Honky Tonk Christmas

by Carolyn Brown

  “Sounds like she had a little salt too,” Holt chuckled.

  “She did right up until the time that Jarod McElroy swept her off her feet and they wound up married. By then her cousin, Cathy, had come to stay with her and she gave the Tonk to her. Amos put in the trailers and brought an oil crew to town. Travis was the engineer and lived in the first trailer spot out there. Didn’t take Travis and Cathy long to figure out they were made for each other when Amos talked Cathy into running the office for him. She was a high-powered accountant and knew the oil business upside down and backwards. Only trouble was Travis had wings and didn’t want to settle down and Cathy had put down some roots like I have in the Honky Tonk and she didn’t intend to leave. So they had to jump a lot of hurdles before they figured out their hearts weren’t going to be happy without each other. Meanwhile Larissa Morley blew into town and that’s a very long story that would take half the night to tell. Cathy left her the Honky Tonk when she and Travis got married. At first it looked like Larissa was going to run Ruby some competition for not letting the charm beat her. But then there was the deer and that’s another story. Anyway, after a lot of ups and downs, she and Hank Wells got married and now she lives in Palo Pinto on a ranch. Do you know him?”

  “I know his dad, Henry, really well. Met Hank last spring when Henry hired us to build a hay shed. I’d have never pictured his wife as owning a beer joint. She seemed like someone who’d come from money. Kind of genteel. Lovely lady with dark hair. Hank seemed to be real possessive of her.” Holt was amazed.

  “Yes, she did and yes, he is. She inherited the Tonk from Cathy. Did you know that Hank was also Hayes Radner? Heard of him?”

  “You’re shittin’ me. Hayes Radner is a big-name Dallas businessman,” Holt said.

  “No, I’m not and yes, he was. He about blew his chances with Larissa because he didn’t tell her that in Dallas he was a Radner and in Palo Pinto he was Hank Wells.”

  “Tell me that story another night. You were telling me about you tonight,” Holt said.

  Sharlene smiled. “I get sidetracked and I always talk too much and when I explain something I start from, ‘In the beginning God made dirt.’ So in the beginning I smelled a story about Honky Tonk owners and cowboys falling in love so I asked Larissa if I could shadow her a few weeks to see if the charm was going to hit her like it did the previous two owners. That led to me living in the apartment and then working full-time.”

  Holt was still frowning. “And?”

  “And I gave up on the newspaper article and wrote a romance novel. It kind of veered off into another line of thought rather than being solely about Ruby, but she was the inspiration for the book. Never thought I’d sell it so fast but Larissa knew an agent who took a look at it and the next thing I knew I was signing a contract and now it’ll be on the stands in November. Anyway, the reason I want to have a grand opening on Christmas Eve is because I’ve invited all the girls who owned the place before me down here to christen the new addition. And to see my new book, Honky Tonk Charm, which I plan to have on hand to sign for anyone who wants to buy a copy.”

  Holt laughed. “You do talk too much but now I understand everything from the beginning of time. You forgot to throw in the part about Moses and Jonah, though.”

  A cold shiver ran down her spine at the mention of Jonah. Of course, he didn’t know about her spotter or his death. He’d been talking about the Jonah that got swallowed by the whale, but still hearing the name brought back memories she didn’t want to think about.

  She slapped his arm and felt the heat from the sparks dancing all around them. “If you want a sermon, you can go home to Corn with me and I’m sure my father will be glad to preach one to you.”

  “Corn? Where’s that? Your father is a preacher? And you own a beer joint? No wonder you don’t want to tell your momma,” he laughed.

  “Corn, Oklahoma, is where I grew up. Daddy is not a preacher but he is a deacon. And my momma almost had a heart attack when I didn’t get married right out of high school. She doesn’t even think I should be working when I could have a good husband and a farm. When she sees the front cover of Honky Tonk Charm she’s going to faint and tell me that I’m kissing Lucifer’s forked tail for writing such porn. When she reads on the back of the book that my beer joint was the inspiration for the book, she’ll probably go into hiding.”

  Holt shook his head. “Why? She should be proud of your accomplishments.”

  “Momma won’t be able to hold her head up at the Ladies Circle meetings once a week or at the grocery store or the post office when everyone in town knows her daughter is writing trashy romance, but throw that in with owning a beer joint and the sun will stand still. Oh, they’ll all buy a copy the next time they get into a town where no one knows them and they’ll drool on the cover but they’ll never admit that they read it to Momma.”

  Holt chuckled. “Small towns, huh?”

  Sharlene threw up her hands. “Corn, Oklahoma, huh!”

  “Never going back there to live, I take it?”

  “Hell would have to put in an ice skating rink and a snow cone stand for me before I’d consider such a thing,” she said.

  His cell phone rang. He pulled it from his shirt pocket and answered it. “Hello. Will do.”

  “That was short,” she said.

  “Got to go. Chad and Gloria are about five minutes from my house. Both kids are asleep in the backseat and we’re going to try to get them inside without waking them. Thanks for the conversation, Sharlene. And don’t worry about the addition. When I get finished, it’s going to look like it was always there, I promise.” He held out a hand to help her stand.

  The electricity between them sparkled even brighter than the twinkling stars overhead. She looked up at him and he looked down, their eyes locked in the distance between their lips. She shifted her gaze to his mouth and before she could look back into his mesmerizing eyes, his sexy mouth covered hers. The kiss was intense and passionate, holding the promise of a wild night in bed. She wished it would go further and she’d wake up tomorrow morning in his strong arms.

  He broke the kiss and stepped back. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said hoarsely, wondering the whole time why in the devil he’d kissed her. It had stirred him to painful desire, but it had also awakened things he didn’t want to think about. Not with a bartender.

  “I expect you will on Monday morning. Tell the kids not to forget anything that happened at the movies. I’ll want to hear all about their night.” She clamped her mouth shut. God, what was she thinking? He’d just kissed her and caused her knees to go all rubbery and she was talking about kids?

  “Will do. Good-bye.” He jogged across the parking lot.

  She leaned against the outside wall until her breath came naturally instead of in short gasps as if she were in labor. Then she walked across the parking lot, opened the door to go inside, and the young folks who’d been dancing and drinking at the tailgate party set up a howl.

  The spokesperson for the group shouted as she marched up on the porch and bowed up to Sharlene. She was at least thirty pounds heavier, had long black hair that Sharlene could use to cause a little pain if the woman didn’t back down, and enough beer in her to make her cocky. “Hey, lady, how come you get to go inside when we have to wait for someone to leave? That’s not fair!”

  “I get to go inside because I own the joint and I’m the bartender,” Sharlene said.

  “Whoops!” The woman clamped a hand over her mouth and backed away. “Don’t tell that big old bouncer to ban us. We drove two hours from Wichita Falls and we’ve been waiting forever to get inside. It’s all our friends talk about. They got off work earlier than we did and they’re already in there.”

  “Come back in the fall and the place will be twice this size. We shouldn’t have to turn folks away very often when the addition is built,” Sharlene said.

  “We’ll be here every week until we get inside. We heard it was the most fun bar in this part of Texas. Is th
ere really a woman in there who is pro at pool?”

  “There is and a jukebox that plays three songs for a quarter on weeknights. It’s not nearly as crowded then as it is on the weekends.”

  “Well, damn. Hey, y’all, guess what?” The girl went running back to her group.

  Sharlene went on inside and found Tessa hustling to get the orders out.

  “That was a hell of a long ten minutes. We need to think on hiring another bartender. This is getting crazier every night,” she fussed. “You out there kissin’ on that cowboy?”

  “I was not!”

  “You ain’t never lied to me but I still don’t believe you. Was he kissin’ on you?”

  Sharlene smiled sweetly. “Just which cowboy are we talkin’ about, Tess? There was a lot out there who might have been kissin’ on me. There was a bunch with fried chicken in a bucket and beers in a cooler and at least two Chigger women were doing business in the front seats of pickups. Thank goodness the windows were fogged over or it would have been pure old Honky Tonk porn out there.”

  “Oh, hush and make two pitchers of Coke and Jack while I fix a couple of buckets. You might talk too much but you sure know how to beat around the bush and I ain’t got time to kick every bush between here and Houston to get the truth out of you,” Tessa said.

  “I see Loralou made it.” Sharlene changed the subject.

  “Yes, and Merle is in a pout. She says that Kent is almost as good as Chad. She’s down at the far end with her third beer for the night. You’d think she’d be fat as much of that as she puts away every night,” Tessa said.

  “I’ll work my way toward her. She might want to prop her feet up with me after two and bemoan the fact that lust will win out over eight ball most of the time,” Sharlene said.

  Merle left an hour before closing at two a.m. Tessa and Luther were out of the joint by ten minutes after. The parking lot was empty when Sharlene carried her bottle of beer to the porch.

  Strange as it was, those same stars up there in the sky sparkled down on Baghdad the same as they did Mingus, Texas. There were still women over there saving lives, filling out papers, carrying guns, and doing what they’d been trained to do. She didn’t figure there was another woman doing what she did because that job was closed to women. Some kind of special decree from two notches under God had to be signed in blood before she was allowed to get her name on the sacred classified list.

  She sat down and leaned against a porch post with her feet on the steps. She could see the very place where she and Holt sat on the block foundation, where he’d kissed her, and where she’d come close to swooning. Lord, but that cowboy could have caused a holy woman to fall backwards and pull him down on top of her.

  “It would be so easy, but it ain’t happenin’,” she said. She left her half empty bottle on the porch and went back inside. She turned out the lights and went straight to the shower.

  It didn’t do a bit of good. Relaxing wasn’t possible. She paced the floor and finally picked up her purse and headed back to the rent house north of the Tonk. She parked on the road to keep from waking anyone and sat down in one of the orange rockers on the porch where she often went in the middle of the night to think. She pulled her knees up and propped her chin on them.

  Holt also had trouble sleeping that night. Every time he shut his eyes he saw her lips, felt the warmth of them as their tongues did a mating dance. He sat straight up in bed when he heard a strange noise. It sounded like footsteps across the front porch so he looked out the window and saw someone curled up in one of the rocking chairs. Figuring it was a drunk from the Boar’s Nest beer joint not even a block away, he didn’t even bother with shoes. Sending a staggering fool on his way wouldn’t take long enough to get his feet dirty.

  He went out the front door and touched the person on the shoulder, only to have Sharlene come up from the chair ready to fight.

  “What? Don’t say a word. They’ll… oh, my, I woke you up. Was I screaming?” she stammered.

  “No, you were rocking and I heard a strange noise. I still haven’t gotten used to the house so I hear every strange noise. What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “Thinking. I have nightmares and can’t sleep… sometimes.”

  “Well, hell, Sharlene. Come on in the house. I’ll make you some hot chocolate. Mother always said that would put a person to sleep.”

  “I can’t bother you like that,” she said. “I’ll just go on home.”

  “I insist. I’m awake now. I’ll make us both a cup and put in an old movie. I don’t have to get up tomorrow morning and the kids will sleep late from being out so long tonight.” He offered her his hand.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  “Very.” He led her around the corner and into the back door. He turned on a table lamp and pointed to the sofa.

  She sunk down into it and pulled a lightweight throw over her legs. She listened for the ding of the microwave bell but it never sounded. In a few minutes he returned with two cups of steaming hot chocolate complete with marshmallows and whipped cream.

  She reached for one. “I didn’t hear the microwave.”

  “That fake stuff wouldn’t put anyone to sleep. This is the real stuff, made with cocoa, sugar, and vanilla.” He poked a button and the DVD tray slid out. “How about Lucky Seven?”

  “You’re willing to watch a chick flick?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He settled in on the sofa beside her.

  She took a sip. “God, this is wonderful.”

  Almost as good as the kiss, she thought and blushed.

  She’d seen the movie so many times that she knew the dialogue. Who would be her lucky number seven? Had there been six already and was Holt the seventh? She didn’t think so. She damn sure couldn’t remember six and there had been none that had turned her insides upside down with a single kiss.

  She finished the chocolate and set the cup on the end table beside the lamp. Her eyes grew heavier and heavier until it was an absolute chore to keep them open. Finally, she figured she’d only close them for a minute.

  Holt smiled when she slumped against him. He slung an arm around her and let her sleep. She awoke with a start when the noise of the movie ended.

  “Have a good nap?” he asked.

  “You will never know how good it was but I’ve got to go now. It’s almost daylight,” she said.

  “Want some breakfast?”

  “No, I want you to get some rest before the kids wake up,” she told him.

  I’d rather take you to bed, he thought.

  “Thank you, Holt,” she said as she stood up and headed for the door.

  “For what?” He followed her.

  “For the chocolate and the sleep.”

  “Thank you, Sharlene,” he said.

  She frowned. “For what?”

  “This.” He leaned forward and kissed her, long, hard, and lingering through several kisses that would probably send him straight to a cold shower when she left.

  “Wow!” she said when he broke away.

  “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

  “See you Monday,” she mumbled as she stumbled out the door. If his kisses could make her need to change her underpants, she couldn’t imagine what a night in bed would do. She shivered as she got into the car and slapped the steering wheel. Determination to not be attracted to him just ended in pure frustration.

  Chapter 5

  Only an idiot would be sitting in the hot afternoon sun when they could be inside with air-conditioned comfort. The temperature was kissing the hundred degree mark even though it was mid-September. It might be hot but it hadn’t rained but once since Holt and the guys started working and that was on a weekend. So it looked like the deadline would be met in plenty of time.

  The kids were running around for another half hour before quitting time. Holt and the guys were putting up studs and the addition was beginning to look like something other than a row of concrete bricks with floor joists running fr
om one side to the other. Now it had a floor and the walls were going up.

  She kept her head down and her sunglasses pushed up on her nose, but she stole long glances at Holt while he worked. No wonder she’d felt so safe in his arms that night in Weatherford. It had been the first night she’d slept without dreams of bombs and guns and Jonah’s death, but they’d returned every night since other than the night she’d fallen asleep on his sofa after a cup of hot chocolate. She’d tried drinking the same thing for a whole week after that but it hadn’t worked. She’d still had the nightmares. It must have been the security that she felt snuggled up in his big arms that had brought on peaceful sleep.

  “Yeah, right! It was the booze the first time and the kiss the second time. Knocked me on my butt and my brain cells were so fried they couldn’t dream. The second time it was the kiss. It created so much havoc in my heart that the nightmares couldn’t get inside my head,” she mumbled.

  She forced her eyes away from Holt’s arms and back to the notebook in her hand. If she didn’t work while she was using the excuse to get some fresh air, then she’d have to go back inside because she had to get the book finished. She began to note out another chapter as she watched the children crawl all over the new jungle gym out behind the Honky Tonk. Holt and the guys had put it together in an hour out of scrap lumber from the project. Then at her suggestion they’d hung a couple of round discs from long ropes attached to limbs of the pecan tree. Judd and Waylon ran from one to the other, playing everything from robots to Tarzan.

  Wouldn’t Ruby think that was a hoot? Play equipment on the beer joint lawn. Can’t get anymore redneck than that, can I? At least the new addition hides the whole backyard and no one can see it. I’m not going to tell Larissa. I can just hear her giggling about Holt working his way into my life through the children. If it did work it wouldn’t last. First time I told him the whole story he’d grab those kids and run for the woods. No man would ever live with a woman like me.