Sandra Steffen - A Bride by Summer

“You’re my best friend, and I would give you a kidney or the shirt off my back,” Ruby declared from behind the bar. “But I told you. I’m not taking a date. From now on I’m flying solo. I mean it, Amanda.” Her laptop was open, too. Next to it was the box she’d started filling with cameras from the former owner’s collection. “I don’t even want to attend the class reunion.”

“You have to, Ruby.”

“Peter’s going to be there.”

“I know,” Amanda said gently. “That’s why I think you should bring a date. As former class officers, we’re not only the planning committee, but we’re the welcoming committee, too. Don’t even think about trying to get out of it. You promised, and you never break your promises.”

With a sigh, Ruby returned to compiling the menu of drinks that would be indigenous to her saloon. So far her list included alcoholic beverages with names such as Howl at the Moon and Fountain of Youth and Dynamite. Since she thought best when she was moving, she wandered to the pool tables in the back of the room.

Amanda tucked her chin-length brown hair behind one ear and followed. “Number one,” she said, fine-tuning a line on the small screen. “This goes without saying because it’s always number one with you. Nonetheless, number one.” She cleared her throat for emphasis. “He must be tall. T-a-l-l. Tall, with a capital T. Number two. It would be nice if he spoke in complete sentences.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. While she was looking up at the ceiling, a loud scrape sounded from above. Evidently her mother was still rearranging her furniture, even though Ruby had told her that the layout was fine the way it was.

Nobody listened to her, she thought as she shook out the plush sleeping bag she’d found near the pool tables and refolded it. It was a strange place to leave a sleeping bag, but at the closing yesterday, the previous owner, Lacey Bell Sullivan, had asked Ruby to keep the bedroll here for safekeeping for a few days while Lacey’s brand-new husband whisked her away on their honeymoon. Lacey had vaguely mentioned that someone might come by to pick it up. Ruby believed there was something Lacey wasn’t telling her, but Amanda was right. To Ruby, a promise was a promise.

Amanda was rattling off number five, apparently unconcerned that Ruby had missed numbers three and four entirely. “No bodybuilding Mr. America wannabes. And your date should be sensitive but not too sensitive. You don’t want to be apologizing all the time.”

Ruby smiled in spite of herself.

While Amanda recited the remaining must-have qualities from her list, Ruby took another look around. It was hard to believe this building was hers. The main room of the saloon was large and L-shaped, stretching from Division Street all the way to the alley out back. The tables and chairs were mismatched and the lighting questionable. There was a jukebox on one wall and two pool tables in need of a little restoration in the back. The ornately carved bar, where drinks would be served and stories swapped, was the crowning jewel of the entire room.

The ceilings were low and two of the walls were exposed brick. The hardwood floors were worn and the restrooms needed a little updating, but the building was structurally sound and included an apartment with a separate entrance.

Lacey Bell Sullivan had moved to Orchard Hill with her father when she was twelve. She’d inherited the building when he died. Business had fallen off, but she believed with all her heart that what the tavern really needed was a breath of fresh air. A new life.

Ruby thrilled at the thought.

“Rainbow of Optimism,” she said under her breath as she hurried back to her laptop and added another drink title to her menu.

Amanda hopped back onto her barstool, the pert bounce of her hairstyle matching her personality. “What are you working on?”

“I’m giving Bell’s a new identity so it will appeal to a lively, energetic, fun-loving crowd. Right now I’m compiling a menu featuring one-of-a-kind drinks.”

Amanda turned the screen around in order to read the menu. “These are fun, Ruby. Fountain of Youth and Dynamite are self-explanatory. What’s this two-X-Z-zero-three?”

“Oh, that doesn’t belong on the list. It’s just the license plate number of a Corvette I saw run a sweet Mustang off the road earlier. I stopped to make sure the driver of the Mustang was okay. What do you think of Happy Hops?”

“Was this driver a guy?”

“We’re talking about the title of a drink,” Ruby insisted. “Is Happy Hops too trite?”

“Was this handsome stranger under, say, thirty-five?” Amanda asked.

“I didn’t say he was handsome.”

“I knew it,” Amanda quipped.

Another scrape sounded overhead. Holding up one hand, Ruby said, “You and my parents are making me sincerely wish I had hired a moving company.”

Just then Ruby’s father came bounding into the room waving a sheet of yellow lined paper. A brute of a man with a shock of red hair and a booming voice, he said, “The smoke alarm doesn’t work. The bathroom faucet drips. Only one burner works on the stove, and that refrigerator is as old as I am. Did you count the steps leading to the apartment? Do you really want to have to climb twenty steps at the end of a long day?”

“Walter, would you stop?” The only person who called Red O’Toole Walter was his wife. Ruby’s mother now joined them downstairs. The freckles scattered across Scarlet O’Toole’s nose gave her a perpetually young appearance, which was at odds with the streaks of gray in her short red hair.

“It isn’t too late for her to get out of this,” Red said to his wife.

Scarlet wasn’t paying attention. She was listening to Amanda, who was telling her about the near accident Ruby had witnessed and the driver she’d stopped to help earlier.

“Was he tall?” Scarlet quizzed her daughter’s best friend.

“I asked her that, too,” Amanda replied. “That particular detail has not been forthcoming. Yet.”

Ruby dropped her face into her hands.

“She needs to come home with us,” her father insisted, as if that was that.

“She signed the papers,” her mother said dismissively.

“I don’t like the idea of our little girl serving up hard liquor to a bunch of rowdy m-e-n.”

Ruby didn’t bother reminding them that she was standing right here.

“Driving a tow truck you were okay with.” Ruby’s mother had a way of wrinkling up her nose when she was making a rhetorical statement. She demonstrated the tactic, and then said, “She’s only a three-and-a-half-hour drive away.”

Ruby backed away from the trio—not that any of them noticed—and traipsed to her laptop, where she added another one-of-a-kind drink title to the top of her menu. Kerfuffle. If her life thus far was any indication, this one was going to be a big seller.

“It’s time for you to go,” she said loudly enough to be heard over the din.

All three turned to face her.

“What?” her mother asked.

“But I’m not finished—” her father grumbled.

“You’re kicking us out?” Amanda groused.

Ruby stood her ground. “Thanks for all your help these past two days. I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“You’re asking us to leave?” her six-foot-three-inch father asked incredulously.

“I’m begging you,” she said.

“See what you’ve done?” Scarlet said to Red.

“So I’m worried that my little girl is a barkeeper.”

Red O’Toole’s little girl was twenty-eight years old and stood almost five foot eleven. But she smiled at him as she rounded the bar to give him a daughterly kiss on the cheek and a heartfelt hug. “The smoke alarm probably just needs a new battery. One burner and a microwave is all I need. I can deal with the leaky faucet, and those steps will be a good workout.”