* * * *
Mary Beth had just finished sending a newly edited manuscript back to its author when the doorbell rang. She looked down at her clothes and decided the oversized T-shirt, jeans, and bare feet would have to do since she was not expecting anyone.
Opening the front door, she hesitated. Two men in jeans and snap front shirts stood on her front porch. The younger one wore a baseball cap and the older one’s head was bare.
“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked when it appeared that they were not going to speak first.
“Yes, ma’am. Did you happen to find a pair of cowboy boots on your front porch last week?” the older man asked, looking a little uncomfortable.
Mary Beth nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Can you tell me why?”
Both men shifted, the younger one looking a little green.
“Well, that is a story to tell, but we’ve got perishables in the truck that we’ve got to get back to the ranch, so if we could just get the boots, please, ma’am,” the older one said.
Mary Beth glanced at their feet and saw both were already wearing boots. After another second, she decided neither man’s foot was big enough to fill the boots that were sitting just a few feet from where she stood. Then her evil bratty side decided she wanted to meet the man who filled the boots instead of his underlings.
“No,” she said simply with a smile.
“Ma’am, we really need to get those boots back,” the younger one looked ready to cry as he begged for the boots.
Mary Beth thought a moment, then said, “I’ll give the boots to you, if you can prove they are yours.”
“But ma’am,” the younger one whined, only stopping when his buddy nudged his arm.
“Come on, Jimmy. We’ll tell Mack where they are and he can come for them. Thank you, ma’am, for your time.”
Mary Beth nodded. She stepped back into the house, but watched the two men as they left her porch and trudged down the driveway to the large pickup truck parked in front of her house. She squinted, but could not read the words of the sign on the door. Once they had driven off, she closed and locked the door and returned to her office.
It would be interesting to see who showed up next, because obviously the true owner of the boots might not know they were missing.
Chapter Three
“So, what’s the latest in the saga of the cowboy boots?” Heather asked three days later as they sat on the new porch furniture Mary Beth had bought at the thrift store end of season sale.
Mary Beth poured iced tea for them both before answering. “Except for the two men showing up the other day, nothing. Haven’t heard a word, but I’m sure someone will be coming by sooner or later. The boss apparently needs his boots back.”
Both women laughed and sipped their tea as they watched a huge white pickup slowly drive by. Mary Beth noticed the logo on the door looked familiar. The truck drove down the block to the cul-de-sac where it turned around and slowly made its way back up the block.
This time it stopped across the street, and parked.
“Oooo, this could be interesting,” Heather said as a man opened the door and climbed out.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Mary Beth said as the man ambled across the road and up her front walk. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and removed his cowboy hat. “Good afternoon, ladies,” he said with a smile.
“Hello,” Mary Beth said while Heather merely nodded. “What can we do for you today?”
“I understand you found a pair of cowboy boots on your porch the night before Thanksgiving,” he said, sounding more like a Scottish cop than a cowboy.
“I did,” Mary Beth answered without adding anything further.
“I’m here to take them off your hands,” the man said.
“Who are you?” Heather asked before Mary Beth could speak, "because you sure as heck don’t sound like a cowboy."
“My name is Mack Stewart and I’m the foreman at the McBride Ranch. Now, about those boots?”
Mary Beth exchanged a glance and smirk with Heather before both women turned back to Mack. “Please, Mr. Stewart, come up and join us for a glass of tea,” she said as Heather rose and went inside.
“Thank you, but I’m really just here to pick up the boots, ma’am,” the man said even as he climbed the steps to the porch.
At that moment, Heather reappeared with a glass full of ice in one hand and the boots in the other.
“Please, have a seat. You can’t leave until you tell us the story,” Mary Beth said as she poured tea in the glass Heather held out.
“The story?”
“The story of why these boots ended up on her porch on Thanksgiving eve,” Heather said.
“Oh, that story,” Mack said as he reluctantly settled into the third chair on the porch.
“But first, you need to try the boots on,” Mary Beth said.
“Excuse me?”
Heather sent her a look that said she needed to back off before turning to smile at Mack. “Just hold your foot up here and we’ll check to make sure they fit you,” she said holding one boot out.
Mary Beth was surprised when Mack leaned back in his seat and lifted his foot. It was obvious even before Heather matched the found boot to his foot that he was several sizes smaller than the true owner of the boots.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Stewart, but you cannot take the boots,” Mary Beth said as Mack lowered his foot and Heather turned to carry the boots back inside. “But you can still tell us the story of how they came to be in my possession.”
Mack looked uncomfortable as he lifted his glass and drank deeply of the sweet tea. “It all began with my great-gran and a story she told me when I was a wee lad.”
He waited until Heather returned to her seat before he continued his tale. “She grew up in a tiny village in the highlands of Scotland where there was a tradition for just about everything that had been passed down through the generations. When a young man set his cap for a lass and decided to declare his intentions, he would visit her house late one night and leave his shoes outside her door. He’d leave without knocking and not go back to call for a week. When he returned, if his shoes were still sitting where he’d left them, he would pick them up and leave, knowing she had rejected him. If, the shoes were gone, he would knock on the door and ask for their return, and with them, the right to court the young woman.”
“That’s so romantic,” Heather gushed as she wiped a tear from her cheek.
Though she agreed about the romantic part of it, Mary Beth was still confused. “While that’s a fine story, what does it have to do with the boots being left on my porch?”
Mack swallowed hard and drank the rest of his tea before answering. “My boss is a great guy, and his wife died a couple years ago.”
“Oookay,” Mary Beth said slowly.
“Well, me and the boys decided it was time for him to meet a woman. And through a long string of people, and the fact that your house was on our way home, well, you ended up getting the boss’s boots. We figured…,” Mack looked a little pale and a lot relieved when the phone on his hip began to ring. “Excuse me, please. I need to take this.”
He rose and walked to the other side of the porch as he answered the phone. “This is Mack. Yes. No. Don’t listen to him, he’s been hurting for a week now. I’ll meet you at the hospital. Yes. Okay. Russ is in charge until I get back.”
He hung up and returned the phone to his hip as if it were a gun returning to its holster.
“I’m sorry, ladies, I have to go,” Mack said, looking serious. “The boss just collapsed and they’re taking him to the hospital.”
All at once, Mary Beth felt guilty for holding the boots hostage. “Do you want to take the boots with you?”
Mack looked at her and smiled. “No, ma’am. You keep them ‘til the boss himself comes calling for them. Thank you for the tea.”
With that, Mack set his hat on his head and headed for his truck. Once he had driven out of sight, Mary Beth turned to Hea
ther. “So, I guess I’m the proud owner of a pair of large men’s cowboy boots for a few more days.”
“I guess you are,” Heather said as her own phone began chiming. “I’ve got to run. Thanks for the tea, and the entertainment.”
Mary Beth remained on the porch, wondering what the boss man was really like, and saying a prayer that his collapse was nothing serious. She also admitted to herself that she couldn’t wait to meet the man, especially knowing he was single. Maybe holding the boots hostage hadn’t been such a bad idea after all.
* * * *
“What do you mean you can’t get my boots back?”
The last thing he needed right now was to hear that his good boots were gone forever. Sure, he planned on buying new ones like he did every couple of years, but he planned to relegate his current dress boots to work boots because his everyday boots were falling apart. But, like any man who hated shopping, he was waiting for the end of year clearance sales. And they wouldn’t start until after Christmas, in another few weeks.
Learning that his boots were still missing while being laid up on the couch after having surgery to have his appendix taken out was not helping his grumpy as a bear with a sore paw mood.
Mack looked entirely too pleased with himself as he sat on the couch facing the one Roman was on. “She refuses to release them to anyone except the person who fits them.”
“And who is this paragon of virtue who has my boots and won’t give them back?”
Mack froze and then slowly blinked. “Umm, well, I’m don’t know. I never asked her name.”
Roman shook his head and sighed as he shifted uncomfortably on the couch. “Well since I’m not allowed to go anywhere for the next two weeks, I guess it won’t matter whether I have my dress boots or not. Let her keep them, for now, but I will get them back before Christmas, one way or another.”
“Yes, boss,” Mack said as he stood and left the living room as quick as he could.
Roman growled in frustration as he shifted around, trying to find a comfortable position. The couches had never been comfortable, but he refused to go back to bed after spending three days in the hospital. His appendix had been on the verge of rupturing when he finally relented and agreed to surgery. He’d had to stay for three days due to a fever that they said was infection due to his being a stubborn mule.
So here he was, stuck in his house for the next twelve days and he still didn’t know where his boots were or how they had gotten wherever it was they were.
Roman was not a happy man.
Chapter Four
December 21
In the weeks since Thanksgiving, Mary Beth had added to her Christmas wish list. While she still wanted her Christmas cowboy, she also wanted the next twelve days to fly by so the world could return to some semblance of normal.
She didn’t hate Christmas, exactly, but had grown so disappointed by the insanity connected with the holiday season over the past few years. This would not be her first holiday with no gifts to unwrap, or people to cook a Christmas feast for, and she had already mailed or delivered Christmas cookie boxes. For some reason, this year she felt more alone and less tolerant of the silly season this year.
Moving halfway across the country might not have been the smartest thing she had done in her often impractical, impetuous life, but she was here and she remained determined to make a go of her new life. She only wished she could meet an unattached man of an appropriate age who was searching for an older, single woman to share an occasional evening with. And if those evenings happened to include breakfast the next morning, all the better.
Mary Beth was tired of cuddling with a pillow while trying to remember what it felt like to share her bed with a man. She was well past ready for a new man to come into her life. Despite friends suggesting it, she had discovered online dating to be a waste of time. Every one of the men she’d had contact with ended up being liars, scam artists, or married assholes looking for a someone to fulfill a few illicit fantasies as they cheated on their wives or live-in girlfriends. One even wanted her to join his “family” as the second woman in his bed.
She had a few fantasies of her own, but they did not include sharing her body, her man, or her bed, with another woman. After a decade of being on her own, she was beginning to accept that her expiration date had passed, and she would be single for the rest of her days.
She had even thought about giving up on men all together and just adopting six cats from the local shelter. At least then she would have someone to talk to, even if cats didn’t necessarily respond well.
The bong-bong-bong of the doorbell pulled her from her darkening thoughts. Rising from the dining room table where she had been paying bills and catching up her tax bookwork for her CPA, Mary Beth pasted a smile on her lips as she mentally ran through the speech she worked out years ago that would send any door-to-door saleman on his way.
Her neighbors never stopped by to chat.
Heather, the one friend in the area who might pop over, had left town the day before for a Colorado holiday ski vacation with her new boyfriend.
She was not expecting any packages.
Steve, her son, had informed her on their Thanksgiving morning phone call, that he was too broke to buy her a gift this year, which meant he certain wouldn’t be visiting. That news came as no surprise because in his entire thirty years on Earth, she could remember a scarce handful of years where he had shown any loving Christmas kindness to the woman who had birthed him.
These days, Mary Beth expected nothing from him and he rarely disappointed. She did, however, remain puzzled as to how she had raised such a self-serving, self-centered, selfish child.
Turning the deadbolt and then the lock in the doorknob, she slowly opened the door. She remained on guard, but happy for someone to talk to, even if it was a thirty-second conversation while she signed for some unexpected delivery for one of her neighbors.
But the man standing on the porch was not like any of the other deliverymen or door to door salesmen she had met since moving to Texas.
He was a cowboy.
A real live, felt hat, cotton shirt with pearl snaps up the front, fitted Wrangler jeans wearing cowboy. The only thing that didn’t fit the picture was the red duct tape with white polka dots wrapped around the insteps of both boots. With the exception of the tape, he looked every inch of what Mary Beth envisioned a true Texas cowboy should look like.
She immediately sent a mental thank you out to God, Santa Claus, and whatever other kind spirits in the universe had sent her a man such as this. He looked like a younger version of Sam Elliott, with the same thick mustache that extended beyond the corners of his mouth and over his lip. His deep auburn hair, that held threads of silver and copper red amongst the strands of reddish-brown, was in need of a cut, but the look was a good one on this man.
The few days’ growth of scruff covering his cheeks only added to the appearance of a cowboy just off the trail. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a flat belly, narrow hips, and long legs.
To Mary Beth, he was an iconic Texan.
But what was he doing on her front porch?
Raising her gaze to eyes the same faded blue as her oldest, most comfortably worn jeans, she waited while he looked her up and down as thoroughly as she had just inspected him.
When his gaze finally rose to meet hers, she said, “Hello.”
The man blinked before pulling his hat off his head allowing her to fully see his hair. It just brushed the tops of his shoulders and was a lighter shade of auburn with glinting strands of pure white liberally laced through the waves.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I was wondering, did you happen to take custody of a pair of cowboy boots a few weeks back?”
“A pair of boots?”
* * * *
At that moment, Roman didn’t care if he found his dress boots. Mack had given him a street, but not a house number, so he’d had to go door to door in search of his boots. This woman who answered the fourth door he knocke
d on was the kind of woman he had been dreaming off since Claire’s death. Generously curvy, and old enough to know that both joy and heartache made up a good life. He could only hope she was single.
Swallowing hard, he forced himself to smile, hoping to appear nonthreatening. “Yes, ma’am. A pair of brown cowboy boots.”
The doctor had finally cleared him to drive and work the day before. Having to retape his work boots together after breakfast had pushed finding his other pair of boots to the top of today’s to do list.
As soon as he found his dress boots, he planned to trash the boots on his feet. Then the boots he’d been wearing to church and town and formal occasions for the past year would immediately be demoted from dress to work boots. He planned to visit the boot store for a new dress boots as soon as the after-Christmas sales began.
Mack had finally explained why his crazy crew had left his boots on a stranger’s porch. The Scotsman went on to share the tradition his great-grandmother had shared with him. He also shared with Roman that the woman had taken his boots into her house and refused to give them up to anyone but the man who fit them.
What his foreman had not told him was that the woman who had his boots was not only beautiful, but might just be old enough that he would not feel like he was robbing the cradle if he asked her to dinner.
Standing inside the house, a step up from where he stood on the porch, she was barely eye to eye with him, which was fine. Roman liked his women small in stature, but curvy. The Texas Stars hockey T-shirt and skin-hugging leggings highlighted a body that curved in all the right places and made his fingers itch to explore those curves. Her strawberry blonde hair with strands of silver glinting in the light told him she was older than he had first thought.
Mossy green eyes twinkled as her raspberry pink lips slowly turned up at the corners.
His body decided it wanted this woman. In his life. In his arms. In his bed.
But first, he needed to get his damn boots back.
Roman blinked and corralled his wandering thoughts when she cleared her throat.
If the Boots Fit Page 2
