Whiskey Girl

Whiskey Girl

Maggie Casper

Book two in the
To Serve and Protect series.

When your heart
has been ripped bleeding from your chest, it leaves behind a dark hole where
desire no longer resides. At least that was what Ausha Malone thought right up
until the moment Detective Doug Pennington walked into her bar.

Informing Ausha
about the death of her ex-husband would be Doug’s hardest task of the day, but
he was ready for it. What he wasn’t prepared for was meeting Ausha
face-to-face. Life had dealt her a bad hand. If someone cared to look close
enough, they could see exactly how bad in the gunmetal gray of her gaze.

Doug wasn’t so
sure he wanted to look, and yet he couldn’t seem to stay away. He was bound and
determined to give Ausha her life back, whether he had to drag her kicking and
screaming all the way or not.

Acknowledgements

To my editor Mary Moran, the best comma
Nazi ever! Thank you for the time and effort you put into making each one of my
books the very best they can be.

Chapter One

Doug Pennington spent his whole life as a
police officer. He’d seen things bad enough to make even the worst of criminals
sick to their stomachs.

It should get easier,
he thought to himself. The problem was…it didn’t.

Sure, he’d learned to mask his feelings as
he watched the finality of a situation cross the faces of those left behind.
Sometimes he even felt cynical enough to pretend not to care, but he did.

The constant death and destruction of
humanity was the main reason he’d uprooted and moved from Dallas. Being a
big-city cop certainly kept life interesting but at the same time it greatly
decreased the longevity of that same life. He’d just decided one day he’d had
enough.

After putting in a call to close friend and
local small-town sheriff Ryder Jackson, Doug had been given a desk in the
unassuming brick office building on Main Street in the small town of Memory, Oklahoma.
It had taken some getting used to for sure, but at his age, boredom was a good
thing. The thought made him grin.

Doug’s smile was short lived as he pulled
along the curb in front of Malone’s bar. He set the gearshift into park then
turned off the ignition. The business front was similar to others in town. Kept
clean as it was, a passerby wouldn’t even realize it was a bar if they didn’t
take the time to read the wooden sign.

He’d only been in the place once. Nothing
serious, his duty had been to escort an inebriated man home to his wife. No
damages, no bloodshed. He hadn’t caught sight of Ausha Malone at that time. As
a matter of fact, he couldn’t recall ever seeing her around town in the two
years since she’d opened for business. Either they kept vastly different hours
or the woman was a loner. Either scenario was completely understandable since
Doug himself wasn’t overly predictable in either case.

Peering down at the photograph in his hand,
he had a hard time picturing the pink-sweater-wearing, perfectly coifed hair
woman as a bar owner. It was obvious to him she was a ’burb mom. Her
fingernails were probably perfectly manicured. From all appearances, she seemed
the type to volunteer her days away while being home in time to have supper on
the table by six.

Super mom type, at least on the surface.

Only problem was, in his experience, those
types were cold and calculated. The house was immaculate, no smudged faces or
hand-me-down clothes for the kids, but neither were hugs and kisses passed
freely either.

When the call came in early this morning,
Doug hadn’t thought much of it. He opened the door and uncurled himself from
the driver’s seat of his unmarked vehicle. Taking one last look at the picture
in his hand, he wedged it into the front pocket of his button-down,
business-type shirt.

After crossing the threshold, it took a
minute for his eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior. The place was closed
for business, but Doug had called ahead and been told the door would be
unlocked when he arrived.

A woman sat at the end of the bar, her gaze
trained on him. Where the woman in the picture was light, all pink pastels and
smiles, this woman was dark. Her hair was mussed, hanging down to her shoulders
in glistening black curls. He couldn’t see the color of her eyes but already
knew they were the same gunmetal gray as his service revolver.

Her pink sweater was gone, replaced by a
tight black t-shirt that barely reached the waistband of the jeans she’d
evidently painted on. It was hard to tell since she was sitting, but she
appeared average in height, and although soft in all the right places, there
was no doubt in Doug’s mind she could give anyone a run for their money. She
was athletically built, scrappy even. Although she appeared it from the
outside, Doug would bet calm wasn’t a word Ausha Malone knew well.

He moved close enough to clearly see her
too-pale face and her stone-hard eyes. Instantly he knew. The woman before him
had been through something horrific and he’d been way off base in his
assessment of her based purely on a picture.

The overwhelming urge to pull her into his
arms assailed him. It was something Doug fought, not only because he was there
in a professional capacity, but also because from the look on her face, he knew
she would not be a willing participant in anything even resembling a hug or
support. Not to mention the fact he hadn’t had the urge to gather a woman into
his arms and protect her since Andrea, who had been the wife of his best friend
Antonio Parelli. It no longer hurt as much when Andrea entered his thoughts,
but now was not the time for reminiscing, so Doug pushed her from his mind.

“You wanted to talk to me?”

Her voice was rough, pulling him from his
inner thoughts. It sounded almost as if she’d spent the night in a drunken stupor,
screaming concert-style. It skated across his flesh, causing bumps to rise on
its surface.

“Yes ma’am.” Doug motioned toward the empty
stool next to her. She nodded and so he sat. Pulling his ID and badge from his
pocket, he showed them to her. “I’m Detective Doug Pennington with the Memory
Sheriff’s Department. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

She nodded.

For the first time he could remember, Doug
couldn’t quite think of the words to say. He didn’t want to add to whatever
caused this woman so much grief. She saved him from the need, but he wasn’t so
sure her doing so was a good thing.

“Is it about my ex-husband? If so, spill
it. There’s no love lost.” Then, as if something had just struck her as funny,
she smiled. Only it wasn’t really a smile, more like a sneer. “Maybe it’ll be
my lucky day and you’ve come to tell me he’s dead.”

Doug was so taken aback by her words he
could only stare. He’d heard bitter people who had been hurt talk. He’d also
heard hateful people wish all sorts of bad things on others, but for some
reason, those exact same type of words coming from her mouth rubbed him the
wrong way. It took everything in Doug not to mention what a bitch she was
being, but he somehow managed.

He decided to keep everything businesslike
and started his impersonal speech. “I’m very sorry to inform you your
ex-husband was found dead early last week. After a preliminary investigation,
his death was ruled a suicide. There was a note left at the scene along with
some other paperwork. I have it with me. Included was your information as his
next of kin.”

Her demeanor and expression had not changed
once while he was talking. Until he mentioned having a letter for her, she’d
not moved even once. When he finished, she climbed off the high barstool to
face him.

“I don’t want the letter or any other
paperwork. Do whatever you want with it. Burn it for all I care. I want nothing
to do with that man, dead or alive.”

She started to walk away. “Ausha. Mrs.
Malone.”

He knew people said things out of anger and
hurt, but he didn’t want this woman feeling those things or regretting what he
saw as making a rash decision based purely on emotions.

She stopped but didn’t turn to face him.
“Being angry and bitter won’t make whatever he did to hurt you feel better,
sweetheart. Forgive him for the affair or emptying your savings account or
whatever it is you think he did and move on with your life.”

Before the sentence was free of his mouth,
she whirled on her booted heel. The look of wild agony on her face would have
brought a lesser man to his knees. As it was, Doug couldn’t help but flinch in
response. She stalked back to him, her cheeks wet with tears she silently shed.

“What life?” She hung her head for a second
then snapped her chin back up, her eyes glaring daggers at him as she poked the
middle of his chest with a short, rough-edged fingernail painted black. “It’s
not a matter of thinking he did something. I know.” It was the first time she’d
raised her voice. “I know, but you have no fucking clue.” The last was tainted
with disgust.

Doug knew he should leave, but he couldn’t
quite bring himself to do so. He watched as she stalked around him. There
really was no other way to describe the way she moved. Sleek and quiet like a
large cat was the first thought to come to mind. She rounded the end of the bar
and didn’t stop until her long, tapered fingers closed around the neck of a
Jack Daniel’s bottle.

He watched as she poured a man’s portion
into the bottom of a glass then without hesitation swallowed it in one shot.
There was no grimace, no coughing or sputtering. It was a taste she was
obviously familiar with.

“Ausha.” This woman was in need of help.
Why Doug planned to offer assistance, he had no clue. Even if all he could do
was allow her to vent or use him as her verbal punching bag, he was willing.

“Don’t. Just don’t.” Her tone was once
again modulated, not a hint of emotion seeping through the cracks. “It’s time
for you to leave, Detective.”

As any good peace officer knew, there was a
time to advance and a time to retreat. Now was the time to retreat, but not for
good. Doug would be back, but before he returned, he needed to spend a little
time arming himself with knowledge. He needed to find out exactly what had
happened to change Ausha Malone from the woman in the picture to the one
swigging back another shot of Jack at ten o’clock in the morning.

Ausha set the glass down. Her hands shook
so badly, she was surprised she could even hold it. Placing them on the edge of
the bar, she stepped back, dropped her head until her forehead rested on the
scarred wood surface and let the tears fall.

He was gone. The bastard who stole her baby
away from her was gone, the man who was responsible for changing her life in
the blink of an eye. Dead. She wanted to be happy, she really did, but joy was
not something she was feeling. She’d hated her now-dead, ex-husband Brian,
every minute of every day for the last two years. She was also well aware of
what a wasted emotion hate was. In her previous life, she often counseled
others on how to use a negative emotive process for good instead of dwelling on
the bad, and yet, when push came to shove, she couldn’t practice what she
preached.

There wasn’t a day gone by she hadn’t shed
a tear or two. The loss was just too keen not to do so, but she never let another
witness her mess of emotions. She regretted doing so now. There was something
about Detective Pennington that made her feel transparent.

He saw things she didn’t want him to and
would challenge and push her. She knew it as well as she knew how many cases of
beer sat in the storeroom that he would be back. The knowledge rekindled an
awareness throughout her body, one in which she was not ready for. She didn’t
deserve to live a happy life when the one whom she loved the most lay cold in
her grave.

The news of Brian’s death was supposed to
have been a new beginning for her. She’d known it would come. He hadn’t been
the type of man who could live with himself after what he’d done. She had
actually anticipated the day as one in which she would rejoice and be born
again. She’d finally be able to forget, to move on.

Why oh why couldn’t it be that way?

“And why couldn’t it have been a geeky,
pencil-pushing desk jockey who came to me with the news?” Her grumbled words
ended on a hiccough.

Ausha pushed herself upright, poured
another round for the bar then chuckled since she happened to be the only
person there. Shit had to improve because it sure the fuck couldn’t get any
worse, was the thought spiraling through her mind as the whiskey burned a path
down her throat.

Wiping the tears from her face, she turned
to the sink to wash the glass she used to drown her sorrows and began the daily
chores needed in order to open on time. It was going to be one hell of a long
ass day.

* * * * *

She knew he was there long before she
spotted him through the crowd. She felt him nearly as soon as he sauntered his
big self through the door. His perusal made every hair on the back of her neck
stand tall.

“Hey, boss. Want me to send the big guy
packing?”

Jeffrey Langford was about as out of place
in Malone’s as Ausha herself would have been a few years before. He was tall
and whip thin. The only thing missing was a pocket protector from completing
his nerdy look. His wire-rimmed glasses were always riding low on his nose and
in need of being pushed up, but he’d needed a job when she’d been looking to
hire. The economy sucked and they both knew a good thing when they saw it.

Jeff was a whiz at making all the frou-frou
drinks the ladies seemed to enjoy. If Ausha wasn’t mistaken, he memorized the
whole damn book of pansy-ass drinks anyone might ever want to try and a few no
one had ever heard of. In that aspect, he was irreplaceable, but what he wasn’t
was bouncer material.

She gave him as much of a smile as she
could possibly muster. “Thank you, Jeff, but that won’t be necessary.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

He walked away but kept sneaking a peek to
the chair where Doug sat in one of the back corners. It was shrouded in shadow
so she couldn’t clearly see his face, but there was no doubt it was him who
occupied the space.

Not acknowledging him would be childish,
but to do so would place her in a position she wasn’t really looking forward to
being in. On the other hand, if Ausha didn’t make the first move, it would
appear he controlled the situation, not something she relished the thought of.
Besides, there was no doubt in her mind he would hang around until no one else
was present. He seemed like a man used to getting his way and one patient
enough to play the waiting game to see it happen.