The Trouble with Texas Cowboys

by Carolyn Brown

  She took a step to the side so that she was shoulder to shoulder with him. “For your information, I was thinking about my friend.”

  “Betsy or Kinsey? I’ll put my money on Betsy, since you and Kinsey have some evil vibes going on between you tonight,” he said.

  “No, my friend who protects me from the evil feuding family.” She grinned.

  “Hey, gorgeous, can I get three pitchers of Coors?” Tyrell bellied up to the bar. “And, Sawyer, we’d like seven burger baskets. Load ’em up with everything. Double the grilled onions.”

  Jill pulled the lever and filled three pitchers and set them on the bar.

  Tyrell flipped two bills toward her. “If there’s anything left, consider it a tip. If not, let me know what else I owe when the burgers are done. And, darlin’, say the word, and I’ll wait for you after-hours and we’ll go watch the moon from a special spot I know about.”

  “Sorry, the only thing I’m interested in…” She stopped short of saying that she wanted to fall into bed.

  “Is what?” Tyrell grinned.

  Too bad his smile wasn’t as hot as Sawyer’s, or she might have taken him up on a visit to his special spot.

  “The only thing I’m interested in is sleep,” she said.

  “I would love to hold you in my arms all night. I’ll be the last one out the door, so if you change your mind, let me know.” He picked up two pitchers in one hand, and the last one in the other, and swaggered off to his table.

  “Should I tell him that you steal covers?” Sawyer asked.

  “What about covers?” Betsy asked from the bar. “I’d be right happy to keep you warm enough that you wouldn’t have to worry about covers, Sawyer. Thought I’d wait for the burgers and carry them back to the table as you get them ready. We are starving.”

  Jill didn’t miss the look exchanged between the two women when Kinsey brushed past Betsy on her way outside with a cell phone plastered to her ear.

  “I was saying that you can’t judge a book by the cover,” Sawyer lied. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Betsy.”

  “Well, hot damn, darlin’! I agree with you on that. Anytime you want to see inside this book, all you have to do is open the cover.” She flipped her hand around to sweep from head to toe.

  Sawyer ignored her comment. “Three burger baskets right here, and the other four will be ready when you get back.”

  “Fast thinking there, cowboy.” Jill laughed.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Kinsey let a welcome blast of fresh air inside when she returned with the phone tucked away somewhere and a smile on her face. She and her cronies, which had grown a table full of people to two tables, put their heads together for another confab and kept glancing toward the bar.

  “Either they’re about to murder Betsy, which I wouldn’t mind, or they’re going to try to enlist us into their family for help on the next battle of the pig war,” Jill told Sawyer.

  “I’m a lover not a fighter,” he said.

  There was that cocky grin again.

  “No sassy comeback. You must be tired,” Sawyer said.

  “I was thinkin’ maybe I’d tell Betsy that you’re a lover, or maybe Kinsey,” she said.

  “They know it already. That’s why they’re both chasin’ me.” He laughed.

  “Not a bit of ego risin’ up from your cowboy boots, is there?”

  “Awww, this is Sawyer you’re talkin’ to, ma’am. Not Quaid or Tyrell. You don’t have to stomp on my feelin’s because you’re mad at them.”

  “A pitcher of beer and two cheeseburgers, no fries,” Kinsey said.

  “Four burger baskets for Betsy Gallagher,” Sawyer yelled.

  Betsy made her way through the crowd and perched on a stool right beside Kinsey. “So how’s business? You chargin’ more than a dollar to meet some poor old cowboy out behind the bar? I saw you leave a while ago.”

  “Prices went up,” Kinsey said sarcastically. “For prime they have to pay two bucks. When I found out you was chargin’ a dollar, I figured I was worth twice that much.”

  “Don’t forget to pay your taxes. I’d hate for the IRS to get you for tax evasion. The righteous Brennan name couldn’t stand a mar on it,” Betsy said.

  “Like the bootleggin’ Gallaghers?” Kinsey smarted off.

  “Ladies, remember where you are,” Jill said.

  Betsy leaned forward until she was inches from Kinsey’s face. “I see a few wrinkles around your eyes. Won’t be long until you’ll have to lower your prices or pay the customer.”

  Then she flipped two dollar bills on the bar in front of the stunned Kinsey and said, “I wouldn’t want you to starve to death since your chicken and dumplin’s dried up. That should buy you a latte tomorrow morning.”

  She lined the burger baskets up on her arm like a professional waitress and sashayed her way through the line dancers back to her table. Kinsey swiped all the color from her lips with a paper coaster and smiled at Sawyer.

  “I’m experienced, not old,” she said.

  “I’m not sayin’ a word,” Sawyer said bluntly.

  “I’ll take the beer back and return for the burgers,” Kinsey said.

  The baling on the hip pockets of jeans glimmered as she carefully made her way past the folks two-stepping to Blake Shelton’s newest song. Then suddenly she stumbled and fell right into the Gallagher table, dumping one pitcher of beer on the floor and the other on Betsy.

  Jill grabbed a mop and headed that way, with Sawyer right behind her. Betsy jumped to her feet, slinging her hands and throwing drops of beer on everyone around her.

  Kinsey’s eyes went wide in mock shock. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry,” she said coldly. Then she moved closer to Betsy, grabbed her by the shoulders, and licked the beer from her face from jawbone to forehead. The song ended, and the bar went quiet. It was worse than sitting in the eye of a tornado, and more eerie than the music in a horror movie.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Betsy quivered like she’d stepped on a mouse in her bare feet.

  “A Brennan doesn’t waste good beer.” Kinsey smiled. “If all you can do is whine and bark, then you don’t have a place with the big dogs.”

  Betsy’s hands knotted into fists. “I’ll show you a fight, if that’s what you want.”

  “Not in here, you won’t. You’ve both had your fun, now settle down,” Jill said.

  Sawyer quickly plugged two coins into the jukebox, and loud noise filled the building again. Jill didn’t know if he simply punched in numbers or if he’d chosen the songs, but she couldn’t keep from smiling when Gretchen Wilson’s voice filled the room with “Redneck Woman.”

  Jill swabbed up the beer on the floor and put the mop back in the closet. “It says that she’s a product of her raisin’. I believe that Kinsey and Betsy should sing along with her,” she grumbled when she was back behind the bar.

  “What was that? I was afraid the crowd might goad them into a brawl, so I started poking numbers into the jukebox. I’m not sure what I played,” Sawyer said. “I was ready to step in if fists started flying, because I was afraid you’d get hurt.”

  “Hey, I had a mop. I’d have decked them both with the handle.” She started to laugh when the song ended and “Romeo,” an old one from Dolly Parton and Billy Ray Cyrus, started playing. “Are you sure you didn’t handpick these?”

  “Hell, no! I’m not interested in being anyone’s Romeo, if that’s what you are thinking,” he answered.

  She laughed even harder when the lyrics said that she might not be in love but that she was definitely in heat. “Sounds to me like Dolly Parton knows Kinsey and Betsy both pretty damn good. They’re not in love, darlin’, they are in heat, like she says in the song.”

  “It’s not funny,” Sawyer said.

  But it was, because Jill had the same problem. Love and heat
were two different things, and she could easily see where Sawyer, with his tall, dark, handsome looks could put any woman in heat. The words said she didn’t get as far as his eyes when she was lookin’ him over, and Jill could relate very well. She had trouble listening to that damn song and not letting her eyes stray to the silver belt buckle above Sawyer’s zipper.

  Good God, when did this happen? A couple of kisses, and I’m wanting to jump his bones? What’s the matter with me?

  It was a few minutes past eleven when Sawyer finally unplugged the jukebox and announced that the place was now officially closed. The Brennans and Gallaghers had left, and a couple of old worn-out cowboys who’d come close to dancing the leather off their boots shuffled out the door.

  Sawyer locked it and picked up the broom. Jill started wiping down tables and chairs. She’d barely gotten past the first table when she heard money clinking down the chute in the jukebox and turned to see Sawyer coming toward her with that grin on his face.

  “Will you be my Juliet?” He growled exactly like Billy Ray in the “Romeo” song.

  “I’m too damn tired to dance,” she said.

  He grabbed her hand. “Don’t make me waste my money.”

  He tucked his hands in his belt loops, and good Lord, those jeans did things that gave her hot flashes. It was either dance with him or stand there slack-jawed like a Saturday-night drunk. She tossed the cleaner and the rag on the table, tucked her thumbs in her jean loops, and matched him step for step in the line dance.

  When it ended, she was panting so badly that she couldn’t even talk. “That sucked every bit of energy out of me.”

  “You ain’t that old yet,” he said as Mary Chapin Carpenter started singing “Down at the Twist and Shout.” He swung her out to the Cajun-flavored music and brought her back to his chest for three minutes of swing dancing.

  “Please, tell me the third song isn’t that fast,” she said when it ended.

  The whine of the fiddle in an old song softened the lights and the whole atmosphere in the bar. Sawyer pulled her close to his chest, picked up her hands, and put them around his neck. Then he dropped both his hands to rest at the small of her back, and he moved slowly around the floor as George Jones sang “Don’t Be Angry.”

  He softly sang the words in her ear as they danced. He sang about remembering the first time he flirted with her, and asked her not be angry with him when he failed to understand all her little whims and wishes all the time.

  When the song ended, he tipped her chin up and kissed her. She heard the whine of the fiddles and a harmonica somewhere in the distance, even though the music had stopped. There wasn’t an angry bone left in her body when she rolled up on her toes for the second kiss.

  “That, darlin’, was the payment on the bet,” she said.

  He picked up the broom and started sweeping.

  “So?” she asked.

  “So what?”

  “So is my bet debt paid in full?”

  “Honey, after that kiss, I will need at least two cold showers to cool my blood so I can sleep.”

  Chapter 13

  Clouds shifted back and forth over the moon, and only an occasional star could be found in the sky when Jill and Sawyer locked up for the evening.

  Jill inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with clean, cool air. “Thank goodness the bunkhouse and the store are smoke-free, or we’d both drop graveyard dead with lung cancer from secondhand smoke.”

  “At least the exhaust fan takes most of it out of the bar area, so we don’t get what the folks do that are out there around the tables.” Sawyer’s hand went to the small of her back as he guided her to the truck.

  They were inside with seat belts buckled, and he had put the truck in reverse, when both doors opened, startling Jill so badly that she squealed.

  “What the hell?” Sawyer said.

  Tall men with ski masks, bibbed overalls, and work boots pointed sawed-off shotguns at them. Sawyer’s pulse quickened, and adrenaline rushed through his body, but there wasn’t a thing he could do. Three guns in his truck, and he couldn’t reach a damn one of them.

  “Out of the truck right now. You make a move, and I’ll shoot this little lady right here in the parking lot. She’d bleed out before you could get an ambulance all the way up here,” the one with a gun on Jill said gruffly.

  “Hey, slow down. We’re not protesting. You can have the truck, if that’s what you are after.” Sawyer reached for the seat belt and got a tap on the shoulder with the butt of the gun.

  “Don’t be cute, or you’ll never see her again,” the man said.

  “I’m undoing our seat belts. Don’t get trigger-happy. We are stepping out now,” Sawyer said.

  If only one of them had held a gun, he might have grabbed it and told Jill to run, but not when there were two guns. Jill might get hurt or killed. There wasn’t a truck in the world worth harming one hair on her head, but who in the hell would have thought there would be hijackers in Burnt Boot, Texas?

  “Hey, Sherlock,” the man with the gun on Jill yelled. “It’s all yours.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” Sawyer asked. “Can I get my personal things out of the glove compartment before you take it off to strip it down for parts?”

  “Who said we’re stripping it down? And, no, you can’t get anything out of the inside. You’ve probably got guns in there. Give me your cell phones, billfold, and your purse, woman,” Jill’s assailant said.

  Sawyer inhaled deeply. Yes, there was a pistol in the glove box, another one in the console, and a third one under the seat. He had a license to carry all three, but it wasn’t doing him a bit of good right then.

  Sherlock crawled into the driver’s seat, backed the truck out, and drove away with it. No skidding tires or slinging gravel—just drove off like it belonged to him.

  “Now, you two start walking,” Jill’s outlaw said.

  “To where?” Jill asked.

  “Out to the road.”

  “Are you going to kill us in the middle of the road? Wouldn’t it be better to shoot us right here?” Jill asked.

  Sawyer could have wrung her pretty little neck himself right then. If they reached the road, there was a possibility that someone might drive by and help them. He reached over and laced her fingers in his. She squeezed his hand gently, and he hoped that didn’t mean she was about to try something stupid.

  A dark van pulled up and slowed down, and Sawyer thought their problems were solved, until the double doors at the back swung open, and the two hooded men motioned for them to get inside.

  “What the hell is this?” Sawyer protested.

  The second man shoved the gun into Jill’s gut, and Sawyer crawled inside the van. They pushed Jill in right behind him. The doors closed, and the darkness was so thick that he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

  “Jill, where are you?” he whispered.

  A hand reached out and touched him on the shoulder. “Right here.”

  He grabbed it and pulled her into his lap, felt around her face until he found an ear, and pressed his lips close to it. “I imagine this is bugged, so start kicking the side of the van to make noise, and I’ll whisper. Who do you know that would kidnap you?”

  She kicked and said in a loud whisper, “Nobody. Not even Aunt Gladys or Aunt Polly would do this.”

  “Gallaghers or Brennans?”

  “Both.”

  “Which way are we going?”

  “I don’t know. I think we turned around about the time they shoved me in here, but I’m not sure.”

  The van slowed down as if stopping at a red light or a stop sign. Burnt Boot had only one red light and a handful of stop signs, but Sawyer still couldn’t get a bearing on where they were. Or why in the hell either of the feuding families would want to kidnap them.

  Tires squealed, and they wer
e thrown against the doors of the van. Whoever was driving cussed loud enough that they could hear him through the metal separating the cab from the cargo area. “Damn tree in the road. You should have checked things out better than this, Dumbo.”

  “Does that name mean anything to you?” Sawyer asked when they were sitting back up.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Well, let’s get out and move the damn thing. We can’t get to where we’re going any other way,” the one with the deep voice said.

  Everything got quiet.

  “I’m going to kick these doors open,” Sawyer said. “Slide back so you are out of the way.”

  He raised his foot, his boot landed square on the hinged part, and the doors swung open as if by magic. Trouble was, instead of a midnight sky, there were two more guys in ski masks with guns, pistols this time, motioning for them to be quiet and get out of the van.

  “It’s the FBI,” Jill said. “They’re here to save us and then shoot the balls off those bastards for stealing your truck.”

  One of the men chuckled. “Follow us. Now get in here. Be quiet, and we’ll get you out of this.”

  Sawyer and Jill moved as quietly as possible and crawled into another cargo van. This one was blue with some kind of lettering on the side, and the doors went shut, but not before Sawyer shoved his jacket in between them.

  “Why did you do that?” Jill asked.

  “I don’t think we’re being rescued. I think we’re changing kidnappers.”

  “No!” she said.

  “Give them time to get around to the front, and then we’re getting out. Slide off into that ditch until they drive away, and then we’ll start making our way out of this mess. We might have to find a place to hole up until daylight, when we can get our bearings. I think we were driving for about twenty minutes, but I don’t have any idea which way…now, Jill, slide out right now. They’re starting to move.”

  He grabbed her hand and opened one door, retrieved his denim jacket, carefully shut the door, and the van pulled away into the night without its passengers. The two men wrestling with the tree finally freed it, and they went in the opposite direction without ever realizing they’d lost their cargo.