When the Dust Settles

by Mary Calmes

  When the Dust Settles

  By Mary Calmes

  A Timing Story

  Glenn Holloway’s predictable life ended the day he confessed his homosexuality to his family. As if that wasn’t enough, he then poured salt in the wound by walking away from the ranch he’d grown up on, to open the restaurant he’d always dreamed of. Without support from his father and brother, and too proud to accept assistance from anyone else, he had to start from scratch. Over time things worked out: Glenn successfully built a strong business, created a new home, and forged a life he could be proud of.

  Despite his success, his estrangement from the Holloways is still a sore spot he can’t quite heal, and a called-in favor becomes Glenn’s worst nightmare. Caught in a promise, Glenn returns to his roots to deal with Rand Holloway and come face-to-face with Mac Gentry, a man far too appealing for Glenn’s own good. It could all lead to disaster—disaster for his tenuous reconnection with his family and for the desire he didn’t know he held in his heart.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  More from Mary Calmes

  About the Author

  By Mary Calmes

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  As always, a thank-you to Lynn, and to Poppy for getting things sorted out.

  Chapter 1

  “THERE, BOSS, take a left.”

  I took the turn as directed and the five other people in the pickup truck with me—three in the back seat, two in the front—yelled at the same time that it was the house on the right.

  There were a lot of lights on, and clothes and stuffed animals were strewn all across the front lawn.

  Crap.

  I got out and heard the passenger’s side door open, along with movement in the back of the pickup, at the same time.

  “No,” I barked, whirling to stare into the interior and the truck bed as I slammed my door shut.

  Five pairs of eyes all between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two were pinned to me. A quarter of my staff had insisted they were going with me, cajoled, and finally flat-out refused to get out of my truck when I left to go pick up Josie Barnes. The rest of them, those old enough to know better than to leave a restaurant during the nightly dinner rush, stayed there, taking care of the place that had become home for all of us, not just me.

  “Everybody stays in the truck,” I ordered from where I stood in the street. “I don’t want any of y’all hurt.”

  “But boss, her dad and her brother are up in there. We gotta go in with ya,” Andy Tribble, one of my busboys, pleaded. “You didn’t bring no backup.”

  “Kevin’ll be here in a second,” I explained quickly. “He’s right behind us—he’ll go in with me.”

  “Yeah, but—” Shawnee Clark began to argue.

  “No!” I yelled and then included them all with a wave of my hand. “Any of y’all that gets outta this truck is fired, ya hear?”

  “But I was the one that answered the phone when she called,” Danny LaRue chimed in. “I should go in since I told her I was coming.”

  I sent up a quick prayer for strength. “What were her exact words, Danny?”

  Silence.

  “Time’s a wastin’.”

  He coughed. “She said since you were still fishing that—”

  “Since I was still fishing,” I repeated. “Meaning that if I was there, I was the one she wanted, right?”

  Nothing.

  “D?”

  He huffed out a breath. “Yeah.”

  “Well, then.”

  When he looked at me, his face was scrunched up. “You shouldn’t go in alone.”

  Everyone nodded at once in support of his statement.

  I knew why. I did. They needed me. I was the boss; it was my place, our restaurant, The Bronc. I’d pulled it out of thin air into existence, and they’d all taken refuge there with me in one form or another. I was the glue. Without me, if anything happened to me… they would all be adrift, and while for a few that would be a brand-new experience—some were too young to have lived totally alone yet—for others, it meant being without an anchor all over again.

  So I understood that the fear was first for me, second for them, real and tangible and in no way self-serving. None of them wanted me in danger.

  “Just nobody fuckin’ move,” I growled, those my final words on the subject.

  There was lots of nodding and they all stayed put. I knew it wasn’t the threat that kept them in their seats, though, but the look on my face. I had on my serious one.

  I was almost to the porch when the screen door banged open and Josie’s brother—she’d only ever called him Bubba—about twenty years old, came charging out with an electric guitar clutched in his fist. Since I knew from our Christmas party eight months before that it wasn’t his, I surprised him and grabbed it out of his hand.

  “What the hell,” he roared, reaching for it as I put two fingers on his collarbone to keep him still.

  “Step back,” I growled, and then keeping my eyes on him, I yelled, “Kev, get over here!”

  My head bartender, Kevin Ruiz, was a little taller than me, hovering around six three and had twice the muscle. He’d followed my pickup in his Chevy Avalanche that dwarfed my ancient Dodge. I’d heard him pull up while I was crossing the yard.

  “You best get off our porch before I call the cops,” Bubba threatened.

  I didn’t move, just held the instrument out to Kevin until he moved up behind me and took it. “Look around for the amp,” I directed.

  “Yeah, boss.”

  “Who the hell do you think—”

  “Shut up,” I warned, bumping him hard as I walked by, up the porch steps, and into the house.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted, catching me as I stalked into the living room.

  It was a horrific sight that sent a chill down my spine. At the same time I felt a quick swirl in my stomach. The desire to pivot and punch a hole through a wall, any wall, was nearly overwhelming.

  Josie Barnes, born Joseph William Barnes—which I knew because when I hired her, we had to do paperwork together—was on the floor at her father’s feet. Mr. Barnes had his clippers out, and her hair, which had hung to the middle of her back in thick chestnut layers, was now sticking up in ugly uneven tufts, shorn down to her scalp. Her face was scrubbed clean of the normal simple makeup she wore, the sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks stood out in stark contrast against her pale skin. She was sitting there naked, panties and bra on the floor, holding her legs tight together and her hands clutched over her chest.

  I saw red.

  I charged across the room, grabbed Mr. Barnes’s neck in one hand and the clippers in the other. I hurled him back so hard he fell down onto the couch, and the clippers I turned and flung against the wall as hard as I could. They exploded in a shower of plastic and metal.

  “Ohmygod, who is this man?” Josie’s mother, Miranda, standing by the mantle clutching a Bible, shrieked at me.

  “I’m her boss,” I bellowed at the woman whose name I only knew because it was on the emergency contact form in my office. I was betting we’d be replacing her name before the day was out.

  All Holloway men were big and loud; it’s just how we were made. We were also black haired, square jawed, hard muscled, stubborn, and rude. And even though I was the smallest of the family by far, I was just as ornery and noisy. It was not up for debate. Those were the facts. So when I roared from my diaphragm, she recoiled, slid sideways, and hugged th
e wall.

  “You know he’s a boy, don’t you, you dumb fucker?” Mr. Barnes spat as he got unsteadily to his feet.

  “I don’t see a boy,” I said frankly, and suddenly I felt a hand on my calf. Looking down, I saw Josie trembling.

  I could only imagine what my eyes looked like when I turned to Mrs. Barnes. “Get me a blanket, ma’am, and I will take your child up outta here and you won’t never be bothered again.”

  My drawl, normally not that pronounced, got really thick when I was mad.

  “I know you,” Mr. Barnes snarled, taking a step away from me. “You’re Joey’s boss, that fag that runs The Bronc where he works.”

  He didn’t know I was gay. He threw the “fag” in for good measure, but like I cared. “Yessir, that’s me.”

  “So you gonna take him home and fuck him?”

  The bile rose in my throat. This was the man’s child, whom he had held as a baby, played with, held hands with…. It defied all understanding and human compassion.

  “Actually, no, sir,” I said hoarsely, my voice nearly bottoming out, as furious as I was. “Josie’s a girl. I only fuck boys.”

  He swung at me and I put him on the ground. Mrs. Barnes was screaming when I threw Bubba down on top of her husband a moment later. One redneck throwing roundhouse punches at me or two, it didn’t matter none. I was raised on a ranch; I had been breaking horses and driving cattle and tussling with anyone who wanted a piece of me since I was a kid myself. Compared to Josie’s out-of-shape father and spindly brother, I was a god.

  I took the blanket her mother shoved at me from the couch, bent, wrapped Josie up, and lifted her into my arms. The desperate wounded sobbing began instantly.

  “Is there anything in this house you need? Tell me now, ’cause you ain’t comin’ back.”

  She heaved out a breath. “He-hee-he broke my guitar! I can’t—”

  “No,” I soothed, pivoting and heading for the door. “I got the guitar, it’s fine. Kevin has it. Where’s the amp?”

  Her face went from catastrophic to filled with light and hope in a second, even though still awash in tears. “You saved my guitar?”

  “Of course I saved your goddamn guitar,” I groused, scowling. “Where’s the case?”

  She pointed. “Right there by the door.”

  “And your amp?”

  “At work. I never bring it home.”

  I grunted.

  Kevin was right outside on the porch, and when I opened the screen, I dumped Josie into his arms and grabbed the case in time to see Mr. Barnes, red-faced and sweaty, closing in on me with a baseball bat.

  “Rethink your course, old man,” I warned. “I will feed you that fuckin’ bat along with every one of yer teeth.”

  “You—”

  “You think I don’t see them bruises on her neck and face? Her right eye’s about swoll shut and her lip’s bleedin’.”

  “Stop saying she!” he thundered. “That’s a boy! He was born a boy and he’ll die a boy and—”

  I cut off his rant. “She sings like an angel, you know. Gonna be big someday, and y’all are gonna be terrible sorry when everyone knows what you did here.”

  “At least he looks like a boy now!”

  “No, sir.” I shook my head. “She looks like a baby bird that you put under your boot.”

  “You—”

  “I’ma say this once,” I began, drawing myself up as big as I could. “I don’t never wanna see none of y’all up at The Bronc. If I do I’ll have you arrested for trespassin’.”

  “And where will he live? Who will pay for him to go to school or—”

  “That ain’t your concern no more, how she pays for anythin’,” I said and turned, kicking the screen door down as I left. Walking over it, I scanned the porch once I was outside.

  I found a makeup bag, a broken blow dryer—not that, unfortunately, she’d need one for a while—and lots of thongs, panties, and bras. I gathered it all up and was striding through the now-empty yard moments later.

  Everyone screamed at once.

  “No!” Josie’s fractured voice rose above the others.

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw Mr. Barnes on the porch with his rifle. Wheeling to face him, I ran through every scenario I could imagine, but all of them came back to the same conclusion.

  I was dead.

  He could shoot me and claim self-defense because I was in his yard. My people would watch me bleed to death, and that would be their last memory of our time together. Or… I could play the last card I had.

  “You know Rand Holloway?”

  He squinted at me. “Everyone in Hillman knows Rand Holloway, you ignorant—”

  I put my hand over my heart. “Glenn Holloway.”

  It was fun to watch the color drain from his face. Rand was the kind of man nobody wanted to cross. But it wasn’t really Rand—my cousin, well… half brother—who was so frightening, but his ranch was like a small town now, and there were some men who worked for him, Mac Gentry most notoriously, who had dangerous reputations. Even the police were no better deterrent than the men who called the Red Diamond home.

  I saw the rifle shake, and I spun on my heel and walked to the side door of the pickup.

  Shawnee zippered open a duffel bag and I dropped all the underwear in. I saw Josie was dressed, and when I got in the truck, I took off my Stetson and shoved it down onto her head, low over her eyes.

  “We’re fixin’ to stop by Caffrey’s and pick you up a hat for work tomorrow.”

  She was in my lap then, sobbing into the side of my neck, and I figured we were never getting out of there if I just didn’t leave her where she was.

  We drove away fast after I took a breath and my heart started pumping again.

  BACK AT work an hour later, I had Eric and Jamal rig up a makeshift shower so Josie could take one. She needed to get all the fine little hairs off her body so she didn’t scratch herself to death. Kevin used the clippers we had in the office and evened out what was left of her hair, shaving it all to the same one inch off her scalp. On the way to The Bronc, we had stopped and picked up three long scarves for her to tie around her head, a cowboy hat for work, a pleated purple cap, and a pale blue Army hat with silver stars on it. We also bought neon blue hair dye so what fuzz there was, was at least an interesting color.

  After a thorough inventory, all of Josie’s things were accounted for, the guitar and amp being the most important of all. She must have thanked me about nine hundred times when I had carried her out of my truck, her arms and legs wrapped around me as though she were a young child and not a seventeen-year-old girl.

  The boys attached a hose to the sink in the employee bathroom, ran it out the back door, and because a lot of the girls sunbathed on the roof before work, they had towels to hold up to give Josie some cover. It took time, but finally with her body washed and clothed, hair dyed, makeup applied, then being fed and hugged over and over, she stopped shaking and breathed. I realized I finally could as well.

  I got a call from a sheriff’s deputy because the Barnes’ swore out a complaint against me.

  “So what’s our next step here?” I asked him,

  He cleared his throat noisily on the other end of the line. “Nothing at all,” he informed me, sounding nervous as hell. “Just—if you might see your way clear to letting Rand know that we let this whole incident drop…then that would be good.”

  “Yessir I will,” I replied, putting the drawl in my voice. “He’ll be mighty pleased I reckon.”

  His exhale was audible.

  People living in deathly fear of Rand Holloway was working for me.

  By eleven Josie was taking a nap on the couch in my office while I sat at the bar and talked to Kevin, Callie, and Marco. I closed up early at midnight instead of two in the morning and had everyone on the floor in the employee break room a half an hour later. They were all looking at me.

  Two days.

  You wouldn’t think the place could go completely t
o shit in two days, but it most certainly had. Without me there, my restaurant exploded in anger, frustration, name-calling, and backstabbing. And while I was glad to finally know all of what was going on and have everything that was bubbling below the surface out in the open, I could have done without the drama.

  I really hated drama.

  “If one person doesn’t pull their own weight,” I said, addressing my staff, “the whole team gets dragged down.”

  The room exploded in noise. People turned on each other, there was pointing, there was yelling, and I let it go because I could feel the tension in the room dissipate with just the volume.

  Kevin walked over to me, and after a minute I nodded and he blew the air horn, which startled the hell out of everyone.

  I stood, lifted my hands, and told them all to shut the fuck up. Once I had silence and fixed stares, I started again. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that JT was bangin’ every single woman that came in here?”

  Abruptly, no one could look me in the eye.

  “He’s gone.”

  And that fast, everyone was back to looking at me, suddenly hopeful, and of course I understood why. JT had been taking my money and doing no work for it, and they’d all thought he’d had my blessing to be that way, when the truth was far more ridiculous. I’d had no idea. I’d thought he was a good guy, but it turned out he was lazy and cruel and a total womanizer. When Kevin and I busted him in my office having sex with a guest from the hotel, I fired him on the spot. Jamal and Eric really enjoyed carrying him out the back. Callie Pena, my office manager, had his paycheck under his windshield wiper, calculated out to the penny.

  She was thorough like that.

  They waited.

  “To replace him, as of today, Kevin has been promoted to manager,” I told them. I then tipped my head at Bailey Kramer, who was sitting in the back holding Josie’s hand. “Bail, you’re the new assistant.”

  She was stunned, and the smile I got, slow, sheepish, spreading over her features, showing off rows of perfect white even teeth, made me break into one too.

  “So now we’re good,” I announced. “Marco is taking over the head bartender spot.”