Free See Bride Run! by Unknown

entire length of the room. Darla paused a number of times to speak to someone she knew. By the time they reached the bar, Annie’s head was splitting from the music.
    “What’ll it be, miss?” the bartender asked her. He wore overalls and looked as though he’d been plowing a field all day.
    “Just give me a diet soft drink,” she said, and received a good deal of ribbing from Darla and Hank, both of whom ordered a draft beer. Annie had barely managed to take a sip before a tall red-haired man named Jesse tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to dance. She turned him down, only to have Darla insist she dance with him because he was a friend of hers. Annie soon found herself trying to keep time to a tune with fiddle music and before long she had more dance partners than she knew what to do with.
    #
    Sam was surprised to find Darla’s lights off and the car gone when he pulled into the driveway of her mobile home. She’d rushed from the restaurant in such a hurry that she’d forgotten her wallet. She had pulled it out when she’d cashed her tips out at the end of the night, swapping change and small bills so Sam wouldn’t have to worry about going to the bank to replenish them. He knew she was ticked off at him, and it wasn’t the first time, but she would eventually get over it. The bottom line, he was still owner of the Dixieland Café, and Darla would just have to accept the fact that she was his employee.
    It didn’t take Sam long to figure out where the two women had gone. With it being Saturday night, he knew his star waitress would be sitting in Ernie’s. ‘Course tomorrow she’d be as hung over as a Shriner at an annual convention, and the church crowd would have her hopping like a barefoot young’un on a hot sidewalk. She’d be in a sour mood and probably get into a verbal battle with Flo or Patricia.
    Sam had no desire to go to Ernie’s, but he knew he had to get Darla’s wallet to her, despite her frequent bragging about never paying for a drink. Sam backed out of the drive, and as he headed in the direction of the redneck hangout, he tried to imagine Annie in such a place. He couldn’t.
    #
    Pleading exhaustion to her current dance partner, Annie returned to the bar, only to find Darla and Hank missing. The bartender in overalls returned wearing a grin. “Some of your dance partners have taken a shine to you,” he said. “They want to buy you a drink. Several, in fact. What’ll you have?”
    “I don’t want anything right now,” Annie replied as politely as she could, considering her head felt as though it was ready to split open. “Would you happen to know where my friend went?”
    “She left with that other feller. Said to tell you’d she’d be back in a jiffy.”
    “When you see her, would you please tell her I’m waiting for her in the car?”
    “What do I look like, Western Union?”
    “I’m sorry to impose—”
    “I’m just havin’ fun with you,” he said, his chubby face breaking into a grin. “I’ll tell her.”
    Annie made her way out the door, leaving a good portion of the noise inside. She passed a couple of men sitting on the tailgate of a truck but pretended not to see them.
    “Hey, baby, you lookin’ for some comp’ny?”
    “No thanks,” she said, and kept on walking.
    “Hey, that ain’t no way to be,” one of them said as he caught up with her. “What’d I ever do to you?”
    “Please—” She stopped and turned. He was a beefy fellow but she wasn’t sure if she should be scared or amused. He spit a wad of chewing tobacco on the ground, and she shuddered. “I have a splitting headache, and I just want to be alone,” she said. She resumed walking. Where the hell had Darla parked?
    “I got a headache powder in the truck.”
    Sure he did, Annie thought. And she had a hundred dollar bill in her pocket.
    It finally hit her that Darla’s car was missing, and the thought of being stranded at a place like Ernie’s almost made her weep. Why would