* * * * *
An hour later he tucked into his dinner at the bar instead of in the adjoining dining room. This half of the place was deserted, except for her. Sophia. She was tall and elegant for a bartender. Yeah, she wore faded jeans and high heeled boots, a red and green plaid button-down shirt over a figure-hugging tank top. Hair all bundled up. But he’d seen it down. She was a true beauty. Apple cheeks and great big eyes and lips made for kissing.
She seemed at home behind the bar, and yet he didn’t think she belonged there. He had to know more about her. The boys had told him precious little.
There were several tables full of people in the dining room. But the barroom half of the Long Branch was deserted, except for her.
Sophie stood on the other side of the bar and said, “Don’t you want to eat your dinner at a table?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” She was wiping a spotless patch of the gleaming bar.
“View’s better here.”
She groaned and made a face. “That was terrible. Seriously, that’s the line you’re gonna try on me? View’s better here?”
He couldn’t have held back the smile if he’d wanted to. So he didn’t try. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?” he tried, making a question of the question.
She shook her head. “Worse yet. How’s your steak?” She indicated his plate with her chin.
“Freaking mouthwatering.”
“Yeah, the guys have a great cook. Ned cooked in the Navy. Nothing but the best for the Long Branch.”
“What made them decide to put a tourist attraction pseudo-saloon in a middle-of-nowhere town like this?”
She shrugged. “Not them, their father, Uncle Bobby Joe. I like to think he triangulated all the ghost towns and other tourist hotspots and put this place dead center. He’s a genius at things like that. But the truth of the matter is simpler. He fell in love.”
She filled a glass of icy sweet tea for him, brought it back and set it on the bar. “So what’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” she asked.
He smiled. “Funny how that line works just fine on me.”
She shrugged. “You’re a guy. Any line will work on you. So? What’s the answer?”
He thought about it for a moment. “It’s just the latest part of the journey.”
“To where?”
“Don’t know, exactly. It’s starting to look like it’ll end up right back where it started, though.”
She frowned, her brows bending a little. “I have to hear this,” she said. “Please, elaborate.”
He looked around the place. Still no one bellying up to the bar, and he’d already seen that she didn’t wait tables. There were three other girls doing that, maybe still in their teens. She wasn’t too busy to talk. And he was enjoying it. “I decided to take a year off and–”
“Wait, wait.” She held up a hand. “A year off what?”
He smiled. “Secret service.”
She blew air through her teeth like she’d sprung a leak, shaking her head and making her ponytail dance. “Come on, enough with the bar lines.”
He pulled a wallet from the back of his jeans and flipped it onto the counter. She stared down at his shield, which was the only thing inside. The wallet wasn’t a wallet at all, but a holder for the badge. She blinked twice, then looked up at him. “No kidding?”
“No kidding. I worked for the governor’s office in Texas, most recently.”
“Why’d you leave?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I went to work every day, came back every night. After a while of doing the same thing day in and day out, I just got this feeling there had to be…”
She whispered “something more” at the same time he did. He raised his eyebrows and shot her a look. “You know what I mean, then.”
“Yeah, I do. This isn’t…my usual gig either.”
“No? What is?”
She’d been staring off into space a bit, but her eyes snapped back to his then and she said, “We’re talking about you. So you decided to take a year off and…?”
“And travel the country. See it all. Write some songs. I decided–”
“Wait, wait, you’re a songwriter?”
He smiled. “Not to speak of, no. Was once. Ancient history now. So anyway, I decided–”
“Why’d you quit? Writing songs, I mean? Did you ever record any? Did anyone else?”
He tipped his head to one side. “I thought I already finished the job interview.”
She smiled. “I have an inquisitive mind, or so my mamma used to tell me. It’s okay if you don’t want to answer.”
He watched her face. Animated, that’s how he would describe it. Her expressions changed with every thought and every emotion.
“I decided,” he said, picking up where she’d interrupted him. Twice, “not to use any of my own money. It’s kind of a challenge to try to work my way from one place to the next, so I’d have to really experience life in new places, doing new things.”
“Wow.” She was looking at him as if amazed. “I could never do that.”
“No?”
“No. No way. I like to plan everything. I have to know where I’m going and when. I even map out my sightseeing days ahead of time when I travel.”
She smiled and he liked it. She had a wide, lush mouth with full, soft looking lips and pretty, white teeth. “How long have you been at this?” she asked.
“Since last Christmas Eve.”
And inevitably, that sympathetic look he had come to dread, came over her pretty face. “You left home on Christmas Eve?”
“Yeah, I left home on Christmas Eve. Why does everyone act like my puppy died when I tell them that? It wasn’t sad or tragic or heartbreaking. I was bored, and I’d put in my last day and my stuff was all packed. I didn’t see why a date on a calendar should make me put off my trip.”
“Sure, sure. I didn’t mean–” Then she tipped her head to one side and said, “Well, yeah. I did, actually, but I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
She tried to act as if she understood when he knew she didn’t. But then she asked another question, easing them out of the awkward moment with a kind of grace that told him she must work with people. Lots of different people. “So where did you go first? And where did you start out, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t mind you asking,” he said, and he thought that was odd, because he would have, had she been anyone else. “Started in Houston and headed west. Up the California coast. Went through the northwest, Washington and Oregon, and kept going clockwise right around the country. East to Maine, then down to the Everglades.”
Her eyes were wide, like she was taking in everything about him as he talked. Like she was truly interested. “This is your last stop, isn’t it? Your year is almost up.”
“That it is,” he said, nodding and averting his eyes. “That it is.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
He sighed. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t think so.”
“Will you tell me what it was?”
He met her eyes again, looked deep into ‘em and saw sincerity. She really wanted to know. “Peace,” he said. “As best I can put my finger on it, it was peace I went looking for.”
“Ah, yeah, peace. That one’s on my wish list too. I wrote Santa about it.” Before he could decide if she was joking or not, one of the waitresses came over calling, “I need two Margaritavilles and a Bud Light, Sophia.”
“Margaritavilles?” Darryl asked.
“One of my specialties. I invented it.” She winked and moved down the bar, pulling glasses, pouring from three bottles at a time. He widened his eyes, impressed, and she saw him watching, flipped one of the bottles in the air, caught it, and kept on pouring. She was not just a bartender, he thought. She was not just an anything.
“I have to deliver these. The girls are underage.”
He nodded and watched her go, thinkin
g maybe a meaningless holiday fling wasn’t such a great idea. A guy could get himself in too deep with a girl like Sophie McIntyre.