Page 21 of Priceless
Five feet from him, Vonnie heaved a heavy sigh as she pulled out a chair, turned it, then sat facing him with her arms resting on the back. “We ken what’s goin’ on, Jacob.”
Jacob? They never called him Jacob. So, he reckoned they must think his conduct of late was more than insulting. But that wasn’t what she’d said. Hadn’t said they had a bone to pick with him. She’d saidthey knew what was going on, which stole the smile from his lips.
How could any of them know?
No one had access to his phone. No one had access to his computer, except for Vonnie and Lars, who had to do the ordering if he wasn’t able or wasn’t in town.
Jacob narrowed his eyes. “Have ye been on my computer?”
“Auch, lordie,” groaned Mary, one of the waitresses. “I’m goin’ to boak.”
His hand shot up. “Wait! There’s nothing on my computer—I mean to say I’m not hiding anything. I don’t have…porn…on my computer, arright?” He was shouting by the end.
“Jacob,” Vonnie began again, but couldn’t complete whatever she wanted to say.
“Jinks, Vonnie. What is it ye think ye know?”
“Ye’ve been a prick,” Dougie shouted, as if he’d been practicing his line for a while now and was anxious to have his part done.
Jacob inhaled deeply, nodding as he did so. “I have. And I’m sorry for it. My mind… I’ve been distracted. Not payin’ attention?—”
“Because of the droogs,” Vonnie finished for him.
Drugs?A giant bubble of laughter rose and burst from him all at a go. “Drugs?” He grinned. “Ye think I’ve taken up drugs, at my age?”
Dougie scowled. “What has age got to do with it?”
Jacob shook his head. “Ye reckon I’d ruin my lifenow?”
Vonnie shrugged. “Ye never ken. Old people get…” She gestured to his body in general. “Pains, in all sorts of places.”
He swallowed the insult, but it came back up again. “I’m nay old!”
The entire staff winced at the volume. Mary put her hands over her ears.
Trenton held out his hands as if he were presenting Jacob with a giant platter covered with proof. “Ye started it. Ye said,at my age.”
“My age? I’m not yet sixty, laddie. Not old, but old enough…” Implying that he was old enough to kick Trenton’s arse and every other arse in the room if need be.
“Right, then,” Vonnie said, in her sweetest voice, which was also her scariest voice. “We’ll all calm doon now and have a quiet chat, aye?”
Everyone nodded, just as their customers always nodded when she adopted that tone.
There was a sign just inside the door that read,“By entering this establishment, ye implicitly accept the fact that the staff might need to toss ye oot on yer arse VIA YER EAR.”And in the corner of that sign was a photograph of Vonnie, who had bright pink hair at the time it was taken.
The look on her face was a mix of fury and glee as she held tight to the ear of a ginger man whose face wasn’t in the frame. But everyone in town knew it was Milty Lang who’d nearly lost his hearing in that ear, when he’d tried to resist.
Milty hadn’t been back since.
The lass had no respect for that part of the human anatomy, and she knew that grabbing a man’s, or a woman’s ear could make them compliant as a child. And it was her ear-snatching skills that kept the locals in line, even when they were blind drunk. In fact, the mirror behind the bar hadn’t been broken for two full years.
Not many “non-tourist” pubs in Inverness could boast the same. Maybe a hundred in the whole of Scotland.
“We’ll start at the beginning, then, shall we?” Vonnie resumed her naturally brash voice and the rest of the room relaxed. “Ye’ve been an arse. Ye’ve made us clean like…like ye might be sellin’ the place?—"
“Is that it?” Trenton interrupted. “Gamblin’? Have ye lost the pub playin’—”
“He’s a shite gambler,” Vonnie interrupted. “He’d know better. But…it would explain the temper?—”
