Prologue
FIVE YEARS AGO
Tex Williams met the eyes of the waiting customer and slid the beer glass expertly down the bar into his waiting hand. He tipped the brim of his hat and was unable to resist feeling like Tom Cruise in Cocktail when the customer gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up and the patrons between them applauded.
“Last call!” he hollered, in a voice that carried.
Then he turned to the gorgeous dark-skinned woman who had just come in and staggered up to the bar. She was leaning heavily on it, wearing a tight, deeply-scooped magenta shirt and a short skirt. Knee-high, high-heeled boots completed the look.
“What can I get for you, ma’am?”
“Whiskey,” she said boldly. “Neat. On the rocks.”
Tex smiled indulgently at her. “Which one?”
She blinked back, confused. “Can’t it be both?” she asked in a stage whisper, glancing at the next customer at the bar; she was packing up her purse and paying them no notice at all.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tex replied in a matching whisper. Neat was a straight shot, on the rocks was over ice, so there was no way to do both. He turned to pour her a seltzer on ice with a twist of lime. “On the house,” he said, not trying to swindle her.
She took it with no suspicion at all, gulping it down and shuddering as if she had just downed the strongest stuff that Tex had.
“You need me to call you a cab, honey?” Tex asked. He had a few cabbies that he trusted with cases like this on speed-dial.
The woman stared at him, clearly trying to make sense of his words.
“You got a friend here?” he asked gently.
“A friend?” She furrowed her brow, adorably trying to figure him out. Alarm passed over her face and she put a manicured hand to her mouth. “There was someone…” Her eyes widened. “Do you think that he could have put something in my drink?”
Tex was immediately at full alert. No one was going to be slipping drugs to ridiculously innocent young women at his bar on his watch. He peered into her dark eyes, which were glassy, but not dilated. “What have you had to drink?” he asked her intently. “Did you ever leave your glass, to go to the bathroom? Who were you talking with?” His bear senses were at full strength — she smelled like hand soap and laundry detergent and leather and richly of alcohol, but not like drugs.
“I had some iced teas,” she said, gazing back into his eyes trustingly. “Three Manhattan iced teas. Or New Jersey iced teas. Or something…?“ she furrowed her brows again in that childlike way.
Tex relaxed. “Long Island iced teas?” he suggested. That matched the smell on her breath.
She tried to snap. “That was it!”
“You don’t drink a lot, do you.” Tex didn’t make it a question.
She giggled and shook her head. “No.”
She was a full-bodied woman, all her curves in just the right quantities for Tex’s tastes. But if she wasn’t used to drinking -- which clearly she was not -- three long island ice teas would explain her inebriation quite completely.
She was still trying to snap her fingers.
“What’s your name?” Tex asked her, trying not to let his amusement show.
He needn’t have worried; she was oblivious to anything but her disobedient fingers. “Jenny,” she answered distantly. “Jenny Smith.”
“I’m Tex.” If she had been more sober, Tex might have guessed she was picking a generic fake name.
She must have realized that, as she raised sparkling eyes to him and added. “Well, it’s really Jennavivianna Rose Smith. My parents didn’t want me to have a boring name, and were devastated when I told them I’d rather be Jenny.”
“You sit right here, Jennavivianna Rose,” Tex told her, indicating a stool. “I’ll make sure you don’t pass out or do anything stupid. I’m going to give you a glass of water and a cup of coffee, and you put down whatever you can, you hear me?”
She gave a sloppy salute with a face-splitting grin as she clambered carefully up onto the barstool. “I trust you,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I trust you.”
Tex poured the last few drinks for the other customers at his bar, keeping a careful eye on Jenny while she sipped her water and played with the bar napkin. The other customers gradually filed out as they finished their drinks and Tex failed to provide further inebriants. Tex wiped down the bar, and gathered up all the dirty dishes for the cleaning crew. The waitress began putting chairs upside down on tables and gave an old man nursing his last drink by the door a good-natured scold.
“How you doing, kitten?” Tex asked Jenny, wiping the counter around her. “Feel like being sick?” He’d been a bartender long enough to know the usual progression of a drunk that thorough.
She was clearly flagging as the alcohol wore slowly out of her system, but she shook her head firmly. “I don’t usually drink,” she confided. “This is all very out of character for me.” Her gesture included her outfit, and she pulled the shirt up at the shoulder self-consciously.
“You want to tell me about it?” The offer was automatic on Tex’s part, but he meant it whole-heartedly.
Jenny looked at him with a hazy smile. “Yeah, I do. I mean I wouldn’t usually, but hey, while we’re being out of character, why not?”
Tex was pleased to see that her speech was clarifying. He was certain now that nothing was ailing her more than a bit too much to drink, and he was able to shake off the vaguely guilty feeling that had been dogging him at the idea that someone could have slipped her something on his watch.
‘It’s not your bar,’ he reminded himself. ‘And you can’t save every hard-luck case that comes through the door.’
She didn’t look like a hard-luck case, though. Her hair was neatly trimmed, and her makeup was perfect. Her hands had the soft, subtly manicured look of someone who had gone through life without doing labor more menial than loading a dishwasher.
Even her voice as she spoke sounded educated. “It was my sister’s idea,” she confessed in a whisper, though the waitress was across the room cl
osing things up well out of earshot.
“She thought you needed a night out on the town?” Tex gave her an encouraging smile.
Jenny rolled her eyes. “She thinks I’m a stick in the mud,” she scoffed, forgetting to be quiet — or forgetting how to be quiet.
Tex wisely did not agree, but only made a sympathetic noise.
“She always has all the fun,” Jenny complained. “I’m the responsible one, studying hard, scholarship to the University of Texas. She’s so smart, she just skates by without working at all. She could be anything! She’s so stylish and has so much fun.” Her voice was full of affection and envy. “These are her clothes,” she added wistfully.
“They look great on you,” Tex told her sincerely. They certainly fit her just right.