“Just one to help me sleep,” Justin said.
“Comin’ up,” Larissa told him.
Justin turned to Hank. “Who are you? Ain’t seen you in the Honky Tonk before. You just a stranger passing through or did you move to this area?”
Hank stuck out a hand. “Hank Wells. Trailer space?”
Justin shook it. “Justin Langley. I drive a semi and stop in here on Monday nights for a few beers before I turn around and head down to Galveston in the morning. Yep, she’s got twenty of them out back of the Honky Tonk. Someday she’s going to marry me and we’re going to see the world from the cab of my truck. It’s just a matter of time. Owners of the Honky Tonk always fall in love with a customer and he’s always a cowboy. I’m a cowboy who rides in a truck rather than on a horse’s back. She’ll come around someday.”
Larissa made it back down the bar in time to catch the last remark. “Darlin’, I will marry you when angels sell rainbow snow cones in hell. Besides, you’ve got a girlfriend so stop teasing me.”
“And what about this magic charm thing all the women talk about? That one where the owner of the joint ends up married to a cowboy?” Justin asked.
“That’s not a charm. It’s a curse and it’s ending with me,” she said with false bravado.
Hank disagreed. The Honky Tonk had to have a charm of some kind. Daisy wouldn’t sell the place but gave it away to her cousin. Cathy wouldn’t sell either, but gave the Honky Tonk to Larissa Morley. Now she was determined to never leave. What magic did an old weathered building and two jukeboxes have, anyway? Had the wood been passed through a voodoo queen’s blessing or something? Had an ancient witch put a curse on the women who ran the place?
“So where you from, Hank?” Justin asked.
Hank forgot about curses and voodoo and answered, “My dad has a spread up around Palo Pinto.”
“Cattle or oil?”
“Angus.”
“Always thought I’d like a ranch when I settle down. Hey, Larissa, you want to raise Angus when we get married?” he yelled above the jukebox noise.
“Keep dreaming. Listen to what’s on the jukebox,” she said.
Dancers were out on the floor forming long line dances to “My Give a Damn’s Busted” by Jo Dee Messina. Twice in one day she’d heard that song. Was there supposed to be a message in it?
Justin grabbed his chest with both hands. “You are breaking my heart. Is your give a damn really, really busted?”
“Busted all to pieces,” she said.
“Is it just busted or plumb broke?” Justin pushed on.
“What difference does it make?” Hank asked.
“If it’s just busted we might find parts to fix it. If it’s plumb broke we might as well go on home,” he said.
“Don’t forget your hat,” Larissa said.
“Sounds to me like you got some persuading to do,” Hank said.
“Ah, Larissa is just playin’ hard to get.”
Larissa had searched the ends of the earth looking for a place to hang her heart. When it found a home in Mingus she fought it for weeks. When it decided it wanted to own and operate the Honky Tonk, she’d thought about extensive psychotherapy or else an MRI to find out if she had an acute brain tumor. But the heart will have what the heart wants or else it will pine away to nothing. It wanted to live in Mingus and run a beer joint and Larissa gave it what it wanted. Now she owned the Honky Tonk and had been happy as a drunk trapped in a wine cellar.
She made her way from one end of the bar to the other and stopped in front of Hank with renewed purpose to put a vice clamp on the physical attraction. “Need another beer?”
“I’m still workin’ on this one. I took the other one to Luther for payment for his help today. How long have you owned this place?” Hank knew exactly how long Larissa Morley had owned and operated the Honky Tonk. His file on her was slim but it was accurate from the day she moved to Mingus. Before that she didn’t exist.
“Moved here last winter,” she answered.
“Like it?”
“It’s home.”
“Want to dance?”
“Don’t dance with the customers, but thanks.”
“Buy you a beer or a drink?” Hank asked.
“Don’t do that either. Thanks.”
Justin patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve been tryin’ to talk her into the same thing since last spring. Women! Can’t understand them. Can’t live with ’em and it’s against the law to shoot ’em. Ever hear of that book that says they are from a different planet than men folks?”
Larissa left them to discuss the impossibility of getting along with women and made her way down the bar, waiting on customers as she went. Monday nights used to be slow until word got out there was a quaint little beer joint just over the border into Palo Pinto County with a jukebox that still played old records at three songs for a quarter. The Internet and blogging had opened up whole new avenues of word-of-mouth advertising and now the place was hopping every night. Sometimes Luther had to turn the customers away at the door to wait on the porch or in the parking lot until a few got tired and left.
“Hey, Larissa, here’s our song. All you got to do is tell me that you love me and the next time it won’t be so hard.” Justin pointed to the jukebox where “Say It Again” by Don Williams was playing.
She shook her head and frowned.
“You really in love with her?” Hank asked.
“Naw, I just like to tease her. I got a girl in south Texas who can shoot the eyes out of a rattlesnake at fifty yards. I wouldn’t dare fall in love with another woman. She’d shoot me, throw my carcass out for the coyotes, and never look back. She’s one of them country girls that songs are written about and I’m so much in love with her it ain’t even funny. We’re gettin’ married at Christmas time and I’m settlin’ down to an office job.” Justin picked up his beer and headed to the pool tables.
Hank turned around on the bar stool and watched the dancers fill up the floor in a slow two-step as Merle Haggard sang a slow ballad. He was reminded of Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar.” Toby mentioned hookers, lookers, bikers, and preppies in the song. Hank saw women who could be hookers in their tight fitting jeans and low cut blouses; those who were lookers in their high-dollar designer jeans and boots and hundred dollar haircuts; bikers over there at a table with their tattoos and earrings; preppies in their pleated slacks and dress shirts; and more hats and boots than he’d seen in one place since the last time he attended a cattle sale on the Lazy R Ranch up in Palo Pinto, Texas.
The Honky Tonk was a weathered gray building with a wraparound porch with a flashing neon sign atop a three-tiered façade. Inside it was one big room with two pool tables in the right corner, a few tables pushed around the walls with chairs surrounding them, a bar across the entire back side, and two jukeboxes.
Sitting on the stool and taking stock of the place, Hank couldn’t figure out why anyone wouldn’t sell it for ten times what it was worth. But the previous two owners had turned down million-dollar offers for a piece of Texas dirt and a building not worth a tenth of that. If there wasn’t a curse on the place, then what would it take to make Larissa sell?
His heart clinched up in his chest when he looked up and caught her looking at him. Something stirred but he was in the Honky Tonk on a mission and he would not be deterred by a sexual attraction that could be satisfied with one night in a cheap motel. He held up his empty beer bottle and pointed at it. She popped the top on another and brought it to him.
“So you don’t dance with customers or let them buy you a drink. If a customer asked you out to dinner would you go?” he asked.
“I work six nights a week. Only day I have off is Sunday.” Larissa hadn’t been on a real date in six months. Hank Wells rattled her nerves like a marble in a tin can just sitting on the bar stool. She couldn’t imagine spending a whole evening with him with no one else around.
Rattled her nerves, hell! Whatever sexy vibes he threw
out set them on a roller coaster that took her breath away.
“Then Larissa Morley, will you go to dinner with me next Sunday? I will pick you up at noon. What’s your favorite restaurant? Or if you want a home cooked dinner, tell me what your favorite food is and I’ll ask Oma to make it for you. It’s payment for almost totaling your car today,” Hank said. In spite of the job, he would really like to spend more time with her. Getting to know her was part of the job, but she was all the things he liked in a woman. Strong. Independent. Sassy. Funny. Kind. Well, that last one might be up for debate but she had given him a jar of iced tea while they waited on the tow truck.
Her heart wanted to say yes but the little crawling itch on the back of her neck said something wasn’t right. He had mesmerizing eyes. He was sexy as the devil in disguise. He made her little heart jump around like a kid in a candy store. But… and there was that little three letter word getting in the way. Until she could look at him and see no buts, and she dang sure didn’t mean butts, she wasn’t going to succumb to all the heat between them.
“Thanks but no thanks. I’ve got plans for this Sunday,” she said.
Justin poked his head between two customers halfway down the bar. “Hey, Larissa, fix up a bucket of Coors. Me and Julio and Patrick got us a hot game of eight ball going back there.”
“You must’ve lost the first round.” She set a galvanized milk bucket on the bar, shoved six bottles of cold Coors down into it, and topped it off with two scoops of ice.
Justin picked up the bucket and carried it back to the tables. “Yep, I did.”
Larissa made her way down the bar, filling orders and jars. When she got back to Hank he still had half a bottle of beer so she didn’t stop until he spoke.
He nodded toward the jukebox. “Who’s that singing?”
“That’s the great Emmylou Harris. You didn’t grow up on old country music, did you?” she asked.
Maybe that was the wrong thing about him. He didn’t belong in the Honky Tonk and was an impostor. The previous Honky Tonk owner, Cathy, used to say that her “bullshit” radar went off when something wasn’t the absolute truth and when Larissa had worked as a bartender long enough she’d find her radar. Evidently she’d worked there long enough because it was sending red lights and a whining noise that only she could see. The prickle on her neck and the way he looked at her with a veil over those strange colored eyes had set it off big-time.
“Sure I know Emmylou. I just didn’t recognize that song,” Hank said.
Merle Avery claimed the stool next to Hank. She was an expert pool shooter and had seen more groups come and go in the beer joint than anyone in the county. She wore snug fitting blue jeans and her designer western shirt had red roses embroidered on the back yoke. She always carried a special case for her custom made cue sticks and never touched the freebie sticks on the wall. That night she set her case on the floor between the bar stools and studied Hank for a full minute.
“Do I have something on my face?” he finally asked.
“No you don’t, but I’m old enough that I can stare and not give a damn if it’s rude. I’m deciding whether I’m going to like you. Who are you?” she asked Hank.
He hadn’t planned on getting the third degree from everyone in the state of Texas when he decided to drop by the Honky Tonk, but he put on his best smile and said, “I’m Hank Wells, ma’am. Who are you?”
“Name is Merle Avery. You one of the new crowd that heard about the place on one of them Internet things?”
“No, ma’am. Just word of mouth. Friend said that the Honky Tonk was the hottest place around on Monday nights. I’m the one who hit the deer this afternoon and sent Larissa into the ditch,” Hank said.
She leaned back and started at his boots, let her gaze go up his long legs to the Texas Longhorn bull on his tarnished silver belt buckle, on up to chambray work shirt sleeves that had been rolled up to his elbow, taking time to check out his hands and his neck.
“I heard about that. Larissa said you laid down some rubber tryin’ to get that truck stopped and that it was probably totaled, old as it is. Why did you come all the way back down here tonight?”
“That’s exactly what happened. And it is probably totaled out but my dad is bound and determined to fix the thing. He’s got this affection for it. I think it’s a sixty-something model and he’s already put two engines in it. I’ve been hearing a lot about this place. I was close and the chores were done so I came to town for some company and a beer.”
“You almost fooled me, Hank Wells. But you are a drugstore cowboy. You ain’t the real thing.”
Words froze in his throat.
Larissa stopped in front of them. “He’s not real?”
“He’s the best fake I’ve ever seen,” Merle answered.
“What makes you say that?” Hank asked hoarsely.
“Two things. Your neck is lily white. That means you don’t work outside enough to be a real honest-to-god cowboy at your age. And your fingernails. That’s dirt up under them but it’s not ground in enough. Add that to the fact that you didn’t recognize Emmylou and something ain’t kosher.”
“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Miz Avery. But I am not a fake. My father owns the Lazy R Ranch north of Palo Pinto. Henry Wells? Heard of him? I have a job in Dallas and don’t spend all my time on the ranch,” he drawled. “When I’m at the ranch, I’m a bona fide cowboy whether I look like one or not.”
“I knew Henry years ago,” Merle said. “Didn’t know he had a boy. Don’t tell me that truck you wrecked is an old sixties model Ford. Red with white leather interior?”
“It is. How’d you know that? You clairvoyant or something?”
“I’ve got the memory of an elephant, honey. When you go home you tell Henry that you were down here at the Honky Tonk. He might explain about that truck if he wants you to know. Me, I ain’t sayin’ another word except I understand why he would never junk it.” Merle picked up the beer that Larissa set before her and took a long gulp. “You any good at pool?”
“No ma’am, but I understand there’s a couple of guys back there who are,” he said.
“Ah, that Julio and Patrick ain’t no competition. Julio’s Mexican temper and Patrick’s Irish one get in the way of either of them bein’ good at anything but arguing. Damn, I miss Garrett and Angel,” she said.
Hank looked at Larissa with a question in his eyes.
“Angel would be her niece and Garrett is Angel’s husband. They’re newlyweds and don’t come in too often anymore.” Larissa barely got the words out when someone ordered two buckets of Miller Lite and a pitcher of hurricanes.
Merle waited for the noise of the blender to stop before she turned to Hank. “I can see by the way you look at Larissa that you are interested. If you want to impress her then you got to work on getting that neck red and them hands dirty. She said when she took over the Honky Tonk that the only way she’d ever look at a man was if he was a real cowboy.”
Hank frowned. “And I thought I was pretty damn close to the real thing. Not that I’m interested in impressing Larissa or anyone else in this place. Someone else can have my stool. You have a good evening, ma’am.”
“Go haul some hay or drill some wheat and bring a red neck back with you when you come back in here,” Merle told him.
He tipped his hat at her and made his way through line dancers doing their routine to “Johnny B. Goode” by Buck Owens. He could still hear the guitar licks when he opened the door to his father’s newest pickup truck. He crawled inside and rolled down the window. He’d rather have been driving his own car but one look at it and not just Merle, but everyone in the county, would know he didn’t belong in the Honky Tonk. The next singer was Loretta Lynn. He’d recognize that nasal twang anywhere because he’d heard his father and mother argue about it when he was a little boy. His mother hated anything country and his father loved everything country. His mother was a socialite and citified woman who liked Broadway plays and classical music;
his father was a rancher who listened to country music and grew his own food. They’d married on a whim and divorced before the ink was dry on the marriage license. The only thing that connected them was a son conceived on the wedding night in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Hank leaned his head back on the headrest and listened to the country music drifting out through the parking lot. Sweat poured down his neck and when he shut his eyes a visual materialized of Larissa Morley in those skin-tight jeans and that little red knit top that barely touched the top of her jeans. She was a tasty little morsel and he’d be the first to admit she’d gotten under his skin. She wasn’t the first woman who’d taken his eye the few times he went slumming, and she wouldn’t be the last. He would get over it and her because he had a job to do, and a relationship with the likes of Larissa Morley would blow the hell out of his work.
The next vision that flitted through his mind was Hank introducing a bartender to his mother, Victoria. He imagined the look on her face when he said, “Mother, meet Larissa. She owns a beer joint called the Honky Tonk.”
“She would die of an acute cardiac arrest,” Hank said aloud as he started up the engine to the truck and drove north toward Palo Pinto. He pushed the button and Merle Haggard’s voice filled the truck. He kept time to the beat with his thumb on the steering wheel.
***
Larissa was so busy behind the bar that she seldom knew when anyone arrived or left at the Honky Tonk, but the minute Hank Wells left his bar stool she knew it. She watched him walk across the floor, meandering around the line dancers and out the door past the Honky Tonk bouncer, Luther.
“Why did that particular man make you pant?” Merle asked.
Larissa shrugged. “Remember that song ‘Somebody’s Knockin’’? It says that she’d heard about the devil but she’d never dreamed that he’d have blue eyes and blue jeans. Well, I never dreamed he’d have whiskey colored eyes. Terri sings that they’ll have a heavenly night. I was ready to test that out without asking a single question. Lord, he could be serial killer and I’d still peel them jeans off his firm little hind end and enjoy doing it. I almost said yes when he asked me out to dinner. But something ain’t right. I can feel it in my bones, but at the same time I’m kicking myself for not saying yes. Remember how Cathy said that Travis was sex on a stick on her wedding day? I didn’t understand such a crazy saying then but I do now. It would probably be best if Hank Wells didn’t ever come back in this place. I don’t know what the attraction is, but it’s damn sure there.”
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