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For the moment, Grandma Walker, Lisa, and Lisa’s twin boys were a concern. She had friends, she had family. She had, over the years, become content with her life.
“Hey, Rogue,” Jonesy called from behind the bar as she moved through the crowd in front of it. “Get your luscious ass back here and help me. ”
Jonesy and his assistant ’tender, as he called her, were working frantically to fill orders as customers lined up around the wide bar.
Rogue worked her way to the entrance behind the bar, moving quickly to take orders and fill them. Thursday night wasn’t usually this heavy, but the unseasonably warm days and evenings had spring fever in the air. Bikers mingled with farmers and tourists, fishermen and hikers. The Lake Cumberland area had something to tease the imagination and interests of a wide variety of people.
“Hey, beautiful. I wondered where you’d been. ” Hank Gentry was from Virginia. He and his small group of friends made the trip several times a year from their homes to the lake where they rented one of the available houseboats.
Hank was handsome as hell. Very accountant neat, and biker wild. He liked to say he pretended he was revisiting his twenties when he made his trips.
“Hank, you’re early this year. ” She laughed as she pushed a mug of draft beer his way and turned to pour more for the friends standing behind him. “I see you have your misfits with you,” she yelled over her shoulder.
The other four men laughed, obviously pleased that they were being called misfits at forty-something.
“You saving me a dance?” Hank’s wide grin met her as she turned back, handed over the beers, and took the cash.
“My dance card is full, sugar. ” She cast him a wide grin. “Jonesy keeps me leashed to the bar or serving drinks. ”
Jonesy glowered at her. He’d been doing that for two days now. His temper was getting testy, and she was getting ready to take a bite out of his butt for it.
“When she ain’t consorting with undesirables, you can almost get a good night’s work out of her,” Jonesy snarled, and it wasn’t playful.
Hank’s green eyes turned back to her in surprise, his brows raised. “Shame on you, Rogue. ” He wagged his finger at her chidingly. “Consorting with undesirables. ” He shook his head before glancing around the bar. “You surprise me. ” He winked, took his beer, and moved off.
“Cut it out, Jonesy,” she snapped as she turned to pour another beer. “You don’t want to fight with me here. ”
“You got fight left in you then?” he grunted. “Now that one surprises me. I thought you’d done tucked your tail and turned vanilla on me. ”
God, there were days she hated men; their PMS was worse than a woman’s any day, and less understandable.
“I’m going to turn homicidal if you don’t get off my back,” she ordered him. “Wait till closing and take up your problems with me then. ”
She turned away before he could snap back in reply. She’d had just about enough of snarly, snapping males that thought they could order her around or steer her damned life. She’d been steering it fine on her own for over five years now.
“Ronnie’s having problems with a couple in B area,” he called out as she pushed a handful of beers across the bar. “We got a regular and a tourist having a bit of a problem over a woman. ”
Jonesy wore a headset radio atop his head that connected him to the other bouncers.
“Get out there with him,” Rogue warned him. “Lea and I can handle the bar for a while. ”
“Kent’s on his way,” Jonesy informed her as he collected a heavy bat from beneath the bar and exited the bar area on the other side quickly.
“He’s been dying to use that bat all week,” Lea called out as she worked furiously to mix several drinks and slide them across the bar.
“He’s a man. Playing with his bat is the only thing he understands. ” Rogue laughed back at her, causing Lea to nearly drop a bottle of whisky in her mirth and most of the men around the bar to hoot and yell in agreement.
She toasted the men with a hastily poured shot, tossed it back, and slapped the glass on the bar with a grin at the eager cheers before going back to work.
She was having fun. She liked to have fun. She had always imagined any lover she had she would be able to tease and flirt with, to laugh and share her enjoyment of the atmosphere she had built here. She wasn’t going to be ashamed of it. She wasn’t going to change who and what she was, and she wouldn’t ask Zeke to change his rules, either.
That left things rather at a stalemate. The night wasn’t at a stalemate though. She worked the bar before making her rounds through the building again. She watched the waitresses and waiters, made certain everything was running smoothly in between brief hip-shaking dances and laughter. If Zeke were here, she wondered, what would he see?
The bar whore she was rumored to be, or the woman she truly was? She refused to question herself as to why it should matter either way. She was who she was. She couldn’t be anything less, anything more.
As the night deepened, her frustration with Jonesy only mounted though. He was scowling more often, and each time he spoke to her, he snapped. It was wearing on her nerves, and she knew better than to allow it to continue. He had his moods, and if she put up with them, they would only escalate until he ended up in a fight with someone else. The only way to end it was to confront it, before she ended up with bar damage.
