Texas! Lucky (2 page)

A sudden shout warned him of Jack Ed's recovery. Spinning around, he barely had time to suck in his midsection before Jack Ed took a swipe at it with his infamous knife. He kicked the extended knife out of Jack Ed's hand, then gave him a quick chop in the Adam's apple with the edge of his hand. The ex-con toppled into a table; it crashed to the floor. Jack Ed sprawled beside it unconscious, lying in a puddle of spilled beer and broken glass.

Lucky came around again to confront Alvin. Looking like the provoked giant in a Grimm's tale, the former linebacker was crouched in an attack stance.

"Stop this!"

The woman was out of the booth. Hands on hips, she was furiously addressing both of them, though Lucky seemed the only one aware of her. Little Alvin's eyes were red with fury. His nostrils were receding and expanding like twin bellows.

"Get out of the way or you'll get hurt!" Lucky shouted to her.

"I want this to stop. You're behaving like—"

Little Alvin, giving her no more regard than he would a pesky housefly, flicked his hand at her, catching her lip and drawing blood. She fell backward.

"You son of a bitch," Lucky snarled. Any brute who would strike a woman didn't deserve a clean fight. Swinging up his booted foot, he viciously caught the other man in the crotch.

Instantly Little Alvin was stunned motionless, seemingly held upright by the gasps that rose from the onlookers. Then he clutched the injured area and dropped to his knees, rattling glassware throughout the building. At last, eyes crossing, he went over face first into the puddle of beer beside Jack Ed.

Lucky gulped in several cleansing breaths and tentatively dabbed at his swelling eye. Stiffly he approached the woman, who was attempting to stanch her bleeding lip with a paper napkin.

"You all right?"

She flung her head up and glared at him with vivid green eyes. Lucky, expecting tears, admiration, and gushing gratitude, was startled to see naked enmity on her face.

"Thanks a lot," she said sarcastically. "You were a big help."

"Wha—"

"Lucky," the bartender called to him, "here comes the sheriff."

Lucky blew out a gust of breath as he surveyed the damage the fight had caused. Overturned tables and chairs made the place look as if it had sustained storm damage. Broken glass, spilled beer, and capsized ashtrays had left a disgusting mess on the floor where two battered bodies still lay.

And the ungrateful tart, whose honor he had stupidly defended, was mad at
him
. Some days, no matter how hard you tried, nothing went right. Placing his hands on his hips, his head dropping forward, he muttered, "Hell."

Chapter 2

S
heriff Patrick Bush shook his head in dismay as he observed Little Alvin and Jack Ed. Alvin was rolling from side to side, groaning and clutching his groin; Jack Ed remained blessedly unconscious.

The sheriff maneuvered the matchstick from one corner of his mouth to the other and looked up at Lucky from beneath the wide brim of his Stetson. "Now, how come you went and did that to these boys, huh?"

"Might've known I'd get blamed for it," Lucky grumbled as he plowed his fingers through his thick hair, raking it off his forehead.

The sheriff pointed toward Lucky's middle.

"You hurt?"

Only then did Lucky notice that his shirt had been ripped and was hanging open. Jack Ed's knife had left a thin red arc across his stomach. "It's okay."

"Need an ambulance?"

"Hell, no." He swabbed at the trickle of blood with his tattered shirt.

"Start cleaning up this mess," the sheriff ordered his accompanying deputy. Turning to Lucky, he asked, "What happened?"

"They were coming on to her, and she didn't like it."

Bush looked at the woman, who had been standing nearby, silently fuming. She had tried to leave earlier, but had been instructed to stay put until the sheriff got around to asking her a few questions.

"You okay, ma'am?" The sheriff was looking worriedly at her lip. It was slightly swollen, but no longer bleeding. Despite the unnatural fullness, it was pulled into a tight, narrow grimace.

"I'm perfectly fine. I was perfectly fine when Sir Galahad here took it upon himself to interfere."

"Sorry," Lucky snapped, "I thought I was helping you out."

"Helping?
You call this
helping?"
She flung her arms wide to encompass the damage done to the place. "All you did was create an unnecessary ruckus."

"That true, Lucky?" the sheriff asked.

Barely controlling his temper as he glared down at the woman, Lucky said, "Ask the witnesses."

The sheriff methodically polled the bystanders. All murmured agreement to Lucky's version of what had taken place. The woman gave each one a disdainful glare. "Am I free to go now?" she asked the sheriff.

"How'd your lip get busted, ma'am?"

"The gorilla did it," she said, nodding down at Little Alvin and corroborating Lucky's account of her injury.

"What was your business here?"

"You didn't ask what
they
were doing here," she argued, gesturing to the men surrounding her.

"I know what they were doing here," Bush replied. "Well?"

"I was having a beer," she answered curtly.

"You didn't lead these men on, did you? You know, wink, flirt, anything like that?"

She didn't deign to answer, and only stared at him with open contempt for even suggesting such a thing. In Pat Bush's estimation she didn't look like a typical bar pickup. During his twenty-year tenure as sheriff he'd broken up enough barroom brawls to recognize a troublemaking broad when he saw one.

This one wasn't typical. Her clothing wasn't provocative. Neither was her demeanor. Rather than inviting male attention, she put out vibes that said
Do
Not Touch
and seemed about as approachable as a lady porcupine.

More out of curiosity than anything, he asked, "You from around here?"

"No, from out of town."

"Where 'bouts?"

"I was just passing through Milton Point," she replied evasively, "on my way to the interstate highway."

Sheriff Bush tipped his hat forward so he could scratch the back of his head beneath it.

"Well, ma'am, the next time you're just passing through, find another place to have a beer, a place more suitable for ladies."

Lucky made an unflattering snorting sound, implying that he didn't believe she fit the distinction.

"I'll take that into consideration, Sheriff."

She gave Lucky another chilling glare. Then, slipping the strap of her handbag over her shoulder, she headed for the door.

"You don't want to press charges for the busted lip?" Sheriff Bush called after her.

"I only want to get out of here." Moving purposefully toward the door, she went out into the waning twilight without looking back.

Every eye in the room followed her departure. "Ungrateful bitch," Lucky muttered.

"What's that?" the sheriff asked, leaning toward Lucky.

"Nothing. Look, I gotta split, too." A glance through the dusty window showed her getting into a red compact car, one of those square, lookalike foreign numbers.

"Hold your horses, Lucky," Sheriff Bush said sternly. "I warned you last time that if you got into any more fights—"

"I didn't start this, Pat."

Though Pat Bush was acting in an official capacity, Lucky addressed him like the family friend he was, one who'd bounced Lucky on his knee when he was still in diapers. So while Lucky respected Pat's uniform, he wasn't intimidated by it.

"Who're you going to believe? Me or them?" he asked, gesturing down to the two injured men.

The red car was pulling onto the two-lane highway, its rear wheels sending up a cloud of dust. Losing his patience, Lucky again confronted Pat, who kept such a watchful eye on the Tylers that very few of their escapades got past him.

He had caught Chase and Lucky pilfering apples from the A&P supermarket when they were kids, and turning over portable toilets at a drilling site one Halloween night, and throwing up their first bottle of whiskey beneath the bleachers at the football stadium. While driving them home, he'd given them a sound lecture on the evils of drinking irresponsibly before turning them over to their daddy for parental "guidance." He'd been a pallbearer at Bud Tyler's funeral two years before, and had cried as hard as any bona fide member of the family.

"Am I under arrest or not?" Lucky asked him now.

"Get on outta here," the sheriff said gruffly. "I'll wait here till these skunks come around." He nudged Little Alvin and Jack Ed with the toe of his lizard boot. "Do something smart for a change, and stay outta their way for a day or two."

"Sure thing."

"And you'd better let your mama take a look at that cut."

"It's fine."

In a hurry, Lucky tossed a five-dollar bill on the bar to cover the cost of his drinks and dashed out the door. He had noted that the red car had turned west onto the highway and remembered the woman saying she was headed for the interstate, which was several miles away. He vaulted into his vintage model Mustang convertible and took out after her in hot pursuit.

Miss Prissy wasn't going to get away with brushing him off like that. He'd risked his life for her. Only good fortune and well-timed quick-stepping had prevented him from getting more than the tip of Jack Ed's knife.

His eye was swollen nearly shut now, and his skull felt as if a drilling bit were going through it. He would look like hell for days on account of this ungrateful redheaded chippy.

Redheaded?
He thought back.
Yeah, sorta red. Dark reddish-brown. Auburn
.

How was he going to explain his battered face to his mother and Chase, who just this morning had stressed to him the importance of keeping their noses absolutely clean? Tyler Drilling Company was faced with bankruptcy unless they could persuade the bank to let them pay only the interest on their note and roll over the principal for another six months at least. Lucky shouldn't be seen around town sporting a black eye. Who wanted to extend credit to a brawler?

"Since Daddy died," Chase had said that morning, "everybody's been skeptical that you and I can run Tyler Drilling as well as he did."