Honky Tonk Christmas (2 page)

“Would you please bring my meal in a to-go box?” Nikki said. “I won’t be eating here.”

Holt put both hands on the table. “Nikki, I’m all they’ve got. I can’t forsake them,” he said.

“There are dozens of good boarding schools. Couple right here in this area where they’d be taken care of and given a wonderful education. I attended them when I was their age. You don’t have to have them underfoot twenty-four-seven.”

He sighed. “But I like them underfoot all the time. That’s why I take them to work with me. I wouldn’t put them in a boarding school even if I had the money.”

“I’ve got the money and I’ll pay for it. You commit. I’ll pay. Last chance. Going, going…” she hesitated.

He shook his head.

“Gone!”

She picked up her purse and slid out of the booth. “I’ll pick up my dinner at the front counter. Have a nice life, Holt. You’re a good man, just not good for me.”

“Good-bye, Nikki,” he whispered.

***

“One more tequila shot and I’m calling it a night,” Sharlene said.

Her four friends all hooted.

The tall blonde patted her on the arm. “You’ve been saying that for the last six. I haven’t seen you this wasted since the night we had the party in New York when you came home. Remember when you sober up that we are holding you to your promise to come see each of us and sign books in our town this winter. That’s only three months away and we aren’t going to let you back out.”

“I deserved to get plastered out of my mind when I got back stateside. You fair-weather friends left me over there the last two months all by myself. And I’ll be there. I’ll feel like a big celebrity signing books. Three months? What month is this anyway?” Sharlene slurred.

The short brunette giggled. “It’s August 15, darlin’. Four years to the day since we left you in Iraq and came home without you. It wasn’t very nice of us to leave you like that, was it? But if they’d have given me a choice of staying and sleeping with Brad Pitt every night or coming home, old Brad would have been sleepin’ alone.”

Sharlene laughed with her. “We got to do this more often.”

“What? Get drunk?” Kayla asked.

“No, get together and talk about it. No one but a vet understands what went on over there. Was it hard for you to leave behind?” Sharlene rubbed her eyes and smeared mascara.

“Hell, yeah,” Kayla said.

Sharlene nodded. “I still hear the helicopters in my sleep.”

“We all do,” Kayla whispered. “Bringing the dead and maimed to the hospital.”

“That sound of them buzzing around haunts my dreams and…” Sharlene clamped a hand over her mouth. Not even her four best friends were privy to the classified ops she and Jonah shared. She’d been in hospital administration and only she and a handful of top officials knew what else she did.

“It’ll get better with time.” Kayla patted her arm.

“When I’m so old I have demen… dement… whatever the hell that word is that means I can’t remember, I’ll still hear them,” she said.

“Well, it’s midnight and I’ve got to drive this bunch to the airport in five hours so I’m going to call it a night for all of us,” Maria, the short dark-haired one of the group, said.

“Not me. I’m going to sit right here and watch you all go. Just like I did back then. I’m going to drink one more beer and then go to my hotel. It’s just a couple of blocks from here. I’ll be fine,” Sharlene told them.

“You sure?” Maria asked.

“Sure as sand will sneak into your under-britches.” Sharlene laughed at her own joke. “Call me when you get home, all of you.”

Group hugs. One more toast with one more round of tequila shots. One more suck on a lime wedge. And they were all four gone.

Sharlene looked at all the empty bottles and shot glasses on the table. “Shhhtory of my life,” she muttered. She pushed the chair back, staggered to the bar, and slapped it with her fist. “One more Coors.”

Holt could hardly believe his eyes. It couldn’t be Sharlene Waverly of Mingus, Texas, slapping the bar right beside him. He’d just visited with her yesterday and moved into her rental house that very morning. The kids had been elated to have a house again. Judd had done a jig all the way to the front porch when she saw the hideous multicolored house.

“I’ll give you one more beer for your car keys. I can call you a taxi but I can’t let you drive as drunk as you are,” the bartender said.

“Over my dead body. I can drive an Army jeep back to the barracks through a Shaqi windstorm after an all-night mission. I can drive anything with four wheels and can shoot the eyes out of a rattlesnake at fifty yards, so give me a beer and I’ll drive myself to the hotel. Besides, it’s only two blocks from here,” she argued loudly.

“She’s with me,” Holt said. “Give her a beer and I’ll see to it she makes it home.”

“And who the hell are you?” Sharlene turned bloodshot eyes at him. Was there one or two fine looking cowboys sitting on the stool? Dear God, was that Holt Jackson, the man she’d hired to add the addition to the Honky Tonk?

“Don’t you remember me? I’m Holt, the man who’s going to put an addition on your beer joint in Mingus,” he said.

“Well, slap some camouflage on my sorry butt and call me a soldier, I believe it is.” She picked up the bottle of beer and turned it up. “And you’re going to take me home?”

“Wherever you need to go. Boss gets killed, I don’t have a job.”

She set the bottle down with a thump. “Well, pay the man and let’s get out of here, Mr. Jolt Hackson.”

The bartender waved away the bill Holt held out. “Her friends took care of their bill and paid for her last drink. They made me promise to call a taxi for her. She’s pretty wasted.”

“Shit-faced is more like it,” Holt said.

Sharlene laughed and stumbled when she slid off the bar.

Holt hooked an arm around her waist and slipped his fingers through her belt loops. He led her outside where the hot night air rushed to meet them as if someone had opened a giant bake oven in the parking lot.

“Hot, ain’t it? That’s my pink VW Bug over there. Just put me in it and follow me to my hotel, cowboy.” She tried to drag him in that direction.

“You are not driving anywhere, not even out of this lot, Sharlene.”

“I been to Iraq. I could take you in a fight. I’m that good. Don’t let my size fool you,” she said.

Holt grinned. “Where’s your hotel key? I’ll take you there and you can get a taxi to come get your car in the morning.”

She fumbled in the back pocket of her jeans and brought out a paper envelope to the Super 8 with the room number written on the outside. “If you look that way…” she squinted to the south and tilted her head to one side “… nope, guess it’s that way…” she turned too quickly and fell into his arms “… there’s that sorry sucker. Do you reckon they moved the sign while me and my friends were in the bar?”

Holt laughed. “Surprising how those things happen when you’ve had too much to drink.”

“I’m not that drunk. I was worse than this when I came home from Iraq. They all came to New York to welcome me home. Did I tell you that I was in Iraq two years? They killed Jonah. Sand was everywhere. Blowing in my eyes and sneaking down my bra. It was everywhere. It was hot like this, only hotter. Take me to my hotel. It’s cool there,” she said.

He put her in the cab of his pickup truck and drove to the Super 8. She was snoring when he parked.

“Hey, wake up, Sharlene; you are home,” he said.

She didn’t move.

“Damn!” he swore as he opened the door and rounded the back end of the truck. He opened the door and she fell out into his arms but didn’t open her eyes. He carried her like a bride through the front door, across the lobby, and down the hall to the right to her room. It took some maneuvering to get the key out of his shirt pocket without dropping her, but he managed.

He laid her on the bed, removed her boots and denim miniskirt, pulled the comforter up from the side of the bed, and started to cover her when her eyes popped open. “Shhhh, if you make a noise they’ll see us. You have to be very quiet. They’re up there but you might not hear them yet. I hate this place. I want to go home where it’s green and there ain’t burned up trucks and bombed out buildings.”

“What do you hear, Sharlene?”

“The helicopter blades. They buzz like flies lighting on cow patties. Shhh, they’ll be here soon and we haven’t finished the job. If we don’t do it, the men will be in trouble.”

He sat down on the other side of the bed. She grabbed his arm, looked him right in the eyes, and pulled at his arm. “Get down or they’ll see you. Don’t make a noise. I can’t get you out of here if you talk. Just lie here beside me until they are gone.”

“I’ll be quiet.” He stretched out beside her.

Her eyes snapped shut and she snuggled up to his side. He decided to wait until she was snoring again before he left. As drunk as she was, she might see aliens the next time her eyes opened and if the hotel owner had her committed he wouldn’t have a job come Monday morning.

So she’d been in Iraq, had she? Was that the demons that made her get drunk? He thought of his sister and the night she died because of a drunk driver. He fell asleep with his sister on his mind and a strange woman in his arms.

***

A sliver of sunshine poured into the room in a long uneven line through a split in the draperies. Sharlene grabbed a pillow and crammed it over her head. She hadn’t had such a hellish hangover since she got home from Iraq. They’d had a party to celebrate her homecoming and they’d really tied one on that night. The next morning her head had been only slightly smaller than a galvanized milk bucket. Her head throbbed with every beat of her heart and she’d sworn she’d never get drunk again. But there she was in a hotel room with the same damn symptoms.

She needed a glass of tomato juice spiked with an egg and lemon and three or four aspirin. Somehow she didn’t think raw eggs and tomato juice would be on the free continental breakfast bar in the hotel dining room. She peeked out from under the pillow at the clock. The numbers were blurry but it was nine o’clock. Two hours until checkout. That gave her plenty of time for a shower. Maybe warm water would stop her head from pounding like a son-of-a-bitch.

She and her friends had hit four… or was it five bars? She didn’t remember dancing on any tabletops or getting into fights. She checked her knuckles and they were free of bloody scabs. No bruises on her arms or legs. She wiggled but didn’t feel like she’d been kicked or beaten. Either she didn’t start a fight or she won. She frowned and in the fog of the hangover from hell she remembered arguing with a man. Then the helicopters were overhead and she told him that Jonah was dead.

Then they all left and the man brought her to the hotel. She sat up so quickly that her head spun around like she was riding a Tilt-A-Whirl at Six Flags. She was hot and sweaty, barefoot and her skirt was missing. She was still wearing panties, a T-shirt, and a bra, so evidently the man had put her to bed and left.

The newspaper reporter in her instantly asked for what, when, who, and how. She drew her brow down and remembered the what. She’d been drunk and passed out in his truck. The when involved after all the bars closed. The rest was a blur.

She moaned as she sat up on the edge of the bed and the night came back in foggy detail. Four of her girlfriends who’d served with her in Iraq had come to Weatherford for a reunion weekend. One from Panama City, Florida; one from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; another from Orange Cove, California; and the fourth from Savannah, Georgia. Sharlene could only get away for Sunday so they’d flown into Dallas and saved the best until she arrived. One beer led to another and that led to a pitcher of margaritas and then the tequila shots. She vaguely remembered a tequila sunrise or two in the mix. Her stomach lurched when she stood up and the room did a couple of lopsided twirls.

She leaned on the dresser until everything was standing upright and her stomach settled down. If she waited for her head to stop pounding she’d be there until hell froze over or three days past eternity—whichever came first.

She held her head with both hands as she stumbled toward the bathroom. Hangovers had been invented in hell for fools who drank too much. Or maybe the angels developed them. A good hangover would keep more people out of hell than a silver-tongued preacher man ever could.

“Holt Jackson! Dear God! That’s who brought me home. Lord, he’ll think I’m a drunk and a slut.”

She’d slept in his arms and had
not
dreamed. Even with a hangover, she knew she hadn’t dreamed. She hadn’t seen Jonah’s eyes the night before and she’d slept for the first time in years without the nightmares. She looked back at the tangled sheets on the king-sized bed and the rush of what might have happened made her even dizzier than the hangover. She grabbed the wall and scanned each corner of the room.

“Did we? I can’t remember. Oh, shit! I can’t remember anything but getting into his truck,” she whispered. She reached for the knob to open the bathroom door: It swung to the inside and there stood Holt Jackson, drying his hands on a white hotel towel. She had to hang onto the knob for support or she would have fallen into his arms.

“Good morning,” he said.

She rushed inside, shoved him out, and hung her head over the toilet. When she finished, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She heard deep laughter and bristled. Sure, she was in misery, but he had no right to laugh at her unless he was a saint or an angel and had never had a hangover. When she opened the door, he was sitting on the end of the bed putting on his boots and watching cartoons. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair and green eyes looked at her from beneath thick deep dark eyelashes. His face was square with a slight dimple in his chin and his lips were full.

The anger left and was replaced with remorse. “Sorry about that. I haven’t been drunk in many years.”

“Not since Iraq, huh?” he said.

She glanced at the bed. “We didn’t… did we?”

“You snored and I fell asleep. Didn’t mean to but it had been a long day with the moving and then driving to Fort Worth for supper. I apologize. Other than that, nothing happened.”