A Little Texas Two-Step. Peggy Moreland

a damn lie!”

      She set the bucket on the floor by the sink and brushed past him on her way to the bar. “It isn’t. If you did, you’d take better care of the place.”

      Hank followed her. “I take care of my business!”

      She wheeled, and he fell back a step to keep from slamming into her. “Do you?” she asked, arching a neatly shaped brow.

      “Well, hell, yes!”

      “Then why are you letting this place fall down around you?”

      Hank looked at her in dismay. “It’s not falling down!”

      “Sure it is.” She stepped to the wall and tapped a manicured nail at a spot of chipped plaster. “This for instance. How long has this been this way?”

      Hank frowned. “The walls look the same as when I bought the place.”

      “And how long has that been?”

      “Six years.”

      She dipped her chin and looked at him from beneath her eyebrows, the smirk on her mouth telling him that his answer only proved her point.

      “Well, I sure as hell don’t hear my customers complaining,” he said defensively.

      “That’s because they don’t have a choice. Yours is the only bar in town. But if another opened,” she quickly added, before he could interrupt, “which is a strong possibility with all the people who keep swarming through Temptation, then you might very well lose your customers.”

      Her statement momentarily stripped Hank’s tongue of the scathing remark he’d been about to make. He’d never thought about the possibility of competition. The End of the Road had been the only bar in Temptation for as long as he could remember.

      Before he could gather his wits enough to respond, the door opened and Cody Fipes, Temptation’s sheriff, strolled in.

      “Hey!” Cody called, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Who cleaned the windows? Had to put on my sunglasses to kill the glare.”

      Leighanna turned to Hank, folding her arms beneath her breasts. “See?” she said, smiling sweetly. “Someone did notice.”

      

      It rankled more than Hank wanted to admit, but Cody wasn’t the only one who commented on the clean windows that night at the bar. Even old Will Miller, Temptation’s one-and-only barber and the crankiest SOB in town, noticed the change and even found a smile for Leighanna when he’d learned she was responsible for the work.

      Hank bit back an oath. Wasn’t nothin’ wrong with the looks of The End of the Road, he told himself as he scooped coins from the cash register drawer onto his open palm. Hell, business was good, always had been, and nobody’d ever complained about the appearance of the place before...at least not before Leighanna had taken it upon herself to clean those damned windows.

      It was all her fault, he told himself as he started sorting the coins into piles by denomination. He’d never thought twice about what his bar looked like. He’d been too damn busy serving drinks and slapping hamburgers on a grill to pay it any mind...at least not until Leighanna had shot off her sassy mouth.

      But as a result of her comments, earlier, when the sunshine had been gleaming through those windows she’d cleaned, the plaster on the old interior walls had appeared to him a little more crusty and duller than they had before. Even the mirror behind the bar seemed intent on rubbing Hank’s nose in his neglect by reflecting the chipped plaster back at him when his back was turned to the open room.

      Angrily, he scraped a handful of quarters into his hand to count. “What else do you think is wrong with the place?” he muttered disagreeably.

      Startled by the unexpected question, Leighanna straightened from her mopping and used her wrist to push her hair from her face as she turned to look at him. His head was bent over the coins, but she could tell by the way one side of his mouth curled down that he was still irritated by all the attention the clean windows had drawn.

      And that is just too bad, she thought peevislaly. Because she was right. He had neglected the building.

      “The eaves need painting, the doors need revarnishing and it wouldn’t hurt to freshen up the sign.” She started to mention the pots of geraniums, but decided she’d better not push her luck. “And that’s just on the outside,” she said before going back to her mopping.

      His head snapped up. “And what’s wrong with the inside? Other than the plaster,” he quickly added before she could rub his nose in that again.

      Leighanna sighed and drew the mop up, folding her hands over the top of its handle. “Well, for starters, the tabletops are a disgrace. They’ve been scrubbed so much there is nothing left of their finish but raw wood. It’s all but impossible to get the stains off them.”

      He hunched his shoulders defensively. “I can’t afford to replace every damn table in the place.”

      “You wouldn’t have to. You could either refinish them, or maybe even use tablecloths to cover them. A bit of color certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

      “Tablecloths!” He snorted and slapped a ten dollar stack of quarters onto the bar. “If you had your way, you’d turn this place into a damn tearoom.”

      “Tables in a tearoom are covered with linen and lace. I was thinking more in the line of checkered oilcloths.”

      Hank cocked his head to look at her in disgust. “Checkered?”

      “Yes,” she said, hoping she could hold his interest long enough to convince him. “Preferably red and white. It would carry out your country motif.”

      “What the hell’s a motif?”

      “You know,” she said, fluttering her hand at him. “Theme.”

      It was all Hank could do to keep from rolling his eyes. A country motif, for God’s sake! As if he’d actually had a theme in mind when he’d opened The End of the Road for business.

      But then he remembered the compliments the clean windows had drawn and Leighanna’s warning that somebody might move into Temptation and open a new bar to compete against him. He’d already heard the rumors about a couple who were moving to town to open a clothing store. For all he knew, someone could very well be planning to open a bar. Hank knew he was stubborn, but he certainly wasn’t a fool.

      He levered a pile of dimes into a stack. “I suppose if a person were of a mind,” he muttered, “they could pick up something like that over at Carter’s Mercantile.”

      Surprised that he’d even consider her suggestion, Leighanna took a hesitant step toward him. “I could do it for you. In fact, I could measure the tables and cut the cloth myself.”