgin mojito, please,” I said.
All I got was the back of her orange hair, teased so high it looked like cotton candy, Halloween-style. I grabbed a fistful of napkins from a dispenser and mopped up Lake Titicaca—the bar top and the underside of my rack. At least I’d worn a simple black dress tonight, so it wouldn’t show. Much.
“Need some help, Blondie?” Little Joe asked. His voice had a rumbly drawl to it—not quite Texan but close—which I might have found pleasant if he hadn’t called me by my hair color.
I studied him. He was tall, well over six feet—at least with his boots on—and a good ten years older than me, judging by his crow’s feet. Age, or was it weathering? My eyes slipped down to his boots. The leather was worn, but cared-for, with a few dark lines of oil tracking scratch marks and scuffs. I flicked my eyes quickly back up, but not so fast that they didn’t take in his narrow hips circled by a brown leather belt and his flat stomach behind the silver and turquoise buckle, the deep chest, and the wide set of his shoulders. His upper lip looked lighter than the rest of his face, like he normally wore a mustache and had just recently shaved it off, and whatever had weathered his face didn’t hide his great cheekbones or the lone dimple to the left of his half-smiling mouth. Maybe Little Joe wasn’t a city slicker after all.
Willie Nelson crooned in the background. He was a regular artist on the soundtrack to my life—my heroes have always been cowboys. Yeah, Willie, mine too, until they weren’t. Back in another life, I’d had a weakness for Little Joe’s type. I couldn’t help it, really. I was the daughter of a steer-wrestling father. And now it wasn’t just cowboys that had let me down, but the male species in general. So, did I need some help, from this cowboy?
“I don’t think—”
“What’re ya drinkin’, sir?” the bartender asked.
Steam whistled from my ears like I was some fancy-schmancy espresso machine. Oh sure, ignore the woman and bring the guy another round. I wheeled toward the cowboy, ready to let fly a string of invectives about him and the barmaid and my whole miserable life in general, but I saw no drinks in front of him. Maybe it wasn’t another round. I clamped down on my ire.
He looked me in the eye for a split second—long enough for an unwelcome frisson of pure animal response to unleash itself in my lady parts—then turned back to her.
“Bourbon neat. And a virgin mojito.”
Spit in a well bucket, as my father used to say, before he left us for the circuit rodeos one year and never came back. Hell, maybe he was still saying it, somewhere else, wherever it was he’d gotten off to.
“That’s really not necessary,” I said.
Little Joe flexed his jaw and his lips twitched. “You looked like you had your hands full.”
I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes further north, but thought better of it. Instead, I ignored his words and retrieved five dollars from my clutch. Holding one end of the bill, I wafted it toward him.
“Thank you for ordering my drink,” I said in my most saccharine voice.
He nodded and took the money. As he straightened it and slid it into his battered, brown leather wallet, he said, “Name’s Jack. Jack Holden.”
“Emily Bernal.” I scrubbed the dry bar with my pile of napkins until the bartender handed me my mojito. No fresh mint, so basically just a lemonade. I sighed. “Well, thanks again, and have a nice night.”
He touched the brim of his gray felt cowboy hat.
Before I’d turned away from Jack, my mother’s voice trilled in my ear like three-inch acrylic nails scratching across a chalkboard.
“There you are, Emily.”
I tried to hide my shudder. “Yes, but I was just headed to the ladies’ room.”
She beamed at me, reflecting a vision of what I would look like in twenty-five years, if genetics trumped will: Indecently long legs made even longer by stilettos, better-than-medium height, round blue eyes, and dewy, Mary Kay-slathered skin going crepe-y at the edges. She’d fit her trim body—thicker through the middle—in a snug dress slightly less long than was proper for her age, and was wearing the best blonde that money could buy from the shelves of Walmart. Trailer park meets the Southern church lady—that was my mother.
She opened her mouth to torture me. “I was just telling Doug Munroe what a wonderful paralegal you are,” she said, “and he wants to meet you. His law firm is really the best in town, and—”
“I’m not even sure if I’m staying,” I said. “And I have a job.” And the beginnings of a killer headache, I thought.
“A job in Dallas. If Rich isn’t going to do conversion therapy, then you’ve really got to—”
I pushed back from the bar and flashed her a megawatt smile. Before I could answer, though, Jack’s voice interrupted. “Agatha Phelps, always good to see you.”
My mother took notice of Jack, tilting her head to the side, and shaking it.
“Oh my, if it isn’t the infamous Jack Holden,” she said. “What trouble are you causing tonight?”
He wiped a smile from his face. “I have a question for you.”
She twinkled. “What is it?”
Jack’s voice dropped lower, and Mother leaned in. I tried not to. “What’s the difference between erotic and kinky?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” She raised her brows. “And I can’t think why any decent man should.” She leaned closer, twinkled brighter.
“Erotic uses a feather and kinky uses the whole chicken.” He smiled on the dimpled side of his face only. “And you know it’s only part of my job.”
My mother giggled like a tween girl. “That’s the only reason I’ll forgive your manners.”
I shook my head. “I’ll come find you later, Mother.” They both looked at me, my mother’s eyes wide like she’d forgotten I was there.
***
I studied my gap-toothed smile in the bathroom mirror, it and me in a gilded frame, and fluffed my bangs. They needed a spray of dry shampoo and blast of AquaNet, neither of which I had with me. I turned to the side and smoothed my hand over my stomach. At least there was no baby bump, yet, and my dress was nearly dry. I lifted my chest and shoulders. “Put ’em on a shelf, ladies,” my pageant coach used to remind us before we went onstage. That was more than twelve years ago, though, and my shelf was a little lower than it used to be.
A woman’s voice from behind a stall door crowed, “Did you see Emily Phelps? I can’t believe she showed her face tonight.”
A second voice snarked from the stall next to her. “I hear she’s not woman enough to keep her man.”
They both laughed like she was Melissa-flippin’-McCarthy or something.
I picked my drink up from the counter and tossed it at the ground outside the two stalls. Overpriced lemonade splashed its target, eliciting a squeal.
“Woops,” I said. “I guess I’m not woman enough to hold my drink either.”
Damn, that felt good. I tucked my five-pound clutch under my arm, pushed out the door, and headed for the pool area as fast as I could wobble on my heels. I’d look for my mother later. For now, I just wanted to stand outside the fence around the little pool at the center of the atrium and imagine myself 3000 miles away from all of this pettiness. I wouldn’t have a care in the world, and I’d gaze peacefully into the aquamarine ocean off of St. Marcos, the island home of my best friend, Katie. She used to be an attorney at Hailey & Hart, the law firm I probably still worked for in Dallas. Thinking of her in the same breath as I thought of my woes made me feel guilty, though. She’d emailed that morning
asking if I’d heard from her husband, Nick, who hadn’t come home last night. I hoped Nick was only a big douchebag like my husband, Rich, and not truly missing. I needed to call her. Well, why not now? Or when I got to the pool, anyway. It’s not like I wanted to talk to anyone else.
But I had to make it past the happy couple’s receiving line—which I’d already been through, thank you very much—before I could stare at the swimming pool. That is, I had to get through the throng of people who probably thought that I regretted giving Scott back his promise ring when I left for Texas Tech—a throng of very familiar faces, all of them reacting visibly at the sight of mine. A former neighbor, from back when we lived in town. A classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation from AHS. Some kid I’d babysat when I was twelve. I fended off each greeting as I braved the gauntlet to the pool, repeating myself into a mantra.
“Oh my goodness!” Lean in, hug without touching bodies. One-handed shoulder-pat three times. “So great to see you. I’m meeting someone, can we catch up later?” Air kiss. “You, too. Bye-bye now!” Keep walking.
Was I as conspicuous as I felt? I tried not to imagine the inevitable whispers in my wake, because, sure as shooting, everyone here knew my business as well as if it had been front-page headline news—above the fold. I tested my face for the confident half-smile I was determined to wear and adjusted the corners of my mouth up ever so slightly.
The chlorine smell of the pool cut through to my cerebral cortex and I sharpened—in a good way. I placed my hands on the black metal top rail of the fence and looked over at the people gathered around the pool at patio tables. It wasn’t as crowded as the bar area, but that wasn’t saying much. My ex had married another local and they’d sprung for an open bar, so almost everyone in town had shown up. But I didn’t care if I was alone in the crowd. I didn’t care if I was standing in the stripper heels that I’d been forced to borrow from my mother who thought they were high-class. I didn’t care if my life was in shambles and my marriage was history. I only cared about the next few good breaths. My eyes found the water, and I sucked in the chemically poisoned air like it was a magic potion. If I could just have about two minutes of this to shock my senses, I might survive the night.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 28