Page 20 of The Wedding Gift

When her mama and daddy found out what she had done, they were going to have a hissy fit that went way beyond the one they’d had when her grandparents took her to the Honky Tonk on her twenty-first birthday. She was a preacher’s daughter and she didn’t belong in bars—according to what they thought.

She dreaded telling them that she was now the half owner of a bar, that she’d left a lucrative job in Nashville and moved to Mingus, Texas. She would have to come clean with them within the next week, because they would be expecting her to come home for the holiday. Guess what? She wasn’t going to be in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, for Christmas dinner.

She’d only been to Mingus one time in her life, and that was on her twenty-first birthday. Her maternal grandparents had taken her out for what they thought was her first legal drink. The Honky Tonk was a pretty neat little place back then, but that had been nine years ago. If the bar had changed as much as she had, there was no telling what it looked like now. Back then, she had danced with a couple of good-lookin’ cowboys, but that wasn’t anything new. In Nashville, where she went to college, she could have kicked any bush from Church Street to the Ryman Auditorium and a dozen cowboys would come running out wanting to sing a sad country song.

Jorja had been wishing for months that she could get away from the big city and do something less stressful with her life. When her grandparents, George and Lila, and their friend Merle Avery had come to Nashville, and Merle had told her that she was retiring and wanted to give her half rights to the Honky Tonk, Jorja had thought she was kidding. The offer of owning her own business, even if it was a bar in the littlebitty town of Mingus, seemed like an answer to a prayer. She could leave the city, live closer to her grandparents, and she’d own her very own business. The only problem was that she had no idea what all was involved with securing ownership. She had thrown caution to the wind and signed the papers on impulse. Now that she was minutes away from Mingus and driving in a mixture of sleet and snow, she wondered what in the hell she had done.

“I don’t take risks,” she whispered.

But you did this time, her grandmother’s voice singsonged in her head,and you did it without batting an eye or asking a single question about Cameron Walsh, your partner in this new adventure.

“I just hope the co-owner makes a good roommate, like my old high school friend, Cam. I should call her this week and tell her about moving here. She’ll never believe it.” Jorja heaved a sigh of relief when she eased into a parking space. Her SUV was loaded with everything she owned these days. She located the key to the back door in her purse and pushed the driver’s door open. Icy-cold wind whipped through the car, and sleet stung her face when she stepped out onto the slippery concrete parking lot. Her red hair blew across her face as she hurried to unlock the back door. She brushed it away and attempted to insert the key into the lock, only to find that it was filled with ice.

“Dammit!” She swore and ran back to her vehicle. Sitting in the driver’s seat again, she glared at the door, but her go-to-hell looks didn’t melt the ice caked around the keyhole. Finally, she remembered the cigarette lighter in her emergency kit. She opened the console, found it, and said a silent prayer that it still had some fluid in it—the thing had been in the bag of unused items her father had given her for at least ten years.

“One more time,” she muttered as she opened the door and braced herself against the cold. She tried to jog from vehicle to door, but the second time her feet slipped out from under her and she almost fell, she slowed down the pace. She held the flame close to the lock, but the sleet kept putting out the tiny bit of fire. Finally, after a dozen tries, a bit of water trickled from the metal hole, and she was able to unlock the door. She reached inside and found the light switch, flipped it on, and stepped inside her new apartment.

“Holy damn hell!” She hadn’t known what to expect when she swung the door open, but it damn sure wasn’t what she was looking at. Merle had told her the apartment in the back of the bar hadn’t been lived in for ten years, but that had to be wrong. No way could that much dust accumulate in only a decade. Jorja was looking at forty years’ worth of stuff, at the very least.

Two twin-sized beds were shoved against a far wall to make one bed. That would never work. Jorja would share an efficiency apartment with another woman, but she wasn’t going to share a bed. At the far end of the room was a small kitchenette with barely enough space on the right side of the sink for a dish drainer and on the left side for a coffeepot. The apartment-sized stove sat on one end, and a small two-door refrigerator on the other. She walked across the floor, leaving footprints in the dust behind her, and found that the stove worked, but the refrigerator was unplugged. She pulled it out enough to get it going, killed two big-ass spiders that ran out from under it, and then pushed it back in place. When she opened the doors, she found it empty but at least clean.

She opened several doors—one to a big closet, another to a bathroom, and finally the last one got her the utility room with a stacked washer and dryer combination and cleaning supplies and another door at the far end that led into the bar. She peeked inside and found it hadn’t changed since she’d been there all those years ago. She filled a bucket with water and another one with cleaning supplies, and carried both out into the apartment. When it was spotless, she’d bring her things inside. If it wasn’t clean enough by bedtime, she’d drive back over to Mineral Wells and spend the night with her grandparents.

“Where are you, Cam?” she groaned. “If I get this all cleaned before you get here, then you have to do the weekly cleaning for a month.”

Cameron Walsh was a big risk-taker.

He didn’t care what other people thought about his decisions. He made them. He lived with the consequences, so basically whether they were related to him or not, it was none of their business.

He didn’t hesitate about quitting his job or moving from Florida to Texas—not one minute when his grandparents, Walter and Maria Walsh, called and told him that their friend Merle wanted to give him half ownership of the Honky Tonk.

God, he loved that old bar, and when he visited his grandparents in Stephenville, he had spent too many nights there to count. To be half owner of his own bar was a dream come true. He could live in the apartment behind the Honky Tonk with some guy named JJ. His favorite cousin, Jesse James, was nicknamed JJ, and they’d shared too many hangovers and good times together to count on their fingers and toes combined. He only hoped this new co-owner was half as much fun as his cousin had been. Just thinking about himbeing gone put a lump in Cameron’s throat that was hard to swallow down.

The digital clock on the dashboard of his truck turned over to 11:11 when he rounded the back corner of the bar and nosed his vehicle in beside a bright red SUV. “So, you’re not a cowboy, JJ.” He chuckled. “I sure hope you at least like a beer now and then.”

When he stepped out of the truck, the wind whipped his cowboy hat off and sent it rolling like a tumbleweed across the snow- and ice-covered parking lot. He chased it down and settled it back on his head. Another gust sent it flying across the lot again. This time it came to rest on a low limb of a huge pecan tree. He retrieved it a second time and held it tightly in his hands all the way to the back door of the Honky Tonk.

Merle said that the apartment hadn’t been used in years, so he wasn’t expecting much. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take long to clear off his bed and throw a set of sheets on it. Cameron was dog tired after driving for more than eighteen hours. Using the key Merle had sent him in the mail, he opened the door and stepped into a small apartment that smelled like lemon-scented cleaners. From the looks of the place, JJ was a neat freak and had chosen the twin bed across the room. Red and green throw pillows were tossed onto anoff-white comforter, and the chest of drawers on that side had a doily on it.

“Sweet Jesus! What have I gotten myself into?” Cameron muttered as he crossed the room and opened the first door to find a utility room. The second door opened into a bathroom that was complete with the standard toilet, a wall-hung sink, and a deep claw-foot tub with a shower above it. He groaned when he realized he was looking at a shower curtain that had a Christmas tree printed on it. He turned around, bewildered. Cowboys didn’t decorate, and they damn sure didn’t use doilies under cute little lamps like the one sitting on the chest of drawers on JJ’s side of the room.

He shook his head, stepped into the bathroom, and closed the door. When he finished getting rid of two cups of coffee and a big bottle of root beer, he washed his hands and opened the door to find a woman standing in front of him with a pistol pointed at his chest.

“Who in the hell are you, and how did you get in here?” Her cornflower-blue eyes didn’t have a bit of fear in them. She had flaming-red hair that hung in curls down to her shoulders, and even though she was short, her stance said that she would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later.

He raised both hands and said, “I didn’t know JJ was bringing a girlfriend, but that explains all the foo-foo crap.”

“Are you drunk or crazy?” the woman asked. “No one calls me JJ except my grandparents, and I damn sure don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Youare JJ?” Cameron felt as if his eyeballs were going to flip out of their sockets and roll around on the floor like marbles at the toes of his cowboy boots.

“I am Jorja Jenks,” she said, and her grip on that gun was firm and her hand was steady.

“I’m Cameron Walsh,” he said. “You can put the gun away. Looks like we’re going to be roommates and co-owners of the Honky Tonk.”

“That’s not possible. Cameron is a g-girl,” she stammered.

“And JJ was my favorite cousin, and believe me, he was all cowboy,” Cameron chuckled. “I think our grandparents and Merle Avery have pulled a good one on us. Would you please lower that gun? Talkin’ is a little tough with that thing pointed at my heart, and, honey, we definitely have a lot to talk about.”

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