I don’t need to wait for Wes and that sexed-up realtor to explore Sierra Grande. I have two feet and two eyeballs and I can put them to use just fine.
“Girls are good. Emerson found a turtle today. Don’t ask me how, I have no idea. She wants to keep it.” Abby takes another bite of bell pepper. “I asked her where it would sleep and she said your bed.”
I narrow my eyes at my sister’s laughing face. “Very funny.”
“Thanks, I try.”
I exit the hotel and pause on the sidewalk, looking right and then left. After a second’s consideration, I go left.
“I need to put you down, hang on,” Abby says, and I find myself looking at the kitchen ceiling while I listen to the sound of her sharp chef’s knife slicing away on her butcher block cutting board. “Are you coming home tonight?”
“No,” I answer, pushing off the brick wall I’d been leaning on and looking around. The hotel is on a busier street, and storefronts line both sides. Shading my eyes from the sun, I try to read the names in the nearby windows. “I have some more work to do here. Learn the town and get a feel for the property and what the townspeople want to see developed. You have to go slow in a place like this. They won’t take kindly to us marching in and throwing in a strip mall.”
Abby finally picks up the phone so I’m no longer talking to the ceiling. “Don’t you ever tell me you’re not good at anything. Listen to you, thinking of what people want instead of acting like some corporate raider and shoving your agenda down their throats.”
I look away, pretending I didn’t hear the compliment. After all the hell I put my parents through, I have a hard time accepting that I could possibly be doing something good.
“Anyway, Dad and I won’t be coming home until tomorrow evening, probably. Maybe Saturday morning. We don’t have a return flight booked yet.”
Abby smiles into the phone. She looks like our mother, with fair skin and blonde hair made blonder by highlights. “Proud of you, Little D.”
I frown playfully at the nickname, and Abby laughs.
We say goodbye, and I put the phone back in my pocket. At the end of the street is a sign with a huge white arrow and the words Bar N. A quick glance at my watch tells me it’s not quite an acceptable time to have a drink.
But what the hell? Dad’s taking a nap, and it’s not like I have anywhere to be right now.
Now I get it. The reason for the name Bar N is that the place actually is a barn.
From the outside it looks like a regular barn. If it weren’t for the trucks parked haphazardly in the grass around the place, I’d think it was a place where horses should be. Oh, wait, that’s a stable. What animal goes in a barn?
This one, apparently, I think as I walk in. A makeshift bar runs half the length of the left wall, and folding tables dot the floor in such a way that it leaves a big open space in the middle. I’m assuming this is a dance floor, but without any dancers, it looks a bit depressing.
I go to the bar and order a vodka soda. I almost ask what choices I have for vodka, but think better and hold my tongue at the risk of earning myself a dirty look from the female bartender with the partially shaved head.
“Thanks,” I tell her, throwing down some cash and taking my drink to an unoccupied table. There are plenty to choose from.
I’ve been sitting for no fewer than three minutes when an older, crackling voice speaks up behind me.
“Aren’t you a pretty thing?”
I take a deep, slow breath and turn around, ready to flip the middle finger to an asshole who needs to be reminded this isn’t fifty years ago and I haven’t placed my life’s hopes and dreams on being complimented by him.
Something about him makes me stow my trigger-happy middle finger. He’s an old man, probably somewhere around eighty, but his eyes are bright with life.
“Haven’t seen you around here before.” He points a wrinkled, age-spotted finger at me. “And no, that was not a pick-up line, even if it sounded like one.”
Laughter bubbles up. I lean back in my chair and extend a hand. “I’m Dakota Wright. Here on business.”
“Waylon Guthrie. Here since I learned to walk.”
This