A Cowboy's Woman (5 page)

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Authors: Cathy Gillen Thacker

BOOK: A Cowboy's Woman
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“Shane needed to get rid of me for a few minutes,” Lilah explained. She inclined her head at the TV screen, where the tape of Greta and Beau was playing. “Pretty, isn't she?” Lilah said dryly.
Gorgeous, Shane thought with more than a tad of wistfulness. Unfortunately so was her date. Shane frowned as he bit into the thick, delicious sandwich his mother had prepared for him. For several minutes, they all watched in silence. “How many of these things did Greta go to?” Shane asked finally.
“Jealous?” Lilah suggested.
“Fine. Don't tell me.” Shane chugged his lemonade and, ignoring the napkin next to his plate, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Unable to stop mothering him, even for a moment, Lilah reached over to pointedly hand him his napkin. “Shane...” Her low tone carried both a warning to behave himself and a plea for peace between him and his folks. An impossible combination under the circumstances.
His temper soared at the ever-increasing scrutiny of both his mother and his oldest brother. “I'm interested. And why not? It's the kind of I should probably know since I'm now married to her.” Actually, he amended silently, it was the kind of thing he should have known before he married her.
“But for how long?” Lilah asked gently.
Travis shook his head as yet another image of Beau and Greta came on the screen. “Give it up, kid. You're never gonna compete with that.” Travis stabbed his finger at the screen.
The hell he couldn't, Shane fumed. There wasn't a competition on this earth he couldn't win if he set his mind to it. After ten-plus years on the professional rodeo circuit, he was rich and famous, too. Maybe not that famous. Or that rich. But he doubted Greta responded to Beau's kisses the way she had responded to his. He'd seen the look in her eyes when their kisses ended, all soft and yearning and completely vulnerable. He'd felt the way she melted against him. He'd seen the way she looked at him when she thought he didn't notice. He'd felt her desire... and let it ignite his own. She couldn't have felt that for Beau, or she never would have been there with him. No matter what her parents had alleged that morning about Greta using Shane to teach her movie-star boyfriend a lesson.
“Ten-to-one,” Travis continued with a confidence that really grated, “Beauregard Chamberlain is here to rescue our Miss Greta from her impulsive elopement with you before week's end.”
Grabbing what was left of his sandwich, Shane ignored the warning. “You're just jealous because you don't have a love life,” he retorted grimly.
Besides, risk was something Shane thrived on. He didn't understand—or sanction—ever turning away from it. Because without great risk, there could be no great happiness.
Having temporarily silenced his older brother, Shane turned back to the TV.
Like it or not, Travis is right,
Shane admitted reluctantly to himself.
I might lose Greta before all is said and done,
Shane thought as he continued
to study his arch rival on the videotape. It was, after all, a logical conclusion to their hasty involvement with each other. But he damn well would not lose her to him!
 
“HOW DO YOU KEEP a ring from turning your finger green?” Greta asked her friend Dani Lockhart shortly after noon. Roommates since their college days, first in Dallas and later Los Angeles, the two were as close as family. In fact, in many ways Dani was the sibling Greta had never had.
Dani stepped around the empty packing boxes that cluttered the dance hall. Fresh from L.A., the auburnhaired film critic was wearing a white linen pantsuit, pale green silk shell and delicate Italian sandals. She had a soft leather carry-all thrown casually over one shoulder, and sunglasses perched on her head. “Looks like I hit town just in time.” Dani's gray-green eyes sparkled merrily as she neared while at the other end of the hall an electrician and an engineer continued installing the new sound system. “When I heard about you and Shane McCabe this morning, I couldn't believe it.”
Greta motioned Dani away from the pounding and drilling. “How did you hear?” Greta went back to sorting out the old Texas license plates, cactus plants, Texas flags, southwestern art, branding irons and other assorted Texas memorabilia that would decorate the walls of her new establishment.
“My sister, Meg.” Dani paused to finger framed photos of several recent chili cook-offs. “She had an appointment with your dad at his insurance office this morning. Apparently he's still stunned.”
Greta shook her head in silent aggravation. Although she'd only been at work a few hours, she'd already fielded half a dozen phone calls on the subject—to the
point she'd had to turn on her answering machine. She could only imagine that, as well known as he was, Shane was having the same experience. At this rate, by sundown there would be no one left in Laramie County who didn't know.
“Although I must say,” Dani continued brightly, as Greta climbed the step ladder. to reach the foot-wide shelf installed eighteen inches beneath the ceiling around the entire perimeter of the room, “it was smart of you to dump that arrogant lump head, Beauregard Chamberlain.”
Greta motioned to the cactus plant in the terra cotta planter. “Hand that up to me, would you please?” As Dani complied, Greta continued, “And that lump head, as you put it, used to be a very good friend of both of ours. You even introduced me to him, remember?”
“What can I say?” Dani lamented with a frown, watching as Greta placed the cactus plant next to a wrought-iron weather vane. “Women tend to get wiser with age. I only wish I'd been wiser a lot sooner.”
“You and Beau really ought to call a truce and make up,” Greta counseled, knowing there had never been too more hotheaded people on earth.
“I take it that means you haven't dumped him, after all?” Dani asked, clearly disappointed.
Greta pointed to the big book of Texas history with the photo of the Alamo on the front. She smiled as Dani handed it up and at that moment the front door of the dance hall opened and shot in an arc of morning sunshine. “Not as a friend, no, I haven't.”
“Well, you should.” Dani scowled as Greta situated the book to the left of the weather vane and straightened once again to view her handiwork.
“Can't say I disagree with that,” Shane drawled, his
eyes twinkling as he strode up to join them. Standing next to the ladder, he curved a lightly possessive hand around the back of Greta's knee and looked up at her. “Now that you're a married woman.”
All too aware his face was nearly at eye level with the hem of her dress, and that all he had to do was look up to see a lot more than she wanted him to see, Greta swiftly climbed down the ladder, with him gallantly assisting her. Once her feet were firmly on the floor, she swung around to face him.
Unsure whether it was excitement or annoyance speeding up her heartbeat, she asked, “Shane, what are you doing here?” She thought they'd agreed to spend the day apart, each of them doing their own thing.
Yet she couldn't deny she was just the tiniest bit glad to see him nevertheless.
Shane nodded at Dani politely then handed Greta a videotape.
Although they'd all been in different grades, the four of them had gone to high school together. Shane had run in a very fast, popular crowd. Dani and Greta had both been on the dance team and the debate team. Greta had made a profession out of dancing. Dani had used her oratory and writing skills to become a much-quoted film critic who worked for the
Dallas Morning News
. Both of them had been somewhat nerdy in high school, only to find themselves blossoming after they left Laramie and hobnobbing with many a celebrity as adults. It was odd, Greta thought, how life worked out sometimes.
“My mom sent this,” Shane told Greta with a quietly assessing look. “She thought you might like to see it.”
Greta's spirits plummeted as she saw her mother's handwriting on the label. Trying her best to hide her aggravation, she handed it right back to Shane. “I already
have. Dozens of times. My parents insist on screening it every time I come home,” she told him bluntly.
Some emotion she couldn't quite identify flickered in Shane's silver-gray eyes. “They like Beauregard Chamberlain that much, huh?”
Greta didn't know why, but suddenly she felt as if she were in the midst of some sort of test. A test she was destined to fail. “No, as a matter of fact, they don't like him at all,” she returned quietly, puzzling over his strangely subdued mood. “Although how they formed that opinion, I don't know,” Greta continued, attempting to insert some levity into the conversation, “since they've never actually met him.”
Dani selected a miniature oil derrick, moved the ladder slightly to the left and then climbed up to try her hand at arranging the Texas memorabilia.
Shane took Greta's elbow and guided her well out of Dani's way. “How come you didn't bring him home to meet the folks if it was so serious between the two of you?”
Greta watched Dani a moment, then turned back to Shane. He sounded jealous. To the point he was about to become bossy. She folded her arms in front of her mutinously. “I never said it was serious between Beau and me.”
“Is that what you call him—Beau?” Shane demanded. When what he really wanted to ask her, Greta guessed, was if what her parents had asserted that morning—about her marrying Shane to give Beau a wake-up call—was true.
“Yes,” Greta replied carefully, not about to make it easy for Shane to butt into her personal business, any more than she was going to let her parents, even if he
was her “husband” temporarily. “And so do the rest of his friends,” she stated unequivocally.
“Ohh sparks!” Dani said as, her mission complete, she climbed back down the stepladder to join them.
Shane and Greta turned to Dani in unison, their aggravation obvious. “Don't you have a movie to watch or review?” Shane asked impatiently.
“Actually, no.” Dani grinned at him brightly, reminding Greta there wasn't a man on earth Dani didn't want to provoke in the worst way, and that went triple for Dani's former friend Beauregard Chamberlain.
“Then maybe you'd like to run off and watch this.” Shane waved the aforementioned videotape under Dani's nose.
Dani didn't move a muscle. “I've seen it.”
At that Shane lifted a skeptical brow, and Greta felt her embarrassment over her parents nonstop bragging about her increase. “It's true, Shane,” Dani continued knowingly. “Half the families in town have copies of Greta's Hollywood Moments, courtesy of Greta's folks.”
Greta sighed. “Tillie and Bart do go overboard when it comes to me, don't they?” '
Dani rolled her eyes in sympathy. “And then some, kiddo. Listen—” Dani paused to glance at her Cartier watch. “I just came over to make sure we're still on for lunch tomorrow.”
Greta nodded. “Absolutely.”
Dani looked at Shane, then back at Greta. “Honeymoon won't get in the way?” She grinned.
“Not a bit,” Greta said, refusing to shoot so much as a glance at Shane.
“Hmm.” Dani studied them both. “I hope you two know what you're doing,” Dani murmured finally.
So do I,
Greta thought, even more urgently.
“Anyway, congrats,” Dani leaned forward to hug first Greta and then—somewhat less enthusiastically—Shane. “I don't know what's gotten into you two crazy lovebirds—” Dani grinned at them both and shook her head “—but I hope it lasts.”
The question was, Greta wondered, did she?
 
SENSING THE TWO GALS WANTED a moment alone, Shane looked around as Greta walked Dani out. He remembered what the place had been. Once a garment factory that had turned out curtains, the large brick building had been closed for years, since much of that industry had gone overseas.
It had stood empty until Greta had bought it late last spring. Since then, much of the existing interior had been ripped out, the cement floor overlaid with a varnished oak dance floor. The high-beamed ceiling had been exposed, the interior walls painted white. Four raised dining areas, walled off by a rustic split-cedar railing, surrounded a central dance floor. The kitchen was at the rear of the building. To the left of that stood a raised play booth for a DJ or host, complete with state-of-the-art sound system, now currently being installed.
Shane looked around. “Where's the bar?”
“We're not having one. Nor are we serving alcohol,” Greta told him.
Shane quirked a brow. All of the dance halls he'd seen had revolved around the liquor they sold. “I wanted a place where people could bring their kids. Have dinner. And dance and have fun. When we really get up and running, I'll have dance lessons here every afternoon for every age group. Luncheon parties. Maybe even wedding receptions. But for now, we'll just be open seven
nights a week, from five-thirty till ten Sunday through Thursday, and till midnight Friday and Saturday.”

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