Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

  Chapter One:

  I wedged myself up to the bar between an urban cowboy and a sequined octogenarian with a cigarette dangling from her lips. Is that a gun in your holster or are you just glad to see me? I shied away from Little Joe Cartwright or Brett Maverick or whoever the heck he thought he was while also trying to avoid the business end of Grandma’s cancer stick. I looked up at myself in the mirror behind the premium liquor bottles, a head shorter than the cowboy and a head taller than the little old lady—and a damn sight more harried looking than either of them.

  Why did everything have to be so hard? All I wanted was one teensy-tiny little drink. Well, that wasn’t completely true. I also wanted as far away from my mother as I could get. Siberia-far, or maybe even Pluto-far. Oklahoma City-far would do in a pinch. Across the lobby from her in a hotel—which now called itself a Wyndham but which everyone in Amarillo would forever know as the Ambassador—wasn’t nearly far enough. Especially since we were there for the wedding reception of my high school boyfriend, Scott, to his third wife—who was nineteen and pregnant.

  I raised a finger and leaned across the wooden bar, trying to catch the attention of the bartender. Too late, I felt the wetness. I looked down. I’d plopped my breasts into someone else’s spilled drink. Great. Just then, the bartender’s blue-shadowed eyes swept over me.

  “Virgin mojito, please,” I said.

  All I got was the back of her orange hair, teased so high it looked like cotton candy, Halloween-style. I grabbed a fistful of napkins from a dispenser and mopped up Lake Titicaca—the bar top and the underside of my rack. At least I’d worn a simple black dress tonight, so it wouldn’t show. Much.

  “Need some help, Blondie?” Little Joe asked. His voice had a rumbly drawl to it—not quite Texan but close—which I might have found pleasant if he hadn’t called me by my hair color.

  I studied him. He was tall, well over six feet—at least with his boots on—and a good ten years older than me, judging by his crow’s feet. Age, or was it weathering? My eyes slipped down to his boots. The leather was worn, but cared-for, with a few dark lines of oil tracking scratch marks and scuffs. I flicked my eyes quickly back up, but not so fast that they didn’t take in his narrow hips circled by a brown leather belt and his flat stomach behind the silver and turquoise buckle, the deep chest, and the wide set of his shoulders. His upper lip looked lighter than the rest of his face, like he normally wore a mustache and had just recently shaved it off, and whatever had weathered his face didn’t hide his great cheekbones or the lone dimple to the left of his half-smiling mouth. Maybe Little Joe wasn’t a city slicker after all.

  Willie Nelson crooned in the background. He was a regular artist on the soundtrack to my life—my heroes have always been cowboys. Yeah, Willie, mine too, until they weren’t. Back in another life, I’d had a weakness for Little Joe’s type. I couldn’t help it, really. I was the daughter of a steer-wrestling father. And now it wasn’t just cowboys that had let me down, but the male species in general. So, did I need some help, from this cowboy?

  “I don’t think—”

  “What’re ya drinkin’, sir?” the bartender asked.

  Steam whistled from my ears like I was some fancy-schmancy espresso machine. Oh sure, ignore the woman and bring the guy another round. I wheeled toward the cowboy, ready to let fly a string of invectives about him and the barmaid and my whole miserable life in general, but I saw no drinks in front of him. Maybe it wasn’t another round. I clamped down on my ire.

  He looked me in the eye for a split second—long enough for an unwelcome frisson of pure animal response to unleash itself in my lady parts—then turned back to her.

  “Bourbon neat. And a virgin mojito.”

  Spit in a well bucket, as my father used to say, before he left us for the circuit rodeos one year and never came back. Hell, maybe he was still saying it, somewhere else, wherever it was he’d gotten off to.

  “That’s really not necessary,” I said.

  Little Joe flexed his jaw and his lips twitched. “You looked like you had your hands full.”

  I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes further north, but thought better of it. Instead, I ignored his words and retrieved five dollars from my clutch. Holding one end of the bill, I wafted it toward him.

  “Thank you for ordering my drink,” I said in my most saccharine voice.

  He nodded and took the money. As he straightened it and slid it into his battered, brown leather wallet, he said, “Name’s Jack. Jack Holden.”

  “Emily Bernal.” I scrubbed the dry bar with my pile of napkins until the bartender handed me my mojito. No fresh mint, so basically just a lemonade. I sighed. “Well, thanks again, and have a nice night.”

  He touched the brim of his gray felt cowboy hat.

  Before I’d turned away from Jack, my mother’s voice trilled in my ear like three-inch acrylic nails scratching across a chalkboard.

  “There you are, Emily.”

  I tried to hide my shudder. “Yes, but I was just headed to the ladies’ room.”

  She beamed at me, reflecting a vision of what I would look like in twenty-five years, if genetics trumped will: Indecently long legs made even longer by stilettos, better-than-medium height, round blue eyes, and dewy, Mary Kay-slathered skin going crepe-y at the edges. She’d fit her trim body—thicker through the middle—in a snug dress slightly less long than was proper for her age, and was wearing the best blonde that money could buy from the shelves of Walmart. Trailer park meets the Southern church lady—that was my mother.

  She opened her mouth to torture me. “I was just telling Doug Munroe what a wonderful paralegal you are,” she said, “and he wants to meet you. His law firm is really the best in town, and—”

  “I’m not even sure if I’m staying,” I said. “And I have a job.” And the beginnings of a killer headache, I thought.

  “A job in Dallas. If Rich isn’t going to do conversion therapy, then you’ve really got to—”

  I pushed back from the bar and flashed her a megawatt smile. Before I could answer, though, Jack’s voice interrupted. “Agatha Phelps, always good to see you.”

  My mother took notice of Jack, tilting her head to the side, and shaking it.

  “Oh my, if it isn’t the infamous Jack Holden,” she said. “What trouble are you causing tonight?”

  He wiped a smile from his face. “I have a question for you.”

  She twinkled. “What is it?”

  Jack’s voice dropped lower, and Mother leaned in. I tried not to. “What’s the difference between erotic and kinky?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.” She raised her brows. “And I can’t think why any decent man should.” She leaned closer, twinkled brighter.

  “Erotic uses a feather and kinky uses the whole chicken.” He smiled on the dimpled side of his face only. “And you know it’s only part of my job.”

  My mother giggled like a tween girl. “That’s the only reason I’ll forgive your manners.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll come find you later, Mother.” They both looked at me, my mother’s eyes wide like she’d forgotten I was there.