of the nightstand. Holding it to his side, he opened his bedroom door just enough to peek out. A shadow moved toward the center of the foyer. He brought the gun up, and a flash of light almost blinded him.
“What the hell?” he said.
Jolene whipped around. “Sorry I woke you. I tried to be quiet.”
He slung the door all the way open. “I can’t make the same promise when I come home late, but I’ll do my best. How’d the first night at work go?”
“Busy. Made two hundred in tips. That’ll pay the electric bill and put some food in the pantry.” She sat down on a chair at the end of the foyer table and pulled off her boots. “I’m hungry. You want some cereal? There’s the chocolate kind and the fruity one.”
“Sure,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
“To put the gun away or get a shirt on?” she asked.
“I can go as I am,” he offered.
“I might spill the milk.” She headed toward the kitchen in mismatched socks.
“Why?” he asked.
She turned around and shrugged. “I don’t pour too hot with a gun pointed at me or if I get distracted by a man’s sexy chest, so you’d do well to put on a shirt and get rid of the gun.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
The gun went back in the drawer, and he jerked his shirt over his head. She was setting out boxes of cereal on the table when he made it to the kitchen. A memory of Melanie in the kitchen flashed through his mind. He’d loved that woman with all his heart, but the kitchen had looked like a war zone after she cooked. And the high-pitched squeal of the smoke alarm always meant that dinner must be close to ready.
He got the milk from the refrigerator. “Don’t suppose you want coffee just before bed, do you?”
She shook her head. “No, but as tired as I am, it probably wouldn’t keep me from sleeping.”
They ate in silence for the most part. She frowned a lot and cocked her head from one side to the other several times before she shook it in disagreement with whatever voices were in her head. It kind of reminded him of when Sassy needed to be treated for ear mites.
“Are you about to have a seizure or something?” he asked.
“No, there was a woman at the bar who . . .” She paused.
“Who what?” he asked.
“Mama,” she said. “She reminded me of my mother. Not in looks, but in actions. I tried to close that chapter in my life a long time ago, but it keeps risin’ to the surface.”
“Want to talk about it?” Tucker understood exactly what she was talking about.
Jolene was quiet for so long that he figured she didn’t want to say anything, but then she began to talk. “She was on a guilt trip from the time my daddy died. He probably had the heart attack because he was stressed out, working two jobs to keep her in her fancy jeans and a new car every year. And even that wasn’t enough. His insurance policy paid off the credit cards, but she lost the car and the house. We moved into a trailer and she went to work at a grocery store there in town. Her guilt sent her into a vicious merry-go-round of drugs, alcohol, and men.”
She refilled her glass and went on, “I love milk. We didn’t always have it in the house those last couple of years, but Mama had her pills. When the doctor quit giving them to her, then she got them from the street. Every Saturday night she’d go out. Before she left, she’d get all dressed up and take two or three pills. That woman tonight reminded me of all that. I hated to see her like that. She’d always been . . .”
Just thinking that he’d been looking forward to hitting the bar the next night filled Tucker with his own share of guilt. He shouldn’t put her through all that again—not even if they were just partners. She was a good woman, and she damn sure deserved better.
“How long was it until you lost her?”
“Four years after Daddy died. But truth is I lost her when the doctor gave her that first bottle of pills to help her get through the funeral. She’d always liked her liquor and usually started on cocktails long before five o’clock. Mix those with enough pain pills and—” Jolene’s shoulder rose. “I thought when