A Slow Dance Holiday

by Carolyn Brown

  Jorja butted in. “Do Mama and Daddy know?”

  “No, and I’m not telling them either. That burden is on you, but you best let the cat out of the bag soon. They’ve invited Eli to Christmas dinner in hopes that y’all will get back together. Can’t you bring your new co-owner of that horrible place home with you, even if it’s just for a day? We’ll do our best to make her real welcome.” Abigail’s voice turned as soft as butter, like it always did when she wanted something.

  “Cameron is not a girl. Cameron is a guy,” Jorja said.

  “Lord have mercy!” The buttery voice turned hard as concrete. “Are you trying to kill Mama and Daddy both?”

  “Nope. And right now, we’re sharing an efficiency apartment in the back of the bar until we can figure out other living arrangements.” Jorja knew Abigail could never keep all that juicy information to herself. “He just made breakfast and my food is getting cold. Maybe I can come home next summer for the family reunion.”

  Her sister hung up on her, and Jorja went back to the table.

  “That sounded like an interesting conversation,” Cameron grinned.

  “Yep,” Jorja agreed and ate faster than she ever had. She figured it would take ten minutes for Abigail to tell all the dirt on her sister and for the three of them to come up with a plan. They must’ve talked fast enough to fry the cell towers because her phone rang after only five minutes.

  “Want me to leave the room?” Cameron asked.

  “Nope,” she said as she hit the answer button. “Good mornin’, Mama.”

  “Is what Abigail just told us a big joke, and are you on your way home for the holidays like always? If it is, I don’t consider it a bit funny,” Paula said in a stern tone.

  “It’s not a joke.” Jorja was glad that the whole thing was out in the open.

  “Then I’ll have the Prayer Angels at church pray that you see the error in your decision and come home,” Paula told her.

  “To what? I’ve quit my job in Nashville.” Jorja held the phone with one hand and carried her dirty plate to the sink with the other. The whole time she wondered if there were two Prayer Angels that would be praying for her.

  “To Eli. Come home to Eli. He still loves you.” Her mother sighed. “You just have to realize…”

  “Mama, I don’t love Eli, and what he loves is the idea he has in his head of what I would be if I changed everything about myself and became the woman he wants his wife to be. I’m not willing to do that.” Jorja crossed the room and spread the bed up with her spare hand.

  The phone went dead, and she held it out to look at the screen. “She’s really pissed. She hung up on me.”

  “Eli didn’t like your red hair?” Cameron asked. “I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help but hear what you said.”

  “Eli is the youth director at a big church in Nashville. He takes the scripture very literal and wants a submissive little wife who never questions his decisions. I’m not that woman,” she answered. “It has nothing to do with my hair or my looks, and everything to do with my attitude.”

  “How long did y’all date?” Cameron drew his dark brows down.

  “Almost a year.” She refilled both their coffee cups.

  “Is he slow-witted?” Cameron asked.

  “No, he has a degree from seminary, and he’s very smart.” She popped her hands on her hips. “Do you think I can only go out with dumb guys?”

  Cameron shrugged. “Evidently so. I knew you were full of spit and vinegar when I met you. Maybe you should’ve met him at the door with that pistol in your hands on your very first date. Eli must have rocks for brains if he thinks you’d let him have control over your life.”

  She tried to keep a poker face but couldn’t hold back the grin. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s get these dishes done and go clean up the bar, and then we’ll see what damage we can do to the office.”

  “I’ll wash,” he said. “You can dry.”

  “What if I want to wash?” She cut her eyes around at him.

  He put up both palms defensively. “If you want to wash, then have at it. They can sit in the drainer for all I care. I’ll go on out to the bar and start putting the chairs on the tables so we can mop the floor.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded. “All I ask is to be given a choice.”

  “I’ll remember that if you’ll leave that gun in the drawer.” He grinned at her again. “So, who’s washing dishes?” He liked her sass and fire, and even though she was a newbie at the bar business, she’d taken to it like a cowboy to a rodeo.

  “You can wash, and I’ll dry. I like to have things put away,” she said.

  “Me too,” he agreed.

  She glanced over at his bed and nodded. “I can see that.”

  “Hey, come over here and look what those kids have done,” he said.

  She took a few steps forward so she could see out the small kitchen window. Standing so close to him that he could feel her body heat, and smelling like something akin to suntan lotion, sent sparks dancing all over the small apartment. A vision popped into his head of her in a bikini playing volleyball on the beach. In the visual, she wrapped one of those see-through scarf things around her waist and flirted with him when she came into his bar to order a margarita.

  “That’s amazing. Wonder where they got coal,” she said.

  He shook the vision from his head and said, “I think it’s charred wood, probably from a fireplace, but it looks pretty real, and that’s a nice-sized snowman. Look closer.”

  Jorja giggled when she realized they’d affixed a beer can to the branch that made Mr. Frosty’s left arm. “I guess he’s a lefty.” She giggled.

  “And he likes Bud Light.” Cameron ran a sink full of water and began washing their plates, cups, and glasses.

  “He’s not from Texas, then, is he?” Jorja dried the dishes and put them away.

  “Why would you say that?” Cameron finished up his job and dried his hands on the end of the towel she was using.

  “From what I saw last night, most of these Texans like Coors,” she answered.

  “Yep, that and double shots of Jim Beam.” He nodded.

  “Look!” She pointed. “The owls are gone, but there’s a couple of possums out there sniffin’ around the snowman.”

  “They’re probably trying to figure out why every other snowman in Mingus has a carrot for a nose, and this one doesn’t.” He chuckled. “You ready to tackle the bar and the office now?”

  She hung her towel on the rack at the end of the cabinet. “Yep, let’s do the bar first. I’ll gladly sweep and mop if you’ll take care of the chairs and the trash.”

  “Are you going like that?” His eyes started at her mismatched socks and traveled up the legs of her faded Rudolph pajama bottoms, and then took in her oversize T-shirt with its picture of Minnie Mouse wearing a Santa hat.

  “Yes, I am.” She started across the floor. “We’re going to get sweaty and dirty, so why get cleaned up now and then again before we open the bar this evening? That don’t make a bit of sense.”

  “I agree.” He stopped long enough to put on his boots. They might look ridiculous with his baggy shorts, but there was no way he was going into that office in his socks—not when there could be spiders hiding in those piles of papers.

  Jorja brought out a mop bucket and filled it with water, then stopped in her tracks, pulled out her phone, and took a picture of him setting chairs on the table.

  “Why’d you do that?” he asked.

  “If Abigail calls me again, I’m going to send the picture to her.” She picked up the wide dust mop and began to sweep the floor.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked.

  “So that she’ll know you’re harmless.” Jorja laughed.

  “You could have given me a chance to pose,” he teased.

 
Chapter 5

  Jorja heaved a long sigh and then opened the office door. Not one blessed thing had changed since she had found the checkbook to pay for the beer delivery. The place still looked like a tornado and a hurricane had had a fight in the middle of a post office.

  “I’ll get a big garbage bag.” Cameron said.

  He was so close to her that his warm breath caressed her neck and sent sweet little shivers down her spine. She dismissed the sparks by telling herself that she hadn’t been out with a guy in over a year—not since she and Eli had broken up. Sure, Cameron was sexy, even in baggy shorts and cowboy boots, but he sure wasn’t her type.

  When she finally trusted herself to turn around, he was already on his way back toward the office with the whole box of black bags. “Cleaning up that place will take more than one.”

  “Think it will all fit in the dumpster out back?” she asked.

  He set the box down on top of the checkbook ledger, pulled one free and handed it to her. “If it doesn’t, I’ll find out where the dump is and take the rest off in my truck. Where do we start, and why did the last manager let things get this bad?”

  Jorja shook the bag out, hung it over the back of a chair, and picked up part of a stack. “Maybe his or her job wasn’t to take care of bills, and Merle didn’t feel like messing with it. She must be eighty by now, because she’s the same age as my granny.” Items on the top of the precarious stack were dated three months earlier. As she worked her way down the mountain of mail, she sorted by putting the junk in the bag and organizing the rest into three different piles on a chair—unpaid bills, bills that were paid, and other things that had to be filed.

  By noon, Cameron had hauled two bags out to the dumpster, and they could see one fourth of the desk. Cameron picked up a stack of paid bills, opened the file cabinet, and groaned. “You’re not going to believe this.” He pointed.

  “I don’t think anything would surprise me right now, unless it was a snake hiding in that drawer. If that’s what you’re looking at, then clear the way from here to Tennessee.” She wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. Thoughts of snakes and working with a sexy cowboy sure did heat up the room.

  “No snakes, but if a spider comes up out of this drawer, I’m on my way to Florida,” he declared. “The problem here is that not one of these files are labeled. How in the hell did Merle know what to take to her CPA for tax purposes?”

  Jorja rounded the desk and stared into the open drawer. “Holy crap on a cracker,” she moaned. “You do realize that since we took ownership before the first of the year, it’s up to us to organize all this, and get it ready for the CPA in the next few weeks. What in the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “Key words there are ‘in hell.’” He nodded.

  “Amen, sweet Jesus.” She sighed. “We’ll put the stuff that should be filed in a box. When we get the desk cleaned off, we can start with one drawer at a time and get it all put to rights.”

  “And I thought I’d just walk into my own bar and start to work.” Cameron groaned again. “Guess nothing comes for free.”

  “You got that right.” Jorja took a step backward and stepped on a pencil, and her mind immediately told her it was a snake. She jumped as high as she could, but there was no way she was landing back on that evil monster. She wrapped her arms around Cameron’s neck and both legs around his waist, and then hung on like he was a tree and she was a spider monkey.

  “I murdered a spider for you, so you can kill that snake for me,” she panted with her eyes tightly closed.

  “I had a reason to do a stomp dance.” He laughed. “But you’re asking me to go to jail for murdering a pencil.”

  She opened one eye slightly and gave the yellow pencil a dirty look. Then she realized that Cameron had instinctively caught her by grabbing her butt with both hands. Her face heated up and she tried to wiggle free, but he tightened his grip.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  “Not just yet.” He took two steps back, rounded the end of the desk, and carried her all the way to their apartment.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  He set her on a kitchen chair and said, “I need to borrow your pistol. Mine is out in my truck.”

  “What for?” she asked as she started for the chest of drawers. “You don’t need a gun to kill a spider.”

  “Honey, there are two rattlesnakes, real ones, curled up together under the desk,” he told her. “Thank God you didn’t pull out the chair and sit down to work your way through those stacks of mail.”

  “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?” She drew her legs up and scanned the room. “Are you sure there’s two?”

  “Two heads, two tails. Is it all right if I get your pistol from the drawer, or should I go out to the truck for mine?” he asked again.

  “Get mine and kill them. How did snakes get in the bar anyway?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but I intend to check every crevice, crack, and corner in that office and the bar for unwelcome vermin. We need to be more careful until we get things in order.” He took the gun from the drawer and started out of the room. “Stay right there until I get back.”

  “You’ll get no argument out of me,” she said.

  * * *

  He made sure the little thirty-eight revolver was loaded, and then he eased back into the office, tiptoed around the desk, and peeked under it. One critter was awake now and eyeing him. It would likely strike if Cameron tried to pull the office chair back. He took aim from halfway across the room and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went right through the snake’s head and the back of the desk, and imbedded itself in the doorframe. He sucked in a lungful of air and let it out slowly, then aimed and fired again before he dragged the chair back out of the way.

  Both snakes were dead, but Cameron had been around old barns enough to know that sometimes they brought more than one friend with them. He dragged the first carcass out with the broom handle, picked it up by the tail, and dropped it into the open garbage bag, and then did the same thing with the second one.

  After that, he checked every crack, corner, and crevice in the whole room. When he was satisfied that the area was clear of both snakes and spiders, he carried the bag with the dead critters out to the dumpster. That’s when it hit him that he and Jorja had been seeing everything in twos since they arrived at the Honky Tonk. Doves, dogs, owls, possums, snakes—surely that had a meaning of some kind.

  He was back inside and headed toward the apartment when the adrenaline rush hit. Until then he’d been acting on impulse, killing something harmful, but now he thought about how far he and Jorja were from a doctor or hospital. He jogged the rest of the way, burst into the apartment, and stopped in the middle of the floor when he saw her sitting in the chair—which was on top of the table.

  “Are they dead?” she whispered.

  “Yes, ma’am, and in the dumpster, and I checked under and around everything to be sure he hadn’t invited a friend to come in with him. All clear.” He nodded. “I need a beer. How about you?”

  “I need a double shot of Jack Daniel’s. No ice.” Her eyes were as big as saucers even yet. “Are you sure it’s safe for me to go to the bar?”

  Cameron crossed the room, scooped her up out of the chair like a bride, and carried her through the door. When she was settled on a barstool, he poured a triple shot of whiskey and handed it to her, then opened a beer for himself. He carried his beer around the end of the bar and sat down beside her. “I guess we’ve both eaten our bullfrog today.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “My nanny used to say that if you get up and eat a bullfrog first thing every morning, nothing will faze you after that for the rest of the day. You’ve saved my life by killing a spider…”

  She butted in before he could go on. “That little, fuzzy black spider wouldn’t hav
e killed you, and you know it.”

  “Maybe not, but it could have caused me to fall, hit my head on the foot of my bed, and kill myself,” he disagreed.

  She took a sip of her whiskey. “On the other hand, that snake could’ve bitten me or you, and as big as he was, the venom…” She shivered and turned up her glass again.

  Cameron laid a hand on her shoulder. “We’ve proven that we are survivors, no matter what anyone says.”

  “Are you really afraid of spiders?” She clamped a hand over his.

  “Yep,” he admitted. “When I was about five years old, I woke up one morning and this big-ass tarantula was sitting on my pillow, not three inches from my nose. I froze. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t make a single peep until the sorry little sumbitch crawled over and put one of his hairy feet on my cheek. Been afraid of them things ever since. How about you and snakes?”

  “Don’t know that anything catastrophic like your spider thing ever happened, but I’ve always hated them. I shut my eyes if there’s even one on television.” She threw back the rest of her whiskey. “Should we go back in the office and do some more work?”

  “Let’s put it off until later. It’s not like we have to have it all spick and span today,” he said. “It’s after three now. Let’s have a burger and get cleaned up to face the crowd tonight. Think we should stay open on Christmas Eve or close up shop?”

  “Why don’t we ask Chigger and Frankie what they’ve done in the past? I can’t imagine that we’ll have much business.” She removed her hand and wiggled free of his. “I’m going to have one more shot and then we can make burgers.”

  “You can hold your liquor pretty good there,” he said.

  “Yep.” She grinned. “You know what they say about preachers’ daughters.”

  “That they’re the wildest of the lot?” he answered.

  “Oh, yeah.” She giggled. “Except I was never really wild. I just happen to like whiskey like my granny Lila. She was an O’Malley before she got married and is second-generation Irish in this country. I inherited my red hair, my temper, and my ability to hold my liquor from her. She always thought it was a shame that her son, my father, decided to preach rather than to run a good old Irish pub like her grandfather did in County Cork.”