Whatever, Cassie – move your ass, and do it right now. Circumstances will take care of themselves, one way or the other, but you need to take care of those paying customers.
I stared at my blurry reflection on the cooler’s metal door, tucked an escaping strand of my impossible-to-tame frizzy red hair back behind one ear, and willed that pale, freckle-faced, sniffly girl to get her act together.
Nobody is riding to the rescue, kid – it’s just you.
I saved the cheeseburgers before they could char black and decided on impulse to toss some fiery Cajun seasoning onto the things – that should cover the burnt taste, and I could tell Ambrose and Darla McKenney that honest, they really had ordered my “Louisiana Blue Plate Special Burgers,” no matter what they thought they remembered.
I hustled out front, dropped off the burnt, sort-of Cajun burgers with the McKenneys, got back to the bar and set up three more beers for the Jarratts, and dialed down the volume on the TV to a low roar – when the people watching the basketball game squawked about that, I informed them that the next time a hand other than mine adjusted the volume I was switching the channel to Lifetime, where it would stay until the end of the playoffs.
The new arrivals took forever fussing over who wanted which drink and whether they did or didn’t want food, and why was the service so slow anyway? They could take their business to somewhere better and faster and cleaner, and they could do it right now if they didn’t get something free in exchange for waiting five dreadful minutes to be served.
I resisted the urge to kill them and leave their bodies in the parking lot as a warning to other whiny out-of-towners. Instead, I comped the babies a few sodas while they looked at the menu because sodas barely cost me anything anyway; then I wiped down a few tables, took orders for a basket of fries, a box of buffalo wings to go, and yet more nachos, and headed back to the kitchen.
I almost got there. I swung around the end of the bar, I tossed the towel I’d wiped tables with under the counter, I was only six inches from the kitchen door, and then it happened.
Shana sashayed in the front door of the Jayhawk Tavern to hoots, hollers, and a rising tide of wolf whistles. My late-and-then-some bartender beamed a professional smile at her admirers, and waved like she thought she was a rock star or maybe the Queen of England.
As the whistles and applause trailed off, she glanced over at me.
She said it nice and loud, as the jukebox fell silent between one song and the next – which also happened to be the split second when the TV went quiet between a time-out in the game and a commercial.
“Cassie, did you know there’s a naked guy passed out in the back of your truck?”
Whistles and cheers erupted all over the place, because as I may have already mentioned, life loves screwing with me.
“Wore him out, huh, Cassie?”
“The game warden’ll see in you jail for bagging hot studs out of season!”
“Stop having your way with all those college boys, or there won’t be any left for the rest of us!”
“Let’s tie him up and have some fun!”
Wow, thanks, Shana.
And way to go, life, because the evening wasn’t crazy enough for my tastes – and you know how I do love punishment …
I closed my eyes, started counting to ten, and lost patience with it at five.
“Nice of you to remember you work here, Shana – by the way, the INS picked up Jorge, so I’ve been on my own here since we opened. Mind getting up to speed on who needs refills while I see what’s going on with Nature Boy out there?”
She had the decency to look embarrassed – well, sort of. “That totally sucks about Jorge, he was a nice kid – um, you want me to call the sheriff to come get that guy out of your truck?”
“Hell and no – Sheriff Chucklefuck was just here, and I am not anxious to see him back. I’ll handle whatever’s going on outside, you keep these customers squared away for a few minutes.”
“Will do.” She headed over to make the rounds of the tables, while I headed outside to deal with my latest problem.
2
Ducking between two ranch trucks hogging the prime parking space right outside the door, I cut diagonally across the parking lot, gravel crunching under my once-white, now-grey, off-brand sneakers. Behind me, cars and pickups waited in a crooked line that wandered along the front of the bar; ahead of me, another row of dusty, dinged, and dented vehicles sat on mostly bald tires, reminding me more than a little of their shopworn owners drinking inside.
You won’t be surprised to hear that my truck was the worst of the bunch.
To reach it, I had to hike all the way to the far corner of the lot, right next to the road – a basic bit of business owner etiquette is that you let the customers have all the good parking spaces, particularly if your customers might be more than a little lit up when they leave your place of business. Not that another dent or three would have made much difference to a truck like mine, but I figured playing it safe sure wouldn’t hurt.
I walked around the nose of Shana’s red Jetta and towards the back bumper of my battered fifteen-year-old Dodge pickup. All I could think was that my unknown trespasser had pretty low standards for choosing a place to pass out – the ads say that ‘Dodge trucks are ram-tough,’ but mine would have collapsed into a heap of rusted metal if it had butted heads with anything tougher than a hamster.
My tired old truck was sky blue when it left the factory, but between an unknown number of amateur paint jobs since then, assorted fender benders, a little body work, and a lot of time, it sagged on its springs that evening wearing the color of depression – tan here, grey there, a bit of faded blue on the hood, and patches of rust everywhere. The left rear fender had three holes, the tailgate was dented and scratched, and the front bumper was held on with a few twists of wire, because I couldn’t afford to be proud about appearances.
Snores echoed from the bed of the pickup – sounded like somebody else couldn’t afford the price of pride, not if they were sleeping it off on the all the crap I had back there … but something about those snores wasn’t quite right, was it?
The longer I stood there in the spring evening listening to that snoring, the more it sounded exaggerated, too slow, too loud and then too soft, and the rhythm was all wrong.
My mysterious somebody wasn’t sleeping – they were faking.
But why?
The sensible voice in my head pointed out that I was alone in the near-dark with a potentially dangerous stranger who could be pretending to be asleep so I’d get close enough for him to grab me and do God knows what. That voice advised me to go back inside and drag a couple of my burlier customers away from the basketball game to provide backup; don’t go it alone, Cassie, my sensible voice said – get help.
I’ve never been any good at listening to that voice.
Instead, I chose to listen to my Cassie-doesn’t-have-the-time-or-the-patience-to-waste-on-this-bullshit voice, and I bounced a fist-sized rock from the parking lot off the tailgate.
“I’ve got CUSTOMERS to deal with, asshole! Get out of my truck and out of my life now, because I’m busy as hell tonight and I don’t have two minutes to spend on a loser like you! MOVE!”
Mom always said I was too impulsive and Dad used to say I had enough fight in me for two girls, with a pissed off honey badger thrown in for good measure – so since I didn’t care to let their memories down, I followed up the first rock with a second and larger rock, and I threw this one right into the bed of the truck.
“If I don’t see your ass out of my truck and running down the road in TWO seconds, I’m getting my shotgun – consider this your final warning, Sleeping Beauty!”
That did it.
The bastard popped right up like a jack-in-the-box, hands held up and fingers spread wide. “Jesus, please, don’t shoot me or anything! I’m sorry about this, it wasn’t any part of my idea, believe me!”
The headlights from another car turning into the parkin
g lot picked my mystery man out of the gathering darkness for a moment, and … damn.
Fate might have had bad timing and a nasty sense of humor, but at least it had good taste in naked guys.
My trespasser looked to be in his late twenties and his height was a little hard to judge, since he was sitting in the bed of my truck – but he had to be six feet and then some, which made him almost a foot taller than me. And without a single stitch of clothing on him, every bit of that six-foot-plus body was on display – the bands of muscle standing out on his broad, body-builder chest, the powerful biceps in his arms as he held his hands up, the sleek muscles rippling down his sides as he turned to look left and right around the parking lot, every inch of his sharply defined six pack of rock-hard abs, and every inch of his …
… oh my. Oh my, yes.
And yeah, he had a face too – I just happened to scope out the rest of the scenery first, okay? Don’t be so judgmental, at least not until you’ve gone without companionship for over a year and then been gifted from out of nowhere with a naked Norse god.
As for that face, I only got a glimpse before the headlights moved away and yet more customers I’d have to deal with piled out of their vehicle and headed inside – but if this guy wasn’t a model for Calvin Klein or a rising star in Hollywood, then he was missing his calling; God knows, he was wasted on Kansas. A wild and free mane of long blond hair, a wide jaw coated with the stubbly beginnings of a sexy-as-all-hell blond beard, sweeping brows shading dancing green eyes that pulled you in like a magnet …
Cassie, you need to remember this is a very much unknown and possibly dangerous truckload of human male you’ve got here – so lock your hormones back up and deal with reality instead of your horny fantasies, all right?
I hate you, sensible voice.
My latest problem looked past me, scanning the parking lot again. Who or what was he hoping to see? Or not see? Not that it mattered – that tight, toned ass of his was still trespassing.
“Look, you can be naked on the county road, in town, or on the stage at a strip club, I don’t care; you just can’t be clothing-challenged in my truck, or anywhere on my property. If you’re going to be here, you need to cover yourself up and you need to have enough money to order something, even if it’s only a lousy soda –”
“Please, is that cop still here? The one that looked like ten tons of sausage stuffed into a uniform? I am so screwed if he’s still here –”
Great, so not only did he have nothing to wear but his birthday suit, but he was also on the run from the law – swell.
“No, little boy, you’re screwed because I’m here – nail that idea to the front of your brain and think hard about it, because you’re in my reality now. And points to you if you’ve got our useless dickweed of a sheriff mad at you, but I don’t have time or patience for bare-ass fugitives who think my truck is a free motel room.”
“Lady, I had clothes, okay? Earlier today I had clothes, I had a car, I had enough money to … well, to do what I was doing, and it’s so not my fault that I wound up naked, broke, and in your truck. I swear, I was minding my own business being lost and trying to find the interstate when I got a flat tire, so I pulled over to stare at it as if I knew how to fix the thing, and then these two girls showed up and –”
Ah, now the light dawned – maybe Delicious Hunky Boy was innocent after all.
“Let me guess – two twenty-something sisters, both blonde, driving an off-white Dodge van? Built like porn stars, probably wearing cutoff denim shorts and skimpy tank tops, and definitely being all sweet and giggly and super helpful? One of them offered you a soda or maybe a beer, while the other one said she’d call a tow truck guy she knew?”
“You called it, right down to the warm Dr. Pepper – you know those girls?”
“Honey, everybody knows the Honaker sisters. They used to prowl the bars around here looking for drunk, horny guys to run their scams on – then after they spent some time in the county lockup, they switched to hanging out at motels near the interstate and fleecing out-of-state suckers for everything they could get. And by the way, there was more than just warm Dr. Pepper in that can – do you remember much beyond your first swallow?”
My trespasser groaned. Then he wrapped his arms around his folded-up legs and hid his face against his knees – that muffled his voice, but there was no mistaking the sound of an embarrassed city boy realizing he’d met his match out here in the country.
“Those girls roofied me, really?”
“That they did, sunshine.”
Poor guy – he looked so pitiful sitting all hunched up and shivering next to my spare tire … what would he do now? Where would he go? How could I make him high-tail it down the road in just his skin?
Cassie, no. Do not feel sorry for this guy – he should have known how to change his own damn tire like a man. Besides, he probably has plenty of Daddy’s money to fall back on – he’ll just hike to the nearest pay phone, make a collect call home to whine for help, and he’ll be on his way back to his plush existence in no time.
He looked up and shook his head. “You want to know something about me, Miss …?”
The guy turned to look at me, and his crooked smile warmed me right down to my toes – but again, Cassie, no. No pity for this clown, remember?”
“I’m Cassie Hamilton, and no, I have no particular interest in knowing anything more about you, other than when you plan on getting your bare ass off my property.”
Being a man and all, he ignored my lack of interest in knowing more about him. “Well, I’ll tell you something I didn’t know myself, Cassie, not until I woke up here in your truck – I suck at running away. I thought I could pull it off, at least for a while, but I didn’t get far, did I?”
“That depends on where you started from – Topeka? Kansas City?”
Cassie, who cares? Why are you even still talking to this guy?
“Chicago, as it happens – but wait, if those girls wiped me out and stripped me of all my cash –”
“Looks like they stripped you of everything but your skin, pink boy.”
“I sort of noticed that, yes – but why did I end up in your truck?”
The music welled up louder behind me, and I knew an argument would break out soon between the people who wanted to hear the jukebox and the basketball fans who wanted to hear the game. Get back inside, girl …
“My guess is they dumped you here to get back at me. I banned them from this place last year because I don’t need my customers being harassed by trampy, cash-grabbing sluts, so they probably figured they owed me one more headache, on top of everything else going on in my –”
“CASSIE!”
I looked around to see Shana poking her head out of the Jayhawk Tavern’s open front door.
“Cassie, if you’re done molesting that guy, I need you back in here stat – I can’t run the bar and cook and referee everybody’s bullshit arguments all by myself, not without killing somebody!”
“Two seconds, Shana!” I was doing everything by myself for hours before you rolled in, Shana “It’s All About Me” McIntyre, but yeah, let’s rescue you right away.
“What about my car? I see you’ve got your own problems, Cassie, but I –”
But it’s not all about you either, college boy.
“Your car has long since been stripped for parts, and the frame crushed into a pancake by the compactor at whatever junkyard the Honakers are working with these days – face it, you’re walking to your next destination. And since your time in my life is up, you’re making that walk NOW.”
But I made the mistake of looking into those eyes again, those lost puppy-dog eyes, those entrancing green eyes that wouldn’t let me look away … and yeah, I caved in a tiny bit. What could it hurt to let him make a call?
“On second thought, you caught me in a generous mood – do you want to use my phone to call a buddy or your girlfriend or whoever to come get you?”
“Cassie, the last thing I nee
d is for anyone I know to come get me –”
“Funny, I could have sworn that’s the first thing you need, because somebody is coming to get you, one way or the other – either you call a pal or your girl or some other generous sucker you know, or I call that sheriff you’re all shy of and tell him to come pick you up for indecent exposure, and then you can make some new meth-head friends while you’re locked up in his jail. Which will it be, Mr. …?”
He hesitated way too long. “I’m, uh, Dave Carson. Cassie, please, I can’t let anybody at home know where I am, trust me –”
“Trust you, seriously? That’s not even your real name, is it? A fake name, no clothes, scared of the law and of somebody back home, sprawling bare-ass in the back of my truck without invitation while I have five million other things to worry about, and you want me to trust you?”
“Yes.”
He said that one word and those compelling eyes begged me for help.
I stared at him. I said nothing, he said nothing.
Out of the corner of one eye, I saw three more cars turn off the road and come crunching across the gravel parking lot. I heard Shana shrieking my name again, as the jukebox roared and the TV blared. Shouts echoed into the night as the bar’s front door banged open and shut, and was that breaking glass I heard?
Running a country dive bar is a non-stop exercise in chaos, and there’s so much you have to do to stay on top of it all. You have to keep dozens of drink recipes in your head, you need to know how to splice together an adequate menu of bar food from whatever supplies you can afford, and you have to balance keeping your customers happy with keeping your bottom line out of the red. You can’t be shy about stepping in and breaking up fights, and you have to be able to fake interest in the same sad stories you’ve heard from the same sad regulars five hundred times already.
No Dreams Allowed: A Billionaire Romance Page 2