Hot in Hellcat Canyon

by Julie Anne Long

  He’d badly wanted this part.

  “FUCK,” he said, with great, resonant sincerity.

  Either Kevin or Cherisse thumped the wall.

  J. T. thumped it back twice, harder. “Take it as a suggestion!” he yelled. Even though they’d probably miss the irony.

  There was no return thump.

  There might, however, be a return noisy revenge hump.

  He had to get out of this room.

  He looked up at the wall. A cherub was gazing at him with limpid sympathy.

  J. T. almost appreciated it in that moment.

  His eyes flew around the room like a prisoner in a cell looking for an escape. And his eyes lit upon the little bright pink flyer featuring Hellcat Canyon’s Calendar of Events.

  Tonight was Open Mic Night at the Misty Cat.

  He plucked it off the desk and stared at it.

  And then something occurred to him.

  There was a silver lining here, and she had green eyes and a sweet body and a sharp wit on her.

  He’d never gotten more than three no’s in a row in his entire life.

  That could only mean one thing: he sure as hell wasn’t going to get another one tonight.

  The tables at the Misty Cat were about a quarter full when he arrived a little before seven in the evening. Plenty of parking on the street. Not a really hopping night, apparently. Possibly because it was a weeknight. Possibly it never was.

  A few tables were occupied by guys who were already loud thanks to beer.

  A big chalkboard had been propped up on an easel and it read:

  TUESDAY IS OPEN MIC NIGHT!

  Open Mic Night Sign-­up

  Glory Hallelujah Greenleaf was written on the board in pink chalk. It was the only name so far.

  He looked about, but he didn’t see Britt right off.

  But a girl who must be Glory Hallelujah Greenleaf was up on the stage, an acoustic guitar on her lap. She was tuning it.

  An old bearded guy, wiry and small but surprisingly lissome, was on the floor in front of the stage, swaying and waving his arms around.

  “You sit down, Marvin Wade, I don’t care how many drugs you did in the seventies, this ain’t no Grateful Dead show and I will not have you doing a swirly dance while I’m playing. This is a listening song. Or maybe . . . a make-­out song.”

  She flipped a sheet of long black hair over her shoulder, to a chorus of whistles and lascivious hoots. She was wearing a lacy sort of bustier-­esque top that owed something to Stevie Nicks, and she had a very appealing rack.

  “Take it off!” some doofus inevitably shouted.

  “Yeah, Glory, show us your ti—­”

  “LANGUAGE!” Glenn bellowed as he strolled across the floor scooping up empty beer bottles, probably the world’s most futile admonishment. “This ain’t the Plugged Nickel!”

  J. T. made a mental note to find out what the Plugged Nickel might be and where it was. If he had to guess, it was in the scary, in other words, interesting, part of Hellcat Canyon that Rosemary had warned him about and Britt had described pretty colorfully.

  “There ain’t enough money in the world to get me to show them . . .” Glory Greenleaf paused. “. . . to you, Truck.”

  “Hoooooooeeee!” A gleeful chorus and a few high-­fives were exchanged.

  The inevitable heckling lunkheads aside, this was a girl, J. T. was certain, who knew how to incite a riot, and might just do it in order to observe it, the way a pyromaniac stands back and admires the fires he sets.

  She settled onto the chair and pulled the microphone up to her face, squinting in the overhead stage light. She had cheekbones cut like diamonds.

  He suspected she was a dangerous little thing.

  He’d been completely inoculated against dangerous little things ever since 1995, when one had keyed his car and set fire to the ficus on his front porch after he’d been photographed with his arm around another woman.

  Lighting something on fire was a surefire way to get a lesson to stick, as far as he was concerned.

  A brief shot of warm air against his cheek made him turn toward the door. A guy with a badge, who must be the sheriff, had quietly slipped into the Misty Cat and was leaning against the wall behind him, mostly in shadow, unobserved, as all faces were turned toward the stage.

  He looked like a former halfback who’d parlayed a knack for busting heads into a career in law enforcement.

  He intercepted J. T.’s glance and nodded politely. He had a cop face. Pleasant and unreadable.

  Maybe the sheriff knew that drunk men and the girl with the guitar were a combustible combination and had stopped in to throw a nice wet blanket over that.

  There were three names on the chalkboard now.

  And then he saw her. She slipped out of the poolroom, carrying a tray.

  His heart rate actually ratcheted up in speed.

  He watched her move from table to table, taking orders, giving smiles, and it was ridiculous.

  And then she was next to him.

  “Hi,” she said.

  The pleasure of being next to her washed through him with such surprising force that he felt his stomach muscles contract. And for a second he didn’t say anything. He nearly stood up, a reflex born of Southern manners. He stopped himself just in time.

  Her hair was swept up off her face with a clip and waved on down to her shoulders. Which was how he noticed, suddenly, that it was shaped a bit like a heart, thanks to some magic collaboration between her cheekbones and chin. She was wearing a sort of floaty floral shirt tied at the waist over a low-­scooped pink camisole, and a short denim skirt that inspired an ungentlemanly impulse to invite her to sit down so he could see just how far up her tanned thighs it rode. Just enough to leave a little mystery, he was pretty certain.

  “Hi,” he said, belatedly. “I nearly jumped up like an eager golden retriever when I saw you coming, Britt Langley.”

  She tipped her head and studied him. “A golden retriever? Funny, but you don’t strike me as the obedient type, J. T.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Oh, I can take instruction on occasion. Like Kevin.”

  “Kevin?”

  “Of Kevin and Cherisse, in the room next to mine? He takes instruction from Cherisse. All. Night. Long.”

  Britt froze.

  From her expression, she was clearly imagining him listening to “Faster!” “Harder!” “A little to the left!” all night long.

  “Just imagine what Cherisse is taking,” she said, finally.

  And he gave his head a slow shake to and fro and smiled, as if her answer was better than anything he could have anticipated. As if he’d known she’d had it in her.

  She smiled, too. And then she surprised him again: she put a Sierra Nevada Stout down in front of him.

  He looked at it, then up at her. “I’m touched you remembered.” He was, in fact, as absurdly pleased as if he’d won a prize. She must have seen him come in before he saw her.

  “I’d memorize pi out to twenty digits if I thought you’d tip me well for it.”

  She was teasing. Probably even officially flirting.

  If anyone with bionic vision had looked their way surely they would have seen tiny sparks flying from both of them.

  “Actually . . .” She took in a deep breath. “This one is on me.”

  Well.

  Surprise number three.

  There were an awful lot of things he could have glibly said aloud in response to what she’d just said: “. . . which is exactly where I want to be,” chief among them.

  He let his expression do the talking for him.

  From her expression, she heard him clearly.

  He was pretty sure she was blushing, though it was hard to tell in the dark.

  But neither of them blinked.


  Britt Langley seemed to have done a little thinking since he’d seen her last. He could work with this.

  He fished out a five dollar bill. “Will this do for a tip?”

  “Nicely.” She whisked it away.

  “Funny,” he mused, “but now I want pie.”

  She laughed.

  It was impossible not to notice when the big red-­faced guy turned to the sound of her laughter. It was like someone had set a building on a turntable and rotated it.

  He flicked his eyes from Britt to J. T., where they remained.

  J. T. leveled his head up and locked eyes with him.

  If they’d been dogs, he’d have been over in an instant, fur on end, for a bout of mutual, stiff-­legged butt-­sniffing.

  Before they attempted to tear each other to pieces.

  “Anything between you and Jughead?” he asked Britt idly, returning his eyes to her, where they infinitely preferred to be. It was absolutely none of his business, but that had seldom stopped him asking anything. And he was more than prepared to vanquish Jughead, if necessary.

  “Oh, Truck Donegal?” she said, casually enough. She’d glanced briefly at him, offered a polite smile. Truck was clearly torn between watching the girl onstage, who was still tuning her guitar, and his new fascination with J. T. and Britt. “He seems to have given up asking me out after the third ‘no thank you.’ ”

  There was absolutely no need to ask why the guy was called “Truck.”

  “Three times, huh? Polite of you to add the thank-­you.”

  “Oh, yeah. Etiquette is the glue that holds society together,” she said dryly.

  “Can’t say”—­he leaned back in the chair, as if relaxing into the sheer luxury of looking at her—­“I fault him for trying so hard. Because if I got three no’s from you it might just about end me.”

  She appraised him with a slow crooked smile that he felt like warm honey poured down his back.

  The implication was that he’d give her another chance to issue one.

  But he was going to leave her in suspense until then.

  “I told you to sit down, Marvin!” came over the P.A.

  “She any good?” He gestured with his chin toward the girl on the stage, whose dark head was down as she tuned her guitar. Which seemed to be taking forever.

  “Yeah. I don’t think she realizes how good.”

  He arched a brow skeptically. “I’d be willing to bet that girl is fully aware of and uses every one of her assets.”

  Britt laughed. Which he loved, given that after that sentence a lot of women would bristle or immediately begin mentally inventorying their own assets.

  “BRITT!” Truck had a big arm up in the air and was waving it at her. “Gettin’ thirsty over here.”

  “Look at her hands,” she said, leaning toward him, as she slipped off toward the beckoning behemoth. She arrived and gave Truck one of her smiles. Mollified, Truck basked in it.

  J. T. couldn’t very well tug her back. But she’d come around again. He knew that for certain.

  And he somehow knew for certain he wouldn’t be leaving without her.

  So he closed his hand around his beer and looked at Glory Greenleaf’s hands.

  Sure enough, she fumbled a little as she turned the pegs.

  He could have, in fact, sworn that they were shaking.

  Huh. So the wild, cocky thing was nervous.

  He wondered if anyone here besides Britt noticed.

  Or would bother to notice.

  Glory Greenleaf sure threw out the kind of sparks that would camouflage it.

  The advantages of getting the ficus burners—­hot women who were easy to get but hard to handle at best and got your insurance rates raised at worst—­out of his system early in his career were that now, in contrast, he could appreciate a ficus whisperer.

  Not that this particular ficus whisperer didn’t have thorns. And she was also insanely hot. But it was just that she bothered to notice when someone’s hands were shaking and for some reason this made all the difference in the world.

  Rebecca hadn’t been a burner or a whisperer. She in fact occupied her own category on the planet, which was the way she’d always wanted it.

  He glanced over at Britt again. Just in time to see Truck accidentally-­on-­purpose brush his hand across her ass.

  She jerked and stepped backward, her smile frozen.

  J. T.’s hand gripped his beer so hard it was a wonder it didn’t shatter.

  Hazards of the trade when you were a waitress. Probably wasn’t her first ass grab. She could probably cope. She’d probably be the first person to tell him she could cope.

  Didn’t stop him from kind of wanting to break the arm of an ass grabber, however.

  Neither his agent nor his publicist would thank him for that.

  Truck chose that moment to look at him.

  For whatever reason, meathead was declaring territory. J. T. didn’t know if it was about Britt or the Misty Cat or the whole of Hellcat Canyon or because he was miserable about life and wanted to take it out on someone in any way he could, but it was both tiresome and timely.

  Because J. T. was really in the mood to take someone on.

  And then the girl on the stage, without preamble, began plucking out a song.

  Her guitar was an old Martin acoustic, and each note rang with depth and richness you could feel right in your rib cage. Beautiful instrument. Expensive, too. The Misty Cat really did have amazing acoustics. The whole room seemed to soak up and amplify that song until you felt surrounded by it.

  And a few chords in, J. T. was shocked to realize he recognized it.

  It was an old Linda Ronstadt song. “Long Long Time.” A song that was popular long before that girl on stage or Britt had been born. Before even he was born.

  He hadn’t heard it in . . . God, must be at least a decade. It was a straight-­ahead, brutally poignant, unpretentious ode to unrequited love. Just beautiful.

  And Glory Greenleaf was good.

  Possibly even amazing.

  She sang most of the song through her hair, and when she looked up, her eyes were closed.

  Every guy in the place—­maybe ten of them—­was frozen, listening. And even on this Tuesday night in the middle of nowhere, with all these disparate people, misfits, travelers, drunks, lunkheads, famous and anonymous, it was the kind of song that could burrow into a person and find that sore place of heartbreak, recent or remembered, and really make it hurt bad all over again.

  J. T. was not unaffected.

  He reflexively did what every person who’d had an ache stirred would do: searched out comfort.

  Which is how his gaze collided with Britt’s at that precise moment.

  He knew a surge of triumph. She looked away again, swiftly, self-­consciously.

  But she had to keep moving, because that was her job.

  The room was held in such thrall that a minute, restless motion in his peripheral vision made J. T. turn around.

  It was the sheriff.

  Whose eyes were fixed on the stage. But something raw and fierce, very like pain, so vivid that J. T. actually held his breath, flashed across the guy’s face.

  A moment later he slipped out the door and was gone.

  A few seconds after that, Glory Greenleaf abruptly stopped singing. Almost as though she’d forgotten the words.

  She held perfectly still a moment.

  Then she stood up, stuffed her guitar into her case, snapped the latches down, walked across the silent, startled room and right out the door of the Misty Cat.

  They all watched her silently go.

  There was a stuttered scattering of confused applause.

  “Women,” he heard Truck Donegal sniff.

  Glenn, clearly accustomed to rolling with whatever happen
ed in his establishment and completely unaffected, stepped up to the microphone.

  “You’re up, Mikey McShane!”

  A skinny young guy with dyed black hair clutching a battered acoustic guitar in one fist moved toward the stage. He gave a head toss to get his long bangs out of his eyes. He had a single stud in his nose, and the piercing looked fresh. And possibly infected.

  He cleared his throat and leaned toward the microphone. “This one’s called ‘Fuck Small Towns,’ ” he said shyly.

  “Go Mikey!” Truck called. Not entirely ironically.

  If the kid was born here, he’d probably be known as Mikey his whole life, J. T. thought. Which was reason enough to write angsty songs about small towns.

  And with no one to tell him not to, Marvin Wade got up to dance.

  Britt brought her beer orders to the counter and Sherrie sorted through them with practiced speed. Casey Carson was waiting there. She’d sneaked one last take-­out order in for the day to bring home for her dinner. She had an early morning and she couldn’t stay for Open Mic Night.

  “Mr. McCord likes you,” Sherrie said as close to Britt’s ear as she could get, over the sound system as she plopped beers on her tray.

  Britt’s heart gave a lurch. “Of course he likes me. I’m nice to everyone. Isn’t that why you pay me the big bucks?”

  Sherrie snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Likes you, likes you.”

  Britt stopped herself just in time from saying, Really? You think so?

  Because, frankly, she knew so.

  It was an interesting blend of terrifying and enthralling to hear it from other people.

  Casey took the take-­out bag Sherrie extended and leaned toward her so she could say it quietly. “Greta was in here a minute ago and saw you talking to him, and she said your auras were merging.”

  Greta worked at the New Age shop and read palms and futures in the back room behind a red curtain, between selling books and crystals and other accessories.

  Casey looked genuinely excited about the prospect of this. As if her team had made the playoffs.

  Britt was touched to realize that both Sherrie and Casey were rooting for her. And Britt wasn’t an unbeliever in auras and that sort of thing, not really. But now felt like flinging her hands up over her head. How did one disguise an aura? Could you wave it away, like a gas?