Man...Mercenary...Monarch

John snapped his head around to see a waitress standing next to the booth, a pad of paper in one hand, a pencil in the other. She was wearing a very short red skirt with white fringe, a matching bolero top that exposed her midriff, and white cowboy boots. A white Stetson was cocked at a jaunty angle on her head.

“Yeah,” John said, “you could say that.”

“Well, you came to the right place,” she said. “Some drinkin’ and dancin’ will take your mind off your troubles. What can I get ya?”

“Beer,” John said.

“What kind?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t care. Bring me whatever is handy.”

“Whew. You are bummed, big time. Hey, a good-lookin’ guy like you can have your pick of any gal in the place. Get yourself a pretty woman and go for it. Be right back with your beer. You runnin’ a tab?”

“Yeah.”

The waitress hurried away, managing to wiggle her hips despite her fast pace.

Get myself a pretty woman? John thought dryly. Not a chance. That mind-set had gotten him nothing but trouble, was the cause of the mess he was now in.

What in the hell was he going to do?

The waitress returned with a brown bottle and a tall glass. She set them on the table, gave John a coy smile and a wink, then disappeared again into the crowd. John pushed the glass to one side, then took a deep swallow from the bottle.

Nasty, he thought, shuddering slightly. He really didn’t like beer, but he wasn’t about to start drinking hard liquor. He’d never be able to sort through the tangled maze in his mind if his brain was fuzzy from alcohol.

Maybe what he should do was quit thinking for a while, just zone out and observe the foolishness taking place around him. Yeah, that was the ticket. He would take a mental break, then square off against his dilemma again later. It was worth a try, might enable him to come up with a workable solution.

He shifted into a more comfortable position in the booth, then tapped his fingers against the cold bottle in an edgy, restless rhythm. He blanked his mind and watched the age-old mating games being played in an endless series of scenarios.

Half an hour later, the five-piece band appeared on the platform, tuned up, then exploded into loud music with a peppy number that caused a crush of humanity to flow onto the dance floor.

Several women approached John, but he refused each invitation to dance with a barely discernible shake of his head and a nondescript expression on his face.

He ordered another beer that he had no intention of drinking, figuring he’d better spend more money to justify occupying the booth.

Each time the reality of the situation that was plaguing him began to creep into the edges of his mind, he pushed it away, refusing to dwell on it during the mental hiatus he was allowing himself to take.

He simply sat there, as still as a statue, listening to the music, and people-watching.

Laura Bishop stood outside of Jake’s Saloon, telling herself for the third time to open the door and enter the nightclub. She could hear the music and the muted sounds of voices and laughter that were beckoning to her.

A chill wind whipped across the parking lot, causing her to shiver and hunch into her jacket.

This was ridiculous, she told herself. She was standing there like an idiot, freezing to death, because she couldn’t gather the courage to enter the dumb building.

She was acting like a silly child instead of a twenty-nine-year-old woman. Granted, it was totally out of character for her to be out on the town by herself, let alone contemplating going into a bar, for heaven’s sake.

Maybe she should just forget the whole thing, return to the ranch and curl up in front of the fire with the novel she’d been attempting to concentrate on.

Laura frowned as an image of the large, empty living room at the ranch flashed before her mental vision.

No, not tonight. She couldn’t face the long, lonely hours in that house tonight. As the minutes on the clock had ticked slowly by, she’d become more and more depressed.

Her inner voice had been taunting her with a list of what she didn’t have, would probably never have, causing an ache of loneliness to consume her, to grip her with icy tentacles.

Once she’d been accustomed to a busy schedule as social secretary to the four Royal Princesses of Wynborough. Now she had too many idle hours to fill each day.

Laura sighed.

The princesses. Each had found true love, her soul mate, and were all so blissfully happy. She was sincerely pleased that the four women, who were her friends as well as her employers, were floating on cloud nine as they began their new lives as the wives of the men they had chosen to be their life’s partner.

But, oh, dear, how it all accentuated the stark reality that she was so very alone. Her few relationships over the years had resulted in the frogs she’d kissed remaining frogs, not one of them turning into her Prince Charming.

Laura shivered as another gust of wind whipped around her.

The air certainly held no promise of spring warmth, that was for sure. She either had to hightail it back to the ranch, or open the dumb door to the nightclub and have an evening away from her solitude as she’d intended to do.

“Enough of this,” she muttered. “My toes are probably going to fall off if I stand here any longer. Move, Laura. Right now.”

She took a steadying breath, let it out slowly, then yanked open the door and entered the building.

Despite the noise, smoky haze and the crush of people, John’s razor-sharp senses alerted him every time the door to the club was opened and someone new needed to be checked out. His appraisal was done by rote, born of years of always being prepared for potential danger.

He glanced at the door yet again, then did a double take as an attractive woman came into view. He watched her hesitate, as though she was about to bolt right back out of the crummy place. She swept her gaze over the huge expanse in a jerky motion, her eyes widening slightly at what she saw.

She was a fish out of water, John thought rather absently. It didn’t take a genius to realize that she wasn’t a regular on the barhopping scene. She looked as if she was about to climb into a dentist’s chair.

His ability to size people up quickly had saved his life on more than one occasion in the past, and there was no doubt in his mind that this woman was way out of her element in coming here on her own.

Well, she wouldn’t be alone for long. She was pretty, in a fresh, wholesome sort of way. She had short blond hair that curled around her face, delicate features and very kissable lips. From this distance he couldn’t discern the color of her eyes, though. Brown? Blue? Ah, hell, who cared? Forget it.

He shifted his attention back to the band, then seconds later found himself looking at the woman again.

She hadn’t moved.

John chuckled and took a swig of beer.

Well, Pretty Lady, he thought, how long are you going to stand there? Ah, there she goes. She was unzipping her puffy blue jacket, apparently having decided to stay awhile.

Pink sweater. Nice. No, it wasn’t exactly pink, it was that fancy color with the weird name. Mauve. Yeah, that was it. Okay, she had on a mauve sweater and jeans that were so new, they probably crackled when she walked.

So, Pretty Lady wasn’t a true-blue Westerner. It was evident she hadn’t washed those stiff, spanking new jeans a dozen times or more to soften them up and fade them a bit before she wore them.

She was, oh, maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but not single-scene savvy. She was definitely in foreign territory, and it showed like a brightly lit neon sign.

Pretty Lady had spunk, though. He’d give her that. She’d lifted her chin and started forward, making her way through the crowd at the bar. She’d probably faint dead out on her lovely face when she got over here and discovered there was nowhere to sit.

Man, John thought, shaking his head in self-disgust, he was really scrambling to keep his troubled thoughts at bay. He was actually wasting mental energy by concentrating on a city gal who had no business being in a Western bar where she didn’t know the rules of the game.