Sweet Dreams (Colorado Mountain #2)(10)

Whatever.

Whatever!

This was my life as I wanted to lead it. This was the place I wanted to live it. I’d been on the road driving through towns and cities looking for what I needed and after four and a half months, this was the only place that felt right. And Bubba’s felt right too, even though it wasn’t much and the people weren’t nice, it still felt right.

And I didn’t care if they didn’t like me. I didn’t care if they didn’t think I was one of them. I didn’t care that my jeans cost twice as much as theirs and my t-shirt was designer and they saw it, knew it and didn’t like it.

Fuck them. Both of them.

I walked out of the storeroom and back into the bar. I found a sheet of paper, took stock of what was needed and went back to the storeroom to search through the shelves and find it. I was on trip three and squatted down rotating bottles of Bud and Coors Light when I heard them come back.

I sucked in breath and looked up and when I did I looked right at Tate. When my eyes caught his, I watched his face change sharply and it did this with a small head jerk and wince.

He knew I’d heard him and at least that jerk had the good grace to react.

I put in the last bottles, stood, pushed the fridge door to and walked toward them both, saying, “One more trip and re-stock should be done. I made notes of what I took and I’ll mark it on your clipboard. Then I’ll wipe down the tables.”

Then I walked by them, down the hall and into the storeroom.

Fuck them.

Both of them.

I had a job to do.

Chapter Three

Shake It Off

I walked out of my hotel room and the door closed behind me.

“Hey hon,” Betty called. “That’s a pretty top.”

I turned to Betty to see she had a hose and was doing her morning watering of the flowers. She had on a sundress, a light cardigan and hot pink Crocs. Her hair was dyed a very flaming red and was pulled back in a ponytail. Her legs had a hint of tan I guessed because she was often out watering her flowers or cleaning the pool or sweeping the walkways or cleaning the cool deck around the pool with a blast from the hose and I noticed she was always in a sundress.

I was on day four in Carnal just about to start day three of my job at Bubba’s.

I hadn’t been wrong, it wasn’t hard to pick up but then again the traffic in the bar was light. During the day it was mostly Jim-Billy and a few drifters. It started to get busier around five and by the time I left at seven thirty (the first day because Tonia had been late coming in) and seven twenty (the second day because Jonelle had been late) it was going on really busy. The hardest part was remembering what everything cost and making change on the fly. I’d screwed up my float the first day and because of that went home with fifteen dollars worth of tips. I’d learned quickly the next day and told my customers I was new and took my time and luckily they didn’t seem to mind. I still went home with only twenty-three dollars worth of tips. The day shift seriously wouldn’t cut it if I actually had to make a living at this.

Luckily, I had my share of what Brad and I made off the house plus me selling everything I owned in an “everything must go” yard sale before I got the heck out of The Horizon Summit housing development where Brad and I had lived for five years (the five years he was screwing Hayley). We had a huge house with four bedrooms and three and a half baths and a yard that a man named Juan-Carlos, who had seven thousand Mexican men working for him, tended. We had Juan-Carlos because all our friends used Juan-Carlos and we did what all our friends did. I also had a girl named Griselle who cleaned my house because everyone used Griselle and her sister Alicia. This wasn’t my choice, it was Brad’s. He said people like us had cleaning ladies. But I kind of liked cleaning. It was one thing I could do where I could see the results and I used to put on music and not even think about what I was doing, just fade into the music and move around my house and clean. Cleaning my house, weirdly, was the only time I liked to be in it. Then Griselle came and, well, that was that.

I wasn’t loaded but I had a significant nest egg. Then again, I might want to buy a house in Carnal eventually and would need money to set that up with furniture and the like and the money I had wouldn’t last forever. I couldn’t make it on twenty-three dollars a day plus the terrible hourly rate I got. I was going to have to step things up somehow.

I walked to Betty and smiled.

“Thanks, I like your sundress too,” I told her.

“Momma always put me in a skirt. Said, she had a girl, no girl of hers would wear pants and, as you can see, she had a girl.” She grinned at the spray shooting at her flowers and kept talking. “I can count on one hand the times I been in pants. Don’t know why. What Momma did just took and I never think about puttin’ on pants.” Betty finished sharing a random piece of her life, looked my way then nodded to my top. “You’re good with color. I notice you always pick the right ones. Perfect for you.”

I looked down at myself.

I was wearing my last pair of the three pairs of jeans I owned, these slightly more faded and beat up than the others I’d worn the previous two days to Bubba’s. I’d had them awhile and I actually hadn’t worn them for some time because they were getting too tight. They fit now, for some reason, were even a bit loose so I went with them. I also had on a pale pink camisole over which I wore a nearly see-through kelly green blouse. It had a little ruffle around the rounded collar and the cuffs of the short sleeves. It also had tiny ruffles and pin tucks down the front of it and teeny pearl buttons, a lot of them. I paired this with silver stud earrings in the shapes of little daisies, a bunch of silver bangles on my wrist with dangly daisies or roses on them and a pair of kelly green, suede flats with a big flower on the rounded toe.