“These will hold together until we get back to the hotel. Or I could leave them in that hole right there with this hanky and go commando the rest of the day.”
“Not if you want to have dinner at that cute little restaurant we saw. Just thinking about you commando will bust the zipper out of my jeans and we’ll have to go back to the hotel.”
She tiptoed and kissed him, rearranged her clothing, and peeked out the moon-shaped hole. “It’s all clear. No auras floating around the church and the blue-haired granny has disappeared. I’m opening the door now.”
“One more second!” he said. “Got to buckle my belt and kiss you one more time. Man doesn’t do a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am job and not even kiss the angel.”
Haley looked at the company plane on the short taxiway and sighed. She’d had the perfect honeymoon but no marriage. Dewar hadn’t even said the three magic words even though there had been plenty of opportunity.
“Miz Haley, it’s good to see you again,” Kyle, the pilot, said.
She shaded her eyes with her hand and wished for Liz’s old straw hat. “You too.”
“Can I get your bags for you?”
She laughed. “That would be my Walmart plastic sacks this time, Kyle. I think Dewar and I can handle them.”
Dewar stuck out his hand. “Hello. I’m Dewar O’Donnell, the trail boss for the cattle operation.”
Kyle shook hands with him. “I’m Mr. Levy’s pilot, Kyle Massey. You are the last ones here, so if we can get your luggage, oh dear, she wasn’t teasing.” He gasped when Haley brought out several plastic bags.
“No, she wasn’t. We sent the saddlebags home with the horses. I’m afraid Samsonite doesn’t work on a cattle drive,” Dewar said.
Coosie waved from the backseat in the plane when they boarded and the steps were coming up behind them. “Look who decided to fly with us. We thought maybe you two killed each other over that shopping trip.”
Haley opened the one plastic bag she’d kept with her and handed Coosie two boxes of Oreos and Buddy a brand new bottle of strawberry Boone’s Farm.
“Are we even now?” she asked.
“We are even,” Coosie said.
“Please buckle your seat belts,” Kyle said.
Dewar and Haley sat down beside each other and buckled up. She glanced at the cousins. Rhett looked tired. Finn looked bored, and Sawyer’s eyes were swollen.
“Leave you boys alone for two days with a month’s paycheck and you don’t even look happy?” she said.
“Sawyer didn’t waste a bit of time using the hotel phone to call his woman, and he’s been poutin’ like a girl since,” Rhett said.
“There’s a big difference in pouting and having a broken heart,” Sawyer said.
“He wouldn’t leave the room. He’s drunk a whole bottle of whiskey and we had to coax him to get him to eat,” Finn said.
Haley touched Sawyer on the shoulder. “Tell me what happened.”
“She was at a party the weekend after I left and it happened. She fell in love with someone else. They flew to Vegas on Saturday and got married and she’s going to live in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. What Texas girl moves off to Pennsylvania anyway?”
Haley patted his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, but she couldn’t have loved you as much as you loved her or that wouldn’t have happened.”
“I should have stayed home and she wouldn’t have gone to that stupid office party.”
“Put on your big-boy britches and suck it up. If you’d stayed home and y’all got married while we were all gone, it wouldn’t have lasted,” Dewar said as the plane took off.
Haley slapped him on the leg.
“What was that for? He’s had mollycoddling for two days. He needs to man up. When he gets home he doesn’t need to be whining around like a little girl. He needs for his friends and family to see him with his head up.”
“Momma and Poppa havin’ trouble with the babies back there?” Coosie called over his shoulder.
“What does Grandpa think he should do?” Haley yelled back.
“I’m not old enough to be his grandpa, but if I was I’d tell him the same thing that Dewar did. She’s gone. Water’s done flowed away under that bridge and it’s time to burn the damn thing.”
“Okay, okay! Enough advice. Lord, I’ll be glad to be back home just to get away from all you meddlin’ relatives.” Sawyer leaned his head back and shut his eyes.
“What did you two do, Coosie?” Haley asked.
“Me and D-d-dexter went to that big m-m-museum. Boot Hill. We had us a beer at the saloon and looked around at all the stuff,” Buddy said. “We went to a Western-wear store and bought us new boots.”
He shoved a big foot out into the aisle to show Haley and she nodded.
“We watched some television and ate too d-d-damn m-m-uch food and D-d-dexter, he d-d-don’t snore as m-m-much on a bed as on the ground. What did y’all d-d-do besides shop?”
Haley felt the blush crawling up her neck and didn’t dare look at Dewar or it would have gone into full-blown crimson. What did they do? Well, they made an angel out of her—several times!
“Did you go to the museum or shop the whole time?” Coosie asked.
“We shopped for about an hour at the Walmart store. I bought this dress and shoes there,” she said.
“And you look almighty pretty in them. I didn’t expect you to clean up nearly as good.” Coosie chuckled.
“We went to the museum yesterday and we ate at that Mexican place on the south side of the highway just down from the hotel where we stayed,” she said.
And
if
you
look
closely
there’s a halo floating above my head because Dewar screwed the hell out of me.
“Did you go inside the church?” Coosie asked.
“No, we didn’t know you could go inside.”
But
I’m surprised the outhouse is still standing.
“What’d you think of that stuffed buffalo?”
Haley smiled. “It was huge. Did you guys get your pictures made in the old-time photography place?”
“Hell, no!” Buddy exclaimed. “D-d-did you see the prices on them things? I bought boots and a new buckle with m-m-my m-m-money.”
Finn leaned out into the aisle. “Me and Rhett had ours made to take home. I’m a Confederate soldier and Rhett here is a gambler. You have yours done?”
“I was a saloon girl with a tall plume in my hair.”
“Dewar?” Rhett asked.
“The man thought me and Haley were newlyweds so we had a bride and groom picture made.”
Sawyer groaned.
Finn laughed. “You going to show it to your momma? It’ll give Aunt Maddie the heart flutters. I heard a while back the whole female population around Ringgold was out kicking the mesquite bushes seekin’ a bride for you. Way I heard it was that they was about ready to put an ad in the newspaper over in Wichita Falls with a picture of you and then in big letters above it a headline that said,
COWBOY
SEEKS
BRIDE
.”
Rhett picked it up from there, “And Aunt Maddie was going to buy one of them number machines and nail it to the front porch post. The women would be free to camp out in the front yard until she and your brothers’ wives interviewed them.”
“Y’all are full of shit! Of course I’m going to show it to her. Way she and the rest of Ringgold has been parading women past me, I might even tell her it’s for real.”
“Man, I’m cuttin’ out of your place soon as we get home. Ain’t no way I’m stayin’ around for that party,” Rhett said.
“Oh? Don’t you think my new mother-in-law is going to be all smiles and sweetness?” Haley teased.
“My momma says that Aunt Maddie would probably go to war if anyone tried to take Dewar out of Ringgold,” Finn said.
“But Dallas isn’t that far for Dewar to move,” Haley tested the waters.
“Honey, Bowie would be too far and it’s less than twenty miles. Don’t you tease Aunt Maddie about a weddin’. She’ll have you staked out with a fire built up under your new skirt tail so fast you won’t even know how you got burned,” Finn said.
She wanted to slap the grin right off Dewar’s face. “Is he right?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“So you are a momma’s boy?”
The smile disappeared. “I wouldn’t say that. I’m a ranchin’ man and Bowie is too big for me. It’s got about three thousand people last I heard. How many folks live in Dallas?”
She squirmed and didn’t answer.
“One point two million,” Sawyer said without opening his eyes.
“Point proven,” Dewar said.
***
In less than an hour the small plane landed at the Nocona Municipal Airport. Kyle was surprised when Haley stood up to get off the plane with the other passengers.
“I supposed I was taking you on home,” he said.
“My car is at the O’Donnell ranch. I’ll ride over there and drive it home.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kyle ran a hand through his silver hair. “Drive safe.”
When Haley stepped out into the hot sunshine, Liz waved. Lucy stood beside her and Raylen leaned against a club cab truck. She wasn’t expecting such a big welcoming committee or to see her car sitting right there either.
“Hey, y’all made it!” Lucy yelled.
“I drove your car over here for you to save you some miles,” Liz said. “If you go east on Highway 82 you can catch I-35 at Gainesville and be home in an hour.”
Haley’s heart spiraled down and she wasn’t wearing boots to catch it.
“Well?” Dewar said.
“You’ve got my number and we’ve got a date,” she said.
“Yes, we do.” He walked her to her car and tossed her part of the plastic bags into the backseat. “Looks like your suit and shoes are all clean.”
Dewar brushed a quick kiss across her lips. “Call me when you get home, H. B. McKay.”
She smiled up at him. “H. B. McKay got lost out there on the drive. You call me later. And give my donkey a hug.”
“You’ve still got the cutest ass in the world,” he whispered.
Bright, blistering, red scarlet filled her cheeks and her neck. She ducked into the car. The keys were in the ignition, so she stuck her hand out the window and waved as she pulled away from the airport and headed home.
She was sitting at the second red light in Nocona when her phone rang. She fished it out of her purse and answered without looking at the caller ID.
“I’m still blushing,” she said.
“About what?” Joel asked.
“Hello, Joel,” she said tersely.
“What were you blushing about?” he asked.
“Nothing. Just something Dewar said about my donkey.”
“Your what? Good God, H. B., you aren’t bringing a donkey to Dallas, are you?”
“Sure I am. I’m going to potty train him and get him a diamond collar and a leash and I’m buying a special van next week so he can ride to work with me. I hope you like him because if you hurt his feelings we’ll have to send him to jackass therapy,” she said.
“That’s not a damn bit funny,” he said coldly.
Dewar
would
be
in
stitches
, she thought.
“Well, it was at the time and that’s what I was blushing about.”
“You know I hate it when you joke like that. I’ve made reservations for dinner for two tonight and we’re having dinner with your parents tomorrow night. I have some work to finish up, so I’ll pick you up at eight thirty,” he said.
“No thanks. I’m not even going home. I’m going straight to the spa and it’s going to take them until closing time to get me in shape,” she said.
“I insist.”
“I said no.”
“I’m willing to give you a second chance,” Joel said.
“Thanks but no thanks for the second time. I don’t want another chance, Joel. Have you changed this past month?”
“No, have you?”
“Tremendously, and you aren’t going to like me at all,” she said.
He hung up on her and that made her giggle even harder than the idea of taking Eeyore right into Joel’s office.
She threw the phone on the passenger’s seat and made it all the way to Gainesville before it rang again.
She pulled over in the parking lot for the Day’s Inn motel and answered it after she’d checked caller ID.
“Hello.”
“I really, really miss you,” Dewar’s drawl came through the line.
She shut her eyes and enjoyed the delicious heat flowing through her body.
“Me too.”
“Turn the car around and come back.”
“You get in your truck and come to Gainesville. I’m sitting in front of a Day’s Inn.”
“I wish I could but Raylen and Liz have held down my half of the chores this month. They’re leaving in a couple of hours to spend the rest of the week down your way. I’ll be down there for the Resistol Rodeo this weekend. Want to go with me?”
“Sure. What night?”
“Saturday night.”
“Spend the night with me afterwards,” she said.
“That could sure be arranged.”
“I’m getting all warm and tingly thinking about it,” she said.
“Hold that feeling. Eeyore says that he likes his new home and he misses you too.”
She groaned. “You aren’t playing fair. I miss him.”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“Which is this, Dewar? Love or war?”
“I’m not fighting. Are you?”
“It’s going to be a long week.”
He chuckled.
“I’m hanging up now. Call me in an hour?”
“You call me when you get home.”
Sammy, the doorman, carried her Walmart plastic bags from her car into her apartment building without so much as a raised eyebrow. But two of her elderly neighbors gasped when she lugged them into the elevator.
“That damned airline lose your luggage, Haley?” one asked.
“No, ma’am. I’ve been out on a field trip and my saddlebags went home with the horse, leaving me with nothing to pack in.”
“Oh, my! Saddlebags? A horse?”
Haley nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I rode one every day for a whole month and herded cattle from a little town north of here all the way to Dodge City, Kansas. It was for a reality show we’re working on.”
“That is dedication to a job. I bet you had to stay in some nasty motels in those little bitty towns, didn’t you?”
“That would have been luxury. I slept on the ground in a sleeping bag and ate food prepared by a cook on an open fire.”
And
fell
in
love
with
an
amazing
cowboy
who
is
absolutely
the
most
wrong
man
for
me
in
the
whole
universe.
The second lady patted her on the shoulder. “Darlin’, you deserve a medal.”
The elevator doors opened on her floor and she shoved all her bags out into the hallway and waved at the ladies. She didn’t want a medal, not unless it was a buckle attached to a belt around Dewar O’Donnell.
The bags looked out of place in her ultra-modern apartment full of enameled black furniture with lots of black leather and glass. She pulled back the drapes to let in the afternoon sun and see the magnificence of downtown Dallas. But she still felt like she did in the trailer the night they’d endured the tail end of a tornado. The air was fresh inside the apartment but it didn’t have the faintest whisper of cows or sweaty cowboys or even beans boiling on an open fire.
She reached for her house phone and dialed the number for the spa located in her building. When the receptionist answered she said, “Mallory, I need the works. I don’t care if it takes until midnight.”
“Come on down, Miz Haley. We’ll put you right into a room. Nails, toes, and everything?”
“Even the mud bath,” Haley said.
“Honey, what happened?” Mallory asked.
“You’ll see. I’ll be there in five minutes.” She stepped over the bags and heaved a sigh of relief when the elevator was empty. What in the hell had happened to her in just one short month? She loved her apartment, so why did it feel like the walls were closing in on her? The view out the window never ceased to amaze her, looking different by the minute depending on where the sun was hanging in the sky. That day it appeared to be a stylized print from a cheap picture and not nearly the real thing.
“Oh, no!” Mallory said when Haley walked in the door.
“Oh, yes. Thirty days out in the sun does have its effects, doesn’t it?”
“You poor baby. Don’t even sit down. It’s going to take until midnight for Collette to undo this mess. What in the hell were you thinking?”
“That it was an April Fools’ joke,” Haley said honestly.
She was sitting in a hot tub, bubbles popping all around her when she called Dewar. He answered on the first ring.
“Is this the sexy girl in the pretty white nightgown that I just spent two wonderful days with in Dodge City?”
“No, it’s the sunburned, unevenly tanned woman who is trying desperately to look decent by tomorrow morning’s conference.”
“Darlin’, you’d look good in a gunnysack roped up in the middle with a length of jute twine, and you look damn fine in nothing at all.”
“Where are you that you can talk like that? I hear voices behind you,” she whispered.
“In a tractor, doors shut, air-conditioning going, and the radio now turned down low. You are hearing the Bellamy Brothers singing about this being our secret, our own private affair. And you are either at Niagara Falls or in a hot tub.”
“I’d rather it was Niagara Falls. Let’s quit our jobs and go there.”
“Sounds wonderful but I don’t have a job.”
“You quit?” She held her breath.
“No, it’s not like that. A job is something that you go to from nine to five or whatever hours it demands and then you go home and forget it. I don’t have a job like that. I have a way of life. It’s here twenty-four seven, not totally unlike the cattle run. It’s just the way I live. But with a little planning, I could take a few days to go to Niagara Falls if you want to quit your job.”
She leaned her head back and an attendant brought a rolled towel to go under her neck. “I don’t think so. I just proved that I can do fieldwork. No way am I quittin’ when I’m ahead.”
“I see. Are you in the hot tub in your house?” he asked.
“I have an apartment in downtown Dallas, only a couple of blocks from the corporate building. The hot tub is in the spa on the first floor. I’m here for the works. I’m getting all fancied up for the rodeo on Saturday. And what exactly should I wear?”
“Your old boots, a pair of jeans, and a pretty shirt that’s so sexy all the other cowboys will be jealous of me,” he said.
“The spa manager is motioning for me to go to the next thing on the agenda,” Haley said.
“And that is?”
“A warm mud bath.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You had one of those when Eeyore and the coyote locked horns and you hated it. I’ll never understand women!”
She stood up and took the hand the assistant offered. “We weren’t born to be understood, Dewar. We were born to be loved. I can’t take my phone in the mud bath area. Rules of the game. We are supposed to listen to soft music and breathe in the aroma of therapeutic candles with tea bags on our eyes so that the toxins will leave our bodies. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Sweet Jesus! You are sitting in mud! It’s putting toxins into your body more than it’s sucking out,” Dewar said.
“Later,” she said and handed the phone to Mallory.
***
Dewar was ready for work when he arrived home that afternoon, so Raylen gladly turned over the tractor to him and went with Liz to her doctor’s appointment in Wichita Falls. He’d dumped his bags at his house, talked to Eeyore a few minutes, and then started plowing.
Everything felt right except that empty house. He was back on his home turf, among his own cattle, horses, and dirt. Eeyore was happy in the pasture with his Gypsy Vanner horses and Rye and Austin were coming to dinner that evening at his folks’ place with Rachel and Eddie. They had two kids already. His sister, Gemma, got one with a marriage license instead of a birth certificate, but no one would ever know she hadn’t birthed Holly, as much as she loved her. Now she, Liz, and Colleen were all expecting a baby.
If Dewar had been a woman he would have felt the ticking of the biological clock. But he was a man and all he could do was yearn for what all his siblings already had. Trouble was he wanted it with Haley and that was as possible as Lucifer setting up an ice cream store in hell.
He made a sharp turn to the left and started down the back side of the hay field. “She made it pretty damn clear when she said that there was no way she’d quit when she was ahead. So now what? The heart wants what it wants and it doesn’t accept substitutions.”
He imagined her in a big claw-foot tub filled with warm mud. It wasn’t nearly as repulsive as he thought. Matter of fact, it was downright sexy seeing her breasts all covered with chocolate coating and her aqua eyes glittering as he drew pictures on the parts of her body that he could reach with his forefinger.
He put the vision out of his mind and concentrated on the classic country songs on the radio, but every single one reminded him of her in some way.
“Please Help Me I’m Falling,” an oldie by Hank Locklin, talked about a man who was already married and falling in love with another woman. In a sense that was the case with him and Haley because he was married to his way of life and he was falling in love with her whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Charley Pride said it all when he sang that it would take a little bit longer to get her off his mind. He said that the lonely feeling would go away, but Dewar didn’t believe it for a minute. Half of his heart went to Dallas in that little sports car with a woman that was as married to her way of life as he was to his. Maybe he should just cut the strings right now, today, and forget all about the way he felt in Dodge City.
“Walk Through This World with Me,” a George Jones classic, started playing and it said everything in Dewar’s heart. He asked her to go where he went, share all his dreams with him. He said that he’d searched for her and now that he’d found her, new horizons were in his world and all he wanted was for her to take his hand and walk through this world with him.
He turned off the radio at the end of that song, but the lyrics kept running through his mind on a continuous loop. When the day ended, he parked the tractor at the edge of the field and waved at Wilma, who was taking clothes off the line in her backyard. Wilma was middle-aged and took care of cleaning and cooking for Liz since she didn’t like to do either one.
“I could hire a woman like Wilma if Haley wanted to freelance. Lucy would know of a woman who would love to work for me, I bet,” he said aloud.
Forget
it! It’s not the cooking and housekeeping that she’ll shy away from. It’s a whole way of life. She needs more than a cowboy.
His house was as empty as a tomb with only the noise of the shower beating down on his tired body. He leaned against the back wall and let the hot water massage the muscles in his shoulders. Riding inside an air-conditioned tractor wasn’t supposed to stiffen him up worse than riding Stallone all day long.
Shower done, dressed, and a stuffed animal for each of the kids from the souvenir shop at Boot Hill in his hands, he closed the door behind him and walked the quarter mile from his place to the two-story farmhouse where he’d grown up.
Rachel met him at the door, hands on her hips and eyebrows drawn down over her blue eyes. “No more.”
He squatted down to hug her. “No more what, baby girl?”
“No more go for Nunky Dewar.”
“Okay, baby. No more go for Nunky Dewar. I promise, but I brought you and Eddie a present.” He brought the stuffed armadillo and the horse from behind his back and held them toward her.
She grabbed the horse. “Star!”
“Pretty close, isn’t it?” Dewar hugged her again.
“Lookee, Mommy, Star!”
Austin came from the kitchen, Eddie in her arms. “She’s going to do Maddie proud. All she talks about is Liz’s horse, Star. And he’s just as addicted to her. The horse sense has skipped a generation and landed right smack on her.”
“I believe it. Let me see that boy.”
She put the baby in Dewar’s arms and he headed for the nearest rocking chair. “Look at how you’ve grown. By the end of summer, you’ll be riding bulls with your daddy and me.”
“That’s enough of that talk,” Austin yelled from the kitchen.
Rye clapped a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder and sat down on the sofa near him. “So the trip was good?”
“Great,” Dewar said. “No problems except that crazy donkey of Haley’s got a little jolt of lightning. And we faced a tornado and Haley had to bring the donkey into the old huntin’ trailer we were holed up in. Oh, and between the jackass and Haley, we did have a stampede. But other than that, not much happened. Well, we did meet an old whorehouse madam who told us some funny stories.”
“Well, shit! I wouldn’t want to go with you on an exciting trip. Tell me about this woman who went with y’all.”
“She did just fine. Hell, Rye, I thought she’d run back home an hour after she finally got into the saddle, but she was made out of tough stuff. She rode through rain and didn’t even bitch about not having a bathroom. She did carry her own toilet paper.” He laughed.
“Do I hear a little bit of missing her in your voice?” Rye asked.
“You hear a lot of missing her, but I’ll just have to get over it. She’s city. I’m just a cowboy. Be like…” He paused.
“Like me and Austin. It’s doable if both hearts want the same thing. If one doesn’t, though, it won’t work. Give it time, brother,” Rye said. “When do we meet her?”
“She’s coming to the rodeo on Saturday night.”
“Oh, she is?” Maddie yelled from the kitchen.
“Yes, Momma, she is. You are going to like her.”
“We’ll see about that,” Maddie said.