Bounty

  For a poet, something like that happening with a man like that was the end of the world.

  I looked different, it was true. It wasn’t just that seven years had passed (though they had). In that time, I’d embraced a variety of fashion options before I settled on the one I liked (or, I should say, my mom and I settled on it, since Joss was my stylist and this not just because she was my mom who would naturally have input into that kind of thing, but because she was my stylist).

  Now my look was one that was not like the miniskirt, tank top, teased-out hair, rocker/biker vixen version of me Deke had met.

  This meant I was in a long, flowing slip dress embellished with matte gold sequins in zigzags and diamonds, back gone completely to my waist, held up by double straps on each side that crisscrossed. The back of the dress was hot, though, but the front gave awesome cleavage.

  My dark brown hair was mostly down, some of its thick curls loose and hanging to my waist, some hanging in braids, the top front twisted back in a messy way from my forehead.

  I had on lots of jewelry, mostly necklaces, bangles at my wrist, earrings in the five holes I had curving up the shell of each ear, and also a jingling ankle bracelet.

  Last, on my feet, flat gladiator sandals.

  70’s pinup was right.

  I looked like an advertisement for Free People clothing.

  Which was how I liked it.

  So I looked different seven years down the road.

  But it still hurt he didn’t remember me.

  I got to the middle of the bar, the only place with stools available that was far from Deke, and I slid up on one. I dropped my phone and fringed suede bag on the bar in front of me.

  When I did, I was surprised to see petite 70’s pinup with the loud, foul mouth was standing in front of me wearing her tight Harley tank over large breasts and a big pregnant belly.

  “Yeah, I’m pregnant,” she announced tetchily and my gaze shot from her stomach to her eyes. “Lexie poppin’ out kids here, there and everywhere. Faye doin’ it. Emme knocked up, though I got there before her. Bubba caught the bug. What am I supposed to do?” she asked belligerently—seriously and visibly pissed at me even though I hadn’t said a word. “I love the guy and he melts like a pussy the instant he’s in an infant’s presence. Forget about it with a toddler he can actually play with. He’s gone. Always volunteering our asses to babysit. Up in my face, ‘Please, my cloud. I’m beggin’ you, Krys. Let’s make a baby.’ So tell me. I love him, what do I do?” she demanded to know.

  “You get pregnant,” I guessed hesitantly.

  “Yup,” she snapped, leaning in. “Knocked up. Too fuckin’ old to be luggin’ this around.” She circled her belly with a hand in a way that was vastly different than the bewilderingly honest, deep and pissed-off ranting she was aiming at me. “Barfin’ mornin’, noon and night. My tits hurt. My head hurts. My feet are swollen. Gotta pee all the time and that includes gettin’ up from the toilet after just peein’. Hadta get an entire new wardrobe I’m never wearin’ again ’cause once this kid slides outta me, they’re goin’ right back up there and tyin’ my tubes.”

  Having taken in the Harley tank, I was wondering what her old wardrobe consisted of when another voice sounded.

  “Krys, no. Baby, what you talkin’ about?”

  My startled gaze slid up to a man who was suddenly there. He was as big as Deke, not as solid, a little bit older, light-brown hair, good-ole-boy eyes, thus a lot more jovial looking.

  He was rounding the petite “Krys” with both arms from the back and curving his body at his height to disastrous levels in order to shove his face in her neck, his hands spanning the sides of her protruding belly.

  Even with his face in her neck, I still heard him say, “We can’t have just one kid. She’s gotta have a brother or sister. Least one.”

  “Bubba, I’m thirty-nine years old,” the pregnant woman snapped.

  Bubba pulled his face out of her neck, tipped his head back, and with twinkling eyes and carefully pressed together lips, he winked at me.

  She was not thirty-nine.

  I gave him a stretched down mouth “your-woman-is-freaking-me-out” face.

  He lifted up, didn’t let his woman go, and burst out laughing.

  At this point, extremely belatedly, I noticed the main entertainment behind the bar were not the only entertainment behind the bar.

  Another man was there, tall, dark-haired, bearded, standing closer to where Deke and the guy with the ball cap were, leaning his narrow, jeans-clad hips against the back of the bar, grinning at the couple before me with an expression on his face like he was watching two kittens wrestling.

  He was vaguely familiar.

  He was also smoking hot.

  “What you drinkin’, gypsy?” I heard asked, and I tore my gaze off the hot guy down the way to look at the man who was clearly Bubba of Bubba’s.

  “Champagne,” I answered, and to this, the woman called Krys bafflingly threw up her hands.

  “Champagne?” she asked and took a step toward me, taking her out of her man’s arms. She flicked only one hand high that time before she dropped it and asked, “Girl, what’s this place look like to you? Unless I didn’t feel it and the entire bar was picked up and transported to Manhattan, Sarah Jessica Parker has done left the building because the bitch never stepped one of her high heels in the building and never would.”

  “Krys, we have champagne,” a rough, deep voice said from down the bar.

  I glanced that way.

  Tall, dark, hot guy was entering the conversation.

  “Yeah, but we don’t got glasses,” she shot back to hot guy and looked to me. “And I’m not openin’ a bottle of champagne only for you to drink one glass, no one touches it for the next night or three or three hundred and seven so I gotta dump that shit down the drain and lose money. I don’t lose money. You want champagne, you drink it in a regular glass and buy the whole damned bottle.”

  “Deal,” I stated.

  “I’ll get it,” Bubba said instantly.

  The woman named Krys narrowed her eyes at me, did a sweep of my head, hair and upper body, then her eyes got squinty.

  “Your look don’t say champagne.”

  “That’s because it normally says beer or bourbon but I have something to celebrate.”

  “Babe, the troops been out of Vietnam for entire decades,” she sniped.

  I decided not to explain that her hair might be a different facet of that decade, but she shared something with me.

  “She gets touchy when she’s on her feet for a while,” that rough, deep voice came back and I looked toward it to see he was close and tossing a beer mat in front of me. He then turned and grabbed a milky-glassed, oft-washed, possibly purchased in Krys and my fashion inspiration decade wineglass from the back of the bar, turned back and set it on the mat.

  “Tate, do not speak about me like I’m not even here,” Krys bit out.

  He looked down at her. “Krys, you’re makin’ Twyla look downright friendly.”

  Her lips thinned.

  I braced at the same time wondering who Twyla was and hoping I didn’t ever meet her.

  The champagne cork popped.

  And with that distraction, I gave up the struggle, looked all the way right and saw that Deke was still at his place at the end of the bar, back now to me, attention not on the guy with the cap but across the space.

  I looked where his attention was aimed and saw a mini-skirted biker babe leaned over the pool table, ready to take a shot, ass aimed Deke’s way with a purpose.

  God, he didn’t only not remember me, he had no interest in me.

  God.

  “You’re usually beer and bourbon,” Bubba started and I jerked my gaze back to him.

  I noticed he was pouring my champagne.

  Krys was looking toward Deke.

  The man called Tate was studying me.

  I swallowed.

  “Then what’s with the champagne?” Bub
ba finished.

  “About an hour ago, I closed on a house,” I shared.

  Krys turned her glare back to me. Bubba smiled huge. Tate kept studying me.

  “Well, shit, woman, that’s a celebration. Welcome to the neighborhood!” Bubba cried, lifting the bottle of champagne in a salute before he set it down by my now-filled glass.

  “If you want, you can all share it with me,” I offered, tipping my head to the bottle.

  “Do I look like I can suck back a glass of champagne?” Krys clipped.

  “No. Though you act like you need one,” I retorted to Bubba’s choked-back guffaw and Tate’s lips twitching. “But I wasn’t offering it to you. I was offering it to the guys.”

  “On-duty, darlin’. But thanks for the offer,” Bubba said.

  “Sweet, but I’m not a champagne kinda guy,” Tate put in. “And I second what Bubba said. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

  I nodded to him.

  With one last look at me, he wandered away.

  I looked back to Bubba and Krys who were now attached with Bubba’s arm around her shoulders.

  “So, just sayin’, good news,” Bubba noted. “Not a lotta folk been movin’ here past few years. Lotta folks been movin’ out, not a lot movin’ in. Nice to have a fresh face around.”

  “And a new ass to sit on a stool,” Krys put in. “That crazy lumber guy in Gnaw Bone, hirin’ hits, kidnappin’ people and shootin’ folk. Dalton, our own personal serial killer. Fuller and his pig cops keepin’ everyone under their thumbs, framin’ Ty for murder, extraditing his ass to LA to rot in prison for five years.”

  I was blinking rapidly at all her words, but Krys didn’t notice.

  She was still talking.

  “Thought we hit enough extreme to last a lifetime, then we had those lunatics who lost their shit thinkin’ it’d be exposed and buryin’ Faye alive. Bigger lunatic church lady holdin’ those two poor kids hostage in her basement for years. And if that wasn’t bad enough, then came those fuckin’ crazy teachers brainwashing kids into robbin’ houses. All a’ that goin’ down, no one wants near Carnal, Gnaw Bone or Chantelle. It’s the fuckin’ Bermuda Triangle of the Rockies.”

  I’d thankfully stopped blinking but I knew I had my mouth hanging open, I just didn’t have it in me to close it.

  Real estate agent Joni hadn’t shared any of that with me.

  That house didn’t sell for ten months because it was over-priced and incomplete.

  Serial killers? Hired hits? Brainwashed kids?

  A woman buried alive?

  What the fuck?

  At least it brought to mind how I knew that Tate guy. He’d been on the news about that serial killer.

  I just didn’t recall that all happened in Carnal.

  Until now.

  “Don’t worry, girl,” Bubba said, leaning himself and Krys toward me. “Been least a year since any of that kinda shit’s gone down.”

  It would need to be two years. Better, three. Even better, twenty.

  “I’m Bubba,” he stated, jerking a beefy mitt my way.

  I took it and shook it and let go.

  “This here’s Krystal, regulars call her Krys,” Bubba went on.

  “And you’ll be a regular ’cause unless you wanna drive twenty miles to Gnaw Bone, only place to get beer and bourbon is Bubba’s. You with me?” Krys shared her invitation in a way that was more a command that I be a customer.

  I nodded since that was the only thing I thought prudent to do.

  “Man gave you the glass, he’s Tate Jackson.” Bubba jerked his head Tate’s (and Deke’s) way. “End of the bar, you’ll always find company with Jim-Billy. Spirit moves him, you’ll also find it with Deke.”

  I suppressed my intake of breath.

  “Happy to introduce you around,” Bubba offered.

  I didn’t want him to introduce me around seeing as that round of introductions would include Deke.

  “I’ll take you up on that offer,” I said, wrapping my hand around my glass and lifting it. “After I get a little of this in me.”

  “You got it, darlin’,” Bubba replied on a smile, gave Krystal a squeeze and then moved down the bar.

  Krystal kept staring at me.

  “Didn’t say your name,” she noted.

  I wondered if she’d figured out who I was with the way she was now staring at me. Some people did. Most people, luckily, didn’t.

  “Jus—” I cut myself off.

  “Jus?” she asked when I didn’t continue.

  I nodded since that was true. Lots of folks shortened my name to Jus and friends and family called me Jussy.

  “Jus,” she stated like she wanted it confirmed.

  “It’s short for something, nickname. Prefer it.” That last was a lie.

  But new house, new town, new bar, new life.

  And if they knew my real name, they’d put two and two together a lot faster. There’d be time enough for that to come out.

  Now was just not that time.

  Now was the time for me to just be Jus.

  And anyway, if they mentioned me to Deke, he might remember me (maybe).

  I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to go my way and do my best not to see Deke at all.

  I did want to know older guy with a ball cap. And Krystal and Bubba were seriously crazy, but I’d known crazier and at least they weren’t boring and Bubba was very friendly. Not to mention, he didn’t hang around long, but Tate seemed to be a good guy. Strangely watchful, but when you’d run down a serial killer that worked at your bar, I figured that shit happened.

  And I’d closed on my house. It was time to find my peace, my privacy, my place, my less that’s more than I needed.

  But in that less is more, I’d need people. Everyone needed at least some people and I was part of that everyone.

  And these people resided in my peace, my place, my less that’s more.

  So I’d take them.

  Chapter Two

  No Big Deal

  Justice

  My phone ringing woke me, and blurry-eyed and clumsy, I reached out to grab it from the nightstand, bring it to my face and stare at the display.

  No name, so not programmed in, but the number was local.

  I looked at the time on my phone.

  Quarter past eight.

  Jesus, who called this early?

  Since the number was local, and therefore not someone I was avoiding, I took the call.

  “’Lo,” I answered in a mumble.

  “Justice?” a gravelly-voiced man asked.

  The voice was familiar, and if I was more awake, I could call it up.

  Unfortunately, it was way too early so I couldn’t call it up.

  “Yes, sorry, you are?” I asked, pushing up to a forearm in the bed.

  “Max. Holden Maxwell. You’ve got a deposit down on some construction work with me,” he answered.

  Shit. Max. Holden Maxwell. Hot guy number one I’d met in these Colorado mountains.

  And that number was quickly growing. It was like there was something in the water or a local secret where, if you journeyed out, you had to vow not to share their bounty and sign that contract in blood or they could hunt you down and kill you. Even with serial killers, kidnappers and people being buried alive, the hot guy quotient would negate that and women would be flocking to those tall, rocky hills.

  “Yes, Max, sorry, of course,” I said, and went on to explain my rudeness, “I’m not a morning person.”

  When he replied, he sounded like he had a smile in his voice (and I’d noted in our meeting where I engaged him to finish the work that he was a pretty happy dude on the whole, in a tall, dark and hot way, of course), “Sorry, Justice. But I’ve got some news that may be good for you and thought you’d wanna know right away to see if you wanna run with it.”

  Oh God, I hoped one of his clients backed out or delayed or ran out of money.

  This wasn’t nice to hope but I had a mini-fridge in the garage, one working
sink, no on-site laundry, a furnace installed that didn’t work (and the nights were getting straight-up chilly) and not much livable space.

  I’d been in my house for three days and I was already wondering if I should try to find a local VRBO to rent for a couple of months because I needed space. I needed a washing machine. I needed silverware that wasn’t plastic that I got with my takeout that I’d eat sitting in my bed.

  What I didn’t need was to die of exposure inside my newfound oasis because there was no way to turn on my furnace.

  But then I’d make coffee in the coffeemaker that sat on top of the mini-fridge in the garage and sit out on my personal deck outside my bedroom and I’d lose all thought of VRBOs.

  “I’d love to hear this news, Max,” I told him.

  “Got a guy who’s a temp for me. He’s back in town, looking for work,” Max replied. “Since he’s told me he’s in town for a while and he’s not scheduled out on any of my other contracts, I could send him to you.”

  I pushed up to sitting, exclaiming, “Oh my God! That’d be great!”

  “He’s just one guy, Justice,” Max warned. “The progress would be slow, but there’d be progress.”

  I could be happy with progress. I could make coffee in the garage and clean the pot out in the bathroom sink for a month if I had a working furnace (not to mention a washing machine).

  Before I could share that I wanted this dude to start in the utility room (after hooking up my furnace, of course), Max kept talking.

  “More good news, this guy does it all. Electrical. Plumbing. Carpentry. I’d have him as a foreman if he wasn’t a travelin’ man.”

  This just got better and better.

  “Awesome,” I said.

  The goodness kept coming from Max.

  “He’s also down with doing overtime. So that progress will definitely progress.”

  “Hallelujah, God’s answered my prayers,” I praised the heavens in reply to Max.

  Another smile in Max’s rocky voice. “Overtime for just a few hours a day, two, three. Hard labor, don’t like asking more from my men and they get beat, don’t want the work to suffer.”

  “I’ll take it,” I accepted instantly.

  “Gotta pay that overtime, Justice. And it’s you that has to approve it since it’s your money I’ll be payin’ him.”