Free The Old Man's Back in Town by Ann Charles Page A

have to lure you out with Snickerdoodles.”
    My eyes watered for a split-second, remembering my momma and her sweet, coaxing smile. It had been her idea to name me Montana, after her home state. Momma had said my big blue peepers had reminded her of Big Sky country as soon as I shot out of the womb and blinked them open.
    “Yeah, maybe it’s just the wind,” I said. “But I’d feel safer at home.”
    “Is this about those calls you’ve been getting with all that heavy breathing?”
    Maybe. “Nah, that’s just some stupid kid screwing around.”
    “I still think you should tell the sheriff about them. If not the calls, then at least he needs to know about all of this blood.”
    “Enough about the blood. It’s all gone.” I dipped the mop-head in the red water. “All the sheriff will do is tell me to file a report and change my number. The calls will go away if I just keep ignoring them.”
    “Fine, don’t listen to me, like usual.” He leaned against the bar, watching me rinse the mop-head. “So what makes you think you’re safer alone at home?”
    “My 12-gauge.”
    He laughed. “You want me to bring my forty-five over to spend Christmas with your shotgun?”
    “Thanks.” I squeezed his shoulder. “But I’m not good company tonight. Too many memories. I need to re-align my chakras or some crap like that.”
    “Have you been reading those books full of motivational mumbo-jumbo again?”
    I shook my head. “Somebody keeps carving quotes on my bathroom stall doors.”
    The bell over the door jingled.
    “Bar’s closed,” I hollered.
    “Even for an old friend?” The deep voice raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
    I turned slowly, gripping the mop handle to keep from falling over.
    “Well, well, well,” Buffalo said. “Look what Santa brought you, Monty, a hunka-hunka burnin’ heartache. You must have been naughty this year.”
    Joel Andersen closed the door, silencing the wail of a Nevada winter gale.
    My eyes narrowed as Joel strolled closer. His black hair was ruffled from the wind, his chin covered with dark stubble. The lines bracketing his eyes showed a tension that his big, easy grin couldn’t hide.
    Of all of the gin joints in all the tumbleweed-choked towns in the world, he strolled into mine. “I said the bar’s closed.”
    “I heard you, Shooter.” He used my childhood nickname like he still had a right to, the jerk. He patted Buffalo on the back. “How’s the restoration coming along, Buffalo?”
    Buffalo was in the process of fixing up the historic Goldwash Grand Hotel. A dilapidated monument of Goldwash’s prosperous past, the old brick hotel had been left to decay under the harsh desert sun for over forty years along with the rest of the town after the last of the gold had been hauled away.
    “When I’m not tied up in historical committee red tape, it’s great. How are those Vegas lights?”
    “Twinkling,” Joel answered, but his emerald-colored eyes held mine captive, fire burning in their depths like usual when he planned to woo my pants right off of me. “Always twinkling.”
    My heart shook off a layer of dust and started to pitter-patter, the damned lonely traitor.
    There went my plans for a sober Christmas Day.
    “What do you want?” I asked, not mincing words.
    His gaze trailed down the front of my green T-shirt, old blue jeans, and landed on my red cowboy boots. “I missed you, too, Montana. Got your Miss Claus getup on, I see.”
    “Go back to Vegas.” I dragged the mop bucket across the floor and kicked it into the corner. “You’re not welcome ‘round here anymore.”
    And here I’d had the silly notion that I was over the pain of his leaving me. The grinding sensation chewing away in my chest called me on that lie.
    “Come on, Shooter. Is that any way to treat a guy just out of the cold on Christmas Eve? Where’s your holiday spirit?”
    “She flushed it down the toilet,” Buffalo said, hooking a stool with his boot for Joel to sit next