Her Four Cowboys

A knock sounded at the door, startling me so badly I couldn’t help my shriek.

“Sorry to scare you, Lulu,” my dad’s voice came through the door. “Mama sent me to ask if you were staying for dinner tonight.”

I sighed. On second thought, maybe not.

A few hours later, freshly showered and in clean clothes, I pulled up to the curb outside Spurs and threw my truck into park before grabbing my jacket and heading inside.

A quick look around the bar showed me that it hadn’t changed while I was away. Somewhere on one of the walls was a plaque that had the date the bar had been built… sometime in the mid-nineteenth century.

Looking around, I highly doubted that the decor had been updated since that day. I seriously doubted that the bar itself had even been brought up to code.

No—if somebody wanted to drink at a modern, upscale bar in this town, they didn’t come to Spurs. They went a town over, to the more modern pub that had been opened a few years before.

But Spurs had something that the other bar didn’t have.

“Well, if it isn’t the woman who increased the class and education factor in our town by about five thousand percent,” called a husky, rich voice from behind the bar, and I grinned.

“What are you talking about?” I asked as I slid the barstool out from under the bar with a booted foot and took my seat. “You’ve been keeping this place classy for as long as you’ve been working here.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Molly said, pulling out a handle of whisky and dropping some ice into two tumblers with a few other ingredients. “Damn, girl. Did you come here trying to set this place on fire?”

I raised an eyebrow, looking down at myself. I wasn’t wearing anything different from what I normally wore. A rust-and-black plaid shirt that might have sat a bit more fitted over my shoulders and breasts than some of the others I had, showing off the fitted black camisole that I wore underneath. The shirt was tucked into a pair of skinny indigo cigarette jeans that fit all the way down my legs and were tucked into the old cowboy boots that I’d had since I was eighteen.

As for my hair, I could admit that it looked pretty good. Freshly washed and dried, it hung down around my shoulders in the long, blonde waves that I never managed to keep neat for very long. In fact, it would be a miracle if I managed to keep it down this entire night instead of pulling it out of my eyes out of sheer annoyance.

“Come on,” I said, reaching for my glass. “Do I really look all that different than I usually do?”

“No, you don’t,” Molly said, stirring her own glass. “That’s what’s so obnoxious about you. You always look so insanely sexy, and you don’t even have to try.”

“You know, it does take effort to wash my hair,” I said, shooting her a mock dirty look.

“I believe it,” she said, grinning at me above the rim of her drink. “You know, I have seen some of the nonsense you get up to; I’m just saying that you could be covered in horse crap, and you’d still be the best-looking woman in here.”

I rolled my eyes. “Shut up,” I groaned. “Do you have to say that? You’re my best friend.”

“Exactly. As your best friend, would I lie to you about something like this?”

I grinned, shrugging one shoulder. “Guess not.”

She nodded, picking up a rag and wiping down the bar. “Good. Now talk to me about what it’s been like being at home with Eddie and Marge.”

I sighed, reaching up and rubbing my fingers over my eyebrows. “Well, my dad came and banged on my door while I was in the shower to ask if I was staying for dinner.” I took another slug of my drink.

She snorted. “Making you crazy already?”

I groaned. “I don’t know if I can last the full three months,” I said, referring to the plan I’d made to wait out three months in my parents’ house to save money before finding my own place in town. “I might just have to skip out on Marge and Ed early.”

“You know my door is always open if you need a place to crash,” she said, looking up at me with her wide brown eyes. “And now, we don’t have to sneak booze anymore.”

I laughed a little. “Maybe,” I said, thinking of Molly’s tiny apartment. She’d moved during one of the rare occasions that I’d been able to make the trip up from school, and as excited as she’d been to get into her new place, I’d been a little worried about how she’d be able to make it work in the little studio. “I don’t want to cramp your style.”