Sneak Peek
Why didn’t I just stay home with the Ben and Jerry’s? Surely ringing in the New Year with a pint of What A Cluster is better than this.
Gemma Forester picked her way across the gravel parking lot, praying she didn’t break an ankle, or worse, one of the precious Jimmy Choos she’d scrimped and saved and paid damn near retail for.
I’m going to kill him, she thought. That’s simply all there is to it. Family immunity does not apply. Mom will have to understand.
The bar door opened before she could reach for it. A pair of clearly drunk rednecks stumbled out, lips locked, along with a burst of truly craptastic country music. Whoever the bar had hired to play for the night was going to be lucky if they made it out without requiring intervention from Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott.
Gemma leapt out of the way before the couple could lurch into her. With the door held open, she watched them stagger to a beat up pick-up truck. The guy managed to get the passenger door open, while simultaneously removing his date’s bra from her tank top. Gemma couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or appalled. She went inside before her suspicion that they weren’t going to make it out of the parking lot was confirmed.
The music didn’t stop and all attention didn’t focus on her, but she noted her fair share of raised eyebrows. She ignored the catcalls and wolf whistles.
“Eat your heart out, boys,” she muttered, crossing to the bar.
As a rule, she wasn’t opposed to honky tonks. If she was in the mood and dressed for one, she could totally go for some boot scootin’. But she’d been dressed for dinner at Chez Philippe, where she’d been forced to abandon her very pissed off date before the signature golden champagne raspberry sorbet was served. All because her stupid brother was drinking himself under the table over his latest lost love and making enough of an ass of himself that the bartender had liberated his phone and gone straight down his contact list trying to find someone to come pick him up.
And of course nobody else was dumb enough to pick up tonight, she thought.
It would’ve served him right if she’d left him to be arrested for public drunkenness. But there was always that niggling doubt that the bartender hadn’t been able to take his keys as easily as his phone, and what if he got behind the wheel…? So with profuse apologies, she’d walked out on her date—who she knew damned well was never going to call again—and taken a cab down here to Red’s Roadhouse.
The bar was two-deep in patrons. She’d had half a dozen offers of drinks and a headache from the caterwauling they apparently called music by the time she fought her way through. Red himself—it had to be him—was manning the taps, a towel tucked into the waistband of his jeans. A giant of a man, with carrot-orange hair ringing a bald pate and an enormous fu manchu mustache, he automatically asked for her order without taking his eyes off the glasses he was filling.
“I’ll take the drunk idiot you called me about and get him off your hands.”
Red shifted his attention to Gemma. His bushy brows rose. “Well now, which one belongs to you?”
“There’s more than one?” she asked.
“Got three. One’s sleepin’ it off under the pool table over there,” he nodded to the left.
Peering between the legs of the players, Gemma could just make out a figure curled into a fetal position. Too small to be Rick.
“One’s workin’ on soberin’ up with some chili cheese fries down at the other end of the bar.”
This guy was hunched over a plastic basket, shoveling in bar food as he swayed a little on the stool. Not Rick.
“The other one’s up there.” Red jerked his chin toward the back of the room behind her.
Turning, Gemma realized it wasn’t a live band that was playing so badly. It was a karaoke station set up on a little stage. Beneath the blinking party lights that were making her queasy without any alcohol, a lone performer clutched at the mic stand and wailed out a very explicit, very profane rendition of “Friends in Low Places”.
“Oh, of course, that one’s my drunk idiot brother,” she said. Heaving a sigh, she turned back to Red. “Do you have his phone? His keys?”
“Sure. One sec.”
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