Red's Hot Cowboy (25 page)

Pearl handed him ten keys and picked up the check, but her heart wouldn’t let her put it in the cash drawer. “I’m going to let you have these rooms at half price and you tell any shelters in this area if they need to use this motel as an underground service for abused women that they can have the rooms for half price. I can take it off my taxes. Here’s your change for the other half.” She put a couple of hundred-dollar bills and a fifty in his hand. “I’ll just need you to sign a paper for me.”

“Be glad to do that. You are a good person. You been abused?”

“No, I have not. Got too much temper for that.”

“Well, God bless you! Too bad you couldn’t give some of that to these women and my sister. I tried to get her out of the situation she was in, but she wouldn’t have none of it. The last time around she died. I drive the bus for these people as a payback and tell her story for her in hopes that it will wake some of these women up.”

“Bless
your
heart,” Lucy said.

He left and escorted each woman and her children from the bus to a motel room.

Lucy watched from the window and when the last one stepped out of the bus, tears flooded her cheeks. The woman was barely more than a child, a skinny girl that didn’t look to be more than eighteen carrying a baby with a diaper bag thrown over her shoulder and two toddlers struggling to keep up beside her.

“That could’ve been me,” Lucy whispered.

Pearl patted her shoulder and headed back to her apartment. “But you got out of it, Lucy. And you’ve got a job and your dignity back. They’ll have the same. It just might take them a while because they do have children.”

“My heart hurts for them, especially that last one.”

“I’m leaving. Wanted to thank you one more time,” Luke said as he made his way from the door to the counter.

Lucy looked up. “Can you tell me about that last one? We could see a little by the light above the lobby door and she looked so young.”

“She looks young but she’s twenty. Got pregnant with those twin boys when she was eighteen. Married the man and he began to beat her after they were born. She says he was good until he lost his job in all this economic mess, then he started layin’ around drinkin’ because he didn’t have anything to do. She got pregnant again and the baby is six months old. The husband got mad last week and slung one of those boys against the wall and beat the hell out of her when she picked the baby up to comfort him. She waited until the husband went to sleep and walked out with nothing but the clothes on her back, a bottle of milk for the baby, and ten dollars. She’d heard of us somehow and walked three miles with those kids to our shelter. She’s tough and she’s finished taking abuse. Don’t worry about her. And thanks again for the food. They were excited to have it. And many thanks for the half price rate.”

“You want a cup of coffee before you go back?” Lucy asked.

“That’d be nice,” Luke said.

Lucy motioned toward the chairs. “Have a seat over there and I’ll get you one.”

“Pearl?” she whispered as she eased the apartment door open.

“In the bathroom,” Pearl said.

“All right if I get some coffee?”

“Help yourself.”

He’d barely sat down before she was back with two mugs in her hand. She handed him one and sat down in the recliner beside him.

“I’m sorry about your sister. I was nearly to that point when I left.”

“I could see in your eyes that you had problems before. You can get out of it, but getting the pain out of you ain’t so easy,” Luke said.

“You sure got that right. What makes a man like that?”

He sipped the coffee. “Lots of excuses but not one damn good reason for a man to ever treat a woman like anything but a queen.”

She nodded.

He set the cup down and stood up. “Thank you, Lucy. Maybe I’ll come by sometime when I’m not driving a bus for the shelter. I work at the Department of Human Services over in Wichita Falls. Maybe you’d go get an ice cream cone with me sometime?”

“I’d like that,” Lucy said with a bright smile.

“Okay, then, I’ll call sometime. I’m in this area once a month, usually on a Wednesday,” he said.

Lucy nodded. She wanted to jump up and down and dance, but she kept her cool until Luke was in the bus. Then she hopped up, ran to the apartment door, and knocked on it.

“I see a glow on your face.” Pearl smiled as she answered the door.

“His name is Luke and he’s a decent man and he asked if I’d go get an ice cream with him some Wednesday when he’s in this area and I said I’d never even look at another man and I’m still married and what do I do because I like him?” Lucy said in one breath.

“Lucy, I’ve got a lawyer friend in Sherman who can take care of that marriage thing in a very quiet way. And what you do if you are attracted to that feller is go eat ice cream with him and tell him your story.”

“Really? You’d do that for me?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, yeah! Now I’ll take care of the motel. You go on and think about Luke.” Pearl laughed.

“Never say never,” Lucy mumbled as she rinsed the two cups and put them in the dishwasher. “I’m going on to my room now. Me and Delilah are going to spend a while reading after I feed her. She’s a good cat. You ever want to get rid of her I’d sure like to have her as mine.”

“Lucy, you are welcome to find a cat or a kitten of your own. There are advertisements in the paper all the time for free kittens.”

Lucy’s face registered pure joy. “You serious?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I want a yellow one just like Delilah. You call me if you need anything. If you feel dizzy or like you are going to faint or anything like that.”

“I promise I will,” Pearl said.

Lucy nodded seriously and left the door into the lobby open as she left.

***

Pearl was alone and it felt strange. “Chaos,” she said. She’d barely gotten the word out of her mouth when her phone rang. She fished it out of her purse and hurriedly said, “Hello!”

“Hi, Red. I can’t sleep. Are you all right? Talk to me a while,” Wil said.

She smiled. “Of course I’m all right. I was about to read until time to turn out the lights. I’m not sleepy either after sleeping all day. But tomorrow is going to be a stinker. We’ve got a full house.”

“Well, I’m too wired to sleep and now I’m thinking about tomorrow night. We could do something other than bowling if you want.”

“I haven’t been bowling in months. I’d love to go. And a good old greasy hamburger and a cold beer sounds wonderful,” she said.

“Just don’t want any other cowboy to come along and offer you something more exciting,” he said.

“Honey, I barely have time for one cowboy in my life right now,” she said.

He danced a jig right there in the bedroom and Digger looked at him like he had clean lost his human mind.

“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want there to be two cowboys in your life,” he said.

“Hey, it’s all I can do to keep up with the cowboy who puts things that trip me up at the top of his stairs just so I’ll spend the night with him.”

“Awww, I wouldn’t do that to my favorite red-haired lady,” he drawled.

Her heart skipped a beat. So she was his favorite red-haired lady, was she? Who was his favorite blonde? A wide band of green jealousy wrapped itself around her heart.

The business phone rang before she could think of a comeback. “Gotta run. Business calls on the other phone.”

“Call me if you have a change of heart. I can be there in less than ten minutes.”

“I will.” She hung up and made a dive for the phone before it went to the fourth ring and the answering machine.

“Longhorn Inn, may I help you?” she said.

“Either I just interrupted the best sex in the world or you are cleaning. Those are the only two things I can think of that would make you that breathless,” Austin said.

“Well, it damned sure wasn’t sex or I’d have hung up on you and went back to it. Hell, if it had been that good I wouldn’t have even answered the phone.”

Austin giggled. “Get a cold beer. Sit down and we’ll talk while you take a break.”

“That I can do because I wasn’t cleanin’ or havin’ good sex,” Pearl said.

“I’m coming to Henrietta tomorrow and I’ll either bring hamburgers from the Dairy Queen or we can go there to eat. But I couldn’t wait that long to hear the story from the horse’s mouth. Ever since you were a kid, trouble has followed you.”

“Chaos,” Pearl said.

“One and the same. So start talking and only stop when you get a drink of beer.”

Pearl laughed. “You’d better bring hamburgers here because Lucy and I’ve got a full house tonight. We’ll be cleanin’ rooms all day long tomorrow. Now where do you want me to start and are you planning on getting any sleep tonight?”

“Rye is out coon huntin’ with his brothers. If I get sleepy we’ll put it on pause and do the rest tomorrow.”

Pearl took a long swig of beer and started. “Once upon a time there was a red-haired fairy who—”

Austin laughed so hard. “You, darlin’, were never a fairy. You were born with horns that I had to clip when you were a kid. Wings were never your thing so why in the hell did you think you could fly down a flight of stairs?”

“Who’s tellin’ this story?”

“Okay, red-haired fairy child, go on.”

Pearl grinned, settled into the corner of the sofa, and told her story.

***

Wil surfed through the channels on television but nothing took his attention. He and Digger took a long walk out around the barn, checked on the cattle, the moon, and the stars, and went back inside when Wil’s nose was so cold it began to ache.

Digger raised his head and perked up his ears. He looked toward the door and growled deep in his throat.

“I hear it,” Wil said.

He hoped that the vehicle they both heard would be Pearl. He was halfway across the floor when the doorbell rang. He peeked out the triangular pane of glass at the top of the door to see the three O’Donnell brothers: Rye, Raylen, and Dewar.

He slung the door open and said, “Come on in. Want a beer?”

“No, we got cold ones in the back of the truck. Thought maybe you’d like to go do some coon huntin’ with us. Put on some warm boots and bring old Digger. He’ll like the run,” Rye said as all three men filed into the foyer.

“Give me five minutes. Y’all make yourselves at home.” Wil took the stairs two at a time. Coon hunting took a second seat to an evening with Pearl, but it might get him out of the wide-awake doldrums.

“Man, that wasn’t five minutes. If I’d have known you could get ready that fast I wouldn’t have even took off my coat,” Raylen said when Wil came down the stairs fully dressed carrying his shotgun.

“I slept all day. Spent the night up with Red so she wouldn’t fall asleep, and then we slept all day and now I’m wide awake. I’m glad y’all showed up,” he said.

Raylen slipped his arms back into his buff-colored work coat and grinned. “You slept with Pearl?”

“Yep, I did, as in shut your eyes and go to sleep.” Wil whistled for Digger and headed for the truck. “How we going to do this?”

“We got Blue, Amos, and Moses in the pens in the back. Last time Digger didn’t have a problem with old Moses. We could put him in there with him or he can sit up between you and Raylen in the backseat,” Rye said.

“Throw him in with Moses,” Wil said.

Rye opened the tailgate and Digger hopped up on it. He unfastened the cage that housed Moses and Digger ducked his head and went straight inside. He and Moses touched noses and sat down beside each other.

“Looks like they’re goin’ to get along fine,” Raylen said.

All four men got into the truck and Rye drove around back of the house, down the tractor path, behind the barn, and to the very edge of Wil’s land. Back where it hadn’t been cleared off and the pecans, oaks, and mesquite created thickets of trees that attracted coons, coyotes, and possums.

They unloaded and turned the dogs loose. Moses gave a mournful old howl and led the pack into the woods. Men followed dogs in a trot. The dogs stopped at the base of a pecan tree that was all of thirty feet tall. A possum hung on a low limb from its tail, his beady little eyes tormenting the dogs.

“Digger, you know that’s not a coon. Nose like yours can’t be fooled by a stupid possum. Go on,” Wil said.

Digger put his nose to the ground and took off with the rest of the dogs behind him.

“You got a thing for Pearl Richland?” Raylen asked.

Wil removed his cap and raked his fingers through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know. It started out on Christmas Eve and has been something wild goin’ on ever since. Might just be adrenaline.”

Raylen clapped a hand on his older brother Rye’s shoulder. “Remember when you first saw Austin? Wasn’t no doubts there. You was plumb in love from day one. Colleen didn’t think Austin would convert from city girl to country girl but she did. Hard to believe they can give up them high-heeled shoes, ain’t it? Maybe you done stood too close to Rye and got yourself a case of lovesick blues like he had, Wil. Only one way to cure them kind of blues and that’s to marry the girl.”