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Someday, she silently told herself. Oh, sure, and when is that going to happen? Remember, Bliss, you’ve got a long way to go. You’re twenty-seven years old and still a virgin.
CHAPTER NINE
“So tell me, Lafferty, what is it you’re afraid of?” Jarrod asked. He peeled the label from his bottle of beer while some old country ballad wafted through the smoky interior of the bar. From the back room, billiard balls clicked while conversation at the few odd tables scattered around the room was punctuated by laughter. A television mounted high over the bar was tuned in to a baseball game, which the bartender watched as he polished the battered old mahogany with a white towel.
“Afraid of?” Mason took a swallow from his long-necked bottle and let the beer cool his throat. He didn’t like lying, wasn’t much good at it, but knew that once in a while it was necessary. This was one of those times. “Nothing.”
“Bull.” Jarrod eyed him with the calm of a cougar advancing upon a lamb. He leaned forward. “You’re scared that Patty’s involved up to her eyeballs in old man Wells’s disappearance.”
“I don’t know how.” That much was the truth, though he couldn’t help suspecting that Patty, with her penchant for trouble, knew something about their uncle’s vanishing act. What, he couldn’t imagine, but then, Patty always kept him guessing. He never knew what to expect from his muleheaded sister.
“Yeah, and I’m the pope.”
“Why would I pay you a lot of money if I already knew the answer?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” He hoisted his empty bottle and signaled to a bored-looking waitress. “Hey, Tammy, how about another one?” He motioned to Mason. “For him, too.”
She nodded a head of overbleached and kinky-permed hair, and Jarrod swung his gaze to his friend again. “I get the feeling that you’ve led me on a wild-goose chase, Lafferty, and I don’t like being played for a fool. You know that.”
“Look, I don’t know where Patty is and I sure as hell can’t begin to figure out what happened to old Isaac. As much of a pain in the butt as he was, most of the people in this county think it’s a blessing that he’s gone, but I’m not one of them.”
Jarrod snorted as Mason drained his beer. “Right.”
The waitress, slim in her blue jeans and white T-shirt, deposited two more bottles on the table. “Anything else?”
“Not just yet,” Jarrod said, flashing her a smile that was known to break women’s hearts.
She, today, wasn’t in the mood. “Just let me know,” she said sourly and took the empties.
“You got it.” Jarrod rolled the new bottle between his palms.
Jarrod had phoned Mason, invited him for a drink, and Mason had agreed. He needed something—anything—to get his mind off Bliss. But he wasn’t too keen on being grilled by his old friend.
Jarrod checked his watch. “Look, I’ve got to go, but there’s one more thing.”
“Shoot.”
“It’s about Mom.”
“Brynnie?”
With a sharp nod, Jarrod settled back in the booth. “She’s in a pile of trouble because of her deal with you about her acres of the ranch. Old man Cawthorne is fit to be tied and he wants blood. Yours and Mom’s.”
“So I heard.”
“Yeah. He feels that she betrayed him.”
“What do you want me to do ab
out it?”
Jarrod rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know. Maybe sell the ranch back to her.” At the tightening of Mason’s jaw, Jarrod sighed and shook his head. “Hey, you know there’s no love lost between the man and me. I’d just as soon spit on Cawthorne as talk to him, but he’s gonna be my stepfather—like it or not. And for some unfathomable reason, he makes Mom happy. Or he did, until she up and sold out to you. Now he’s hot under the collar, furious with her, and she’s got her back up. They’re barely talking and they’re supposed to be tying the knot.”
“Sounds like a marriage made in heaven,” Mason observed.
“There is no such thing,” Jarrod replied, finishing his drink and reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet. “You, of all people, should know that. This one’s on me, Lafferty.” He tossed a few bills onto the table.
“I’ll buy next time.”
