Free Honky Tonk Christmas by Carolyn Brown

bathroom. He’s kind of shy but Judd is a brassy little thing and she bosses him just like I used to try to do to my brothers,” Sharlene said. “He’s finished and leaving now.”
    “I put the lid down,” he said.
    “That’s good, kiddo.” Sharlene shut the door. “I guess I’d best start at the beginning, huh?”
    “That sounds like a perfect place to me and don’t leave out anything. Do one of your ‘in the beginning God made dirt’ because I want to hear it all,” Larissa said.
    Sharlene took a deep breath and began.
    When she finished Larissa was laughing so hard she couldn’t talk.
    “It’s not that damn funny,” Sharlene said.
    “Oh, yes it is.”
    “How can it be funny? I was piss drunk.”
    Larissa got the hiccups. “I’m imagining your face when you swung that bathroom door open and there he stood. Bet that knocked you on your hungover ass, didn’t it?”
    “My ass wasn’t what was hungover and it didn’t waste a bit of time shoving him out the door and slamming it so I could throw up. Real romantic, huh?” Sharlene snapped. “And if you tell Hank one word of the story, I’m going to ban you from the Tonk forever.”
    “I won’t tell Hank but I can’t wait to call Cathy and she’ll tell Daisy. Now that idea of having a Honky Tonk Christmas is even better. When all the girls come home, you’ll have a cowboy too.”
    “I will not! I swear you’ve got romance on the brain.”
    “And you don’t?”
    “Hell, no. Lust occasionally but not with Holt Jackson. Can’t you just imagine it? We’d get all into the kissing and foreplay and then he’d remember me smelling like a brewery and upchucking. Like I said, real romantic. Our Honky Tonk Christmas is going to be the grand opening of the new addition and the celebration of my first book being published. I’ll have copies for all four of you that day and my Honky Tonk Christmas doesn’t have a damn thing to do with a cowboy.”
    Larissa hiccupped again. “I’ve seen the front cover of your book and honey, it has everything to do with cowboys.”
    Sharlene laughed with Larissa. “I’m hanging up now before you get me all tangled up in words. One last thing, Judd—who is named Ashley Judd Mendoza, soon to be Jackson when Holt gets her and her brother adopted—loves the colors of our house. I’m letting them live in it as part of the payment for the job.”
    Larissa cracked up again. “I will tell Hank that part of the story. He thought my colors were butt ugly and now a man has to live there.”
    “Waylon says they’re butt ugly too.”
    “You buried the cat and he never did see the house so what’s he got to do with anything?” Larissa asked.
    “Remember what I told you? Waylon is Judd’s twin brother. My cat Waylon died and yes, I buried him there and that’s why I was at the house when Holt came home with the kids Sunday.” Sharlene went on to tell the part about burying Waylon and the boy, Waylon, thinking she was going to bury him.
    “It just gets better and better,” Larissa said.
    “I think that’s all and I’m really hanging up. I’ll call later in the week,” Sharlene said.
    “Bring the kids up to the ranch for a day and we’ll really catch up,” Larissa said.
    “Good-bye and no thanks. I’m not getting roped into anything. Kids, cowboys, or lust.”
    Sharlene was deep into a scene where her heroine and hero were arguing about whether or not the hero had been flirting with the local hussy at a barn dance when a loud rat-a-tat-tat on the door made her grab both ears and duck her head.
    “It’s just one of the kids. It’s not gunfire,” she said as she made her way across the living room floor.
    She slung open the door to find Holt leaning against the door jamb, dirt smeared across his face and the knees of his overalls green with grass stains.
    “Just wanted to thank you for letting the kids run in and out of your place all day. You didn’t have to do that,” he said.
    “They are great