Colorado 02 Sweet Dreams (3 page)

“Sorry?” I asked.

“The pool,” he answered. “Like it?”

“Um…” I mumbled, staring up at him. “Yes.”

“It’s heated,” he informed me.

“Um…” I mumbled again. “I can tell.”

“Betty ‘n me got it relined last year. One or t’other of us clean it every day. Best pool in the county.”

I couldn’t disagree. It was a fantastic pool, clean, heated and everything.

Therefore I said, “It’s really nice.”

He rocked back on his heels and took in the pool with his eyes before he looked back at me.

“Thanks. Ned,” he said.

“Uh, my name is Lauren,” I said back and he laughed.

“No, pretty lady, name’s Ned.” He jerked a thumb at himself. “I’m Ned.”

“Oh,” I replied, feeling like an idiot. “Hey Ned.”

“Hey back at cha Lauren.” He grinned. “Betty tells me you’re stayin’ awhile.”

“Yeah,” I told him thinking he seemed friendly enough but not certain how much to share because, well, I didn’t know him and every girl in a pool in the parking lot of a hotel on the edge of Nowheresville should be smart and not tell their story, current or past, to some random man who snuck up on them. In fact, girls like that should get out of the pool, get into their room and lock the danged door.

“That’s great.” Ned was still grinning. “We don’t get a lot of long timers. Weekenders. Nighters. Yeah. Long timers. No.”

“Oh,” I replied, my eyes going back to the long block of hotel, specifically to my room where I figured I should be at that present moment.

“That’s Neeta,” Ned said and I looked back at him.

“Neeta?” I asked.

Ned nodded. “Neeta and Jackson,” he shook his head, “bad news.”

My gaze slid back in the direction of the hotel. He’d misinterpreted where I was looking. He thought I was looking at Harley Guy and Lucky as Hell Girl’s room.

 I didn’t inform him of his mistake. Instead, I asked softly, “Bad news?”

“Yeah,” Ned answered. “She swings into town and shoo!” My eyes went to him to see he’d put his hands up at his sides and had taken a step back. “We brace.”

“Brace for what?” I asked.

He dropped his hands. “Brace for whatever Neeta’s got up her sleeve.”

“Is that…” I stopped and motioned toward the Harley and the convertible with my head, “Neeta with that man?”

“Jackson, yeah. He’s great, a good man, smart, solid, salt of the earth. Loses his mind around Neeta, though. Then again, not many men wouldn’t but I’m guessing you know all about that.”

My eyes had wandered back to the Harley as I treaded water and Ned talked but I looked at Ned when I heard his comment.

“I do?”

His grin came back and it was bigger this time, brighter, transforming his whole face making me think he might just be a friendly innkeeper in a biker town in the Rocky Mountains, just like he seemed.

“Sure you do. Ain’t shittin’ me, pretty lady.”

He was right. I wasn’t shitting him mostly because I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Figure, though,” he went on and his eyes moved toward the Harley, “you’d be worth whatever trouble you might cause.”

“What?” I whispered and he looked back at me.

“I’m a good judge of people,” he informed me instead of explaining himself.

“Yes?” I asked because I didn’t know what else to say.

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, moved closer to the edge of the pool and squatted down. I kept treading water and staring at him. “See,” he continued, still quiet, “any trouble you might cause I’m guessin’ would be trouble you don’t mean to cause.”

“I’ve never caused any trouble,” I told him.

This was true. I hadn’t. I was a good girl. I’d always been a good girl. I’d always made the right decisions and done the right things. I might have chosen the wrong husband and the wrong friends but they were the jerks in those scenarios, not me. I was nice. I was thoughtful. I was considerate. I looked out for my neighbors. I got up when old ladies needed a seat in a waiting room. I let people who had two or three items go in front of me at the checkout in grocery stores if I had a full cart of food. I kept secrets. I bit my lip when people I knew did stupid things I knew they would regret and then kept biting my lip when those stupid things bit them in the ass and they came to me and whined about it.

I didn’t wear mini-skirts, not ones with frayed hems, not any mini-skirts at all. If I did, I wouldn’t wear them with high-heeled sandals. Maybe flip-flops or flats but not high heels. I didn’t air kiss front desk reception guys named Ned even if I knew them. I didn’t drive a convertible. I didn’t rush out a door and throw myself in the arms of a man.

And I’d never laughed so loud I filled the air with music.

“Betty’s different than me,” Ned broke into my thoughts and I focused on him.

“She is?” I asked thinking I may have missed something.

“I’m a good judge of people, she’s got the sight.”

“The sight?” I repeated stupidly.

He grinned again while straightening, it was his big grin. He had all his teeth, the eyetooth was wonky but they were all clean and white and the rest were straight. His hair was a little thin, light brown. He wasn’t tall, not short either. Lean and on the thin side. And, I was beginning to believe, a genuinely nice guy, not the creepy night clerk at a hotel in Nowheresville.

“The sight.” He nodded then looked toward the hotel before he turned to me as I moved my arms through the water to take me back to the side so I could stop treading. I reached out and held onto the edge as he kept going. “She told me she met you and she just knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Somethin’ big was gonna happen.”

I blinked and it wasn’t to get the water out of my eyes.

“Something big?”

“Yep.”

“To me?”

“To you, through you, because of you, whatever. But whatever it is, it’ll be big and it’ll be good.”

I didn’t know what to do with this mostly because it was a little crazy.

“She said that?”

He nodded and crossed his arms on his chest, rocking back on his heels again.

“Yep. And she’s never wrong. We been married twenty-five years and she gets these feelin’s and, I’ll repeat, she’s never wrong. My Betty’s always right. Always.”

I didn’t know what to say to that so I stayed silent.

“Anyhoots!” he exclaimed loudly. “Best leave you to your swim. You need anythin’ at all, you know where to find me. I hit the hay around midnight but you just gotta ring the buzzer outside the front door and it’ll wake me up. Yeah?”

I nodded.

“Anythin’ you need, pretty lady, I mean that,” he said and it sounded like he meant it.

“Okay,” I replied.

“Glad to have you with us, Lauren.”

“Thanks, Ned.”

He lifted a hand in a wave and wandered back to the reception-slash-house.

I looked at the Harley and listened to the quiet of Carnal.

Then I forced out ten more laps (with three more rest periods), got out of the pool, toweled off, grabbed my stuff and ran to my room.

Chapter Two

A Job to Do

I spent more time wondering what to wear to work than I did training at Bubba’s.

Since Krystal was in a tank top the day before, I decided that it probably wasn’t work casual, more like anything goes. So I put on a nice pair of jeans, a belt and a peachy-pink colored t-shirt that had a crew neck and three ruffles made up the sleeves. I thought it was bright and cute. My ex, Brad, told me he thought it was a little young for me but I liked it, I thought it suited my coloring. I wore flip-flops because I usually wore flip-flops if I could but also because I figured I’d need comfortable shoes. I put in some earrings that were little dangles of peachy-pink crystals, a half-inch choker which was a net of peachy-pink beads and a bunch of bracelets that were elasticized bands of multi-colored crystal beads, peach, pink, peachy-pink, creamy peach, creamy pink, clear and I threw in a couple of blue ones to go with my jeans.

I walked from the hotel to Bubba’s thinking that I should have planned ahead last night and maybe stocked some provisions in my room. I left early so I could pop by the bakery to get a donut and a coffee. I hadn’t even thought of dinner the night before and didn’t eat any so I was starving.

My muscles also ached. It was dull but they were not used to being worked. They’d been cooped up in a car for four and a half months for one but even before that it wasn’t like I was a regular at the gym. I didn’t think this was good considering I’d be on my feet all day.

Krystal was there when I got there and I knew right off she was in a bad mood. I didn’t know why but I suspected it was because there were some dirty glasses and beer bottles left out “on the floor” as she called it though most of them were on ledges on the walls around the pool tables and not on the floor at all. Also, when we turned the chairs off the tables, most of them hadn’t been wiped down.

I suspected this was why she was in a bad mood because she muttered irately, “Fuckin’ Tonia and Jonelle. How many times do I gotta tell them? Wipe the tables, clear the floor of empties. Shit,” she looked at me, “you got evening shift, you clear the empties off the floor and wipe down the tables real good. It ain’t hard to do and Anita comes in in the mornin’ to sweep and mop so it ain’t like you’re part cleanin’ lady.”

I nodded, making a mental note to clear the empties and wipe down the tables “real good” because I figured that Krystal was the sort of person who didn’t need a lot to tick her off and I didn’t want to do anything to add to her seemingly perpetual bad mood.

She showed me around the bar but there wasn’t much to it. The front which had the bar, a mess of tables out front and the pool tables to the sides. She explained that day shift there was only one waitress and bartender unless it was a weekend. If it was a weekend, the floor was split into two sections for two waitresses. Weeknights there were always two waitresses and one or two bartenders. Weekend nights there were three waitresses and at least two bartenders.

“We don’t have no busser,” she informed me, leading me out of the bar and down one of the two doorways that led off the back of the bar. It had a sign over it that said “Private Do Not Enter”. “Don’t need another person on payroll when you waitresses can nab your own empties.”

I nodded even though she wasn’t looking at me.

She took me to an office and let us in. “You stow your purse in here and you take your breaks in here. We don’t give keys out to everyone so you need to come back here, you find Tate, Bubba, Dalton or me to let you in.”

“Tate, Bubba and Dalton?” I asked.

“Bubba’s my old man,” she answered. “Tate owns the bar with us. He ain’t around a lot. Then again, Bubba ain’t around a lot either. Like now. He’s
fishin’,
” she said the word “fishin’” like it tasted bad and she had to get it out of her mouth fast or she’d have that taste forever. “Dalton’s the other bartender,” she finished.

“Oh. Okay,” I said and she eyed me.

“Gonna say this now gonna say it once, Bubba, Tate and me own this place and Bubba’s been in my bed goin’ on a decade. That’s about as much fraternization as we need. Half the time I don’t
want
that jackass in my bed, half the time he ain’t in my bed because he’s fishin’. You get an eye for Tate or Dalton, and they all get an eye for Tate or Dalton, rethink it. You’re here to work not get laid.”

“Oh,” I repeated, more than a little surprised at this subject matter and the way she presented it. “Okay.”

She didn’t move but she spoke. “Not jokin’, girl.”

“Um…” I decided to give as good as I got in an effort to make her think I wasn’t the fancy pants she clearly thought I was from her comments the day before though, in all honesty, I kind of was or at least I wasn’t a biker babe like her. “I’m not exactly in the market to get laid, Krystal.”

She kept staring at me. Then she moved out of the office muttering, “Yeah, you haven’t seen Tate or Dalton yet.”

I had to admit this worried me a little bit. I didn’t need to be working alongside good-looking men, especially starting out. It’d make me anxious. Once I got used to things, got my bearings, I’d be fine mainly because I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t in the market to get laid. That market had closed and I was okay with that. But I didn’t want to be fumbling around learning how to be a waitress in a biker bar with handsome biker men as my audience.

As if she read my mind, Krystal talked as she led me down the hall. “I’m keepin’ you on day shifts for a week, maybe two, see how you do. Cut your teeth. Get the lay of the land before you go nights.”

“Thanks,” I said when she stopped outside a closed door.

She turned to me. “Don’t thank me. Tips are shit on the day shift.”

She unlocked and pushed open the door and showed me the storeroom. Then she told me that waitresses might be called on to help stock or run back and get something if the bartenders were busy. Then she showed me the clipboard where they kept track of stock in a complicated way that would be far easier if put on a computer spreadsheet. Even though I probably could set that up for her in about an hour, I didn’t inform her of this.

“We open at noon close at three,” she went on, walking back down the hall. “Shifts run eleven to seven with two fifteen minute breaks and half hour dinner break. Night shift is seven to three. Last call is 2:30 so you get those drinks in and you get your clean up done best you can while we got folks in the bar. You don’t wanna be hangin’ around ‘til four clearin’ and cleanin’ and I don’t wanna be payin’ you to do it. Yeah?”

“Yes,” I nodded but she wasn’t looking at me, she was leading me through the bar and taking me toward the other hall, the opening had a sign over it that said “Restrooms”.

“Anita cleans these in the mornin’ and loads ‘em up with toilet paper. We got a customer reports a bathroom problem with the toilets, you tell one of the boys. Toilet paper is in the storeroom. You might need to restock and, I’m warnin’ you, you might need to do clean up. Shit happens you would
not
believe in the bathroom of a bar.” She stopped in the hall between the two bathroom doors, ladies up front, gents to the rear and she turned to me. “You got a problem with that?”