Help Wanted: WIFE (Santa Rita Series) (5 page)

Cole hoped his brother was done with his lecture. It wasn’t often Davis got going, but when he had something to say, he kept chewing till he was certain his listener got the message.

Apparently Davis hadn’t finished with him. “Sylvie wouldn’t take my word as gospel, you might remember. She’d back me up to the last ditch if we were in trouble, but she’d give me four hymns and a sermon anytime she thought I was wrong.” He stared out the window, watching a falling star. When he went on his voice had a catch in it. “Tell you, Brother Cole, if there was anything in this world that would have kept Sylvie this side of the grave, I’d have sold my soul to get it. And if a simple thing like letting my woman have a cat would keep her in my bed and at my table, I’m damn sure I’d go get her a dozen.”

“Cat was vicious. That’s the end of it.”

“Your buddy Bennett was vicious when he took out after that nest of Germans. Don’t think those fellas cared much about the courage, but I’m certain they saw the fight in him. Cherry was damn near ‘vicious’ when she left here, swearing she’d personally maim anybody who touched that wire cat cage. She didn’t want to go, but in her mind it was the right thing to do, protecting something she loved with ever’ breath in her.” He shrugged. “And I’m pretty sure one red cat, sound asleep on a nice, soft pillow, suddenly challenged by the biggest, loudest dog in this part of the state, showed a fair amount of courage when she challenged him right back. Vicious, it seems to me, is just another word for being too riled up to quit. The right or wrong of it depends on who’s going to bleed most when it’s over.”

Cole shoved the checkers into their box. “Doesn’t matter now. Even if I grant you have a point and admit the thought of anything hurting Cherry messed up my thinking till all I wanted to do was make sure she was safe, it still wouldn’t matter. Wouldn’t matter because the bus left here on Monday, heading back up to the other end of the state, and Cherry Lynn Bixby was likely the first passenger on board.”

Shaking his head, Davis leaned back and propped his stockinged feet on the corner of the table. “Just how did she manage that?”

Cole spluttered at the question, a question almost too dumb to deserve an answer. “What do you mean, how did she manage it? She got a ticket from the counter, checked her bags, got on the bus, and left. How else would she do it?”

“How did she manage?” Davis asked again. “What I mean, you thick-headed cowjockey, is how did she buy a ticket to go anywhere? Did she have money? Moolah? Dinero? Coin of the realm?”

Money? Cole thought a minute. “Well, I guess… I mean, I suppose she did. She had enough to buy her ticket down here, so I think… Hell, I don’t know. Wouldn’t she be sure she could get home if she needed to? Had money for a ticket, no matter what?”

“Bought her own ticket to come down?” Davis homed in on the one aspect of the deal that had bothered Cole from the outset. “You didn’t take care of that for her?”

“Dang, Dave, she wouldn’t let me buy her ticket. Said she was making the trip so we could both see how we felt about taking up life together, and it might change the way we looked at each other if I paid for the ticket. She wouldn’t feel as free to leave, and I wouldn’t feel right about her going, if there was a question of money between us.” He gripped the arms of his chair and thrust himself upright. “But, by heaven, she wouldn’t have left here if she didn’t have money to go home on. Now, she wouldn’t do that, would she?”

Davis gave him a lopsided grin, a grin reminiscent of Nate in a quirky mood. “I don’t know, Cole. I don’t know what moves a woman to do the things she does. But I’d guess Cherry didn’t leave this house with any overflow of cash. Otherwise she wouldn’t be cooking breakfast and dinner down at Miz Haliday’s place for slim wages and her room and board. Or maybe she just has a strange craving to work fifteen hours a day. Like I say, I’m not sure what moves a woman, but I’d bet that job ain’t it.”

Cherry? Cooking in a boarding house? Not his Cherry!
“You know that, Dave? For sure? How do you know? How?”

Davis’s grin widened, and it took every ounce of control Cole could muster to keep from knocking the grin off his brother’s face. “How does anybody know anything in this county? Miz Hoffmann was here to do the wash yesterday. She knows what goes on in ever’ bedroom, barn, and outhouse in the county. And she couldn’t wait to let me know that your Cherry was working herself half to death in the kitchen of the boarding house.” Davis folded the checker board and slid it into the table drawer. “So, as I asked when we began this discussion, little brother, do you or do you not love that young lady from up in the Panhandle? If not, you’re the biggest fool this side of Dallas. And if you do, you’re still the biggest fool this side of Dallas if you’re sitting here instead of going after her. Are you going to let the best thing that ever happened to you waltz out of your life? One choice or the other, Cole. Make a place for a certain red cat in your world and talk the girl into coming home, or plan to spend your future years drinking bad coffee and playing lousy checkers with your aging brother.”

****

Cherilyn zipped up the red shorts and fastened the bandana-print midriff top. She’d never worn the outfit anywhere but in her own highly fenced back yard, but her stuffy room and the long hours she’d spent in the boarding house kitchen left her too hot to think about the propriety of her scanty attire. A small oscillating fan moved the air around, but it couldn’t drop the temperature a single degree. She looked over at the window, where Arabella sprawled to catch any random breeze. No matter how hard the heat was on Cherilyn herself, it had to be much worse on her poor cat.

“We don’t have to do this much longer,” she assured Arabella. “In a couple of weeks we can afford to get tickets to go…somewhere. Somewhere that it’s cooler.” She tried to think where in Texas temperatures dipped at the end of a long, sunbaked August.

A brisk knock at the door broke her train of thought.
One of the boarders wanting extra helpings tonight, or Mrs. Haliday wanting to change the menu.
Cherilyn reached for the wrap skirt that would cover her shorts but let it drop. She was too hot to deal with such archaic conventions.

“Coming,” she called. The doorknob felt warm against her hand, and she had to try twice to make it turn because her fingers were too damp to grip securely. She opened it to find the last person in the world she wanted to see standing in the doorway.
Cole!
She pushed at the door, intending to slam it, but his hand on the other side stopped her.

“No, Cherry Lynn, don’t shut the door in my face.” He stepped over the scarred threshold and entered uninvited. “I didn’t come to see you, anyhow.” He glanced around. “In fact, I’m not here for myself at all. I’m a—a…an ambassador. That’s what I am. An ambassador.” Leaving her standing in the center of the room, Cole walked past her to the window and Arabella. Cole reached down to run his hand along her full length, stretched the width of the sill. She opened her eyes and acknowledged him without interest.

“Lady Arabella, I come to see you today carrying a message from Reb the Dog. He wants me to say he apologizes for his recent misbehavior. He’s just too much of a country boy to know how to behave in the presence of a high-born lady. He knows now he shouldn’t have barged into your bedroom without an invitation. He should never have used such awful language in your presence. He’s truly sorry for causing the dumb humans he lives with to draw stupid conclusions that put you in danger. Though human beings, not the brightest of God’s critters at best, will jump to the wrong answer more times than not, no matter who tries to explain things to them. At any rate, because Reb wants to make up for all the misunderstandings, he’s sent you, as a token of his regard, his very best ball.”

Cherilyn watched, torn between a desire to laugh and a disbelief in the scene before her as Cole put a worn, heavily chewed, dingy softball beside Arabella.

“Reb wanted to bring this himself, just to show his sincerity, but his ears and nose haven’t quite healed up to the point where he’s comfortable out in public. That’s why he sent me.”

Arabella rolled over and wrapped all four massive paws around the ball. She thumped it with her back feet and buried her nose against its tattered covering.

“You’ve accepted it? Lady Arabella, you can’t know how happy Reb will be when I tell him you like his ball as much as he does. It was real hard for him to give it away, but he was sure that when you saw how special it was, you’d be more forgiving. Can I tell him you’ll be coming back to the ranch real soon? He knows it’s not going to be easy to overlook his bad manners, but he sure hopes you can get to be friends, in time.”

Cherilyn crossed her arms across her chest and stared at the man petting her cat. “Cole, what is all this about? What are you really doing here?”

His eyes widened, brows lifted, and he looked like the personification of innocence. “Like I said, Cherry. Reb sent me to apologize to Arabella. And I was glad to do it for him. I sorta thought he might have a better chance at making peace with her than I had at smoothing things over with her mama. Arabella seems a little more merciful.”

“The last time I saw you, you weren’t exactly spilling over with
mercy
for Arabella.”

Cole turned fully to face her. He lost the spurious look of innocence and his mouth thinned, tension drawing lines in his face. “Cherry… I… Damn it, Cherry, I was flat scared. Abe going on about a cat attacking the biggest dog in the county, all I could see was how it might have been you. Some animal coming over sick or crazed and going after my girl. I couldn’t think straight. All I could get clear in my head was getting at the critter, making sure it never could hurt you. That was what I saw.” He scuffed the toe of his boot across the worn floor. “I’ve had time to…to think back over ever’thing I said and did. I…I’ve even gone over to the library and got the library lady to look up some stuff about these Maine Coon cats. Man can learn a lot from books, if he’s willing to ask. And though they’re big as bobcats, it seems Maine Coons are about as gentle as a cat can be. And anyway, I was… Well, I went off half-cocked, as I’m wont to do, now and again. I need…I need reminding, Cherry, that I don’t always know as much as I think I do. So I was hoping… That is, I was thinking that maybe…” He stopped. “Aw, hell, Cherry, I said I was a marriage-minded man in that want ad I wrote. And it’s true. I am. You came out here hoping to find a man who needed you and wanted to make a life together. I’m still marriage-minded, if you’re inclined to try building that life with me. And bring all the red cats you need to make that life work for you. Just come back to the ranch, and let’s get back to where we were at the dance last week. What do you say, Cherry? Can we make it work?”

Cherilyn didn’t move. She stood, arms crossed, and examined the man before her. Fine-looking man, smart, honest, hard-working, and sincere. She shook her head. No, not enough. Not quite. She needed one thing more.

“Why do you want me to come back, Cole? Because I can cook? Because I’m quiet company in the evening when you’re tired, and you like the sound of a woman’s voice at the end of the day? Because no one else came along, and I’ll do in a pinch? Or you don’t want the trouble of looking for somebody else? Tell me, Cole, does it matter if just somebody is there? Or is there a reason it has to be me?”

“Why you?” Cole’s entreating tone disappeared. His tone was sharp, his words firm. “Why you, Cherry? You, because yours is the face I look for when I walk into the kitchen first thing in the morning. When it’s not there, the day doesn’t start right. You, because the moon isn’t half as pretty from the front porch if you’re not looking at it with me. You, because you’re the only one who can get Nate into a shirt before breakfast, and the only one who will listen when he’s got some half-assed idea he wants to discuss seven ways to Sunday. It’s you that makes the place home. That’s why you, Cherry Lynn. It’s not home without you.”

She released the breath she’d held. “That’s all well and good, Cole Witherspoon, but it doesn’t really say it, does it?”

“Say it? Say what?” His grin, a grin that had a little of Nate in it, lit his face. “Oh, Cherry, I don’t have to say it. You know. You knew when we walked across the bridge and looked down at the river. If not then, you knew when I kissed you. I don’t have to say what you already hear in your heart.”

“But you need to hear yourself say it, Cole.”

“That I love you, Cherry? I don’t have to say it to know it. It’s there, a fact of life, like the sun going down over the hills. Like the smell of wet pasture on a summer day.” He drew her hands free, uncrossing her arms and wrapping his around her. “When I wake up, the first thing I want to see in the morning is your head on the pillow next to mine. The last thing I want to hear ever’ night from now on is you saying good night. I hope we live to see the sons and daughters of our sons and daughters coming back to visit the old folks. If we have hard times, I want to know that you’re right there with me, facing them down, one day at a time.” He kissed her above each eye. “I’ll tell you I love you, Cherry, in all the ways I can. And if I don’t always remember to say it in words, please look in your heart and see all the other ways I’ve said it.”

“I believe you’ll find the words, Cole. You’re pretty eloquent when you have to be. And for a practical man, you put together some sentiments that sound like they came right out of a Hollywood love story.”

“So we get married, turn that rambling old ranch house into a real home, and see how long it takes to get a family going?”

Cherilyn slipped her arms around his neck. “That sounds like a practical problem with a storybook solution. Yes, that’s just what we’ll do…if you’re sure Arabella comes with the deal.”

He turned her so the two of them could see the mound of russet fur. Arabella was still absorbed in Reb’s favorite ball.