by Debra Webb
“Show your face in here again,” Joel warned, “and I won’t be so nice next time.”
Joel waited at the door until Kingston staggered away, cell at his ear, hopefully calling for a ride.
Joel turned around and came face-to-face with the boss.
“Is he gone?”
“For now.” Joel glanced over his shoulder. “He’ll be back eventually for his ride.” He passed the keys to her.
“I wish that was the only reason for him to come back.” She stared across the parking lot, probably hoping the bastard would fade into the darkness never to be seen again.
“You okay?” The question wasn’t necessary. He could see that she was far from okay, but she had no way of knowing he understood far too keenly the unappealing facts of her financial and personal situations.
She shrugged, threw the bar towel over her shoulder. “I’d be a lot better if my security hadn’t bailed on me. That really blows.”
Joel made a show of considering the idea for a moment. “Maybe it is my lucky night.”
Her eyebrows shot up in skepticism. “Look, mister, your pickup lines will have to get a lot better than what I’ve heard so far for you to get lucky.” She looked him up and down. “Packaging isn’t everything.”
Joel laughed. “I wasn’t referring to that kind of luck, ma’am.”
Her cheeks flushed. She hitched a thumb toward the swinging doors. “I have to get back in there. Without someone keeping an eye on the crowd, anything could happen.”
She had no idea. The Kingston men were just the beginning of her troubles. As frustrating as things were for her at the moment, he hated to eventually be the one to let her know that it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.
He gave her a nod. “If you decide to hire a new bouncer, let me know. I’m in the market for a new job.”
Joel tipped his hat to her and stepped down from the walkway. He’d taken another two strides when she called out to him.
“How can I get in touch with you?”
He turned to face her, backed up another step. “I’m right here.” He shrugged. “I’ll probably be back tomorrow night.”
“You’d have to fill out an application.”
He paused.
For a lady who wanted to play it tough, she looked damned vulnerable at the moment. But then he knew why. Couldn’t blame her for feeling that and more.
“I’d need references,” she tacked on.
“I can handle that.”
She hitched her head toward the door then disappeared inside. Joel followed, enjoying the view. Wasn’t often that the backside was every bit as gorgeous as the front, but this lady was definitely all-around gorgeous.
His job was to protect all of her and he finally had his in. Being employed at the High Noon would make his work a whole lot easier.
She skirted the end of the bar and poured that bourbon he’d had to walk away from. When she set the drink on the counter, she grabbed a pen and a napkin and placed them in front of him.
He glanced from the napkin and pen to her.
“The application. Just jot down the usual stuff. Name, address, phone number and references. I need their numbers, too. Use both sides if necessary.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Joel scrawled the requested info on the napkin. He flipped it over and provided a couple of names with numbers he retrieved from his cell. When he’d added the final digit, he passed it to her.
“Anything else?”
She studied the information. “When can you start?”
He grinned. “I thought I already had.”
She tried to look serious but one of those breath-stealing smiles peeked past her cautionary business persona. “All right. The pay is a percentage of the night’s take. It’s nothing to brag about some nights, but others make up for it.”
“Works for me.”
“I will call your references,” she reminded him.
“Then you’ll really be impressed.”
She held his gaze a moment. “We’ll see.”
Chapter Two
Monday, May 27th, 1:00 a.m.
Laney perched on the edge of her son’s bed and watched him sleep all snuggled up with his bear. He’d had that ragged old thing since he was born. It was the first toy she’d bought her child. She’d walked into the gift shop and immediately been drawn to the cute brown bear with its red bow tie. Made her feel safe and it seemed to do the same thing for Buddy. As silly as that sounded.
Regret settled heavily onto her shoulders. These late nights were hard on him. She had hoped to have a good solid staff on board before school started in late August so she could get her boy home at a decent hour, but with Dekker’s abrupt departure that was looking less and less likely.
Last week it had been two waitresses.
What was she going to do?
Getting home after midnight on Sunday night—a school night come this fall—was not going to work. She had to get a good team in place soon.
Terry was running off all her best help. The police would do nothing for fear of a backlash from his father. How did you fight that kind of trouble?
After all these years, why in hell did he have to hunt her down now? She hadn’t seen the bastard but twice in five years. Both times he’d been looking for a place to crash when things got too hot for him in Houston. Which generally meant his father had gotten fed up and decided to actually act like a father. Too little too late, unfortunately for both Terry and her.
She’d let him fool her the first time, but not the second. He’d been furious when she wouldn’t let him into the little apartment she’d had at the time or into her bed. The Kingston men weren’t used to hearing no for an answer.
They weren’t kids anymore. The time for playing games was over. She had a home and a business, as well as a son about to start school. She had responsibilities that needed her full attention and her best efforts. Terry needed to grow up.
Laney might have gotten a rough start with her life, but she was a quick learner. She was a bit of a sap but she was no dummy. The idea of allowing her mistakes to damage her son’s future hurt too much to even think about.
She tucked the covers around her baby, gave him a kiss and checked the window by his bed. Locked, shade drawn. Relieved the day was mostly done, she made her way to the kitchen. There hadn’t been time for even a five-minute break tonight, which was a good thing for her bank account. Now, however, her stomach was demanding attention.
As she took sandwich fixings from the fridge and deposited them on the worn wooden counter of her makeshift island, she considered that tomorrow she had to hire at least one of the new waitresses she needed. And she’d have to check the references on her new security guy.
Her fingers slowed in their work. Joel Hayden had been hanging around most of the week. One of the waitresses had told her he’d recently gotten laid off from his work as a bodyguard at some swanky security company that had closed its doors. Jobs were tough to come by these days and he’d opted to take a break from Houston’s big-city noise and mayhem. Beaumont, he insisted to the waitress who was clearly enamored with him, fit the bill.
Part of her couldn’t help thinking that it was not a coincidence that he hailed from Houston. Terry and his family were Houstonians. But, after the way Hayden had rousted her ex out of the saloon, she figured that wasn’t very likely. Unless the whole scene had been staged.
Damn. She hadn’t thought of that until now. Great. Something else to worry about. Maybe she’d do some checking beyond his references. Google him or something.
After stuffing two slices of bread with ham, cheese, mayo and tomato, she grabbed a beer and found her favorite spot in the living room. Her little corner on the sofa. Most of the living room served as a play area for Buddy. He had his Legos in one corner. His game station in another. And miscellaneous toys in yet another. At five, the kid was already more organized than most adults. He kept Laney on the straight and narrow when it came to clutter.
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br /> He was so smart that he scared her sometimes. Not in a bad way, though. Her biggest fear was that she would never be able to provide him with the opportunities he deserved. College tuition was outrageous. She had already started saving for that but it wasn’t much to speak of. She had thirteen years and so far her math was way off reaching the necessary sum.
“That plan’s really holding together,” she muttered. Between the walk-in cooler in the High Noon’s kitchen going out and that fancy automatic toaster oven Tatum had insisted he needed to make sandwiches folks would love, the almighty dollar was tough to hang on to.
Laney sighed as she settled into her corner. She clicked the remote and set the station to a movie channel that featured classic love stories. What could she say? She had to get her happily-ever-afters from somewhere. And there was nothing like getting lost in a sappy movie after a long, hard night at the High Noon.
Truthfully, she couldn’t complain. Her life had sucked for a while after her parents died. The accident had devastated her entire life. Just a ten-year-old kid with no relatives to take her in. Foster care hadn’t been so bad, but Laney had. She’d been a pain in the butt until she was eighteen and then she’d been an idiot.
As stupid as she was and as many mistakes as she had made, she had a beautiful son because of at least one of those errors in judgment. She couldn’t regret Buddy.
Man, she hadn’t realized how starved she was. Something as simple as a ham and cheese sandwich shouldn’t have a girl moaning but Laney had learned enjoying the simple things in life came with the single-mom territory.
As a single mom and a business owner, there was rarely any time left for a social life. Hayden’s image tried to nudge its way into her thoughts.
Hayden was business. She had to keep that fact firmly in front of her. He had trouble written all over that sexy frame.
She gave herself another fifteen minutes of me time before reluctantly moving on to the other chores that would not be put off. Laundry, dishes. Forget about picking up around the house. She was way too exhausted.
Her hodgepodge kitchen wasn’t exactly state-of-the-art. Far from it actually. She’d spent the past two years scrounging for castoffs from folks remodeling their kitchens. Few of the cabinets matched; none of the appliances were the same color or from the same decade, but they all had one thing in common—they worked! Even Tatum saw the beauty in her vision when it came to getting that toaster oven secondhand.
The vinyl floor tiles were of a mixed variety as well, all leftovers from those same remodeling ventures. But her prized find was the old butcher’s chopping-block stand that she used as a center island to ground the assorted eras she’d converged in the room. The island didn’t sit level and the surface was beat all to hell and back, but still she cherished it.
She’d managed to replace all the broken windows in the house, again with castoffs from those moving to more energy-efficient choices. She’d painted the eighty-year-old wood siding herself. She’d painted the whole house as a matter of fact. Looking at it now made her proud even if she wasn’t likely to be featured in House Beautiful.
The saloon was a similar project. The building and five acres she’d gotten for a song at a tax sell-off. Someone had abandoned the place and Laney had grabbed it, using her measly savings to purchase it flat-out and do the necessary renovations. She’d talked the president of a small local independent bank into taking a risk and lending her the money on her newly remodeled house so she could buy and renovate the saloon.
That had worked great at first. Problem was, she hadn’t seen the nice older gentleman’s bad side until it was too late. The loan had been on a balloon note which wasn’t a problem at the time. Time flew and now that note came due in a mere ninety days. He had just informed her that he wouldn’t be renewing the loan so the full amount was due in three months.
If she didn’t pay, she would lose her business and her home. Worry crushed down on her shoulders.
Last month’s receipts had looked stellar, and she had felt confident she had proof of steady-enough income to get a new loan elsewhere. But now the trouble with Terry and good workers walking had started a trend in falling revenue.
Many of her regulars were complaining that the guy made them uncomfortable. With all the wackos shooting up restaurants and the like, she could understand. But the last thing she needed was a drop in cash flow as the drop-dead date on getting a new loan approached.
She needed the books to look good. Laney choked back the anxiety and reminded herself that there was still time.
With the washing machine churning and the dishes done, she walked through the house to ensure the windows and doors were locked. Before Terry reappeared, she left her windows open at night during good weather. That was a risk she couldn’t take with him lurking around. She couldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.
Keeping her .32 handy once Buddy was asleep was another new addition to her nightly routine. She hated that feeling of being afraid. She’d lived it too many times. Seemed just when life was looking up something else came along and rained on her parade.
She hesitated at the front window, one hand on the paper shade ready to drag it down. Her house sat a good fifty yards off the road and there were no streetlights on these old county roads, but the moon was big and bright tonight, giving her a clear view of the road that ran in front of her house.
A Jeep had parked on the shoulder directly in front of her house. With the convertible top removed, she could see that someone was behind the wheel but she couldn’t begin to determine whether the driver was male or female. Definitely wasn’t Terry’s fancy import. Since his keys were at the High Noon, she could safely assume it wasn’t him.
Unless he’d hitched or borrowed a ride from some jerk friend of his.
There was no logical reason for the driver to be stopped in front of her house unless he’d run out of gas. Since the closest convenience store was nearly all the way in town, a long ways from these twisting, winding roads, it wasn’t smart to joyride out here without at least half a tank.
Evidently the guy didn’t mind being seen since a few yards to the right or left of his position and her view would have been blocked by the trees in her yard. Not scary but definitely unsettling.
She didn’t have any binoculars but she could get closer to have a better look and assess the situation. Knowing old man Kingston, he had a P.I. or member of his personal staff watching her, hoping she would make some sort of unfit-mother mistake. She had decided that making his old man happy was the only possible reason Terry was interested in Buddy after all this time. There had to be an agenda.
“Not happening, old man.” He wasn’t getting her son and she wasn’t about to screw up. The thought that Kingston might be behind her banker’s change of heart had crossed her mind. Failing to keep a roof over her son’s head and food on the table might push her firmly into the unfit category.
“Don’t borrow trouble, Laney.”
She slid her cell into her back pocket and tucked the .32 in her waistband. She eased out the back door and made her way to the front of the house using the grapevine trellis and the old well house as cover. The trees and an abandoned tractor that was nearly as old as the house gave her a few points of cover from there. She’d considered having the old tractor hauled off when she first bought the place but she’d decided it gave the yard character. Her five acres had once been part of a huge family farm. It came with all sorts of funky character, like a leaky roof and unlevel floors.
The final tree available to shield her was only about ten yards from the road. She should be able to have a decent view of the interloper from there.
She rushed through the ankle-deep grass until she made her destination. Cutting the grass was something else she needed to find the time and energy to get done. Laney added the chore to her growing mental list.
Crouching behind the tree, she studied the vehicle and its driver. Male. The cowboy hat prevented her from making out his
profile or his face.
As if he’d picked up on the thought, he removed his hat and placed it on the passenger seat. He leaned the seat back and appeared to be settling in for the night.
Strange.
He checked the screen of his cell phone and the glow highlighted his face.
Joel Hayden.
What the heck was he doing here?
Before her brain assimilated the best course of action, she pushed to her feet and strode toward him.
When he glanced her way, she demanded an answer. “What’re you doing out here?”
He hopped out of the Jeep. The doors had been removed, leaving nothing between him and making that cocky move.
Her right hand rested on the butt of her Smith and Wesson. She kind of liked this guy, but the truth was he was a stranger and she had to be smart.
“I guess I should’ve knocked on the door and let you know I was here.”
“I guess you should’ve.” A frown nagged at her. “What’re you doing?” How was it that her eyes couldn’t stop surveying him from head to toe? The guy looked even better in the moonlight, but that was no excuse to go stupid.
He shrugged, set those big hands on his lean hips. “I was worried that guy might show up at your house after I kicked him out of the saloon.”
Laney beat back the smile that tickled her lips. She did not know this man or his motives. As much as she wanted to be flattered by his chivalry, she couldn’t ever be a fool again, especially when her son’s safety was at stake. Still, she was flattered.
“That’s very noble of you, Hayden, but your pay ends when you walk out the door of the High Noon.”
“This isn’t about getting paid overtime,” he assured her.
“What’s it about, then?” Her hand still rested on the weapon he could plainly see. “I warned you about those pickup lines. Persistence doesn’t add any points.”
“I have no patience for men like the one who gave you a hard time tonight,” he explained in a firm tone that still reeked of charm. “Maybe I was a little rougher on him than I should have been. I don’t want him taking out his frustration with me on you.”
