Love Me Some Cowboy

by Lisa Mondello

  The screen door behind her opened and a tall woman in her mid-fifties, silver-blond hair pulled back from her face, her eyes the same sky color as her son's, stood in the entrance. Sylvia Taylor. She was much as Cassie remembered her. The same handsome features with an array of laugh lines crinkling the corners of her eyes. The lines might be more deeply etched than they used to be and she might be carrying a few extra pounds on her once trim frame, but the changes looked good on her.

  The woman was the first to recover. "Oh! You must be C. A. Edwards. Silly me, I thought you were a man! Come in…come in," she said cordially as she drew Cassie inside. "A man made your reservation, so I assumed—" She laughed at her mistake as she ushered Cassie through the entry into a comfortable living room. "I should be old enough to know better than to assume things, shouldn't I? I'd just stepped outside to get somethin', when I heard you knock. I got here as fast as I could. Did you have to knock more than once? If you did, I apologize." She drew a breath, then began what had to be her usual greeting to guests. "Welcome to the Circle Bar-T. We want you to feel at home and enjoy your stay with us. We don't force our guests to do anything they don't want to. If your plan is to rest and enjoy the beautiful countryside, we'll provide whatever you need to help you do that." Her eyes twinkled. "Up to and including leaving you alone. If you want more of a ranch experience, just like our advertisement says, we'll provide that, too. Same goes for anything in between. I'm the cook, so if there's something you don't want in the food department, let me know." She paused, but when Cassie remained silent, she continued, "Your luggage is still in your car, right? I'll have Will—he's my son—bring it in for you shortly. All around, I think you'll find us Taylors a pretty friendly bunch."

  At the finish of her spiel, she instinctively reached to wipe her fingers on the kitchen towel flung over her shoulder, as if in preparation to shake Cassie's hand, but the simple act must have sparked a memory because she sent a distressed look toward the rear of the house. "Oh, my heavens!" she exclaimed. "I forgot! I was just finishing up with some canning, and I didn't— Please...you'll have to excuse me." She hurried out of sight.

  Cassie used the unexpected moments alone to inspect the area around her. The room was a nice size, not huge but large enough for a family to relax and entertain in. The furnishings might be a little worn but they were well cared for. A pair of overstuffed couches, several comfortable chairs, a well-used recliner positioned to face an older-model television set. A colorful braided rug brightened the bare wood floor. Pictures of what must be family members decorated the walls, along with knick-knacks on a pair of narrow shelves. The overall impression was of warmth and welcome, but it was easy to tell that little money had been spent on it recently.

  She was just settling into one of the chairs when the loud pop of shattering glass was immediately followed by a cry.

  Cassie hurried toward the sound.

  At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at—what was tomato and what was blood—as she stared at Sylvia Taylor standing amid an explosion of red. The lower portion of the woman's dress, her legs, her shoes, the nearby floor and cabinet faces, all were splattered with what could have been either.

  "Are you hurt?" Cassie asked.

  "I…don't think so," Sylvia Taylor replied.

  Cassie grabbed a spare dishcloth off the counter. "You shouldn't move. Broken glass is everywhere."

  She'd taken only a few careful steps when boots pounded up to the back screen door, it flew open, and Will Taylor charged inside.

  Quickly assessing the situation, he gave a stronger echo of Cassie's warning, "Don't move, Mom!" Then his attention switched to Cassie. "And you. You need to get back." When she didn't respond fast enough, he added, "Now!"

  Sylvia tried to intervene. "Will, she's just tryin' to help."

  Will's blue eyes flicked over Cassie as he retrieved a broom from the corner closet. "The last thing we need right now is for a guest to get hurt. So the best way she can help is by stayin' out of the way."

  Without a word, Cassie set the dishcloth on the counter and retraced her steps to the living room.

  ~~~~

  "THAT WAS INEXCUSABLE!" Sylvia Taylor scolded her son as he worked to clear a pathway through the debris. "She's our guest."

  "She was in the way."

  "She was just tryin' to help, that's all. And you—"

  Will drew a breath. He knew he'd overreacted, but hearing his mother's cry just as he was about to remount the windmill had unnerved him. It didn't take a lot these days to make him fear the worst.

  "She's a visitor," his mother continued, "and you promised you'd be friendly to our visitors. Which you have been, up to now. Why would you— When you know—"

  Will paused in his sweeping. "I thought something bad had happened to you. So I— It just kinda spilled out. You want me to apologize to her?"

  His mother held his questioning gaze before her face softened into a smile. "Would that be so hard?"

  Will grinned a little sheepishly. "Depends."

  "I'll settle for you bein' nicer to her while she's here."

  "I'll do my best," he promised and, giving a final sweep to the last pieces of tomato goo and broken glass, said, "Here, that gets the worst of it. You can step out now."

  Released, his mother passed safely to a clear area.

  "Are you cut?" he asked.

  "Not that I know of. This is all tomato," she said as she wiped residue from her lower legs and skirt. Then straightening, "My heavens, what a mess!"

  Despite his protest, she set to work beside him, scooping up debris and depositing it in the trash outside.

  "I can take it from here," she said. She reached into the closet for the mop.

  Will tipped his head toward the living room. "You should get changed…the guest."

  His mother frowned. "But I don't want to leave you with this."

  Will took the mop out of her hands. "All that's left are the counter fronts and the floor, then it's done."

  "Still—"

  "She's probably gettin' bored by now," he warned.

  That got his mother moving, and he was left alone to finish the job.

  When his mother had first brought up the idea of taking in paying guests last fall, he'd been dead set against it. So had his granddad. They raised cattle. It was what they did. They and past generations of Taylors before them, since the first had come to Texas, grazed cattle on this land, cared for them, and sold them at market. They didn't cater to tourists. But despite their protests, his mother had carried on, determined to bring in what extra money she could to help replenish the ranch's rapidly shrinking coffers. At first, visitors had come in dribs and drabs, and then increased to the point where someone seemed to be in the house's spare room for a day or two almost every week. And Will had found himself forced to be amenable to strangers on the property, though it still went against the grain.

  For the most part, the visitors had been easy enough to deal with. A ride on a horse, an accompanied look at a few cows. Mostly they wanted to go for nature walks or take photographs or just lie around and eat his mother's good cooking. The majority had been little trouble. His degree of involvement hadn't interfered all that much with his regular duties. A couple of guests had created headaches, though. One had wandered into a pasture she'd been told not to enter and, leaving the gate open, let a number of the cattle wander into the neighboring pasture he was resting so the grasses could replenish. He'd had to waste part of an afternoon rounding them all up again and putting them back where they belonged. Another visitor had gotten lost and that had taken several hours to put right. He shook his head at the memory.

  His thoughts moved to their latest visitor. He'd been hard on her earlier when she'd left the front gate open. But he'd just settled into the snake-of-a-job that windmill repair was and there she'd come up the drive, pretty as you please, leaving the gate wide open. Turned out she was pretty, too. Which for some reason irritated him even more.

  He w
rung out the mop and set it outside to dry. Then he decided that before he started back on the windmill, he'd better go though and offer to bring the visitor's luggage inside.

  ~~~~

  HOW LONG HAD she been at the Taylor ranch? Cassie wondered as she reclaimed her seat in the living room. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes? And in that short time she'd already managed to rack up three black marks against herself in Will Taylor's eyes. Getting in the way, speeding, and forgetting to close the gate. Never mind that only one—leaving the gate open—was truly valid. She was here to persuade the Taylors, not annoy them. Not any of them. What would Jimmy say if he knew? She instantly had the answer. He'd say, "Buck up, girl, you're just gettin' started. Be patient. Be positive. Now, get to it! Which was precisely what she'd do.

  Jimmy had done more to bring her out of her emotional shell than any other person in her life. He'd gotten her to see that she had as much to offer the world as the next person. She was twenty-two when she'd first gone to work at his small office on the west side of Houston, the four years since leaving Love having brought her little personal change. She no longer felt trapped, but she'd remained quiet, introverted, unwilling to call attention to herself. All negative attributes it was impossible to retain around Jimmy. A swashbuckling land speculator, he was one of those bigger-than-life individuals who is wildly successful because he takes chances other people won't. Not to mention being brashly, humorously very much his own person, because that was him to his core. He had more than enough self-confidence for ten people. And he happily spread the knack to everyone near him.

  A murmur of voices continued in the kitchen, along with intermittent running water and the screen door opening and closing several times. Until, finally, Sylvia Taylor appeared barefoot in the wide living room doorway. Though the worst of the tomato bits had been removed from her skirt and legs, she still hunched forward with the wet portion of her skirt gathered in one hand so as not to spread wayward drips.

  "I don't know if this dress will ever be the same," she said ruefully, smiling. "I was moving the quart bottles that had already cooled over to the table so I could put the hot ones from the pressure cooker in their place…when one of them just slipped through of my fingers and crash. What a mess!"

  "At least you weren't hurt," Cassie said.

  Sylvia's answer was wry. "Just my pride." She glanced back toward the kitchen and a frown creased her brow. "Will's finishin' up in there. Just what he needed today—more work." She sighed. "I'll go get changed, and then show you to your room. It won't take me long, but if you'd like a glass of sweet tea while you wait, there's some in the fridge. Help yourself, or ask Will to get it for you."

  "Thank you," Cassie murmured.

  Yet Sylvia Taylor didn't move. "You should know," the woman added quietly, "Will didn't mean anything by what he said just now. He's a fine man. Sometimes he's just, well, sometimes he has more heaped on his plate than he can handle. I hope you won't hold it against him."

  Cassie shook her head. "No. No, I won't," she murmured.

  "He didn't mean to be so sharp."

  "I'm sure he didn't," Cassie reassured her. "He was worried about you."

  Sylvia Taylor gave her a long considering look, before she nodded and moved away.

  Cassie fingered through the stack of magazines on the nearest end table, selected one, and started to thumb through it. She'd continue to stay out of the kitchen for the time being, thank you very much. She didn't want to chance racking up any more black marks! Only, try as she might to concentrate on the magazine's glossy pages, she couldn't. Sylvia Taylor's long look kept creeping into her consciousness, reminding her of another time when the woman had looked at her in a similar way.

  Throughout Cassie's years in Love, she and Sylvia Taylor had done little more than occasionally pass each other in doorways or stand in the same checkout line in a store. As was Cassie's habit around people then, she had busied herself looking at something else—anything else—to avoid making eye contact. Except once. The time, the last time, her mother had dragged her to a town function. It had been a parent-teacher association meeting at her middle school, and Bonnie, of course, had stood to advocate some inane idea that no one in town would ever think of backing. It was impossible to remember which inane idea because there had been so many.

  At thirteen, Cassie had felt nothing but intense shame as her mother had carried on about the reasons her idea would be so wonderful for the children of Love and for their parents as well. She'd sensed, even though she'd been too mortified to look, the impatient, irritated, disgusted glares of the people sitting around them. She'd wanted to crawl into a hole. But her mother had been blithely unaware and continued to talk even after the association president asked her to relinquish the floor. Cassie had fully expected someone to come force her mother into her seat and tell her to shut up. But no one had, so the torture continued…until Sylvia Taylor, from her seat at the front table among the association's elected officers, had gently interrupted her mother's flow of words to suggest that the board look into the matter and have a report ready for the next meeting. She even thanked Bonnie for bringing the matter to their attention! Bonnie had sat down, then smiling beatifically, reached over to squeeze Cassie's icy-cold hand as if she somehow shared in the victory. It was then that Cassie had looked up and found Sylvia Taylor gazing, not at her mother, but at her. And though she hadn't been able to fathom the message in the woman's eyes during the long seconds her gaze had been held captive, she'd not seen derision or disgust in them either. As quick as she could, she'd looked away, her cheeks blooming even redder in confused embarrassment.

  Cassie was rubbing her forehead, her elbow propped on the arm of the chair, when she became aware that Will Taylor was in the doorway, watching her. Almost guiltily, she sprang to her feet. She wanted to display assurance, not apprehension.

  "OK," he said after a moment, "kitchen's all set. If you give me your keys, I'll bring in your luggage."

  Cassie retrieved the keys from her purse and handed them over. "I have only one suitcase," she said.

  "You travel light."

  "I'm only here for a few days."

  "Some folks seem to think they need a different outfit for each hour of each day."

  Silence fell between them again. He seemed to be making more of an effort to be friendly, to be polite. While mother and son were alone in the kitchen, had Sylvia reminded him that she was a paying guest in their home? Cassie had yet to detect any sign of recognition in either of them. As far as she could tell, she continued to be a stranger to them.

  Will tossed her key ring in his hand a couple of times before saying, "I'll be right back."

  When the front door closed behind him, Cassie released a pent-up breath. She didn't like being watched, especially when she wasn't aware of it. She also didn't like the way her schoolgirl crush on Will Taylor still seemed to have the power to unsettle her. He was a different person now. She was a different person. And it wasn't as if there'd ever been anything between them in the first place.

  The front door opened and Will, using her suitcase, motioned up the stairs. "I'll take this on up. You wait here. Mom always likes to be the one to show folks around."

  "That, I do," Sylvia said from the top landing. "You come on up, too," she told Cassie. "I'm ready for you." She brushed the skirt of the pastel print dress she'd changed into.

  Cassie purposely lagged behind Will. As he passed his mother on the landing, the woman patted his shoulder before smiling at Cassie.

  "We could've put you in our newly renovated bunkhouse," Sylvia Taylor said, "but a family of four is coming tomorrow—a mom, a dad, and two kids—so I thought you might like to be up here in the room we used to use for our guests. The folks who've stayed in it before have always said they love feeling a part of the family. Hope you will, too."

  They followed Will through the first doorway on the right, where Cassie saw that the bedroom's décor matched what she'd seen so far of the house—warm, co
mfortable, well cared for, but aged in its neatness. A double bed was covered by a handmade quilt, a tall chest of drawers stood against one wall, and a lamp with a fluted shade took up most of the space on a bedside table.

  "This room doesn't have its own bathroom, I'm afraid," Sylvia said. "So that means we share the one down the hall."

  Will, who'd already hoisted Cassie's suitcase onto the bed, stood with his hands resting casually on his lean hips. "If that's all you ladies need, I'll be off," he said. "That windmill's still givin' me trouble. I need to get back to it."

  "Let me know if I can help," Sylvia Taylor urged.

  Will nodded and was almost out the door before Cassie remembered her manners.

  "Thank you for bringing in my bag," she said.

  He paused, gave her another one of those indecipherable looks he seemed to have inherited from his mother, then murmured, "No problem," before continuing on his way.

  Cassie's heart had sped up the instant he'd turned to look at her. And she was irritated with herself for letting it happen again.

  Sylvia Taylor moved about the room, needlessly smoothing the quilt and adjusting the curtains. "If you need more hangers just let me know. That goes for an extra blanket, as well. It can be cool some nights still. It also works best if you slide your suitcase under the bed once you've unpacked. Gets it out of the way." Then glancing around, she summed up, "Room's not luxurious, but I hope you'll enjoy it. Just like you'll enjoy all your time at the Circle Bar-T."

  "I'm sure I will," Cassie murmured.

  They moved back into the hall.

  "The bathroom's down there." Sylvia Taylor motioned toward the end of the hall. "The linen closet's inside. Will's room and my room are that way, too. Which brings up somethin' you need to know. The bathroom door always stays open unless it's in use. That way we don't have any 'accidental' meetings. Will's granddad's room is on the bottom floor," she added as they started downstairs. "He's in his seventies and was starting to have trouble gettin' up and down the stairs, so we moved him to where his 'gettin' around' would be a lot easier." She glanced at Cassie, her blue eyes mischievous. "He also snores like a buzz saw, so nights are a lot quieter up here now. We couldn't inflict that on a guest. You'll meet him later…you won't be able to avoid it!" Then she mused, "You know, what with everything that's been happening, I don't believe we've introduced ourselves properly. I'm Sylvia Taylor. Call me Sylvia. Everyone does. And you— You don't go by your initials, do you?"