Bull Mountain(48)

“Hey, buddy, watch your—” The look of recognition registered on Big Joe Dooley’s face before he finished his sentence. “Sorry, Sheriff, I didn’t see you there. My bad.” Joe was known to get a little rowdy. Clayton and Choctaw both had locked him up in the drunk tank once or twice to let him sleep it off before sending him home to his wife and kids, but otherwise, the big boy was relatively harmless.

“S’okay, Joe.” Clayton hailed Nicole, who immediately stopped what she was doing, smiled a big pearly smile, and poured the sheriff a ginger ale from a squatty green bottle under the bar. Clayton’s most recent usual. She slapped a bar napkin down and set the soda in front of the sheriff, then took notice of his swollen eye and split lip. Her pretty smile contorted into a pretty grimace.

“Ouch,” she said. “Holy cow, Sheriff. How does the other guy look?”

“Much better than me, I’m afraid.”

“You want me to make you an ice pack for that?”

“That’s okay, Nicole.”

“It’s no problem. I got clean rags in the back. I could fix you up.”

“Nah, it’s just a scratch. I’ll be okay. Busy night tonight, huh?”

“It’s a busy night every night, sir.” Nicole leaned forward on the bar with both elbows, maybe not so unintentionally creating a perfect view of her sun-freckled cleavage. Clayton did his best not to look. She didn’t make it easy. Her big green eyes would stop traffic even without all the eye makeup she shrouded them in, but girls her age never believed that. She was a looker, but a good girl. Clayton liked her. Big Joe made no attempt to reel in his slack-jawed stare and shifted his cumbersome weight on the bar stool to lean toward her and Clayton’s conversation. “You think I could get a beer, or do I have to be wearin’ a silver star on my shirt, too?”

“Just a second, Joe,” Nicole said without looking at him.

Joe frowned an exaggerated drunken frown. “I been waiting here almost ten minutes, girlie.”

This time she did look at him. “Look around you, Joe. It’s a little busy. I’ll be right with you.”

Joe shot a quick glance at Clayton, then mumbled something shitty into his empty glass. Clayton assumed it would have been a lot louder if he hadn’t been sitting there. He ignored him and took a sip of the ginger ale. That wasn’t going to do it.

“I’ll be back shortly, Sheriff. Are you hungry? Uncle Hollis’s got some country fried steak left over from the lunch rush.”

“No, thanks, Nicole, but . . .” Clayton paused. Nicole lifted an eyebrow. “. . . you could bring me two fingers of Knob Creek. Straight up.”

Nicole, caught off guard, narrowed her eyes at the sheriff. “Um . . . okay,” she said, and turned to get the bottle down from the mirrored shelf behind her. Big Joe Dooley dug his pudgy elbow into Clayton’s recently bruised ribs, causing him to wince with pain, but Joe didn’t notice. He pointed to Nicole up on a step stool reaching for the bourbon. The bright colors of the floral tattoo that covered the small of her back teased out from a sliver of skin above the low waist of her jeans.

“Now, that there is an ass. Right, Sheriff?”

Clayton said nothing and again avoided taking in an eyeful of the half-his-age ass in the air.

“I could sit right here and wait on a beer forever,” Joe said, “if I could watch her swing that shit-cutter around all night.”

That made the nerve above Clayton’s eye twitch. “Shut the f*ck up, Joe.”

Big Joe crumpled his nose like he’d just taken a whiff of fresh dog shit and honestly searched his brain for a reason why another man would take offense to that statement.

Nicole stepped down, oblivious, and poured the whiskey into a clean glass in front of Clayton. He nodded a “thank you” and she winked a “you’re welcome.” A short narrow man who looked like he was carved completely out of seasoned leather waved a twenty-dollar bill at Nicole from down the bar. She held a finger up to Clayton and sashayed off toward her tip money. Clayton closed his eyes and held the glass to his nose. It smelled of oak, vanilla, and bad decisions. The moment ended abruptly with another shot of pain up his side. Big Joe landed another elbow to Clayton’s ribs, spoiling the sheriff’s first sip. Bourbon dribbled down his beard and spilled onto the bar. He put the glass down.

“I hate to see her leave,” Joe said, leaning across the bar, his eyes glued to Nicole’s backside. “But I love to watch her go.”

Clayton used his napkin to mop up the spilled drink and felt the heat rise under his skin. “I thought I told you to shut up, Joe. In fact”—Clayton turned all the way around into the big man’s face—“why don’t you get your fat ass up and find somewhere else to sit as far away from me and that girl as possible.” Clayton’s voice was louder than he’d intended, but that’s what happened when he drank. A few heads turned. A few conversations stopped. Confusion spread over Big Joe’s face like a rash.

“Goddamn, Clayton, I was just cuttin’ up.”

“Move your ass, Joe. Now.” Clayton sat up a little straighter and bowed his chest out. There wasn’t much to it, but it looked a lot bigger to most with that star pinned to it. Nicole came back and set a fresh beer in front of Joe. She looked as confused as he did. Joe picked up his frosted mug and gave Clayton a drunken half-assed toast, in the process managing to spill beer down the front of his shirt.