FIVE YEARS AGO

Tex Williams met the eyes of the waiting customer and slid the beer glass expertly down the bar into his waiting hand. He tipped the brim of his hat and was unable to resist feeling like Tom Cruise in Cocktail when the customer gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up and the patrons between them applauded.

“Last call!” he hollered, in a voice that carried.

Then he turned to the gorgeous dark-skinned woman who had just come in and staggered up to the bar. She was leaning heavily on it, wearing a tight, deeply-scooped magenta shirt and a short skirt. Knee-high, high-heeled boots completed the look.

“What can I get for you, ma’am?”

“Whiskey,” she said boldly. “Neat. On the rocks.”

Tex smiled indulgently at her. “Which one?”

She blinked back, confused. “Can’t it be both?” she asked in a stage whisper, glancing at the next customer at the bar; she was packing up her purse and paying them no notice at all.

“Yes, ma’am,” Tex replied in a matching whisper. Neat was a straight shot, on the rocks was over ice, so there was no way to do both. He turned to pour her a seltzer on ice with a twist of lime. “On the house,” he said, not trying to swindle her.

She took it with no suspicion at all, gulping it down and shuddering as if she had just downed the strongest stuff that Tex had.

“You need me to call you a cab, honey?” Tex asked. He had a few cabbies that he trusted with cases like this on speed-dial.

The woman stared at him, clearly trying to make sense of his words.

“You got a friend here?” he asked gently.

“A friend?” She furrowed her brow, adorably trying to figure him out. Alarm passed over her face and she put a manicured hand to her mouth. “There was someone…” Her eyes widened. “Do you think that he could have put something in my drink?”

Tex was immediately at full alert. No one was going to be slipping drugs to ridiculously innocent young women at his bar on his watch. He peered into her dark eyes, which were glassy, but not dilated. “What have you had to drink?” he asked her intently. “Did you ever leave your glass, to go to the bathroom? Who were you talking with?” His bear senses were at full strength — she smelled like hand soap and laundry detergent and leather and richly of alcohol, but not like drugs.

“I had some iced teas,” she said, gazing back into his eyes trustingly. “Three Manhattan iced teas. Or New Jersey iced teas. Or something…?“ she furrowed her brows again in that childlike way.

Tex relaxed. “Long Island iced teas?” he suggested. That matched the smell on her breath.

She tried to snap. “That was it!”

“You don’t drink a lot, do you.” Tex didn’t make it a question.

She giggled and shook her head. “No.”

She was a full-bodied woman, all her curves in just the right quantities for Tex’s tastes. But if she wasn’t used to drinking -- which clearly she was not -- three long island ice teas would explain her inebriation quite completely.

She was still trying to snap her fingers.

“What’s your name?” Tex asked her, trying not to let his amusement show.

He needn’t have worried; she was oblivious to anything but her disobedient fingers. “Jenny,” she answered distantly. “Jenny Smith.”

“I’m Tex.” If she had been more sober, Tex might have guessed she was picking a generic fake name.

She must have realized that, as she raised sparkling eyes to him and added. “Well, it’s really Jennavivianna Rose Smith. My parents didn’t want me to have a boring name, and were devastated when I told them I’d rather be Jenny.”

“You sit right here, Jennavivianna Rose,” Tex told her, indicating a stool. “I’ll make sure you don’t pass out or do anything stupid. I’m going to give you a glass of water and a cup of coffee, and you put down whatever you can, you hear me?”

She gave a sloppy salute with a face-splitting grin as she clambered carefully up onto the barstool. “I trust you,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I trust you.”

Tex poured the last few drinks for the other customers at his bar, keeping a careful eye on Jenny while she sipped her water and played with the bar napkin. The other customers gradually filed out as they finished their drinks and Tex failed to provide further inebriants. Tex wiped down the bar, and gathered up all the dirty dishes for the cleaning crew. The waitress began putting chairs upside down on tables and gave an old man nursing his last drink by the door a good-natured scold.

“How you doing, kitten?” Tex asked Jenny, wiping the counter around her. “Feel like being sick?” He’d been a bartender long enough to know the usual progression of a drunk that thorough.

She was clearly flagging as the alcohol wore slowly out of her system, but she shook her head firmly. “I don’t usually drink,” she confided. “This is all very out of character for me.” Her gesture included her outfit, and she pulled the shirt up at the shoulder self-consciously.

“You want to tell me about it?” The offer was automatic on Tex’s part, but he meant it whole-heartedly.

Jenny looked at him with a hazy smile. “Yeah, I do. I mean I wouldn’t usually, but hey, while we’re being out of character, why not?”

Tex was pleased to see that her speech was clarifying. He was certain now that nothing was ailing her more than a bit too much to drink, and he was able to shake off the vaguely guilty feeling that had been dogging him at the idea that someone could have slipped her something on his watch.

‘It’s not your bar,’ he reminded himself. ‘And you can’t save every hard-luck case that comes through the door.’

She didn’t look like a hard-luck case, though. Her hair was neatly trimmed, and her makeup was perfect. Her hands had the soft, subtly manicured look of someone who had gone through life without doing labor more menial than loading a dishwasher.

Even her voice as she spoke sounded educated. “It was my sister’s idea,” she confessed in a whisper, though the waitress was across the room closing things up well out of earshot.

“She thought you needed a night out on the town?” Tex gave her an encouraging smile.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “She thinks I’m a stick in the mud,” she scoffed, forgetting to be quiet — or forgetting how to be quiet.

Tex wisely did not agree, but only made a sympathetic noise.

“She always has all the fun,” Jenny complained. “I’m the responsible one, studying hard, scholarship to the University of Texas. She’s so smart, she just skates by without working at all. She could be anything! She’s so stylish and has so much fun.” Her voice was full of affection and envy. “These are her clothes,” she added wistfully.

“They look great on you,” Tex told her sincerely. They certainly fit her just right.

“They look great on her,” Jenny corrected him. “I look like a fraud. I feel like a fraud. I’m graduating in three months with a degree in law and I feel like I’m ready to panic and run away and do something crazy and reckless and throw it all away because I’m not as good as my grades say and who would even let me practice law and there’s the bar and maybe someday I’ll be a judge but that’s just absolutely nuts and it’s all just really overwhelming.”

“It’s pretty normal to feel like that,” Tex assured her. “I’ve probably seen a hundred students in the last few months of their degrees who say exact variations of that. And it’s okay to take a little break and be out of character and go out to a bar for a good time.”

Jenny’s look of relief was almost comical. Tex wondered how long she had been waiting for someone to say that to her.

“‘Course, I have to say that because I work in a bar,” he teased her, and was glad when she picked up that it was a joke and laughed richly.

“Did you go to college?” she asked, then backpedalled, “Sorry, that was probably too personal.”

“Nah,” Tex drawled easily back at her. “I never had the smarts for that. Thought I might make it as a musician, never really got further than amateur night and karaoke.”

“I bet you sing really well. You have a great voice.”

Tex wasn’t sure if the warmth in her own voice was still the alcohol, or if she was flirting. “Thanks, sugar,” seemed a safe enough reply.

“I’m leaving!” the waitress hollered, making true on her statement with a bang of the back door.

“Dreams are important,” Jenny said firmly. “You shouldn’t give up on being a musician.”

“Dreams change,” Tex said with a shrug. “I still like playing, but it’s not a career I’d choose.”

“What would you choose? Bartending?” From some people, it may have sounded condescending, but Jenny was genuine and naive; her question was sincere.

“Honestly, yes,” Tex admitted. “I’d love to have my own place — maybe somewhere tropical.”

“You ever seen…”

“Cocktail,” Tex finished. “Yeah, I may have watched that at an impressionable age. Practiced juggling liquor bottles for hours to get it right.”

Jenny sat up. “Let’s see!”

Tex chuckled and picked two bottles from the counter. “Pro tip… full bottles have different balance than empty ones, and half-empty ones are worse. That lesson cost me half a paycheck when I dropped a 16 year old single malt.”

He set the bottles easily in motion, spinning them in his hands and dipping them behind his back, even tossing one of them and catching it with a flourish.

Jenny squealed and clapped her hands appreciatively. “Oh my gosh, you have reflexes like a shifter!”

Startled, Tex fumbled the bottle, and then miraculously caught it before it hit the edge of the counter. Jenny’s eyes went wide and she clapped her hand over her mouth. She met Tex’s eyes and he knew that he had betrayed his understanding of the term with both his reaction and his reaction time.

“I mean… ah…” Jenny bit her lip. “I suppose we’ve eliminated the possibility that I was drugged into stupidity, but can I blame the iced teas for that slip?”

Tex had to laugh at her earnestness. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re almost past that excuse, too.”

Jenny gave a mortified groan.

“You’re a shifter?” Tex asked. Somehow, she didn’t fit into his expectation.

Jenny shook her head. “No, but otters and wolves run in my family. And I’m usually much better about being discreet about them.”

Tex chuckled, replacing the bottles on the shelf. “Long island iced teas can do that,” he said understandingly.

“What’s your animal?” she asked wistfully. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Bear,” Tex said. “Brown bear.”

“I didn’t know there were brown bears in Texas,” Jenny observed thoughtfully.

Tex leaned in. “Want to know a secret?”

Jenny nodded, eyes dancing.

“I was born in Oklahoma. And I don’t admit that to just anyone.”

Jenny laughed, an unlady-like snort of pure humor. “I can see why.”

Tex straightened up again. “Now you know all my secrets!”

“I won’t tell a soul,” Jenny promised. She rubbed her temples ruefully. “I don’t think I will ever drink again, so I promise that this secret will be better kept.”

“Circumstances were stacked against you,” Tex drawled understandingly. “And anyway, it was part of the whole escape out of character.”

Jenny cast her eyes down, giving a little half-smile. “It would be out of character for me not to go home alone, too,” she suggested with an unexpected invitation.

Tex actually considered it. She was sober enough now that he trusted the offer was made with sound mind, and she was utterly, completely gorgeous, with warm brown eyes and dark, thick, shoulder-length brown hair. Her skin was a rich mahogany, the magenta shirt did little to hide the swell of perfect, overflowing breasts, and the tiny skirt hugged the sexiest hips Tex could imagine. In every way, she was everything he’d envisioned in his perfect mate. But something was holding him back, some sense that she wasn’t quite right for him, and the only feelings she activated were protective.

“You don’t want me, honey,” he told her gently. “I’m unlucky in love. And I wouldn’t want to be mixed up in the hangover you’re going to have.”

She looked disappointed, but accepting, and when Tex refilled her water glass, she gratefully drank it.

“Can I call you a cab?” Tex suggested gently.

This time Jenny nodded. “My sister was supposed to meet me here, but I’m guessing something came up with her job. I’ll read her the riot act tomorrow, let me tell you.”

She slipped off of her barstool to use the ladies room while Tex made the call, and he was pleased to see that her steps were no longer more wobbly than strange, high-heeled boots would indicate.

He finished cleaning the bar while she was busy, and when she came out, the cab was already waiting at the curb.

Tex came around the bar to unlock the front door for her.

“Thanks,” she said shyly, looking up at him with those beautiful brown eyes. “I feel like you came to my rescue tonight.”

Tex tipped his hat at her. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

Jenny stretched up on her tiptoes and planted a chaste kiss on his stubbly cheek. “You’re my hero,” she told him.

Then she was slipping out the door for the cab, and Tex was locking the door behind her in bemusement. Somehow, he didn’t think he’d seen the last of her.