Read Online Red’s Hot Honky-Tonk Bar by Pamela Morsi - Free Book Online Page A

guess these are your immediate needs with the kids,” he said. “What can I do to help you?”
    Red shook her head. “I’m still thinking that you should move along before you get yourself in deeper than you want to be.”
    Cam hesitated for a long moment. “I’m thinking that you are going to be a lot busier,” he said. “So I am going to make myself a bit more scarce.”
    Red forced a smile to her face. He was bowing out after all. She’d expected it. It would be crazy for him not to. And she knew that once he was gone, he’d never find his way back to her again. There was an aching sense of loss within her that she deliberately ignored.
    “It’s only a few months and then Bridge will be back and things will be back to normal.”
    He gave a slow nod that wasn’t completely convinced.
    “One thing I’ve got to ask,” he said. “Why did you let the kids think that you were keeping them here, instead of their dad letting them go?”
    She shrugged. “I’m just their grandmother,” she answered.
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means…” She tried to put her instinct into words. “It means that if they get angry with me, resent me, hate me, well, that’s no big deal.”
    Cam let that answer soak in for a moment. “But if they get angry, resentful and hateful to their dad, it is a big deal.”
    “Right.”
    Cam shook his head. “I’m not sure Miguel Lujan deserves what you’re doing for him.”
    Red gave an incredulous sniff of disdain. “I’m not doing anything for that sorry bastard,” she said. “Or maybe I am. I’m buying him a little time to smarten up, grow up, before it’s too late for any of it to matter. But that’s just coincidental.”
    “You’re doing it for the kids?”
    “Children have a right to think the best of their parents,” Red said. “Believe me, they always learn soon enough how flawed they really are.”
    “You sound like you speak from experience.”
    She laughed humorlessly. “From both sides. I’ve been the flaw finder and the flawed.”
    Cam’s eyebrow went up slightly and Red knew that she’d revealed more than she should. She didn’t want questions. Especially from a guy who was on his way out.
    “I think these two kids have already got my number,” she told him. “You know what Daniel calls me? Abuela Mala.”
    “Bad Grandmother?” Cam translated and then burst out laughing.
    “You would think it’s funny!” she said, although she was smiling, as well. “We’d better go down and get the kids or I definitely will have proved Daniel right.”
    “In a minute,” he said. “First, I’d like to offer something.”
    Red looked at him, surprised.
    “I know how you hate to take help from anybody for any reason,” he said. “You certainly hate taking anything from men. So don’t think this is from me to you. It’s more from me to the kids.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well,” he said. “The truth is, I have a nice house within walking distance of a great elementary school. I’d like to loan it to you. We could just temporarily swap living arrangements. I could be the bachelor living over the bar. And you can take care of two grandkids in a three-bedroom house in a family neighborhood.”
    “What would your landlord say about that?” she asked.
    “It’s my house, Red. I don’t have a landlord. I own it.”
    “You own your own house?” Her tone was incredulous.
    “Yes, ma’am, I do,” he answered. “And I’d be happy to let you borrow it while the kids are with you.”
    Red stared at her ne’er-do-well cowboy fiddler player with new eyes.
    “All the months I’ve known you, you never said anything about owning a house,” she pointed out.
    Cam grinned at her and with more than a hint of teasing in his voice he answered, “You never said anything about having a daughter or grandchildren, so I guess we’re even. It’s my grandmother’s house. She left it to me.”
    “Oh,” Red replied, nodding, as if inheritance explained