The girl stared at the unconscious men before slowly lifting her gaze to me. “How did you…?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything.” It wouldn’t be good if folks talked about things that they didn’t understand. “Are you okay?”
She shivered, rubbing her shoulders. “I’m okay. I think.” A timid smile quirked on her lips. “Thank you for whatever you did.” The woman crossed to me and extended her arms for a hug, but then shrank back.
“It’s okay,” I said encouragingly. “You can hug me.”
She started to open her arms and stopped. “Um, I just remembered I have to be someplace. Thank you, though.”
“Next time,” I said, “don’t go to a bar alone.”
She stared at the men. “Don’t worry.”
She disappeared out the door before I could catch her name. Lady shuffled up beside me, her tail wagging. “Same old story, Lady. We save the day and folks run scared from us.”
The door to the back opened, and Shane appeared, lugging in a keg. He smoothed dark hair away from his face while his piercing green eyes took in the scene. “Clem, what happened?”
Shane left the keg behind the bar and rushed over. He surveyed me, his gaze raking over my body as if searching for broken bones. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’m fine.”
He crossed to the men and dropped to one knee. “What about them?” Shane pressed his fingers to Buddy’s throat, checking for a pulse.
“Oh, they were bothering some woman. She knocked them out with a killer right hook.”
Shane rose and studied me. “Well, as long as no one was hurt badly.”
I smiled widely. “The only thing that got hurt was their pride.”
With that, I downed the rest of my appletini and left, leaving Shane to wonder exactly how a young woman had managed to knock out two grown men.
Nobody in town knew my secret, not even Sadie, and I planned on keeping things that way.
Chapter 2
Iawoke the next morning to the sound of gunshots. No, gunshots were not the normal thing to hear in Peachwood, Alabama, the small town I live in. Normally I awoke every morning to the calls of mockingbirds and blue jays, not to what sounded like a wad of buckshot being scattered down the street.
After what happened last night, I worried that the two men I’d knocked out had found me and were coming in, guns blazing.
I jumped out of bed, nearly whacking Lady off her pillow. “Sorry, girl.”
She followed me, barking. Lady was ready to take on the invaders, too. I threw on my robe and cast a quick glance in the mirror. Sleep had done my red hair good—it hung in ringlets over my shoulders. Though my skin looked fresh and rested, my brown eyes stared back at me accusingly.
I shrugged. “I am not apologizing to myself for what I did last night. Those two guys deserved it.”
Shane had been worried about me, but I left before he could ask too many questions. It wasn’t good to have folks asking a lot of questions or wondering things that they shouldn’t.
Another blast of a gunshot made me hightail it down the stairs of my old Craftsman cottage and out the front door. My street, Apple Orchard Way, is lined with apple trees, hence the name. Actually I don’t know which came first—the trees or the street, but just about everything in Peachwood is named after some kind of fruit. Makes you wonder if the founding fathers and mothers of the town were fruity themselves—in the head, I mean.
As soon as my feet hit the sidewalk, I saw the culprit.
Old Mrs. Malene Fredricks stood outside her house, shotgun in hand, shooting buckshot into the trees.
Lady barked at Mrs. Fredricks. I scooped my dog into my arms and rushed across the street.
Malene, with curlers in her hair and wearing her floral housecoat, shouted up into a tree. “You get out of here, you pigeons! You and your poop can go on next door to Willard’s house.”
She fired again. Leaves and blossoms fell in a great heap to the ground.
