Love Drunk Cowboy (11 page)

“You ready to go on to Ringgold?” he asked hoarsely.

She nodded, not trusting herself to say a word. If there was a Holiday Inn in Ringgold she would almost be willing for a side trip on the way, and for a moment she let her imagination run wild with images of tangled sheets and bodies intertwined in ways that made her heartbeat speed up and her mouth go dry and other parts of her go decidedly moist. She shook her head to get herself back under control and sighed. Ringgold had lost half its houses to a fire a few years before, leaving it with about a hundred people. And that was raking up everyone and their cousins in a ten-mile radius. No Holiday Inn for her today.

“Are you sure your folks won’t mind you bringing in an extra?”

“Honey, everyone in the whole area will stop by sometime today. Friends as well as the neighbors. It’s old home week at the O’Donnell place.”

“You told me a casual family affair with only ten people,” she said.

“That’s for dinner. Afterwards is open door and free leftovers.”

It took ten minutes to drive two miles south of Ringgold on Highway 81. Rye slowed down and turned into an oak tree–lined gravel lane with a big white two-story house at the end of the driveway. It had a porch surrounding three sides topped off by a widow’s walk at the top with doorways opening out onto it.

“Welcome to the O’Donnell horse ranch.”

“Horse?”

“Dad is Irish and loves the ponies. He and Mother raise quarter horses, and my brothers help him.”

She kicked off her running shoes and slipped her feet into the spike-heeled sandals and was instantly sorry that she hadn’t come better prepared. The shoes didn’t go with the outfit she had chosen. And she’d forgotten to spray on perfume. Her hair was a fright from hiding eggs and the majority of her makeup had sweated off.

His touch on the small of her back made her even more nervous when she stepped into a cool foyer. The noise of several conversations going on in a room off to the right made her want to run back to Terral and hide. But she held her head high and fought back another shiver when he escorted her into the living room.

“Rye, is that you? It had better be. I’m starving and oh, my God.” A dark-haired woman stared rudely. “Momma, did you know Rye was bringing someone with him?”

“Is it Ace or Wil?”

“It’s Austin,” Rye hollered.

“Well, bring him on in and make him known to the family.”

Everything went so silent that the flutter of angel’s wings would have sounded like shotgun blasts when he ushered Austin all the way into the room.

“Everyone, this is Austin Lanier, Granny’s granddaughter.”

“Welcome to Easter, Austin. Come on in here and get acquainted.” Cash O’Donnell held out his hand and graced her with a broad smile.

“This is my father, Cash O’Donnell, and my mother, Maddie.” Rye pointed as he made introductions. “My sisters, Colleen and Gemma, and brothers, Dewar and Raylen.”

“I’d be his grandmother, Franny, and this is his grandfather, Tilman,” a woman with gray hair said from a rocking chair right at Austin’s elbow.

“Now can we eat, Momma? I’m starving,” Gemma said.

“It’s on the bar in the kitchen. Everyone can help themselves the rest of the day soon as Poppa says grace,” Maddie said.

Everyone talked at once as they headed through an archway leading into the dining room and beyond that to the kitchen. Rye steered Austin with his hand still on her back. The house was cool but that spot where his hand rested felt as if someone was holding a blowtorch two inches from it.

Maddie bowed her head but opened one eye a slit to look at her oldest son. He’d been the serious one of the boys but he had an expression on his face she’d never seen before, not even with Serena, the girl he thought he was in love with back when he was about twenty-one. He was absolutely smitten with Austin Lanier and Maddie wanted to weep for him. The girl was a high-powered businesswoman who lived in the big city of Tulsa. Rye would never be happy away from a ranch.

Tilman delivered the grace. “God bless the corners of this house, and be the lintel blest, and bless the hearth and bless the board and bless each place of rest, and bless each door that opens wide to stranger as to kin. And bless each crystal window pane that lets the starlight in, and bless the rooftree overhead and every sturdy wall. The peace of man, the peace of God, the peace of love on all. Amen.”

It was the strangest prayer Austin had ever heard and she looked at Rye with a question on her face.

“It’s an Irish blessing that he says every Easter,” he whispered.

“Then you weren’t kidding about being Irish?”

“Not one bit. Momma is too. She was Maddie O’Malley before she married Dad.”

“And we’ve all got the temper to prove it. And Rye is the worst of the lot. That’s why he’s not married,” Gemma said.

She had black hair cut in short layers that framed an oval face, deep green eyes beneath arched dark eyebrows and heavy lashes, and a wide mouth. She took care of her short height with a pair of three-inch wedge espadrille sandals on a one-inch platform. She wore a flowing gauze skirt in a splash of bright spring colors and a skintight tank top the same color as her eyes.

Colleen playfully poked her sister on the arm. “He’d be runnin’ a close race to you.”

Her hair was that strange burgundy color that usually comes out of a bottle but looked totally natural. Her face was slightly rounder than Gemma’s angular planes and her lips a wee bit wider. She was a little taller than Gemma but her bright red high heels that matched the cute little capris and western cut top put them about the same.

“Love your hair,” Austin said.

“Looks like it would come right out of a Lady Clairol bottle, don’t it?” Gemma said. “But it’s virgin as the Mother…”

“Don’t say it.” Dewar pointed.

That he and Rye were brothers was undisputable. They had the same dark hair and the exact same shade of eyes, but Dewar wasn’t quite as tall and his face more square. He also sported a deeper dimple in his chin and a scar on his cheek.

“What? I wasn’t going to blaspheme. Not with Poppa in the house. He’d bring down lightning to strike me dead. God wouldn’t have to lift a finger,” Gemma said.

Raylen chuckled. He was the shortest of the O’Donnell brothers; about the same height as Austin. As if God were making it up to him for making him the short straw, He gave him the deepest voice, the lightest blue eyes, and thick dark chestnut hair, colored somewhere between Colleen’s and Rye’s. He also gave him almost as much sex appeal as Rye and a smile that would cause major global warming.

“We’re glad you came today. We’ve missed Verline. She’d become part of our family,” Maddie said. “She was a hoot!”

“Thank you,” Austin said.

Maddie didn’t look old enough to have five grown children. She had a few crow’s feet around her bright blue eyes but her chestnut hair was as virgin as Colleen’s. She was taller than her daughters and slim as a model. Any twenty-year-old woman would have been delighted to look that good in snug jeans and a western cut lime green blouse.

Hell’s bells,
Austin thought.
I’d be happy to look that good and I’m thirty!

Maddie handed Austin an oversized paper plate. “Did Rye make an offer for the farm? I told him to talk to you soon as you got into town. He’s been wanting to expand for a while and that would be ideal since it’s right across the road.”

“Rye did mention it but I’m still thinking about things,” Austin said.

“Darlin’, Easter isn’t the time to talk business.” Cash nudged his wife on the arm. “Excuse her, Austin. She’s got a mind that never quits. Woman is what made this ranch what it is.”

“You got that right,” Grandma O’Donnell said from across the bar where she was piling her plate high with ham, baked beans, sweet potatoes, and a corn casserole that looked scrumptious. “Maddie took this old wore out place and turned it around. I swear that girl could make silk flowers reproduce and what she can do with horses is a gift from God. She can take a colt that’s all gangly legs and turn it into a million-dollar racer.”

Grandpa patted Grandma on the shoulder. “Got that from you, sugar.”

“Damn right she did. If I could only have one daughter among all them eight wild Irish boys then she had to be smart well as pretty.”

Austin wasn’t shy about filling up her plate. The banana nut pancakes had been wonderful but hiding Easter eggs had used up that energy and she was as hungry as Gemma. If the girl planned on having a piece of the pecan pie on the dessert table, she’d better eat fast because Austin had laid mental claim to the biggest slice.

When she sat down beside Rye at the long dining room table he raised an eyebrow at her plate. “Need some sideboards there?”

“This is just round one. I like good food and nothing you say will make me feel guilty,” she said.

Raylen slapped Rye on the back. “Met your match, did you?”

“Them Frenchies can’t hold a candle to us Irish for eating.” Rye’s eyes twinkled. He started toward his mouth with a forkful of corn casserole at the same time Austin poked him with her elbow and every bit of it landed on the front of his shirt.

He couldn’t catch a lucky break if he’d been driving a hundred and forty miles down the road in a good tailwind. The one woman he wanted to impress more than anyone in the world and every time he turned around he was as clumsy as a hippo in ice skates.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

He wiped at it with a napkin. “At least my shirt is yellow and it won’t show.”

“You’re a good sport but be careful what you say about the French, darlin’. I’m only half French. The other half is pure English and we can whoop your Irish butt when it comes to eating,” Austin said.

Grandpa tapped Grandma on the shoulder. “Aha, she’s got spunk, sugar!”

“What’d you expect? She’s Verline’s granddaughter,” Grandma laughed.

“I forgot to get a beer. What would you like?” Rye asked Austin. “We’ve got Coke, Dr Pepper, sweet tea.”

“Coors?” she said. She could count the number of beers she’d drunk in her lifetime on one hand and wondered why in the devil she’d asked for beer when she meant to say sweet tea.

“You bet,” he said as he pushed back his chair. It was torture sitting so close to Austin with everyone wedged in so close around the table. His elbow touched hers. His leg brushed against hers. And yet he found himself rushing back to the table so he could sit close to her again.

“Loved your grandma.” Gemma was crammed in so close to Austin that their elbows practically touched when they picked up their forks. “I should’ve sat at the end of the table with this left hand handicap but I wanted to get to know you. I used to tell Verline that I was going to grow up and be just like her.”

Austin smiled. “Me too. So she was here often?”

“Every Sunday Rye could talk her out of Terral. She was like an extra granny to us all.”

Rye set a can of Coors beside her plate. It was so cold that the outside had water beads hanging on it and when she popped the top, foam floated out so fast that she had to gulp it to keep it from spilling out on the table cloth.

“Sassy, smart, and knows how to drink beer. We might keep you,” Cash said.

If Mother saw me right now I’d be casket shopping tomorrow. Beer and paper plates, all the fat and calories in the state of Texas, and a cowboy from Terral flirting with me. I don’t know if it’s because he wants my property or if he really likes me but his touch just plain sets me on fire and makes me think thoughts that would make the devil blush.

Austin raised her beer to Cash and smiled. “You’d be paying someone to take me off your hands come morning light.”

Rye wasn’t surprised by his family’s reaction to Austin. She was smart, beautiful, and sassy. That all fit right in with the Irish clan but they’d have been happy to see him bring a plain, shy woman who was only marginally pretty to Easter dinner. He was thirty-two years old and they’d always kidded that the O’Donnell offspring would marry in the order of their birth.

He’d always liked dark-haired women ever since he’d kissed his first girl when he was thirteen out behind the barn after a cattle sale. Her name had been Kaylene Stephens and her father had bought one of the O’Donnell horses. They lived in Hereford, Texas, and he never saw her again or forgot the way the kiss made him feel.

But that was nothing compared to the delicious taste of Austin Lanier’s lips on his, the feel of her soft skin on his palm, or the way her curvy body fit just right all up and down his when he held her close. If kissing had made her knees go as weak as it did his, she would have fallen over backwards on the kitchen floor and taken him with her. Now there was a happy thought.

Maddie looked across the table at her oldest son. “How’s the ham?”

“It’s wonderful. Watermelon wine?” Rye asked.

“In honor of Verline. It was my last bottle. Are you going to keep making it like she did?” Maddie asked Austin.

Austin shrugged. “Don’t know. Didn’t even know she made it.”

“Well, I hope you do. It makes the best ham in the world. Just pour a bottle over it and put it in the oven. Gives it just the right amount of sweet. I used blackberry wine until she brought me a bottle of hers. Does your mother have a secret for ham?”

“My mother doesn’t cook. She has a combination housekeeper and cook. I’ve never known Rosa to make ham. Mother is very health conscious and ham is on her blacklist, but this is wonderful. You should open a restaurant!”

“Don’t give her any ideas,” Grandma giggled.

“Maybe I will when I retire from raising horses,” Maddie said.

“What do you do?” Gemma turned to Austin.

“I work for Humphrey’s Oil in Tulsa. How about you?”

“I’m a hairdresser over in Wichita Falls.”

“And I’m a blackjack dealer at the casino in Randlett, Oklahoma. Sometime you’ll have to pop in at Gemma’s joint, get all dolled up, and then come over to the casino and win a few dollars at my table. Bet you could find something a hell of a lot better than Rye O’Donnell in my casino. We get some damn fine lookin’ cowboys in there,” Colleen said.