Small-Town Redemption

As much as he hated to admit it, he liked her. Hell, if he believed men and women could be friends without sex getting in the way, he might just say she was the closest thing he’d had to a friend in years.

If she ever suspected, she’d never let him hear the end of it.

“Slow night,” Sadie commented, joining him.

“Not too bad,” he said. “The birthday ladies alone are making us a lot of money.”

“Only because every guy under the age of fifty keeps buying them drinks. Men. Always so hopeful they’ll get lucky.”

“It’s what gets us through each day. Any of them getting pushy?”

“If they do, Julie will let you know.”

He expected that. Was glad his employees knew to come to him if there was a problem. He kept an eye out for everyone in his place. Took care of them.

He’d been in Shady Grove less than a year and already he was turning into a damned Boy Scout.

For another thirty minutes, Kane filled drink orders, yakking with those who wanted to chat, leaving the ones who didn’t alone with their thoughts and alcohol. The song on the jukebox ended and the familiar opening riff of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”—a Saturday night mainstay at O’Riley’s, along with Guns n’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”—started.

It was a good song. A classic. At one time it had been one of Kane’s favorites.

Until he’d seen people dance to it.

It wasn’t a tune made for smooth moves, but that didn’t stop a small portion of his customers. All that twitching and hopping and head-banging—most of the time simultaneously—could put off even the most die-hard Nirvana fan.

Averting his gaze from the dance floor, he opened a bottle of water and took a long drink. Scanned his domain from his position behind the bar. The booths along the back wall were filled, as were a few of the tables, late diners finishing their meals or enjoying a nightcap before heading home. The in-between stage of the evening meant those who’d come in for good food at reasonable prices mixed and mingled with the drinking crowd.

Shady Grove was a long way from Houston, but if there was one thing Kane had learned it was that people—whether at a honky-tonk stomping their cowboy boots to classic Hank Williams or in an exclusive club shaking their designer-clad asses to the latest techno hit—were the same everywhere. When Saturday night rolled around, they wanted a good time. To forget their problems, lose their inhibitions and seek out the mystical happy place where their pain magically disappeared, their checkbook wasn’t overdrawn and their boss/spouse/parent/kid wasn’t such a douche bag.

Only to wake up Sunday morning hungover and right back where they’d started.

Nothing sucked the life out of a good time like the real world. But, for a few hours he gave them a reprieve from their lives. That the reprieve came with copious amounts of alcohol caused him some guilt. Not so much he seriously considered turning O’Riley’s into a coffee shop or bookstore, but enough that he wanted it to be more than a bar where the locals got hammered every weekend.

He’d come up with the idea of serving meals. Full dinners instead of bar fare—though they offered burgers, wings and a variety of vegetables coated in thick batter and deep-fried.

Turning O’Riley’s into as much restaurant as bar had been a good idea, a smart one. An idea that had increased his business’s revenue over 30 percent since the fall. He wasn’t about the bottom line—that was his old man’s thing—but he couldn’t deny the sense of pride that came with being successful.

O’Riley’s was in the black, and it was all because of him.

Not that it had been a struggling business to begin with. When Kane had first stepped into O’Riley’s, it had a solid customer base, a good reputation and income enough for Gordon, the previous owner, and his one employee.

Now Kane did enough business for him to be more than generous with his six employees and still have money left over.

He should use it to buy some new chairs, maybe have the floors redone or renovate the kitchen. After all, this was his place. Every shot glass, every bottle of whiskey, every damn thing, from the beer taps to the utility bills to dealing with pain-in-the-ass customers who couldn’t hold their drinks or their tempers, was his problem. He knew these people, the men and women—young, old and in between—who came here night after night, weekend after weekend. He was a business owner, a member of the Shady Grove Chamber of Commerce for Christ’s sake.

In a short time, he’d somehow become enmeshed in this small town, a part of it.

He could see himself here next year. And the year after that. His roots digging deeper and deeper into the Pennsylvania ground, his ties to this community, to these people, growing tighter and tighter.

Cold touched the back of his neck. His stomach got queasy.

He’d tried ignoring the signs, had pushed aside the sense of unease, which had dogged him for weeks, riding his back like a deranged monkey, screeching, tugging his hair and slapping him upside the head. A man could only escape the truth for so long.

It was time to move on.

He’d given it a good run, he told himself, twisting the lid onto his water bottle and setting it aside to take an order from a fortysomething-year-old guy in khakis and a button-down shirt. He drew a beer for Button-Down, exchanged it for money and added the small tip to the wide-mouth jar under the counter.

Buying this place had been an impulsive move, born of instinct and perhaps heredity. He’d seen an opportunity to take a business and build it up, make it bigger, better and more profitable.

And if that opportunity just happened to be in some small town where no one knew him or his family, far away from Houston and his past? All the better.

O’Riley’s was doing well, better than he’d expected. Despite his best intentions, he’d taken after his father after all. At least in one area: making money.

But staying in one place too long was never a good idea. It made a man comfortable. Complacent. Careless.

Better to stay one step ahead. Always.

First thing Monday morning, he’d call a real estate agent, see about getting the building appraised. Start thinking about where he wanted to go next. Maybe he’d head north this time. It didn’t matter where he ended up, Maine or Greenland or somewhere in between. As long as he kept moving.

* * *

IT’D TAKEN A WHILE, but Charlotte was back on the horse.

Her sneakers squeaked on the gray floor as she walked down the main hallway of Shady Grove Memorial’s E.R. The baby with a high fever in room 3 cried, his scream heartbreaking and eardrum-piercing. Two middle-aged men—brothers by the resemblance between them—spoke quietly outside room 5, their faces drawn in worry.

Char approached the nurses’ station. Okay, so technically there was no horse to speak of, but figuratively she was there, sitting tall in the saddle, ready to gallop after her dreams.

And to think, she’d almost talked herself into believing she’d made a mistake, a big one, in going after what she’d wanted. In planning, scheduling and goal-setting. That she could float along, living the rest of her life taking each moment as it came all willy-nilly without a thought or care about her future.

Oh, she’d tried to do exactly that. Hard not to want to try something different after you’ve been rejected by the man you’d planned on marrying. Throw in a second rejection, this time by a man the complete opposite of what you were looking for, and any woman would question herself, her choices. So she’d gone in the opposite direction of anything and everything she’d ever done.

She’d stuck with it for as long as she could, shoving aside her dreams and goals and letting life happen. She’d gone to the grocery store without a list, didn’t note appointments in her phone’s calendar and spent her weekends zoned out in front of the TV, ignoring the work needing done around her new house. For six long months she’d been laid-back, spontaneous and impractical.

It had been torture. Pure, unadulterated torture.

Until one gloomy Wednesday morning last month when, on her way to the store to buy milk after discovering the empty carton in her fridge, her car had run out of gas. Waiting for her mother to come get her, good sense returned. Once back at home, she’d immediately listed her one-month, six-month and yearlong goals, cleaned and organized her refrigerator, and balanced her checkbook and, just like that, all was right in the world again.

Sitting back and waiting didn’t make things happen. It took planning. Control. Discipline. With those three things—traits she had in spades, thank you very much—anything was possible. Any goal achievable.

She walked around the high counter of the nurses’ station, plugged in her laptop and printed out her patient’s discharge papers. She’d been foolish, idiotic even, to try to be something she wasn’t. Someone she wasn’t.

Someone like her sister.

It’d taken time, but luckily she had come to her senses, Char thought as she gathered the papers and scanned them to make sure the information was correct. There was no way she could blithely toss aside all her dreams and the future she wanted.

Her mistake wasn’t in believing in that future, in working toward it. No, her mistake was choosing the wrong man to share it with. Yes, technically James fit the bill when it came to the type of man she wanted to marry. He was successful and smart, handsome and kind.

It was his kindness that had done it. He’d been so sweet to her when she’d been a gawky teenager, too tall, too thin and way too awkward around the boys her own age. James had assured her those boys were blind and stupid not to notice the wonder and awesomeness that was Charlotte Ellison, and they would, one day, line up for the chance to be with her.