Lucky Break Read online

  “Seventy’s not a couple, John,” he answered. “Seventy’s a lot, but you’re welcome. Even though I wasn’t exactly leaving a lot.” Davey shook his head. “Unless you think being divorced and unemployed counts as being busy.”

  “I think it counts as being free, my man,” I said, slapping my friend on the back. “Free to find the things we want to do, the things we’re meant to do.”

  “You think those things are here?” Davey asked, looking around at the area where we now found ourselves. To be honest, we’d moved here on a whim. We had no idea what we were going to do here or how we were going to fill our time. The fact that we were walking distance from a beach filled with inviting waves and even more inviting bodies in bikinis spoke well for our chances. Still, there was a sense of adventure to being in this place. Bonita Springs could have been anything. Sure, it looked like a small town pressed up against a slice of paradise, but looks could be deceiving. Guess only time would tell. The good thing about being as rich as hell and free enough to enjoy it was that I had all the time in the world to figure that out.

  “It’s noon,” Davey said, glancing at his phone.

  “Yeah?” I answered.

  “Noon on a Tuesday,” Davey added. “You think people around here get drunk at noon on a Tuesday?”

  I looked over at my best friend and war buddy. I bet he'd never imagined, back when we were dodging bullets and tossing explosives, that life would take us here. Lord knows, I didn’t.

  “If they don’t, they definitely should,” I replied.

  “That’s my thinking,” he said. “Should we move the couch inside and find a new bar to call home?”

  “Leave it,” I said, standing and shrugging. “If somebody steals it, I’ll just buy a new one.”

  The first bar we came to was a bust. A total tourist trap, complete with plastic seashells nailed to the walls, fake palm trees beside the counters, and watered down piña coladas, it stank of the sort of place that served overpriced drinks to already drunk people it would very likely never see again. That wasn’t what Davey and I were looking for. We were looking for Buddy’s part two, the sort of place where you could sit back, get comfortable, and maybe even make a friend or two. Seeing as how we were planting our flags in this little slice of heaven for the foreseeable future, the idea of making a couple of friends didn’t sound bad.

  Two more unacceptable bars later found Davey and me standing in front of what I knew, at first glance, was the place for us.

  “The Rusted Bucket?” my friend asked, reading the sign and looking over at me with a little trepidation in his eyes. We had walked the beach for a good couple of hours now, talking to girls, grabbing drinks, and getting ourselves involved in an impromptu game of tackle football on the sand with a couple of college kids on break for the summer. We won 32 to14, but who's keeping track?

  After a little while, I realized that was our problem. We were in the tourist part of town, the polished places where snowbirds hang and where they never see the same faces for more than two weeks in a row. So, I did what you do on the beach when you want to get somewhere else. I kept walking and followed the water. Davey complained after a bit, sure. But we had both been to war. We knew that one could do a hell of a lot worse than having your feet in the surf and your best friend by your side while looking at paradise.

  Before long, we hit the less crowded side of the beach. It had less to offer in terms of upkeep and spectacle, but it sure as hell made up for it in the kind of natural, rustic beauty that seemed to spring up in Florida when people started putting their pruning shears and grooming tools away.

  And that’s what the Rusted Bucket was. With a rusted tin roof and bare wooden planks on the walls, it was a rustic, natural beauty. At least, that was the way I’d decided to see it for now.

  “It’ll be fine,” I answered, grinning at my friend. “Buddy’s wasn’t much to look at either, dude, and we had the time of our lives there.”

  “Buddy’s had two for one drink specials after five and a redheaded waitress who thought I was cute. I doubt this place can compare,” Davey said, looking back up at the sign, a makeshift thing that sported the name in messy red paint.

  “I’ve got seventy million dollars. I don’t really care how much the drinks cost, and I hate to break it to you, but that waitress was only pretending to like you for the tips.”

  “Not Justine,” he said, looking over at me with a little bit of mock shock on his face. “She seemed like the real deal.”

  “They always do, my friend,” I answered, slapping his back and walking him into a place I would soon come to realize would change my life forever. “They always do.”

  Chapter 2

  “So, there we were. We had just been ambushed in the middle of the city square, and to say we weren’t welcome there was the understatement of the century,” Davey said, his eyes wide and his hands spread out in front of him. My friend had never been much of a storyteller, but you get a little tequila in him and Ernest Hemingway had better watch his back. We had come into the Rusty Bucket hoping to find the sort of atmosphere we had back Buddy’s, when we were a couple of bored army recruits venturing off base for the night. What we found was even better.

  Where Buddy’s might have had two for one drink specials and a redhead who liked—or, at least, pretended to like—Davey, this beachside joint had the Gulf right outside, a dartboard and a selection of pool tables, and most importantly, people who had never heard our stories before.

  Buddy’s was right off the base. It was constantly filled to the brim with people rattling off tales of overseas adventures, but here, we were something new. We were exotic. Judging by the crowd of people who had surrounded us to hear Davey tell the ‘ambush’ story for the third time in an hour, we might as well have been freaking Indiana Jones and his slightly more impressive friend. Which was to say that no waitresses would have to pretend to like Davey after this. They’d probably be lining up to give him their numbers.

  “I'm gonna grab another Corona. You want one?” I asked, looking over at my friend. He was mid-story, so I didn’t really expect him to respond. He didn’t disappoint. I don’t even think he heard me as he launched into the part where we ducked behind the overturned truck for cover.

  “Bullets were flying everywhere!” he exclaimed.

  “Sounds good,” I muttered, standing up from the stool next to him, a seat that was quickly filled by a leggy blonde who looked a lot better on it than I did.

  Moving away from the crowd, I took note of the song blaring from the jukebox. It was a twangy country tune, something I’d never put on myself. Finishing the last drop of Corona, I set the bottle on the bar and slid onto one of the stools. I had barely noticed the short, dark-haired girl behind the bar in front of me.

  “You guys are making my job easy,” she said, ducking behind the bar for just a moment. “I swear, with your friend’s stories, you guys are better than a live stage show. I can finally have a minute to clean up the place.”

  “Clean?” I asked, grinning at her. “I was under the impression the whole ‘dingy’ thing was part of the appeal.” She popped the top on a new Corona and handed it to me. “I didn’t order this,” I said, taking the drink.

  “You didn’t, but you were about to,” she replied. Shrugging, she added,” I said you made my job easy, not that I wasn’t any good at it.”

  “Fair enough,” I replied, taking a sip of the drink. “I’m John Lucky.”

  “Lucky?” she asked, running a washcloth down the front of the bar close to where I was sitting and narrowing her eyes. I noticed a black ink dragon tattoo running across her right wrist. “Why does that sound familiar?”

  “It’s a pretty commonly used word,” I answered. “Means fortunate.”

  “Hah,” the woman replied. “Just because you’ve got a cute smile doesn’t mean you get to be a Jackass. I’m Alexis, by the way.”

  “Or does it?” I asked, leaning forward and letting the ‘cute smile’ wi
den across my face.

  “I bet that works on a lot of girls,” the woman answered. “Lord knows, if you’d have caught me a couple of years ago, it probably would have worked on me, too.”

  “Miss my chance? You married?” I asked, looking down at her ring finger and finding it bare. That didn’t mean anything, though. Just like the redhead flirting back at Buddy’s, I’d known a lot of married waitresses and bartenders who pretended to be unattached in an effort to maximize their tips.

  “Not anymore,” she answered. “But he had a smile like yours, the troublesome kind. Not really interested in those anymore.”

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions about me based on a smile, but never let it be said that John Lucky ever pushed a girl to do anything she didn’t want to do.” I slapped a couple of dollars on the counter for the beer and turned around.

  “Wait,” Alexis said. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I know,” I answered, plastering on the smile I also wore when explaining my name to people. Turning around, I found Alexis digging through a pile of magazines I hadn’t seen stacked against the back wall. “It’s sort of a weird—”

  “Lucky John!” she shouted, looking up at me with a huge smile on her face and a magazine clutched in her right hand.

  “What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.

  “You’re Lucky John! The one from the magazine!” Alexis said, shaking her head and chuckling. “I knew it. I knew that name sounded familiar, and not just because it’s the opposite of the word ‘false’,” she sneered at me. “You’re the guy who won the lottery after saving that girl in the truck stop.” She flipped frantically through the magazine before gasping and turning the open pages to me. Across the magazine pages sat a headline that read, Good Samaritan Gets the Reward of a Lifetime along with a photo of me holding the big ass check and grinning like an idiot.

  “My God. They did a magazine article about it?” I muttered. Of all the things I thought I’d find down in Florida, it never occurred to me that the story of what I’d done and the way it all ended up would reach this far south and east.

  “More than one, I’m sure,” Alexis nearly squealed. “It says you won eighty million after taxes and with taking the lump sum.”

  “Well, I mean, seventy million. I gave ten million to Charlotte,” I said. “She’s the woman behind the counter, the one who sold me the ticket in the first place.”

  “Really?” Alexis gasped. “Maybe we should start selling lottery tickets in this dump.”

  “This place is not a dump,” I answered, looking around at our surroundings. “In fact, it has good bones.”

  “You should tell the owner that,” Alexis said. “He’s thinking about selling it, and I’m sure it’d go for a lot less than eight figures.”

  “Not sure buying a bar is in my future, honestly,” I answered. “But I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Alexis,” a voice shouted from the other side of the room. Turning, I found a woman walking toward us. She had wavy blonde hair, thick eyebrows, and a look on her striking face that told me without a word that something wasn’t the way it’s supposed to be.

  “Mia, it’s Lucky John!” Alexis said, yelling at her friend and pointing to me.

  “What?” the woman, Mia, said, looking at me for just a second before turning back to her friend.

  “Lucky John!” she repeated.

  “That’s an odd name for a man,” Mia said, turning her attention back to me one more time.

  “That’s not my name,” I said, sighing. “My name is John Lucky.”

  “That’s only slightly less odd,” she said.

  “From the magazine I told you about!” Alexis said. “He’s the guy who kicked that robber’s ass in Iowa and then they gave him the lottery!”

  “It was Illinois,” I answered. “And they didn’t just give me the lottery. I still had to win it.”

  “Lucky John, this is Mia White,” Alexis answered.

  “I don’t care about any of this,” Mia said, grabbing Alexis’s hand. “George is here.”

  “Seriously?” Alexis asked, her face wilting. “My God. What does he want?”

  “He just walked through the door. I have no idea, but I’m sure he’s looking for you. You should get out of here,” Mia said.

  “This is my job. I’m not doing that,” Alexis said, standing on the tips of her toes and looking beyond the crowd that still surrounded Davey for whoever George was. “I’m not letting that douchebag run me away.”

  “Is everything all right?” I asked, looking from one of the women to the other.

  “That’s not really any of your business, Lucky,” Mia said, her tone kind enough but firm.

  “It’s nothing. It’s just my ex-husband,” Alexis said.

  “The one with the smile?” I asked, prompting Mia to give me a quizzical look.

  “He probably wants to fight with me about visitation rights again or something,” Alexis said. “I need to get him out before Rich finds out he’s here. He told me the next time I caused trouble in his bar, I’d be looking for a new job.” She pointed a finger, graced with a rose tattoo, at Mia. “Stay here.”

  “The hell I am,” Mia balked. “If you think I’m letting you confront that dick on your own, then all of that hair dye must have finally seeped its way into your brain.”

  “She’s crazy. This is natural,” Alexis said, motioning to the mop of black on her head. “And I’m fine, Mia.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “You’re holding a magazine article and talking about how badass I am. I’d like to see him try something with me standing beside you.”

  “Neither of you is doing anything except watching this bar until I get back,” Alexis said, throwing her hands up and hopping onto the bar. She slid her legs across, and with one fluid movement, she stood where Mia and I were now. “Look, he’s a piece of work, but he’s not dangerous. I’ll be fine. Besides, if I go over there with some guy, or even worse, with my sister, George will want to show off. I’ll never get anything done. Just please, stay here.”

  “Fine,” Mia muttered. “But if you need anything, just know I’m here.”

  “We’re here,” I said.

  “Who the hell are you, anyway?” Mia asked, looking over at me again, her thick eyebrows crinkling in my direction.

  “Didn’t you hear?” I asked, watching as Alexis walked toward and then disappeared into the crowd. “I’m a lucky bastard.”

  “I’m sure at least half of that’s right,” Mia answered, running a hand through that wavy blonde hair.

  “Very funny,” I muttered. “I guess a sense of humor runs in your family. Alexis has a pretty mean silver tongue herself.”

  “We’re sorority sisters, not biological,” Mia said. “It was a long time ago, but as they say, Beta Kia never dies. As for her tongue, she learned it from me.”

  “I bet a guy could learn a lot from you,” I said, looking her up and down.

  “Maybe,” she answered. “If he was lucky enough.”

  “Well, you did just say I was half of a lucky bastard,” I answered.

  “Wrong half,” she mused, shrugging at me. I gave the woman another look. She was definitely beautiful, but there was something else about her, something hard wrapped around the outside. She would be a tough nut to crack, if she could be cracked at all. I was still deciding whether I even wanted to make the attempt when I heard a shrill cry sound from somewhere behind us.

  My head snapping back, I looked toward a pair of silver swinging doors, the entrance to what was either a kitchen or a different sort of back room.

  “Alexis!” Mia gasped.

  “She went out the front,” I noted, motioning to where I’d seen Alexis disappear a few minutes earlier, the opposite direction.

  The scream returned, this time louder.

  “That’s definitely Alexis,” Mia said, rushing past me. I turned, following and apparently doing what I did now, running toward danger.

  Chapter
3

  As I ran past Mia and through the silver double doors that would lead back to wherever the screaming was coming from, I couldn’t help but notice the change in music. The jukebox was still screaming a country tune, but this one was faster. Full of banjos and fiddles and bass, it was like the music knew what was going on and it wanted to speed up to accommodate it. I wasn’t complaining. If being in the army and the incident at the truck stop that led to my brand-new life had taught me anything, it was that even if I didn’t always like the way it was delivered, I was a fan of action.

  No. I didn’t like the idea of people being in trouble. I wasn’t the sort of heartless loser who got off on the idea of people being scared or hurt, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like being the one who saved them.

  Call me cliché, and maybe it was the love I’d always had for folks like James Bond, Magnum PI, and John D. Macdonald’s masterpiece of a character, Travis McGee, but I always fancied myself as the kind of guy who could get crap done. I always looked in the mirror and saw a guy who at least tried to make the world a better place by being in it. It didn’t hurt that, more often than not, I had the time of my life doing it, even if I didn’t always realize it until after everything was finished.

  Pushing through the double doors, I found myself in what was basically an open-air kitchen. A long awning ran across the side of the building, shielding a grill, stove, and deep fryer from the elements. Mismatched stone provided the floor for a few feet before it melted into the white sand leading out into the beach. We stood with our backs to the building, and past that, the Gulf. Even here, though, I could hear the soft roar of the tide as it pulled back and forth. At another time, probably almost any other time of my life, the beauty of this place would have been enough to stop me in my tracks. I mean, honestly, this place was like getting punched in the face with pretty. I didn’t have time for that right now, though. I didn’t have time for the warm sand or the lines of houses off in the distance, studded with windows that perfectly reflected the shoreline and the way the sunlight sparkled as it danced across the water. Right now, all I had time for was what was going on in front of me, and it wasn’t good.