LITMIR.BIZ

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from what he could tell. She moved like a woman who was aware of exactly what she was doing to every man there at the Johnson wedding. Golden, almost silver, curls tumbled around her face and down her neck, as the ponytail at the back of her head loosened. Blue eyes, he’d guess, though he hadn’t been close enough to see for himself. Her face was flushed, though the color looked good on her.

      He shouldn’t watch her, and he didn’t. Not too much, anyway. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her before, so she must have come with the Texas Tom employees. No way was she related to the BBQ King, not with that complexion and that hair. He hoped she got paid well, hoped she’d find another job that didn’t require carrying other people’s garbage.

      But mostly he just wished she’d go away. He didn’t particularly like that he was watching her like some pervert.

      “Mr. Sheridan?” He looked to his right to see the bride looking up at him, her expression a little uncertain. He wondered if he’d been frowning, so he forced himself to look pleasant.

      “Mrs. Johnson?”

      “Please, call me Elizabeth.”

      “If you call me Jess. My first name is really Jester, but only my mother ever got away with calling me that.”

      “Thank you.” The bride’s smile widened, which was what Jess intended. He knew he was overly tall and overly large, but that came in handy in his profession. Smiling didn’t.

      “What can I do for you, Elizabeth?”

      “Jake and I wanted to thank you for coming today. We’re getting ready to leave for our honeymoon, but I realized there were still people I hadn’t had a chance to talk to.”

      “Thanks for inviting me. I wouldn’t have missed it,” Jess lied, knowing damn well he would have used any excuse he could think up to avoid watching a wedding take place. “Jake’s a good friend.” That was the truth. Jess looked past the bride to see the groom heading their way. He looked like a man who was ready for his wedding night, especially when his arm went around his bride and he reached out to shake Jess’s hand. Jess didn’t think he’d ever seen his friend so happy. Lord, he hoped it would last. At least for a couple of years.

      “Thanks for coming.”

      Jess cleared his throat. “Yeah. Where’re you headed now?”

      “To the airport,” Elizabeth said. “We leave for Boston tomorrow morning.”

      “We’re spending a couple of weeks in New England. I always wanted to see the ocean.”

      “The boys at the Dead Horse can survive without you?”

      Jake shook his head. “Probably not, but we’re moving out to my place. Permanently. Bobby’s going to have to find another foreman.”

      “Or do the work himself,” Jess added.

      “Exactly.” The men shared a smile. The thought of that wild-ass cowboy actually running his own place seemed ludicrous. “I guess it has to happen sooner or later.”

      “Bobby will do just fine,” the bride declared. “And so will the ranch.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Jess said to Elizabeth, but his mind was on the yellow-haired waitress whom he could see out of the corner of his eye clearing the table near where they stood. That damn apron mostly hid her body, but he’d bet his last paycheck it was the kind of body a man would remember.

      “Shorty’s moving out to my place to take care of things while we’re gone,” Jake said, and Jess struggled to turn his attention back to his friend. He’d thought for a moment he recognized the woman, but on second look he doubted it. He would have remembered.

      “Sounds good,” he agreed, shaking Jake’s hand once again as the couple bid him goodbye. He turned his attention once again to the blond gal, but she was busy handing out wedding cake and he couldn’t see her face. So he decided to have another drink. It would be whiskey instead of beer. He would join the crowd gathered outside and drink to Jake’s good fortune.

      As the day wore on and drew closer to sundown, Jess freely sampled the whiskey and paid vague attention to the festivities. “Yeah,” he said in response to Calhoun’s words, lifting another glass to toast to…something. He hadn’t heard what Calhoun announced, but every other man standing at the edge of the tent looked damned impressed. The plump redhead was stuck to Bobby’s side like a tick, so the kid obviously wasn’t pining too hard for his lost fiancée. “Better watch out, Calhoun,” he muttered, lifting his empty glass. Someone filled it up again, which was exactly what he’d hoped would happen.

      Teenage twins draped themselves over Billy Martin, Shorty sat in the shade with a flat-faced dog asleep on his lap, and a country-western band wailed from the bandstand in the center of the small park. Jake and his bride had spared no expense to keep the party going, even though they’d left town a while ago. He figured they must have invited everyone in the county to the wedding.

      Thank God he didn’t have to work tonight. He had the next two days off, and Jess intended to make the most of his last hours in town. He was going to get good and drunk, drunk enough to forget that his wife had emptied their bank account and run off with a man from nearby Marysville. Drunk enough to forget that yesterday the divorce was final. And drunk enough to forget what she’d called him when she left.

      Unfortunately, Jess didn’t think there was enough booze in Beauville to blot out the memory of his ex-wife.

      SHE WOULD NEVER, EVER WORK for Texas Tom again, not if it meant having to load her possessions into a couple of stray grocery carts and live in the parking lot behind the hardware store. When he wasn’t leering at her chest, he was shouting orders. She didn’t know which one was worse; at least when he was leering she didn’t have to listen to the sound of his voice.

      “Lorna!” She turned to see the fat toad gesturing toward another pile of garbage. Unfortunately the bags were made of clear plastic, meaning Texas Tom had seen something inside of them he didn’t like.

      “What?”

      “Those damn cowboys threw the silverware out with the paper plates. You’re gonna have to go through all this and make sure none of them forks get lost. I came here with four hundred forks and I’m damn well gonna leave with four hundred forks.”

      She would give four hundred dollars—which would pretty much empty her bank account—to go back to Aunt Carol’s little house and soak in a bathtub filled with vanilla-scented water. Going through garbage was not her idea of a great way to end the day. “Look, Tom, don’t you think I should finish rinsing dishes?” She was standing there in wet tennis shoes, hose in hand, a stack of platters and various cooking utensils beside her that needed to be cleaned up before Tom’s nephew could finish loading everything in the truck.

      “Yeah, but ’fore we leave we’re counting forks, or someone’s gonna pay,” he grumbled, his gaze dropping to her bare legs. He’d told her to wear a waitress uniform, so she’d gone to Marysville and spent thirty-seven dollars she could have used for the phone bill. She’d been so happy to find work she hadn’t questioned the expense.

      “It takes money to make money,” her mother always said. And what would it take to paw through mounds of garbage? Rubber gloves and a decent vocabulary of cuss words, Lorna decided. She would curse quietly under her breath so no one would hear her. After all, some of those words might give Texas Tom ideas.

      She tried to hurry through the cleaning of the cookware. The sun had set, though lanterns were placed around the tent and over the cleanup area next to the grills. Tom’s nephew was a decent enough kid, and the sooner she got the racks cleaned up, the sooner he and his uncle could head back to Marysville. With or without four hundred forks.

      “Hey,” the nephew said, as she finished the last of the trays and turned off the hose. “How’s it goin’?”

      “We can’t leave until we count the silverware,” she told him. “He thinks some of it ended up in the garbage.”

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