Survivor's Remorse: Brothers of Ink and Steel by Kathryn Thomas Read Free Book Online

bi-weekly trips to El Paso were her thinking times, the solitude of the drives giving her time to tease apart problems.
     
    He’s Not Here was nearing capacity now. She didn’t have people waiting at the door, but Friday and Saturday it was damn near standing-room only. She gave the wheel a quick staccato beat with her hands. It’s time. Tuesday I’m calling the bank and talk to them about a loan.
     
    A year ago, when she had bought the lot next door, she had a firm in San Antonio draw up plans for building on and adding a restaurant. The lot had been functioning as overflow parking, but she had bigger plans for it when she had purchased it. Adding the restaurant would help smooth out her revenue by, hopefully, capturing some of the lunch and dinner crowd through the week, and augmenting her clientele on the weekends. HNH enjoyed a pretty good reputation in town already, but a lot of families still won’t bring their kids into a bar and grille… but they would bring them in a restaurant attached to a bar.
     
    If that happens, I’m going to have to get a bigger truck, go more often, or start having the stuff delivered. She smiled at the thought. Adding on was going to be a ton of headaches… but if she is going to have headaches, having headaches because her business was growing was the kind of headaches she wanted to have.
     
    She was only fifteen or twenty minutes from home, and jazzed up with her plans, when she saw a couple of trucks sitting on the side of the road. She lifted off the throttle, preparing to stop if necessary, but as she approached, she could see it was just kids trying to get a truck out of the ditch. As she accelerated back up to speed, she shook her head. The dumbass kids had tried to cross the ditch straight-on and had gotten stuck. Three of them were pushing while a fourth drove, the spinning tires spraying the sandy soil everywhere.
     
    She didn’t bother to stop. With the other truck there, they could either push the truck out or, failing that, pile into the other truck to ride into town for a tow. Besides, what can I do that four strapping teenage boys can’t?
     
    ***
     
    “Jesus, Leo, you look like hell!”
     
    “Hi, yourself,” Leo grumbled as Jamie pushed a hand-truck out of the back of HNH. He was here to make the deposit… the term Lima 6 used for the cash they funneled through Jamie’s business to launder for them. He had guessed she would be back sometime around noon, and it looked like he had guessed right because the van was still piled high with her inventory.
     
    “Looks like you had a big night last night.”
     
    “Yeah. I didn’t have you around to cut me off and I got a little carried away. I’m here to make a deposit, if that is okay.”
     
    “Sure. You want to just throw it on my desk?”
     
    “I can. You want some help with this?”
     
    Jamie grinned. “Are you sure you are up for it? You look like you have been eaten by a wolf and shit over a cliff.”
     
    He couldn’t help but bark out a laugh. The pounding headache he woke up with was nearly gone; the ibuprofen was doing its thing and he had drank enough water to float a boat.
     
    “Yeah, I think so. I’ll wheel it in and you can put it away,” he said as he hefted the first case and sat it on the dolly.
     
    “Okay. Thanks! Then I’ll buy you lunch.”
     
    As Leo brought the cases in and ripped them open, Jamie stacked the contents on the shelves, placing the newer behind the older.
     
    He could unload considerably faster than she could stock, so after wrestling the beer kegs in, he began to hand bottles and cans to her so she didn’t spend so much time running up and down the stepladder.
     
    “You’re looking a little better,” Jamie remarked as she stacked. “I’ll talk to Rachel about letting you get so snockered. You didn’t drive home, I hope.”
     
    “It wasn’t Rachel. I did it all by myself, at home.”
     
    “Oh? Were you alone or did you have a… companion?