Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [22]
At Clare’s senior prom, floral White Shoulders had been wasted on pimply, damp-palmed Billy Meyer. The football player she longed for dated a cheerleader, rather than a fellow athlete like Clare.
Jay hadn’t exactly told Clare she couldn’t wear perfume during their fifteen-year marriage. He’d just screwed his handsome face into a scowl and fanned away the smell, making the stale leftovers of Elyssa’s Obsession all the more hurtful. Before the ink was dry on the decree, Clare had launched an assault on the Houston Galleria’s perfume counters. A mirrored tray identical to Jewel McGrath’s occupied a place of honor on her sinktop at home.
This evening, in addition to wearing cologne, Clare had selected the one dress she’d brought with her. The slight slip of sundress in a deep violet was more suited for a humid Texas night, but it made her feel daring.
With the easy appreciation that liquor bestowed, Steve Haywood leaned against the dark wood bar in the Bear Pit. He’d walked out of the Lake Hospital yesterday and not been sober since.
Sea green light shone onto the glass screen dividing the bar from Old Faithful’s cavernous dining room. Etched into thick panels was a group of bears in nineteenth-century clothing, playing cards, dancing, and shooting one another with seltzer bottles. Party animals--and no matter how much Steve had drunk in the past four years, he’d never found that carefree plane of non-existence.
Maybe he’d find it tonight, with enough Jack Daniels.
He sipped and surveyed the summer crowd occupying heavy wooden tables and chairs in the half-round bar. Here was an eclectic mix of tourists and folks working the park. Bartender Annabel Eaton stood behind the long western-style counter and wiped a glass with a rag. They were old friends by now, and Steve could tell Annabel thought he’d had enough to drink. He’d need to slow down so the heavyset, earnest, kindergarten teacher from Des Moines would continue to serve him.
Over there was off-duty waitress Pamela Weber, with velvet, Italian-movie-star eyes that could have graced the pages of a men’s magazine. Tanned legs stretched a mile below tight white shorts. Steve hadn’t been to bed with her; in fact, he hadn’t slept with a woman in the four years since Susan, but, with Pamela, he’d come close. Back in June, she had attracted his attention while he was walking around the geyser basin. She’d invited him to go hot potting, the summer employees’ name for swimming in the thermal springs. He’d had too much to drink and the warm water had relaxed him so much he’d been unable to rise to the occasion.
Pamela spotted him, gave an airy wave, and turned her attention to the man buying her drinks this evening. Steve sighed and took another long and joyless swallow of whiskey.
Twenty feet away, Clare Chance paused in the doorway. Everything seemed suddenly sharp to Steve as she swept the room with that deliberately blind stare women bestow on a roomful of strangers. Those eyes, almost haunted—or maybe she just suffered from the lack of sleep of many on the fire lines.
In a bright dress that left her golden shoulders bare, with streaked tawny hair over her rounded forehead, she strode purposefully to the bar. Steve watched her stand on tiptoe in flat-heeled leather sandals, accentuating the corded muscles of her calves. Her extraordinary presence had caused him to forget that she was barely taller than five feet, and made it difficult to believe she had manhandled him into the lake.
With the champagne she’d ordered, Clare drifted toward the curved outer wall of windows. Steve cursed himself for not having noticed Deering before. The pilot looked as cocky as ever, lifting his beer mug and toasting Clare’s approach. A small sideways flick of eyes said he’d seen Steve. “You should have let me get your drink.