Love Drunk Cowboy (6 page)

“Okay,” she said. “Must’ve taken awhile at the tag agency?”

“You know how those things go,” he mumbled. No way was he telling her that he hadn’t even gone to the tag agency. He still had two weeks before deadline on the pickup tag so he’d take care of that another day.

Her cell phone rang when they were backing out. “That’s my mother. How far is it to the feed store? I can tell her to call back.”

“No need. It’s not two minutes from here. You can visit while I run inside and take care of things,” he said.

“Hello,” she said.

“Is it over? Are you okay?” Barbara asked.

“It is and I am. I’ve got a six-man payroll that I’m taking care of today. Tomorrow I meet with the lawyer and start packing.”

“I don’t envy you that job. Verline never threw out a thing. You’ll probably come across school papers that your dad colored when he was in kindergarten down there. God, I hate that place.”

“Well, stay in Tulsa, and I’ll take care of it.”

“That house is as old as God. I swear it is and she wouldn’t move up here even when she got sick. I offered to take care of her, hire the best nurses, send her to a specialist, and have the tumor removed, but she’d have no part of it.”

“I know, Mother. Granny did things her own way right up to and including the funeral.”

“Well, if it overwhelms you, I’m just a phone call away.”

“Thank you and I’ll remember that. I may just pack it all up and put it in a storage unit, then go through a box or two a month until it’s all done. That way I won’t have to make decisions right now.”

“You were always organized. Gotta run. It’s payroll day here too.”

“’Bye, Mother.”

“That was quick.” Rye backed the truck up to the feed store so loading would be easier.

“She just wanted to be sure everything went as planned. I told her that it had.”

As planned,
he thought.
Not one blessed thing has gone as planned today. From the time I hid behind the willow tree and watched you dump those ashes into the river, my whole life would make Katrina look like a summer rainstorm.

“I’ll be right out,” he said and disappeared down the side of the truck into the store.

The two big glasses of iced tea at the café and the cup of coffee she’d had at the farm plus the two cups she’d had after her ice cream while she talked to Greta and Molly hit bottom and she needed to find a bathroom. She opened the door, slung her long legs out, and walked inside where Rye was signing a ticket on the counter.

“Do you have a restroom I could use?” she asked.

An elderly man looked up at her. “Yes, ma’am. Right back down that aisle and to the left.”

His eyes widened and he looked back at Rye, a silly grin on his face. “Is that what made you forget to buy your grain?”

Rye nodded.

“Well, son, I reckon you done good to remember what your name was when you signed the tickets. I ain’t sure I could if I had that a waitin’ on me.”

Rye chuckled.

“John Deere don’t make nothin’ that looks like that. You better keep her in your sights real good or some other old cowboy will boot scoot her right out from under you,” he teased.

“Yes, sir,” Rye said.

By the time she was finished and had walked back to the front of the store, the feed was loaded and Rye was leaning on the side of the truck waiting for her. She and the older gentleman exchanged waves as she left.

“You need anything else before we go home?” he asked.

Home? That sounded strange. Terral wasn’t home.

“Not a thing,” she said.

The wind kicked up a minor dirt storm right outside of Terral and by the time they reached the farm it had blown enough red dirt around that her cute little Corvette looked like it had gone through the Great Depression dust bowl days. She jumped out of the truck and headed into the house as fast as she could in three-inch spike heeled shoes.

Rye was right behind her. “We’ve got to get the windows down or there’ll be dust in everything. That stuff can get into the smallest cracks. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of them. I know which ones I opened to air the place out for you.” The minute he was in the house he was chasing from one room to the other slamming down windows.

“I wondered if they’d been up all week.” She brushed a coating of something resembling rust-colored baby powder from the front of her black suit.

“House smelled all musty when I came over this morning. It’s been shut up for six months, and other than me comin’ by last week when the guys came from Mexico, no one’s been inside,” he said as he shut the final window in the living room. “Didn’t think about a dirt storm.”

“Well, shhh… crap! My suitcases are in the back of my car. Do you think the dust got in them?”

He held out his hand. “Give me your keys and I’ll go bring them in for you.”

She fished around in her purse until she located them and put them in his hand.

He had to control his breathing when her fingertips touched his palm. Dammit! He was thirty-two years old, not sixteen. He’d been in love. He’d had girlfriends and serious relationships. What was it about Austin Lanier that built a fire in his gut?

Austin removed the envelopes from her purse and laid them on the bar. Then she went to the window and watched his fine looking rear end as he hurried to her car in the dust storm. If he’d walked into her oil company a dozen women would have hog-tied him and carried him off to the nearest broom closet. That brought on a jealous streak that wiped the grin off her face and replaced it with a frown. Sure they’d talked lots of times but she’d only met the man that day. She had no right to be jealous. Maybe he had a girlfriend, a fiancée, or maybe he was just being nice to her because he’d loved her granny like his own grandmother.

He set her suitcases inside the door and shut it behind him, went to the thermostat on the wall, and adjusted it to blow cool air. “It’s too warm with the windows down. We usually have to use the air-conditioner a few hours about this time of year. I still got feed to unload so I’ll be going. Oh, I put the dye for the eggs up on the refrigerator in case you want to do some tonight. But I bet you are too tired to mess with them, aren’t you?”

“I told you I’m not dying eggs. Not tonight or tomorrow.”

“See you later,” he said.

She opened her mouth to argue more but he was gone before she could get a word out. Mumbling all the way about Easter eggs, she hauled her suitcase down the short hallway to her old bedroom. Nothing had changed. It still had a twin-sized bed pushed up against the east wall, a dresser on the west wall, and a fluffy pink rug between the two. A picture of Eddie when he graduated from Terral High School was framed and took center stage on the dresser. One of him and her mother on their wedding day was on the left and Austin’s senior picture on the right. More than a dozen smaller ones were scattered around them. Pictures of Austin at a ballet recital. She picked it up and frowned. She must have been ten because that was the last year she took dancing lessons. The next one she picked up was one of her with her mother and father at her college graduation.

She put the picture back and threw her suitcase up on the bed. In half an hour it was unpacked, her clothes hung up, underpants and pajamas in the one empty dresser drawer, and she was removing her dusty suit jacket that would definitely need a trip to the dry cleaners when she got back to Tulsa.

She heard someone knock on the kitchen door and then Felix yelled her name. She kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot through the living room.

“Hello, come on in. I was in the back of the house. Here’s your money.” She picked up the envelopes on her way to where he stood just inside the door and handed them to him.

“Could I get pickup keys too?”

She unhooked the keys from a rack at the end of the bar.

“Not those. That is Miz Lanier’s fancy new truck keys. The ones on the other side with the red keychain is the old work truck.”

She replaced the keys and picked the other set off the rack. “Where is this new truck?”

“She keeps it in the shed behind the house. The old work truck is parked in the backyard. It is so old the weather and dust storms don’t do much damage.”

“Why don’t you just keep those keys while you are here? That way, if you need something from town you can go get it.”

“Thank you.” Felix grinned.

She really meant to take a quick bath in the big claw-footed tub but when she sunk down in the warm water, she groaned and leaned her head back on a rolled towel. She’d forgotten how well her body fit in the tub and just how deep it was. She shut her eyes and a picture of Rye appeared instantly. She snapped them open so fast she swore she could hear the pop.

She was not going to think about that man even if he was the best eye candy she’d seen in months. She lazed in the water until it went cold, contemplated letting part of the water out and refilling it with hot, but didn’t. She stepped out and wrapped a big white towel around her body. She dried her hair, brushed her teeth, dressed in a pair of soft knit pajamas, and opened the door to her grandmother’s bedroom but couldn’t make herself go inside. She had at least five hours before bedtime and she could get a lot done in that time but she was mentally exhausted. She couldn’t face packing a single box or going through even one dresser drawer that day. All she wanted to do was curl up in an easy chair and shut her eyes. On Thursday she’d call the old man, Rye, like she always did and they’d have their usual conversation. But a quick reality check told her that nothing was normal and wouldn’t be again. Granny was gone. She wasn’t coming back. Rye wasn’t an old man. He was a helluva sexy cowboy.

Tomorrow after the lawyer came and went she’d get serious about the business of packing up Granny’s things. She’d done enough for one day. She went to the living room, turned on the television, channel surfed until she found reruns of
NCIS
, and settled into the worn recliner where her grandmother had always sat.

Kent left at five thirty but Rye worked until dark with Austin on his mind all evening. He finally got the tractor in running order and drove his old work truck back to his house. When he removed his shirt and tossed it at the dirty clothes hamper he realized he hadn’t changed clothes after he’d driven Austin to Ryan. His favorite Sunday shirt now had big round ugly oil stains all over the front. He looked down at his jeans and groaned. They’d come from the cleaners just last week and hadn’t even been worn until that day. Now they had grass stains on the knees, oil on the hip pockets where he’d wiped his hands, and a nice two-inch tear down the thigh.

His best boots had weathered a dust storm, waded through a feed lot and the pasture, as well as kicked the tractor wheel more than once. It would take a week to get them back to the shine they’d had that morning when he put them on to go to the cafe.

“What was I thinking?” he said.

He went to the window in the kitchen and looked out across the road at the little white house. The blue light flickering from the living room said that Austin had the television on. What was she watching? Did she like old movies like he did? What would it be like to share his oversized recliner and a bottle of cold beer with her while they watched a movie?

He stood there for a full ten minutes before he went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He pulled out a container of leftover lasagna, put it in a pan and slid it into the oven, turned the knobs, and headed for the shower.

It took awhile to get all the oil and dirt from under his fingernails and three shampoos before the water ran clear out of his hair. When he finished he wrapped a towel around his waist and padded back to his bedroom in the far left corner of the house. He pulled the blinds up and looked at the house across the road again. She was still watching television. Had she fallen asleep?

“It’s only eight thirty,” he said. If he dressed in a hurry would it be too late to run over there with the lasagna? There was plenty for two and she probably hadn’t had anything since ice cream in the middle of the afternoon.

He grabbed a fresh pair of jeans from the closet and tossed the towel in the corner. He pulled a knit shirt over his head and took off for the bathroom to see if he needed to shave again. The plague of having dark hair was that a man’s beard was also dark and either he looked scruffy or he shaved every day… twice if he wanted to impress a lady.

He had his nose right up next to the mirror when he got a snoot full of smoke. “The lasagna!” he yelled and rushed into the kitchen.

When he opened the oven a blast of black smoke billowed out and up his nose. He hurriedly turned on the exhaust fan above the stove and opened the kitchen window. So much for taking a late supper across the road. He pulled the smoking pan from the oven and carried it to the deck off the living room where he put it on the picnic table and left the sliding doors open.

He sat down in a lounge chair and put his head in his hands. He’d had more bad luck since he’d met Austin than he’d ever had in his life and still he could hardly keep from inventing an excuse to cross that road to see her again.

It was Saturday morning, the day before Easter, which fell on the first Sunday in April that year. No matter where Austin was, Saturday was her day to sleep in. She didn’t care that research had shown that missed sleep couldn’t ever be reclaimed. She put in long, hard hours all week and she slept on Saturday morning. Neither psychological nor physical proof meant squat to her. She didn’t care what the specialist in
Vogue
magazine said about the issue or if Professor Know-It-All had proven beyond a doubt that one day of sleeping in did not atone for five nights of working late; sleeping in on Saturday caught her up on missed sleep and if she didn’t get it she was bitchy.

The sun was barely up when she was awakened to rattling pots and pans banging in the kitchen. She put a pillow over her head but it didn’t go away. She groaned, looked at the alarm clock, and sat straight up in bed when she realized she wasn’t in her apartment in Tulsa. If that wasn’t Granny Lanier resurrected from ashes and come back to life, then whoever was in there had better be able to run fast or else like the sting of rock salt on their hind ends. Because Austin fully well intended to jerk that shotgun from behind the door and start shooting. She didn’t bother pulling on a robe or slipping her feet into house shoes but stormed down the hallway muttering curses the whole way.