Love Drunk Cowboy (3 page)

Austin had always pictured Rye with gray hair and a bushy mustache. Granny had said that he was a younger man and damn fine looking but she was eighty-three and her version of younger didn’t mean thirty-something. Now Austin understood why she was so happy when she got off the phone with him each week and why she looked forward to their conversations. She’d thought that he sure had young ideas when she talked to him, but then Granny had been ageless too.

“You got a pretty big job ahead of you,” Rye said. “I’m right across the road so I’ll be glad to help.”

His deep Texas drawl was enough to cause her bikini underwear to start to inch down toward her ankles. She had the urge to reach inside the waistband of her slacks and give them a jerk to remind them that there was no way she was letting a cattle rancher get under her skin or in her pants.

The waitress set two plastic baskets of food in front of Rye and Kent and they settled into it without talking. Rye kept his eyes on the fish and fries but continued to steal microsecond glances at Austin, burning real life pictures of her into his brain. Later he’d get them out, shut his eyes, and play them over and over again.

Austin ate her fish and let her eyes wander to the barbed wire tat. It fascinated her and she had to hold her hands tightly in her lap to keep from leaning across the space and touching it to see if it was prickly.

What would it be like to have those big arms around her? Why a barbed wire tat? And why on his left arm? Did he have any more artwork scattered on his body? If so, where was it?

The waitress made a pass by their table. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Ketchup. This bottle is dry,” Pearlita said.

The waitress reached across Rye’s table, stole the full bottle, and set it between Pearlita and Austin.

“Thanks,” Pearlita said. “They don’t make anything like this up there in Tulsa, I’ll bet.”

“Aw, they’ve probably got anything a body would want up in the big city,” Rye drawled.

“Not this good,” Austin admitted. Sure they were sitting so close that she could see that little dot on his sexy chin where he’d cut himself shaving, but he kept talking across the distance like they were sitting together. Maybe that was the way they did things in Terral.

“I love fish but Momma hates the smell, so we never had it. When I get really hungry for it I usually just grab some at Long John Silver’s, but it’s sure not this good,” she said.

“Verline loved fish. I guess you know there wasn’t any love lost between her momma and granny,” Pearlita said. “Woman stole her only son away from the watermelon farm. I told Verline that Eddie never did intend to make a life in Terral, Oklahoma. The day he left for college up in Stillwater I was out at his car when Verline remembered something she had forgotten. She ran back into the house to get it and I asked him what he was going to study at school. He grinned at me and said that he was going to go into business because he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life wiping sweat and plowing watermelon fields. She always thought he’d change his mind but after he met Barbara up there at OSU, I knew he’d never come back to Terral.”

Kent finished his food and drank three glasses of tea before Rye finally pushed his basket back. “Well, it’s about time. I’d begun to think we were goin’ to laze around this café all afternoon.”

Rye stood up and settled his hat back on his head. Walking away from her wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d be across the road and he vowed that he would be spending more time over there.

Austin was near six feet tall with her high heels and she seldom looked up at any man, but when she watched him put that hat on she could’ve sworn there was seven feet of cowboy standing in front of her. “I’ll be around if you need anything,” he said.

“Thank you, Rye. I’ll call if I do. I have your number,” she said. She wanted to say more but her brain wouldn’t work when her eyes were glued on that tat.

“Nice to see you again, Miz Pearlita. Tell Pearl to come see me and the wife when she comes to visit,” Kent said.

“I’ll do it but I don’t expect she’ll be comin’ around for a while. She chased through for a night last week and I probably won’t see her again until Christmas.”

Austin wasn’t a bit surprised that Rye swaggered or that his jeans fit snuggly over a damn fine looking rear end. Not since the initial shock of seeing he wasn’t an old man had worn off, anyway.

“Like what you see?” Pearlita asked.

She spun around so fast that it made her light-headed. “Yes, I do. I wonder where on earth the owner found so many branding irons to hang on these walls.”

“He didn’t. The ranchers brought them in along with the brands on the wood pieces above them. I’ll have to tell Rye that you were interested in using one on his ass,” Pearlita teased.

“Why in the world would you say that?” For the second time that day Austin wished she could grab the words, douse them in ketchup, and put them back in her mouth.

“Because evidently you’d like to brand his ass. That is where you were looking.”

Austin blushed.

Pearlita laughed. “Eat your fish. You’ve got a big job cleaning out Verline’s house and you will need the energy. She never threw away a damn thing. And now you’ve got to do it knowing that cowboy with a sexy ass lives across the street.”

“Whew!” Austin wiped at her brow. “I got to tell you, Pearlita, that was a shock. Granny never told me what Rye looked like. I figured him for a seventy-year-old cowboy with bowlegs, a gray moustache and hair, and walking with a cane. Came close to giving me a heart attack when he introduced himself. I didn’t drool, did I?”

Pearlita had to swallow fast to keep from spewing tea across the table. “Girl, you are just like Verline. I’ve missed her. We’ll have to do this more often.”

Austin laughed with her. “I don’t know if my poor heart could take it if every time we eat here I get a shock like that.”

Pearlita poured ketchup over the top of her fries. “Rye lives in one of them big double wide trailers right across the street from Verline’s place. The old house on the property finally got too worn out to put a patch on, so he tore it down, used what lumber wasn’t termite infested to build a hay shed, and bought him a trailer. Put it right where the old house used to stand. I guess it had something to do with insurance but he said it was so he could run across to Verline’s when he smelled the cinnamon rolls cookin’. She loved that boy like a son. Sometimes I think he became Eddie in her eyes. He moved up here the same year Eddie died and they had a grandma-grandson thing going from day one. She should’ve told you all that instead of letting you believe he was an old man.”

Austin dipped a piece of fish into the best homemade tartar sauce she’d ever eaten and bit into it. “Yes, she should’ve. I bet she’s laughing her butt off right now. Tell me more about this thing with Granny and Mother. I know Mother hates this place but I had no idea that Granny wasn’t too fond of her.”

Pearlita swallowed a bite and said, “Your mother was a city girl. By the time she finished college her parents were ready to retire. Your mother and Eddie married right after they graduated from college, so her parents bought them a house in Tulsa and gave them both high-powered jobs. They taught her and Eddie about the car dealership for a couple of years and then gave them the business and retired.”

“That explains a lot,” Austin said.

Pearlita nodded. “Well, darlin’, I’ve got a one-thirty appointment at the hairdressers to see if she can get the yellow out of my hair without making it blue, so I’m going to scoot on out of here. You give me a call if that house overwhelms you and I’ll bring a couple of scoop shovels and a box of heavy duty garbage bags.”

Pearlita motioned for the waitress and handed her a fifty dollar bill. “You settle up our bill and put the rest in your pocket.”

“Thank you!” The waitress gasped at the huge tip.

Pearlita stood up and patted Austin on the shoulder. “Verline gave me that very bill when she got sick and said for me to keep it for this day. Remember what I said, Austin. I’m less than half an hour away and Rosa, my hired help, can run the motel if you need me.”

“I will and if Pearl comes around in the next couple of weeks, tell her to drop in on me,” Austin said.

She finished every bite of her lunch after Pearlita disappeared but her thoughts kept wandering back to Rye and hoping that he stayed on his side of the road while she was there. Or she would need one of those big old adult bibs like they use in nursing homes to catch the drooling.

When she finished she drove through town and out past the cemetery where Granny should have been laid to rest beside her husband but instead she was nothing but bits of ashes floating down the Red River.

When she turned right into the driveway she saw the hired hands gathered around the porch, hats in hands, waiting for their new boss. She took a deep breath and crawled out of her little bright red Corvette. She had no idea if there were watermelons in the ground or if they were sprouting, and she didn’t know anything about farming them. But Rye had told her the crew had arrived from Mexico and was hard at work getting the ground ready to plant.

“Miz Austin, we are sorry to lose Miz Lanier. We didn’t even know she had passed on until we got here last week. We could go back to Mexico but we will stay and keep things going until you make up your mind what to do with this place,” Felix said. “This is Angelo, Estefan, Hugo, Jacinto, and Lobo. They are all my kinfolks and we all have work visas through the summer.” He pointed to each man as he introduced them. Angelo was short and thick bodied with a round face. Estefan was tall and thin with a slim nose and a thin mouth. Jacinto had a shaved head and a tattoo of a rosary on his bicep. Lobo had kinky curly hair and soft brown eyes. Hugo had a dimple in his chin, not unlike the one on Rye’s face.

Damn it! I’m not going to think about the neighbor
, she thought.

“And I’m Rye,” a deep Texas drawl said from the shadows of the porch.

“Rye’s been working with us since we got here,” Felix said.

“I’ve met Rye and I’m glad to meet you all, and since I’m not familiar with what it takes to run this farm, I’ll leave it all in your hands, Felix. Is there anything else I’m supposed to know?”

“We get paid on Friday. Miz Lanier writes us a check and we sign the back. Then she takes them to the bank and sends all but twenty dollars to our families in Mexico. She brings us back each twenty dollars for things we need in the week. Today is Friday and the bank in Ryan closes at four,” Felix said.

“Then I’ll find the checkbook first thing and get your checks written. Give me thirty minutes and come back. Is that all right?”

Felix nodded. “That will be very fine.”

They walked away speaking in rapid Spanish. Lobo, a tall thin man with skin the color of coffee with lots of cream, a hook on his pointed nose, and firm skinny lips laughed and said, “
Rye está hechizado por la morena que todos quieren
.”

Rye took a step out of the shadows and yelled, “I can hear you, Lobo.”

Lobo looked back over his shoulder and grinned.

“What did he say about you?” Austin asked. Not one thing about the cowboy had changed. His eyes were just as green in the bright sunlight as they’d been in the dimly lit café and his hair was even blacker. That tattoo beckoned to her to touch it and she had trouble keeping her eyes off the big silver belt buckle.

Rye wasn’t about to tell her that Lobo had said that he was bewitched by Austin. His palms were already sweaty just standing there in her presence. He was more than just bewitched by her. There was an itch so far down in the middle of his heart that there was no way he could scratch it. And the physical reaction quivering behind his Wrangler zipper said he’d best get his mind on ranchin’ instead of Austin Lanier.

“I asked you what he said,” Austin said.

“I’m sorry. I was translating it from Mexican slang into English,” Rye said quickly. He’d deal with Lobo later when he was flirting around with some local chica. The only one of the crew who wasn’t married, he was tall, thin, and would be playing in Mexican movies if a talent scout ever visited his village.

“Hey, Rye,
no
quiero bronca contigo
,” Lobo yelled.

“And what was that?” Austin asked.

“He made a remark about me and then said that he didn’t want to get into a fight with me,” Rye said with a grin. Damn! His face was going to hurt by nightfall if he didn’t wipe that constant smile from it.

Austin had sent thoughts racing around in his brain that he had no business entertaining. Someone who worked in a high-powered office in Tulsa wouldn’t be staying in Terral, Oklahoma, with a population of four hundred if you counted half the dogs and part of the stray cats running around town. Without them the total was probably closer to 350.

Austin opened the front door and said, “Okay. Guess I should’ve taken Spanish in college rather than French. Did you need something or were you just checking up on the hired help?”

“Felix asked me to be here when you arrived. They’ve been spooked about meeting you for fear you’ll decide not to put in a crop this year. It’s their means of living for the whole year. They work hard, send their money home, and then live on it until the next spring. They’re afraid you are going to tell them to go home and their families will go hungry his winter,” Rye said.

“Well, thank you. Looks like I’ve got to hit the ground running if I’m going to get their checks written and taken to the bank.”

Send them home to starve
kept running through her mind. She could never do that. If they knew a year ahead of time there wouldn’t be work for them at Verline Lanier’s then they could make arrangements elsewhere. But how could she run a watermelon farm and work in Tulsa at the same time?

“I’ve got to go to Ryan to the feed store and tag agency. I’ll drive you up there,” he said quickly.

Austin nodded before she thought about it because she was worrying with the idea of those men and their families going hungry all winter.

“Okay, I’ll go get my truck and come right back.”