Dallas, Before
Courtney Jones wakes up to the sun in her eyes. It's the same way she wakes up every morning, with the damn sun in her damn eyes.
She sits up. The bed is empty. She tosses off the covers, gets in her slippers, and shuffles to the kitchen where she can already hear Justin making himself coffee.
If the definition of a 'bad day' was an 'absolutely normal' one, then Courtney was absolutely already having one of those.
"Morning," Justin greets methodically, reading the paper like he always does when he wakes up. "Did you sleep well?"
"Fine," Courtney responds, going to make her same old breakfast: an english muffin with butter and jam and a glass of orange juice.
"I'm working late tonight, will you make dinner?"
"Yes."
She takes a muffin from the basket by the sink and puts it on a plate, buttering both halves and then spreading jam rigorously. She takes it to the table and starts eating, barely able to keep her eyes open. Justin takes his coffee to go, and steals a bite from her muffin like he does every morning.
"Gotta run, busy day at work. See you tonight," he says, placing a kiss in her hair, putting on his jacket and walking to the door. Courtney sighs, shaking her head.
"And Bonnie," he says at the door. Courtney looks up from her muffin, pausing mid chew.
"Please bring the mail in," he finishes, closing the door behind him.
Courtney's shoulders fall. She slumps over her breakfast plate, very unladylike, and dips her muffin in her orange juice even though it tastes terrible. If only so that something is out of the ordinary.
She goes to get dressed in her room and shuts the blinds, stripping naked and laying out across her sheets with her stash of magazines. She thumbs through all the clothes she wishes she could wear to work—boldly colored short beaded dresses, feathered head pieces, pearls down to her knees, all the latest trends in the big cities—before folding the magazines up again in her bottom drawer and putting a simple cotton dress on.
She brushes her hair out and slips her heels on and starts the walk to the bank.
It's a simple job, something Justin allows her to do. She sits behind a desk, bids everyone a good day when they walked in, directing them to where they needed to go, and takes phone calls for her boss. Boring, but better than sitting at home all day.
The bell tinkles as she walks in, and she avoids the skeptic looks from the tellers behind the glass as she puts her bag down and takes a seat at her secretarial desk. Courtney doesn't even have a chance to grab her notebook before the phone rings.
"Dallas Bank, Mrs. Jones speaking, how may I direct your call?" she answers.
"Tell me," a voice drawls, "If I wanted to grab some dough from my account, but wanted to avoid a long line, what would be the best time?"
Courtney purses her lips and taps her pencil for a few moment before deciding.
"At around ten o'clock, I suppose. Everybody will usually be at their jobs, and coming before the lunch rush is crucial if you want to avoid a line."
"Thanks a bunch, doll. You're really helping me out here."
She frowns but keeps her voice unwavering. "May I assist you with anything else—Hello?" she asks, but all she hears is the dial tone.
The rest of her morning goes downhill.
A married couple come in to see a bank representative but refuse to talk to Courtney, despite her attempts at being polite. The woman goes so far as to sneer at the ring on Courtney's finger and comment to her husband that she's appalled that this bank would allow a married woman to work instead of tending to her children.
Courtney smiles at her politely but snaps a pencil in two under the desk.
She handles mostly men the remainder of the morning-jobless men trying to get loans to support their families. A large part of those refuse to deal with her either, jealous that she has a job they feel entitled too, and the ones that will talk to her grow bitter and angry very quickly when she has to tell them that she can't direct them to a teller because they don't qualify for loans.
As ten o'clock rolls around, her latest client leaves calling her all sorts of derogatory names because she couldn't lend him the forty dollars he needed. It's early, but Courtney's already out of pencils. She walks to Katie's desk to get more and glowers as the young, single girl chats up a handsome bachelor looking to make a deposit. When Courtney returns to her own desk, another man walks in, pinstriped suit like all the others, with a dark-haired, vaguely Asian woman beside him. They part ways at the door, the slender woman walking to a teller and the man walking right over to her.
He reaches the seat before she does and she takes her own chair with a sigh. As she straightens her face for a polite conversation she knows she isn't going to have, the man says, "Rough morning, eh?"
She hadn't meant for him to notice, but it seems like trying to pretend otherwise would be insulting to both of them.
"Not really your business, sir," she says. "What do you need?"
"You're a feisty one, ain't ya?" he says with a slow grin. "Easy on the eyes, too. I like it," he says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on her desk.
A flush spreads across her cheeks. She can't remember the last time Justin shot her a compliment.
"Did you come here for something?" Courtney asks, crossing her legs under her desk at the ankles. "Or were you hoping to get a shot with me?"
"I ain't an idiot, sweetcheeks. I see the ring on your finger. You belong to someone else."
"I do not belong to anybody," she says tightly. "Especially not my husband." Women, as the magazines said, in the cities or in the countryside, married or not, belonged to themselves.
The gentleman is amused.
"There's plenty of fish in the sea, darlin', and I got a feeling you hooked yourself a dead one. Tell me how such a looker like yourself managed to get hitched so young, huh?"
Her face grows hotter. Its a combination of the attention of those blue eyes and his infuriating tone of voice.
"If I can't help you professionally, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she says. "Or," she adds, glancing over her shoulder at the woman who came in with him, "better yet I tell your wife you're pawing at me under her nose."
He flashes her his hand, still grinning. There's no ring. "Close hon, but no cigar. Though you are sharper than most. What's your name?"
"Sir, what is your business?" she snaps.
He plucks one of her new pencils out of its container and twirls it expertly across his fingers. "I'm here to make a withdrawal, Mrs." He says the title with a biting sarcasm. "What's your name?"
Courtney breathes deeply as she pulls out a withdrawal form from her stack of papers and says, as politely as she manages, "Jones. Mrs. Jones. Now, what is your account number so I can direct you to-"
"And your first name?"
This isn't the first asshole she's had to deal with, but he's the most persistent by a long shot. She debates whether or not to answer truthfully for a moment, then decides, screw it. "Courtney. Courtney Jones. But everyone calls me Bonnie."
"Why?"
Courtney eyes him. His line of questioning is getting a little too personal, but then again, he cared enough to ask. She straightens up in her seat. "My maiden name is Bons. I'm the youngest of my family and an uncle called me Little Bonnie as a joke at a family reunion. It stuck ever since."
The gentleman sticks the pencil behind his ear, his proud smirk growing softer, more...charming. If such a thing were possible. "Courtney suits you better. A proper dame's name, not a little girl's."
Courtney glances behind her at the woman he came in with who wasn't his wife. She's eyeing the two of them pointedly, impatiently. The man doesn't take notice. It's almost jealousy and Courtney hasn't invoked jealousy in anyone in so long, the sensation is vaguely thrilling.
"Thank you, sir. How about you?" Courtney asks, leaning forward on her own elbows to accent the dip of her chest. A tendril of hair slips from behind her ear and brushes across the desk. "What do you they call you?"
He grins. "That your personal curiosity, sweetcheeks, or are you filling out my form for me?"
Courtney realizes she hasn't written a word down on the form. She reaches for a pencil from the container but he offers her the one he'd been toying with. She takes it from him and as she starts writing, smiles coyly.
"Maybe a little of both."
A gun goes off. Courtney jolts, dropping her pencil and spinning around to the sound. The Asian woman has a revolver in each hand, pointing one at the clerk and one at the people in line behind her.
"Everybody on the ground! Now!"
As she gapes, the nozzle of a gun presses into Courtney's lower back. An arm wraps around her shoulders.
"The name's Duncan Clyde, babydoll," he whispers, hot and heavy in her ear. "And for what it's worth, I'm only kind of sorry about this."