‘And for your date?’ he asked, after sliding her drink across to her.
‘Same as before, I guess. And he’s not my date … I mean, I guess he is, technically … but I didn’t know he was going tobe mydate until he turned up on my doorstep.’Whyshe felt the need to justify herself to the bartender, she had no idea.
‘So a guy you didn’t know just knocked on your door and asked you on a date?’ he asked, kinking an eyebrow.
Jenny let her gaze roam across his wide forehead and down to a set of rather nice eyes, before she answered. ‘My daughters and my best friend decided to set me up on a dating site. They just didn’t tell me about it until tonight.’
‘Bold,’ he said with an appreciative nod.
Jenny took a healthy swig of her drink and squeezed her eyes shut as she clamped down on the coughing fit that threatened to erupt.
‘Here you go,’ he said.
She cracked an eyelid open to take a tentative breath, relieved to find she could do it without coughing. The wine for Derrick sat on the bar in front of her. Jenny tapped hercard on the top of the machine the barman held out, before taking the two glasses and bracing herself as though heading back into battle.
‘You got this,’ she heard the bartender say with a hint of amusement. She looked over her shoulder, but he was already walking towards his next customer.
Nick Mason glanced back over his shoulder, watching thoughtfully as the brunette walked away.
‘Was a real shame what that mongrel ex-husband of hers did to her.’
Nick turned and saw Bill, a white-haired regular, speaking to his two drinking companions.
‘Yep,’ agreed Claud, another of the pub’s permanent fixtures, in his slow, drawn-out fashion.
‘What did he do?’ Nick asked when the conversation appeared to have run its course, leaving everything hanging.
‘Left her for some kid—same age as her daughter. Caused a big stir a few years back.’
Nick looked at the table across the room to where the woman in question sat, trying her best to look suitably impressed by whatever the guy across from her was saying—and failing.
‘So who’s that guy then?’ Nick asked, nodding at her date.
‘No idea. Not from around here, I reckon,’ Bill said, downing the last of his schooner and waiting for another.
‘Doesn’t look like someone Jenny would be interested in. I wonder who he is?’ Joyce added, wandering across from the poker machines to join in.
As the speculation continued, Nick realised most people seemed to know the woman from their hospital visits and for some reason it was a surprise to see her out on a date. Why, he couldn’t understand. She was attractive and apparently single. But this date was a disaster, especially if she felt a need to dull the experience with scotch. Not a good sign.
This wasn’t the first time he’d found himself embroiled in a gossip session. He actually found them quite helpful for getting to know his customers. Sometimes he found out a little bittoomuch information, but on the whole, it was handy to be armed with some intel in order to make contacts and keep himself from making too many blunders.
It was yet another quirky small-town thing he had to get used to since moving from the city. Kind of like the way people here referred to shops and places around town by their names or owners from fifty or more years earlier. For the first week he’d lived here, he’d spent three days trying to find Smiths’ Furniture Shop, which was also known as the two-dollar shop and the cheap shop, but was actually called Mega Save Bargains. All he’d wanted was somewhere that sold liquid chalk to write on the sandwich board he put out on the footpath. Such a simple thing had become a major pain.
Still, he wasn’t complaining too much. He’d bought his dream pub and life right now was good.Maybe it could be better, though, he thought, as he rested his hip against the bar and took one more look at Jenny.
