to Oklahoma, at least for a visit. And then, when he and Darla decided to get married, he said something about inviting you to the wedding.”
Ralphie had invited him. “He gave me a call. Would have made it if I could.” There had been that job in Mexico. He hadn’t wanted to pass that one up. Rio found himself wishing what men always wished when it was too late: that he’d chosen his friend over paying the rent.
She said, “You knew Ralphie a long time, huh?”
Sadness scraped at the back of his throat. He swallowed it down. “Yeah. We went way back.”
Her eyes got a little wetter. She cleared her throat. “He died on tax day, do you believe that?”
He shook his head. “Ralphie. Always filed his taxes…”
She was smiling, a misty kind of smile. “He hated to do it, but he’d say—”
“‘I’ve seen a lot of highflyers brought low,’” He faked Ralphie’s whisky-and-nicotine drawl. “‘And all because they didn’t bother to do their time with a 1099.’”
She turned slightly away, swiped at her eyes, and then faced him again. “I keep expecting to look up and see him comin’ through that door, heading straight for the jukebox.”
“Let me guess. ‘Home Sweet Oklahoma.’”
“That would be the one.” It came out tight. Emotion under strict rein. She swallowed. “Ralphie did love his Leon Russell. No matter where his big dreams took him, he always came home to Oklahoma.”
“Which is why Woody Guthrie would do in a pinch.”
“So true.” Her eyes shone at him, full of memories and the growing awareness that Rio had a few memories of his own.
There was a silence. In it were all the things Rio might have said, but didn’t. Bad idea, he thought, to let himself go tripping too far down memory lane. He’d just met this woman. No need to make a business meeting into a wake.
Ralphie’s ex let her gaze drop to the bar. “So what are your plans?” She was getting down to it.
Stalling, he asked for clarification he didn’t need. “You mean about this place?”
She nodded, drawing herself up, suggesting grimly, “Thinking you want to get into the bar business?”
He should have answered simply, no. But things were starting to seem a long way from simple. “You’re leading up to offering to buy me out, right?”
She raised her slim hands and pressed her fingertips gently to the tear-puffy skin under her eyes. Her bare shoulders gleamed, pearly, in the dim light from above. “Yeah.” She let her hands drop. “Yeah, I am.”
It was exactly what he’d hoped she might say—or it had been. Until he’d heard those friends of hers discussing the way Ralphie had checked out.
And then there was the little problem of Ralphie’s very pregnant bride.
Things weren’t adding up. If the dead man had been anyone else, Rio probably would have just let it go. But Ralphie Styles, with all his faults, had been the best friend Rio Navarro ever had. Rio was ten when they’d met, Ralphie in his mid thirties. Rio still remembered the first advice Ralphie Styles had ever given him.
“Keep your head up, kid. And never let any sumbitch see you sweat.”
The woman across the bar prompted, “So what do you think?”
Rio ordered his mind back to the present—and stalled some more. “You got the cash to buy me out?”
“Not right now. But I can get it eventually. In the meantime, you’d get Ralphie’s share, half of what we make here—after operating expenses.”
“I’ll need some time to think it over.”
“Think what over? What do you want with a half-interest in an Oklahoma City bar? Let me buy you out.”
He let a few beats elapse before replying, “I think I’ll just keep my options open for a while. If that’s all right with you.”
She was getting that strung-tight look again, the one she’d been wearing just before she fled to the back room. “It’s not all right with me. None of it. Not a thing. And excuse me, but did you know?”
He sat back a fraction. “About?”
“About this bar. That you were getting his half of it when—” she had to swallow before she could finish “—Ralphie was gone?”
Her eyes pleaded with him. She didn’t really want the truth. He gave it to her anyway. “I knew.”
She had to clear her throat again. “Ralphie told you he was leaving his half to you?”
“Yeah.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Three years.”
She shut those misty eyes and sucked in a deep breath through her nose. He watched the roses on her dress rise high and recede.
Same old Ralphie, Rio thought. Ralphie had a bad habit of promising people things that didn’t belong to him. And if something did belong to him, he’d promise it to everyone.
When Ralphie’s ex looked at him again, her pretty mouth was set in an angry line and she seemed to have run out of questions—for the moment, anyway.
Rio decided to try getting a few answers of his own. “That was the widow, right? The little pregnant one who left with…” He didn’t know the guy’s name, so he gave her a chance to provide it.
She did. “Boone is Darla Jo’s brother. He works here, for me.”
“And Darla is exactly how pregnant?”
The woman across the bar made a small, angry sound and her green eyes flashed warnings. “Darla Jo was pregnant before she and Ralphie got married, if that’s what you’re getting at. Does that shock you or something?”
“Not a lot shocks me.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yeah. It’s a fact.”
“So why even ask?”
“Just curious. Just…putting a few things together.”
“Well, you know what? I’m a little curious myself. I can’t help wonderin’ why you didn’t have the courtesy to introduce yourself when you first walked in here.” She tipped her head at the twenty he’d laid on the bar. “Why’d you have to fake me out with the paying customer routine?”
“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn’t. “I wanted to wait. Talk to you alone.”
“How thoughtful.” She gave the word a whole new meaning. Not a good one.
He
