Foothills Pride Box Set

Chapter 3

Chapter 3He texted me during Penny’s morning rush. I’d slept on the couch on the second floor of the shop. I’d woken wishing I had the hangover and BG’s comfy bed back. My body ached everywhere, and the dust accumulation upstairs was so bad I ended up sneezing and wiping my eyes all night.

“I’m calling Claude,” I warned Felicity. “He’s got to clean the upstairs even better than he does down here. I won’t be able to stand it otherwise.”

I guess I must have said it as an ultimatum because Felicity gave me a weird look and drawled, “Okay.”

Brad, one of the high school seniors who worked before going to classes, bumped me away from the cooler, grabbed an orange juice, and said, “Got up on the wrong side of the bed, eh, grumpy?”

He skittered back to the register and his customer before I could respond or swat him. He was just the kind of cheeky kid who rubbed me the wrong way when I had my cranky pants on. Usually I loved him dearly, but today, not so much. Why did we keep him on anyway?

Felicity pulled me back into the kitchen area.

“Okay, I want you to stay here until your face doesn’t scare away customers.” She pushed me onto a stool near the freezer. “People come in here this early in the morning because we’re happy and cheerful and we make them feel better. Not because we scowl at them.”

“I’m not scowling,” I muttered.

“No, worse. You’re glaring at them as if you want to shoot them. Not cool, Jimmy.” She turned to go back out to the second register. “Now stay. Chill.”

I stayed and looked at my cell phone as it played the first few bars of Jay Brennan’s “Rob Me Blind.”

I looked down at the text message that Big Guy had sent.

Gotta work 2nite. Meet at bar?

No. No, I didn’t want to go to Stonewall tonight. I was tired and grumpy, and I had to meet with the Realtor this afternoon and potentially sign my life away by making a bid on the vacant building that might make an excellent Penny’s Too.

Felicity came in and put her arms around me. I looked up at her and she shook her head.

“You want to go to my place and take a nap before the meeting this afternoon?” She gave me a hug. “I don’t think Grumpy Bear is the right image for a meeting with a Realtor.”

She was right. Her offer sounded good, too good. I was about to drop.

I nodded. Maybe a nap would turn me human.

“You have a key. Go. We’ve got everything covered here. If anyone asks for anything we can’t make, we’ll tell them a machine is broken.” She stepped back and made a shooing motion with her hands. “Be free, little bird.”

My phone Jay Brennaned me again.

U there? U good with 2nite?

I nodded at Felicity.

“I’ll see you around four,” I told her. “You’re sure about the new building?”

“As sure as I’ll ever be. We’ve got to put our foot out there.”

“Okay. Later.”

I texted: K, see you @ 8.

I’d have a chance to nap again and get cleaned up. Maybe I could even find time to think about BG’s real name sometime before I saw him.

* * * *

A nap in a real bed, a long hot shower, and something to eat turned me into a teddy bear. A deal-making, hard-edged but fluffy, cuddly bear.

I met with the Realtor, and against his advice, made a low but realistic bid, and got back to the coffee shop midafternoon, just when the office people were piling in for their caffeine fix. I told Felicity about the bid and that the Realtor would be getting back to us in twenty-four hours or so.

Then I drove to Felicity’s, showered again, and dressed to go see Big Guy. Somewhere in the afternoon, I thought about what his name might be, and decided instead of BG—which sounded like that old singing group—I decided to call him Guy instead. It was a perfect enough name for the time being. Until I knew the truth.

* * * *

Stonewall was chaos when I got there. Guy and another bartender were mixing drinks as fast as they could. I squeezed in at the end of the bar near the hatchway and sat on an abandoned stool.

I didn’t think Guy had seen me come in, so when there was a lull in the frenetic pace and he was nearly within arm’s reach, I called out, “What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink in this place?”

Guy looked up, grinned at me, and yelled back, “f**k the bartender.”

A slim man sitting next to me perked up, gave Guy the once-over, and yelled, “Okay!”

Guy’s startled gaze met mine, and we broke out laughing.

The man next to me sighed and slumped over his beer. “I knew it was too good to be true,” he mumbled.

I patted him on the shoulder.

“Maybe next time,” I commiserated with him.

“Right,” he answered glumly.

Guy put a rum and Coke in front of me.

“I’m gonna be a while,” he said, looking at the surge starting to build again. “You don’t have to stay.”

Now he sounded almost as morose as the man to my left.

“No, I’ll stay,” I answered and touched his bare arm. Tonight he was wearing a badge that said his name was Tom. “I like watching you work. So big and manly.”

Guy just shook his head and smirked at me.

“Well, if you get bored, I can just meet you somewhere after we close.” He stuck his hand into the back pocket of his tight jeans. “Look, here’s the key to the office. You can wait there if you want.”

Even though I pocketed the key, I shook my head.

“No, I really do like to watch you work,” I told him. “But I’ll keep the key as insurance.”

“Yeah? Insurance?”

“Wouldn’t want you to decide to run off to the back with someone else,” I teased.

“Not happenin’.” He flashed a quick, dimpled smile.

Then he was off to the middle of the bar, where servers were trying to catch his eye. There must have been six guys working the tables and a handful or more pushing past the people on the barstools. I didn’t know what everyone else was celebrating, but me, I was celebrating hooking up with Guy again.

As I sat there, I thought about the new coffee shop. It was four doors down from Stonewall, just where Felicity and I wanted to be. The mall was all well and good, but being where people ate and drank all day was better. Besides, we’d get more adults, fewer kids. We could actually decorate as a serious coffee shop and not a busy-mom outpost.

Around nine, Zeke Bandy, who owned and ran the historic downtown hotel, came out onto the bar’s minimal stage and started singing his revamped cowboy tunes and the bar became a hot spot of singing, laughing, clapping men and a few women. Why couldn’t Zeke have been playing last night? It would have made me feel a whole lot better.

“There! Now you’ve got something to listen to.” Guy was back. He took away my empty glass and pushed a full one of something clear at me. “Water to keep you hydrated.”

As he zipped away to paying customers, I realized my life was really all right. I took a sip of water and turned toward the stage. I had a cold drink, live entertainment, and the promise of dinner out with Guy and a spectacular kiss. What more could I want?

The rush at Stonewall slowed after a couple of hours, so Guy and I took our drinks, both nonalcoholic, to a table in the back of the room. The bar’s walls were covered with photos and posters, all giving the place a down-home ambiance.

“Who are all these people?” I asked, waving my hands at the pictures on the walls.

“My ancestors,” he answered. “And famous customers.”

“So you really do own this place?”

“Inherited it from my dad, who got it from his dad.” He seemed shy about telling me this, as if I might mock him or something.

“That’s cool. So who started this place?”

“Great-great grandfather,” he answered, still not meeting my eye.

I got up and started really looking at the old photos. Presidents, entertainers, all sorts of people had visited this bar through the years.

“Who’s this?” I asked about a man in buckskins standing next to a replica of Guy.

He’d gotten up and had been following me around, not saying anything as I looked at the photos. He leaned forward and peered at the image.

“Great-great-granddad and Buffalo Bill Cody, when the Wild West Show came through here.” Guy rubbed his head and peeked down at me as if checking to see whether I was listening. “Family legend says Great-great-granddaddy bragged he even met Jesse James once, but nobody in the family ever really believed him.”

“Now that’s really interesting,” I said, working my way down the line of pictures.

When I was finished and had asked him about a few more, we went back to the table, picked up our glasses, and returned to the bar. It was nearly closing time, so Guy had to go back to work.

I sat on my stool, waiting to see what we were doing after he shut down the place.

The guy next to me was looking at me funny when I sat down.

“So how’d you get to know Tom?” he asked.

It took me a minute to figure out who he was talking about. Tom? Did I know a Tom? Then I had to laugh. Guy was Tom tonight. Right.

“Uh, I came in here one night, was dumped by my boyfriend, and Tom threatened to kill me.” I looked at the guy, who was gaping at me. “It was my birthday.”

“s**t, man,” he stuttered. “He looks big and mean, but to threaten to kill you?”

By this time “Tom” had walked up to us.

“Only because he asked me my name,” he growled.

The guy’s eyes got even bigger.

“But it’s right there,” he pointed. “On your name tag.”

“Yeah, but some guys are a little slow,” Guy answered. “So I just took him home and f****d him raw.”

The guy gulped as I stifled my laughter.

“Well,” I answered when I could without hooting, “it was my birthday.”

Guy and I looked at each other and howled.

When he stopped laughing, Guy leaned over to the man next to me.

“Last call, buddy,” he said softly. “Get you anything else?”

“A f**k?” the guy asked, equally soft.

“Sorry, not a chance.” Guy clapped the man on the arm and squeezed.

“Then, no,” the guy whispered, “I’m good.”

As the customer walked, slump-shouldered and sad, out of the bar, Guy leaned in to me.

“Nice guy,” he said. “Maybe I shoulda f****d him.”

He looked at me, and I looked at him. We both smiled.

“I don’t know if it would have cheered him up or not,” I said. “So what’s the plan?”

“Well, I was gonna take you out somewhere nice to eat, then ask you over to my place,” he said slowly. “But we had three parties booked this afternoon, so I had to come in. Then my second bartender didn’t show up tonight. And Zeke always pulls a crowd, so here we are. Don’t know about you, but I’m beat.”

I nodded. I didn’t know what to suggest.

“You, uh, wanna come back to my place with me?” His eyes were big and pleading like those of a sad puppy dog.

He didn’t have to try so hard. I was an easy sell.

* * * *

Later, before we snuggled up for the night, he squeezed me and asked, “Oh, yeah, you figure out my name yet?”

“I won the bet.” I stifled a yawn.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, Jesse James.”

I could feel the laughter rumbling up from his waist.

“Nice try, but not hardly.” He hugged me and pulled me in tighter to his chest. “Get some sleep. You got another guess tomorrow.”

Before I zonked out, I thought how perfect Jesse James was as a name for him, how it fit with the pictures at the bar, and how uncomfortable he’d feel with a name like that. I’d just have to pay more attention to come up with his real name.

I wasn’t sure which of the kisses we’d shared that night was the one he considered exceptionally fine, mostly because I thought they all were. But I was so tired by then, I couldn’t ask. I just snuggled in a little closer, put my hand over his, and nodded off.