Sully frowned, wiping a glass behind the mostly empty bar.“Call you what now?”
“City slicker?”the newcomer huffed.
Sully chuckled dryly to himself, the sound as low and taut as the simmering tension just beneath his belt.“Boys?”he asked the three regulars sitting at their usual places at the L-shaped bar.“You wanna take this one?”
“I’ll go first,” said Big Red, thick fingertips still peeling apart the label of his thirdLucky Sudsof the day.“For one, you smell like soap.”
The newcomer’s eyes widened.“That’s a bad thing?”he balked, inching closer to the bar as he gave his closest armpit a quick little whiff.
Big Red shrugged his broad shoulders, clad in a flannel shirt that had seen better days.“Not a bad thing,” he agreed in his folksy, jowly way.“Just ...a city thing.”
“No soap in Pistol Creek?”the newcomer shot back, making Sully snort.He wasn’t alone.The three regulars also stifled good-natured guffaws, though none would allow the sound to escape their lips.Not in front of the newcomer, naturally.
Laughter was for locals only, everybody in town knew that.Newcomers, especially soap-smelling, soft-handing, pretty boy City Slickers got gruff, no nonsense grunts.
And that’s if they were lucky.
“Plenty of soap,” said Tiny, the jovial fellow in the size XXL overalls on the stool next to Big Red.“We just don’t use it all at once, per se.”
Even the newcomer had to snicker at that one.Still, the pretty boy rolled his eyes, fiddled nervously with the brim of his cap and frowned.“Any other reason?”
“How long you got, kid?”asked Phil, the pencil thin banker on the third and final stool at the bar.
“I’d hardly call Storm River a thriving metropolis,” the newcomer huffed.
“Tennessee?”Big Red quipped.
“All the way up there?”Tiny teased.
“Might as well be Manhattan, son,” Phil piled on.
Sully sighed, settling in for the show.Once these three got to riffing, he knew, it could be a while before they ran out of hot air.
“What’d you do?”Big Red huffed, waving his beer bottle playfully.“Park your private jet out there on Lonely Street?”
“Probably set his helicopter on the roof of the bank,” Tiny said solemnly.
“Or his jet pack,” Phil said with a straight face, just before Sully’s daily regulars looked at each other, paused, then broke out laughing.
Sully waved his bar towel in their general direction to quiet them down.“All right, all right,” Sully sighed, wondering anew what the sexy stranger was doing, standing in his bar enduring all the lightly tossed insults for.“What can I do you for, City Slicker?”
His three regulars enjoyed a good old snort while sipping their cheap bottled beers, wiling away the hours until their wives called them home for supper.“Jesus,” the newcomer snorted, nodding at the short row of high-top tables along the far wall, above them a smattering of dusty old pennants from local sports teams and, of course, the obligatory moose head—or two.“A beer, I guess.Is it okay if I sit over there or are they reserved for guests with a valid Pistol Creek birth certificate?”
His regulars chuckled, the highest form of compliment, whether the newcomer appreciated that fact or not.Sully merely frowned.“Have a seat,” he grumbled, setting his well-polished rocks glass down and reaching inside the cooler beneath the bar for another bottle ofLucky Suds.“And have your ID ready.”
