Page 24 of The Wedding Gift
“Red and green pillows, Christmas shower curtain, and now decorating a honky tonk? You think the people who come in here will give a damn if there’s a Christmas tree in the corner or lights all around the bar?” He covered another yawn with the back of his hand.
“I’m not obsessed with the holiday, but I do love the spirit of Christmas.” She sat down on the edge of her bedand wiped sweat from her brow with her shirtsleeve. “I enjoy decorating, and it’s the smart business thing to do. Folks will come in here tonight and see everything all festive, and they’ll be more apt to buy their neighbor a drink or a beer. Trust me, we’ll have more business when folks are in a giving mood.”
“Bull crap,” he muttered. “But if you want to go to all the trouble, I ain’t got anything else planned for today, so let’s get to it. I’ll bet we don’t have half a dozen folks tonight anyway.”
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s Monday, and the weather is horrible. Look out the window.” He pointed.
“That’s all the more reason for them to be here,” she told him. “The guys will be tired of their wives nagging them to fix this or that, and the women will be tired of their husbands sitting around in their recliners watching television. The parking lot will be full. What do you want to bet?”
“Whoever loses has to take down all this crap after New Year’s without gripin’ or beggin’ for help from the other one,” he said.
She stood up, crossed the room, and stuck out her hand. “It’s a deal.”
He wasn’t prepared for the jolt of heat that rushed through his body at her touch. He’d kept her from falling theevening before, and their bodies had brushed against each other several times during the cooking process. He hadn’t felt chemistry then, so why now?
Another spider reappeared right at his toes, and he took a couple of steps back. His knees buckled when they hit the edge of the bed, and he fell backward and then bounced back up so fast that it made him dizzy. How many of the damned things could infest one box of Christmas decorations?
Jorja stomped the spider and then calmly pulled a tissue from the box on her chest of drawers. She cleaned up the dark spot from the floor and said, “There now. That mean old spider is gone. I’ll meet you in the bar, and you can bring that box out to me. I’ll start getting the lights out of one of the lighter boxes.” Her face was still scarlet red when she closed the door behind her.
Surely to God, she’d seen a naked man before, he thought, and hehadapologized. What more did she want?
When he finished brushing his teeth, running a razor over his face, and getting dressed, he scanned every inch of the Christmas tree box for more spiders, and then picked it up and carried it out of the apartment. Jorja was busy hanging lights around the edge of one of the pool tables. He could imagine some old cowboy making a wrong shot with a cue stick and breaking one of the bulbs, but he didn’t say a word.He dropped the box on the floor and followed his nose to the back side of the bar and the coffeepot.
He poured a cup and sat down on a stool with his back to the bar. He expected her to bring up his nakedness again, but to his surprise, she just turned around and said, “When you finish that cup, you can take the tree out of the box and put it together. It’s one of those old ones that you have to stick every branch in a separate hole. We don’t have time to buy a new one for this year, so it will have to do. I vote that when we take it down, we trash it and hit an after-Christmas sale for a new one for next year.”
“You plannin’ on stickin’ around that long, are you?” he asked and then took his first sip of coffee. “This is really good. You know how to make a decent brew.”
“My granny says that if you can see the bottom of the cup, it isn’t nothin’ but murdered water. Good coffee is black and strong,” she said as she started stringing lights around the second pool table. “When you get the tree out and ready to decorate, then you can put tinsel up over the bar. I’m too short to do that.”
“Your granny is a smart woman.” He glanced out the window. Snow was coming down even harder now. She’d be disappointed later when no one showed up, but he damn sure wasn’t going to argue with her about it right then.Besides, he hoped a few folks would come out since she was working so hard to decorate the place.
“Yep, she is,” Jorja said.
Jorja’s face was still hot when Cameron brought the tree out into the bar area. She didn’t even have to close her eyes to envision his sexy naked body, but she damn sure wasn’t going to say a single word about it. That would be opening a can of worms that she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with. No doubt about it, he’d ask her if she liked what she’d seen, and then she’d have to tell a lie. He’d think she was flirting if she said, “Damn straight!” She could tell him that she’d seen better on a twelve-year-old boy, but the devil would claim her soul for a lie that big. She thought it was best to leave the whole incident completely alone.
He finished his coffee, slid the pitiful-looking tree base out of the box, and set the trunk in place. “There, I’ve done my part,” he said.
“In your dreams, cowboy,” she told him. “Now you get out the limbs and match the color on the stems to those holes in the base. We might have this place looking like Christmas by the time we open the doors tonight.”
Someone rapped hard on the outside door before hecould say anything, and he left the bare pole and headed that way. He unlocked the door and eased it open.
“Beer delivery,” a deep male voice said.
Cameron slung the door wide open, and for a minute, Jorja thought she was looking at the abominable snowman. The guy pushing the dolly in with cases of beer on it was taller than Cameron and covered with snow from the hood on his head down to his rubber boots. He stood on the rug just inside the door, removed his coveralls, and hung them on one of the hooks meant for hats. Then he jerked a bright-red stocking hat off his head, revealing a mop of gray hair that hung on the collar of his red flannel shirt.
“For a cup of that coffee, I’ll gladly get y’all all stocked and put the rest in the storage room.” He pushed the dolly across the floor to the bar. “I’m not making any more deliveries today. My boss thought I could make my run, but if I get home to Gordon, I’ll be doing good, and that’s less than four miles from here. I stocked up my truck in Stephenville a couple of hours ago and dropped off my first load at the convenience store in Huckabay.”
Cameron poured the guy a cup of coffee and set it on the bar. He warmed his hands with it before he took the first sip. “My name is Frankie Dermott. Me and my girlfriend, Chigger, come in here pretty often on the weekends. Thiscoffee damn sure hits the spot. Y’all the new owners? I heard Merle was havin’ a tough time gettin’ folks to manage the place and was sellin’ out to new owners.”
Jorja stuck out her hand. “Do you know George and Lila Jenks? I’m their granddaughter and the new co-owner.”
Frankie shook hands with her and then extended his to Cameron. “And you are Mr. Jenks?”
Cameron smiled and shook his head. “No, I’m Cameron Walsh. My grandparents are Maria and Walter Walsh from down around Stephenville. You might have met them here at the Honky Tonk. They’re good friends of Merle’s.”
“Yep, know them very well. Me and Chigger know most of the folks that come around here. Years ago, she managed this place, but that was back before me and her got together. She was married to Jim Bob back then. They had a couple of kids, but Jim Bob got to take them to his place this Christmas, so she’s down and depressed,” Frankie said. “Guess we’d better get after puttin’ this beer away. She’s goin’ to be worried about me. I called her an hour ago and said after this delivery I was on my way home.”