Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(83)

Her Southern voice was soft but demanded attention. “You’ll be Callie Brewster from Salt Draw. I’ve heard about you. I’m Naomi Gallagher. I understand Verdie has come back home to roost. I’m glad. She should have never left, but life takes us on some strange trips. What are you ladies drinking tonight?”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Miz Naomi,” Callie said.

“A Guinness and a shot of Jameson,” Gladys told the bartender.

Callie nodded.

“Looks like you’ve been raised right.” Naomi laughed. “I’m sorry to leave good Irish company, but I have to go mingle. Tell Verdie I missed her tonight and I envy her getting to stay home to play with the grandchildren.”

Gladys propped a hip on a bar stool and drank deeply of the dark beer. “Let’s take a case of this and run away to the barn with a couple of scorchin’ hot cowboys for an orgy.”

Callie had just tipped up the shot glass and had to swallow quickly to keep from spewing it all over the bar, the bartender, and Gladys. “Gladys!”

“I’m old, darlin’, but I’m not dead, and I still remember how to do it.” She laughed.

“Changing the subject on that note.” Callie blushed. “Is there a Brennan queen?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Didn’t you meet her? Mavis married the very Brennan who Naomi lost. About those cowboys?”

“Please tell me you were teasing.” Callie smiled.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t imagine you’d be willing to share a single inch of Finn with anyone, since you’ve already put Betsy and Honey in their places over him.”

A short brunette, wearing a crimson red satin dress that flowed from the waist down in a sweeping antebellum-type skirt, pulled out a bar stool. “Mind if I join you ladies? Lovely dress, Gladys.”

“Why, thank you, Ilene. You look like you belong in Gone with the Wind.”

“Thank you. I wanted that look. White wine, please,” she told the bartender. “And there he is. I’d hoped he would be here tonight. Give me white zinfandel, please. That’s the only kind he drinks.”

She picked up the two glasses of wine and carried them across the floor.

“Well, hot damn!” Gladys said.

“What?”

“Look.” She nodded.

Callie hadn’t recognized Orville out of uniform. He wore a black Western-cut suit, boots, and a big silver belt buckle. When Ilene handed him the glass of wine, he smiled and said something that lit up her face brighter than the enormous Christmas tree in the corner.

“I didn’t recognize him without a box of doughnuts,” Callie whispered.

Gladys cackled and motioned for the bartender to bring her another shot. “Guess he just needed a wake-up call. Lord, the Brennans are going to shit little green apples. If the Gallaghers have the sheriff in their pocket, there’s no tellin’ what Naomi will try.”

Tyrell claimed the bar stool next to her and said, “I heard you and Finn were together in the army.”

“I was his spotter.”

Tyrell pointed toward a longneck bottle of beer and the bartender set it in front of him. “I didn’t know they let girls do that job.”

“They can do it if they outdo the smart little boys,” she said.

“Guess nobody much tangles with you, do they?”

“Not too many times,” Callie said.

The dinner bell rang.

“There’s my cue. Time to go. Nice visitin’ with you, Callie,” he said.

“That means we go rescue Finn from that group of men and find our seats. I already switched place cards. I’m sitting with y’all. If the Brennans decide to retaliate tonight, and I’m not sayin’ they are, then I want to be by the exit out of this place,” Gladys said.

“And they’ve put me and Finn out on the edge by the door?” Callie asked.

“Exactly,” Gladys answered.

“Why?”

“You haven’t been accepted. You are here because of Verdie. There’s an order to the seating. The head table where Naomi will reign like a queen is all the way to the back of the room beside that enormous wall of glass lookin’ out over River Bend. Importance starts there and ends up at the back table where we are sitting.”

Callie smiled. “Strangely enough, I like that idea.”

“Far away from Betsy as possible, right?” Gladys said. “She’ll be up there at the head table.”

“Where were you supposed to sit?” Callie asked.

“About middle of the room with Polly, but I’ve got a feelin’ she’s been spyin’ for the Gallaghers. She’s my friend and my sister-in-law, so I’d never ask, but still, they know things from the Brennan camp too quick sometimes,” Gladys said. “I just switched places with a hired hand. He’ll go home happy thinkin’ he’s the ranch glory child because he got to sit closer to the head table than the foreman.”

When they were seated, Tyrell gave the welcoming speech and the waiters started moving through the crowd with carts. Warming dishes held steaks, baked potatoes, fried sweet potatoes, and green beans. Salads were already on the table along with fancy crystal plates filled with stuffed olives, mushrooms, celery sticks, and radishes.

Callie heard the noise above the buzz of conversation, but surely to goodness there wasn’t a helicopter right above the ranch. Why would there be? Finn had his head cocked to one side, which meant he’d heard it, too.