It'd been a bad week. That's all there was to say about it, really. On Monday, my rent check had bounced, when my boyfriend - ex-boyfriend now - had cleaned out my account and hopped into the car of a waitress called Darla who worked at the diner in town.
I found this out when the landlord grabbed me on my way up the stairs the following evening, pointing to a pile of my things, thrown against the wall in the hallway, with a snarled threat to call the cops if I didn't get my shit out of his place in five minutes. So from Tuesday night, I'd been living out of my car. I'd lost my job on Wednesday. The small law office, where I'd been typing up legal documents for the last two years, said they were downsizing, whatever that meant, and it was last in, first to go. Which meant, of course, me.
I'd seen the advertisement in the paper on Thursday morning for a barmaid up at a dive on one of the roads heading out of town, and knew I couldn't pass it up. At five-eight, a healthy 36C-24-36, I figured I'd get hired and if the clientele were too touchy-feely for my liking, I could always leave. It was also the only job vacancy in town.
Cavanaugh's was - still is, most likely - a roughneck bar on the outskirts of town, not all that far out but on one of those gravel roads that's just as likely to give you a puncture as get you where you're going.
Mostly there's a crowd of regulars, the big, muscly derrick-jockeys from the oil field much further out, a few farm hands from the ranches that are on the other side of town, factory workers - well, you get the idea. Occasionally there are some bikers, blowing through town on their way to somewhere else, but not that often. We weren't on the beaten track, if you know what I mean, but we weren't really that far off either.
I'd been surprised to find, on starting the afternoon shift on Thursday, that I didn't mind the work or the customers at all. They'd gotten a bit more hands-on as the evening had progressed, but nothing worse than I'd copped going out for drinks at night, and they were all good-natured enough about it.
So, that's where things were late Friday afternoon, when I started my second night's shift and my boss, Craig, came out of the office and threw a huge set of keys at me, telling me, in between yelling at his wife on his cell, to serve until midnight, close up, cash out the register and put the takings in the safe, and lock up.
Was it a promotion, I asked myself in bemusement as the sound of his V8 roared from the parking lot? I doubted it. I put the keys under the bar counter and got on with serving.
It was around nine or ten that night that the group came in, three younger men and two older. All of them fit and hard-looking, with the exception of the youngest, also the tallest, who seemed just out of high school, with a sweet face and a mop of dark honey-blonde hair that flopped over his forehead.
The others were equally as memorable, each in their own way. The two oldest were both dark-haired, with short back-and-sides and a few days' worth of beard scruffing over their jawlines. The taller was darkly handsome, dark green eyes under black brows and a voice like black velvet. The other was perhaps less memorable, but friendlier, complimenting me on both my looks and service without getting smutty.
The other two, both in the mid-twenties, I thought, were tall, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, one dark-haired with bright green eyes and a dark five o'clock shadow covering his chin and throat, the other blue-eyed and blond-haired, even teeth shown frequently in a nice smile.
The regulars had all left by eleven, and aside from a couple who had eyes only for each other, the group of men were all that was left. They played pool, chaffing each other over shots made and missed and they ordered round after round, adding their tips in a not ungenerous way.
It might've been an hour or so later, the younger green-eyed man leaned on the bar counter as I put together their drinks, his eyes watching me.
"You worked here long?" he asked.
I shook my head, opening the last bottle of beer and setting it on the tray beside the others. "Started yesterday," I told him. The two older guys were drinking whiskeys, doubles and neat and I reaching for the bottle, pouring the measures and setting the glasses next to the beers.
"Listen," he said, leaning a bit closer. "I gotta proposition for you."
I lifted a brow as I looked at him, admiring the high cheekbones and clean, straight jaw with a flutter of interest. He was, as they say, very easy on the eye and he seemed to have a sense of humour, not always the case with good-looking men. "Yeah? What's that?"
"You see the young guy," he said, looking over his shoulder at the pool table behind him. "My kid brother, he turned twenty-one today."
"Mazel tov," I said, a little dryly.
"Yeah, heh, the thing is," he said, looking around at me again, his gaze dropping to the shadow between my breasts, easily visible in the low-cut shirt I'd been given to wear on the job. "There's not a lot of scope for a celebration here, you know what I mean?"
I couldn't disagree. "Small town."
"Yeah," he said. "I was wondering if you felt like making some serious money tonight?"
The casualness of the offer, and the implications of it, stopped me cold. I looked at him disbelievingly.
"Uh, no, no," he said, rightly reading my expression. "He's, uh, not - look, I was wonderin' if you'd, uh, you know, maybe strip for him," he hastened to add. "No touching."
I'd like to say that the idea offended me, but the truth was, it didn't. I'd done a little stripping - exotic dancing, they'd called it in Chicago - to fund some of my living expenses in my abortive attempt at college, and had found it not only lucrative but sometimes fun, when I'd been in the mood.
