Bounty(11)

I had on lots of jewelry, mostly necklaces, bangles at my wrist, earrings in the five holes I had curving up the shell of each ear, and also a jingling ankle bracelet.

Last, on my feet, flat gladiator sandals.

70’s pinup was right.

I looked like an advertisement for Free People clothing.

Which was how I liked it.

So I looked different seven years down the road.

But it still hurt he didn’t remember me.

I got to the middle of the bar, the only place with stools available that was far from Deke, and I slid up on one. I dropped my phone and fringed suede bag on the bar in front of me.

When I did, I was surprised to see petite 70’s pinup with the loud, foul mouth was standing in front of me wearing her tight Harley tank over large breasts and a big pregnant belly.

“Yeah, I’m pregnant,” she announced tetchily and my gaze shot from her stomach to her eyes. “Lexie poppin’ out kids here, there and everywhere. Faye doin’ it. Emme knocked up, though I got there before her. Bubba caught the bug. What am I supposed to do?” she asked belligerently—seriously and visibly pissed at me even though I hadn’t said a word. “I love the guy and he melts like a pussy the instant he’s in an infant’s presence. Forget about it with a toddler he can actually play with. He’s gone. Always volunteering our asses to babysit. Up in my face, ‘Please, my cloud. I’m beggin’ you, Krys. Let’s make a baby.’ So tell me. I love him, what do I do?” she demanded to know.

“You get pregnant,” I guessed hesitantly.

“Yup,” she snapped, leaning in. “Knocked up. Too fuckin’ old to be luggin’ this around.” She circled her belly with a hand in a way that was vastly different than the bewilderingly honest, deep and pissed-off ranting she was aiming at me. “Barfin’ mornin’, noon and night. My tits hurt. My head hurts. My feet are swollen. Gotta pee all the time and that includes gettin’ up from the toilet after just peein’. Hadta get an entire new wardrobe I’m never wearin’ again ’cause once this kid slides outta me, they’re goin’ right back up there and tyin’ my tubes.”

Having taken in the Harley tank, I was wondering what her old wardrobe consisted of when another voice sounded.

“Krys, no. Baby, what you talkin’ about?”

My startled gaze slid up to a man who was suddenly there. He was as big as Deke, not as solid, a little bit older, light-brown hair, good-ole-boy eyes, thus a lot more jovial looking.

He was rounding the petite “Krys” with both arms from the back and curving his body at his height to disastrous levels in order to shove his face in her neck, his hands spanning the sides of her protruding belly.

Even with his face in her neck, I still heard him say, “We can’t have just one kid. She’s gotta have a brother or sister. Least one.”

“Bubba, I’m thirty-nine years old,” the pregnant woman snapped.

Bubba pulled his face out of her neck, tipped his head back, and with twinkling eyes and carefully pressed together lips, he winked at me.

She was not thirty-nine.

I gave him a stretched down mouth “your-woman-is-freaking-me-out” face.

He lifted up, didn’t let his woman go, and burst out laughing.

At this point, extremely belatedly, I noticed the main entertainment behind the bar were not the only entertainment behind the bar.

Another man was there, tall, dark-haired, bearded, standing closer to where Deke and the guy with the ball cap were, leaning his narrow, jeans-clad hips against the back of the bar, grinning at the couple before me with an expression on his face like he was watching two kittens wrestling.

He was vaguely familiar.

He was also smoking hot.

“What you drinkin’, gypsy?” I heard asked, and I tore my gaze off the hot guy down the way to look at the man who was clearly Bubba of Bubba’s.

“Champagne,” I answered, and to this, the woman called Krys bafflingly threw up her hands.

“Champagne?” she asked and took a step toward me, taking her out of her man’s arms. She flicked only one hand high that time before she dropped it and asked, “Girl, what’s this place look like to you? Unless I didn’t feel it and the entire bar was picked up and transported to Manhattan, Sarah Jessica Parker has done left the building because the bitch never stepped one of her high heels in the building and never would.”

“Krys, we have champagne,” a rough, deep voice said from down the bar.

I glanced that way.

Tall, dark, hot guy was entering the conversation.

“Yeah, but we don’t got glasses,” she shot back to hot guy and looked to me. “And I’m not openin’ a bottle of champagne only for you to drink one glass, no one touches it for the next night or three or three hundred and seven so I gotta dump that shit down the drain and lose money. I don’t lose money. You want champagne, you drink it in a regular glass and buy the whole damned bottle.”