“What color cat did you say you wanted?”
“It changes every day. One day I want a yellow one like Delilah. The next I think a black one would be nice but then maybe a calico. I don’t think it would matter, long as I had something to hold and love that… well, that would love me back,” she said. “But this day ain’t about me. It’s about your date.”
“I told you, it’s a family dinner.”
A date is a night in a hayloft watching the sunset while Wil feeds me cheese and ham and grapes and we make love like there is no tomorrow.
“Claws like a cat.” Lucy laughed. “Wear that right there. That pretty green sweater with that plaid skirt and some of them high-heeled boots. You’ll look like you walked right out of one of them fashion books.”
“I should be staying here and helping you clean rooms.”
“We got six. I can do that many long before check-in starts up. And don’t hurry. Me and Delilah will take care of the guests until you get home. Enjoy the day.”
Pearl pulled the emerald green sweater and the matching plaid skirt from her closet and laid them on the bed. She might as well follow Lucy’s advice.
She dressed, redid the hair damage the sweater created when she jerked it over her head, put on her boots, and looked at her reflection in the mirror.
“See. You look just like one of the magazine models,” Lucy said. “Now that we’ve got that settled, I’m off to clean then straighten up the laundry room.”
“Lucy, you don’t have to do that today.”
“Yes, I do. I’ll go crazy if I don’t have something to keep me busy. Could we go to the library tomorrow? I’m even out of books to read.”
“The keys to the truck are on the rack with the room keys. Come and go when you want. If you want to go to the store or drive somewhere else this afternoon, lock the lobby up and go.”
Lucy’s smile was brighter than the sun. “You mean it.”
“Yes, I do. Buy a book to keep. They sell a few at the Dollar Store. Or drive over to Wichita Falls or down to Bowie.”
Lucy shook her head. “I wouldn’t be comfortable in a place as big as all that. But I might go on to the grocery store and the Dollar Store this afternoon if you are sure that’s all right. And is it all right if I take Delilah back to my place to keep me company?”
Pearl touched Lucy’s shoulder and she didn’t flinch. She’d come a long way in the weeks she’d been at the Longhorn. Not far enough, but then she might never have the spit and vinegar that Pearl did, not after what she’d endured.
“You use that truck like it was yours and enjoy yourself a little bit. And it’s getting to where Delilah is as much yours as mine so, yes, you can take her to your place,” Pearl said.
“Thank you.” Lucy laid the brush down.
***
Wil didn’t know whether he was supposed to knock on the back door to the apartment or walk right into the lobby and ring the bell on the countertop. He was more nervous than he’d been the first time he went on a date back when he was sixteen.
Unlike Rye, who knew the minute he laid eyes on Austin that she was the woman for him, Wil had had to come to grips with the fact that he’d found his soul mate. He’d always thought that a man met a woman and built a relationship with her, then woke up one day and realized she was the one. He didn’t think it would all start when he woke up to policemen, handcuffs, and a walk in the sleet to the squad car. That wasn’t the way things were done to his way of thinking, but he’d been dead wrong, because that’s exactly the way it started.
“And all because the electricity went out at my place on Christmas Eve,” he said as he crawled out of the truck and shook the legs of his Wranglers down over his boot tops.
Pearl and Lucy were sitting in the recliners in the lobby. That big yellow cat of hers lazed on the table between them and they were both rubbing its fur. He wanted to peek through the glass for a long time but Pearl waved him on inside and stood up.
He groaned but it was swallowed up in the roar of the wind sweeping down from the north and headed toward the Gulf with nothing in its way but a few barbed wire fences and a couple of straggly old Longhorns. She looked like she’d just walked off a model runway in that outfit.
“Damn,” he mumbled under his breath. He hadn’t started out to fall for Red, but it had happened and now he didn’t know what to do. She wanted a good time; he wanted a soul mate. How did the two ever meet in the middle?
She threw a plaid shawl around her shoulders and picked up her purse. “You are right on time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “And you are lookin’ stunning today.”
“Thank you. You don’t look so shabby yourself.” She started at his toes and slowly admired his shiny boots, starched jeans, silver belt buckle, and crisp blue shirt under a denim jacket. She stopped when she got to his chin, careful not to go swimming in his mesmerizing eyes. One trip there and they’d never make it to the dinner.
He felt like he was standing in front of his grandmother’s old open-face heater when her eyes hesitated a moment on his belt buckle on her way up to his lips. She blinked before she locked eyes with his, which was probably for the best. If he’d ever sunk down into those green eyes he’d grab a room key and forget about his mother’s fried chicken.
“I guess we’re ready then,” he said hoarsely. He wondered what she’d say or do if he asked for a room, swept her up off her feet like a bride, and carried her down the sidewalk.
“Y’all have a good time and don’t hurry back. I can take care of things,” Lucy said.
“Thanks, Lucy. Do what I said. Lock it up for a couple of hours and go shopping or driving,” Pearl reminded her.
Lucy nodded.
Wil opened the door for Pearl, stood to one side, and settled his Stetson back on his head when they were outside, then rested his hand on the small of her back. Heat spread and glowed and her imagination painted a crimson blush on her cheeks. It didn’t cool down one little bit when he helped her into the truck and whistled his way around the hood of the truck to slip into the driver’s seat.
They’d never been awkward with each other, not the morning after the first time. Not when they’d made love in the loft; not the morning after the session in her bed; but suddenly there was a big white elephant with the word awkward tattooed on his trunk in the truck with them.
“You like Blake Shelton?” he asked.
She nodded.
He touched a button and “Hillbilly Bone” rocked the inside of the truck cab. He quickly adjusted the volume to a lower level.
“So which are you? Blake with his hillbilly bone or the New York City friend?” Pearl asked.
“Oh, I’m Blake for sure. I’m not a city man. Been to the big places with the rodeo rounds. Las Vegas is nice. New York City has its own pulse beat, kind of like that thing about listening to a different drummer, and Los Angeles is the same, different drummer, different beat. But Texas is where my hillbilly bone brought me back to every time I wandered. And I like little towns. They have a heartbeat all of their own,” he said. “How about you?”
“I’m a mixture. Momma’s from Savannah, Georgia, and I could recite a litany about southern girls for a couple of hours. Maybe even a couple of days. Daddy is pure Texan. He’s an executive at Texas Instruments, but he’s a rancher on the side. I went to college, got a master’s eventually, and worked in a bank over in Durant. Taught a few adjunct classes at the school and liked it, but I still like a rodeo, country music, and beer.”
“So what are you going to grow up to be, Red?”
“What makes you think I’m not already grown up?” she said with an edge to her tone. Dammit! He hadn’t even kissed her and he kept both hands on the steering wheel.
“I think you are picking a fight with me so you can tell me to turn around and take you back home. You are afraid to go meet my parents and my poor little momma has fried chickens and made biscuits for you.”
She shot him a look meant to lea
ve nothing but bones and a greasy spot on the pickup seat but it just made him grin. She hated it when anyone had the upper hand. She slowly turned her head to stare out the window.
“I’m right, ain’t I, Red?”
She held a palm up toward him.
“Don’t be giving me the old shut-up hand.”
She flipped around. “You infuriate me, but I wouldn’t tell you to take me home for all the dirt in Texas or tea in China. Nothing keeps me from home-fried chicken and hot biscuits. Not even you.”
Blake finished “Hillbilly Bone” and started singing “Kiss My Country Ass” at that time, and Wil pointed at the CD player.
“Bare it, darlin’,” she smarted off.
He slowed down as if he was about to pull off the road.
“Okay, okay, you win. I wouldn’t want the taste of your ass on my lips when I meet your momma.”
He picked up the speed. “I’m disappointed, Red. I thought my ass would sweeten up your sour mood.”
Blake went into the next song on his CD, “You’ll Always Be Beautiful,” about his lady who forgot on her birthday that she was too small to take in all that alcohol.
“Don’t seem to be the case always, does it? You hold your liquor pretty good for a little wisp of a lady.”
“It’s the Irish. They can hold their liquor no matter how small they are.”
Wil nodded and kept time with his thumbs on the steering wheel. Blake sang that his woman would always be beautiful to him. Wil stole a glance at Red. She was beautiful whether it was curled up the morning after a drinking contest with the mother of all hangovers, in the hayloft, eating lasagna at her table, or right then all dolled up and nervous.
He was still thinking about her when the next song came on about a cowboy in his forty-dollar blue jeans next to a beauty queen. He sang about not having anything but a big old truck and a little old place.
Pearl had dated cowboys in their forty-dollar blue jeans who thought she was a beauty queen many times, but she hadn’t ever laid on the tailgate of a pickup and looked up at the stars like Blake said in his song. Was watching the sunset from the loft window of a barn the same thing? Blake said he couldn’t afford to love her but he couldn’t afford not to. Was that where she was with Wil?
The next song was called “Delilah” and she’d never heard it. Blake said that Delilah couldn’t blame anyone but herself because there was someone right beside her that would never let her down. When she looked at Wil the soft expression in his brown eyes verified that Blake was singing about them. Wil reached across the space and laced his fingers through hers and squeezed.
“You should’ve been Delilah.”
“That mean you’re wearin’ forty-dollar jeans?” She finally smiled.
“Yes, ma’am, packed down with hillbilly bones.”
The last song played and Wil let the CD start all over again without changing it. When it had played through the second time he’d pulled up in the driveway of a low-slung, long rambling ranch house with a deep front porch across the front.
“They’re all here. There’s Amelia’s red truck and Carleen’s black one right beside hers.”
“They are both into ranching?”
“Born into it. Married into it. You are about to listen to poor old ranchers talkin’ about nothing but cows, horses, and makin’ hay. We’re pretty down to earth and common.”
And you can kiss my country ass, she thought. The size of that house and those two big dually pickup trucks don’t spell poverty to me.
“Well, I’m not ever going to get a dose of Mayberry sitting here,” she said.
“Don’t you dare get out of the truck before I can get around there to open the door for you. See those fluttering lace curtains in the window. That means Momma and Daddy are both watching and they’ll skin me alive and tack my hide to the outhouse door if I’m not a gentleman.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the fingertips.
The pickup warmed up considerably and the elephant shrunk in size to nothing more than a stuffed toy.
“Was that for their benefit or to turn me on?” she asked.
His grin deepened the dimple in the side of his cheek. “Both. Did it work?”
She unbuckled her seat belt, leaned across the console, cupped his cheeks in her hands, and pulled his lips to hers in a long scorching kiss that fried every nerve ending in her body.
“Did that work?” she whispered softly into his ear when the kiss ended.
“Yes, ma’am, it did. Want to stay out here long enough to fog the windows so they can’t see in? The backseat doesn’t have a console. We could get closer back there and see where a few more of those would lead. Or we can get a blanket and go back to the hay barn. We can always buy chicken at KFC.”
Pearl had met her match. It wasn’t easy to admit because she liked having the brassy, sassy upper hand all the time, but she was wise enough to concede when she’d come up against someone just as headstrong and willful. Maybe that’s where his name really came from. Wil from willful, not Wilson. One thing for sure, he would keep her on her toes.
He was glad for the cold wind that cooled him as he walked around the truck. One more kiss and he’d have to untuck his shirttail to cover what it had produced. But he hadn’t lost the war yet and before the smoke settled from that battle he’d be back full force. If Red thought she could stay ahead of him, she was in for a big surprise.
He opened to door to his big, black shiny truck, reached inside, circled her waist with his big hands, and brought her out like cowboys did back when they were helping their women down from a wagon. He tipped her chin up and bent to kiss her with just enough passion to make her want more. Then he stepped back, crooked his arm, and waited.
She only hesitated a second before she looped her arm through his and hugged up close to his side, causing a heat wave that stilled the cold winter wind. It followed them into a toasty farmhouse living room where blazes sent out a welcome from the big stone fireplace across the room. It was flanked by filled bookcases from floor to ceiling. A family picture hung above the heavy wooden mantel, showing Wil, his mom and dad, and two sisters back when Wil was a teenager. He’d been plumb cute back then but that was before the promise of a full-fledged cowboy had been fulfilled. Pearl was glad she knew him now instead of then.
Cozy brown furniture with a massive wood coffee table scarcely put a dent in the size of the room. Card tables had been set up at one end and kids of various ages were engrossed in two different games. One looked like Monopoly; the other some kind of card game.
“Hey, Uncle Wil. They’re all in the kitchen. Momma said if you didn’t get here real soon she was going to start eating without you. They were spying on you out the window. Want me to tell you what Granny said?” a Monopoly player yelled across the room.
“Not right now,” Wil said. He removed Pearl’s shawl and laid it on one of the sofas along with his denim jacket.
Pearl had let go of his arm when they came into the house so he laced his fingers in hers and led her into the massive dining room, kitchen combination. The dining room table for eight and a smaller table for six were both set with white China, crystal goblets, and cloth napkins. Lacy curtains covered the long windows looking outside on the dining room end and out into the backyard on the kitchen end of the room. The cabinets were painted crisp white, and evidently Mrs. Marshall liked roosters because they decorated the whole area. Tiny rooster saltshakers on the tables, a big life-sized boy with his head thrown back as if he were crowing at daybreak on top of her refrigerator. Rooster planters held cactus plants in the window above the sink, and a set of bright yellow canisters were decorated with paintings of them.
“You must be Pearl Richland. I’m Wil’s mother, Martha Jane. These are his sisters, Amelia and Carleen.” She stepped forward and held out her hand.
In order to shake, Pearl had to untangle her fingers from Wil’s. She hoped that her hand wasn’t as sweaty as it felt.
“Hi. I’m Amelia and t
his is Carleen. We’d be polite and shake, but Momma has us makin’ gravy and whipping potatoes. If either has lumps she’ll disown us and send us off to the orphanage.”
Amelia was the taller of the two with dark hair worn shoulder length and cut in layers that framed her long, angular face. Her clear complexion and gorgeous brown eyes were her good features. Her nose wasn’t exactly too big, but it would have kept her off the front page of a glamour magazine. Carleen, on the other hand, was short, had dishwater blond hair that she wore in a bob, light brown eyes, and nothing really outstanding other than a beautiful impish smile that lit up her face. They were both dressed in designer jeans with shiny stones on their hip pockets, tucked in pearl snap shirts… Carleen’s in a whiskey-colored cotton with darker lace on the collar and Western cut yoke; Amelia’s in a rich coffee brown with an inlay of stones outlining the Texas Longhorn on the yoke.
Pearl nodded in their direction.
Wil quickly made introductions. “Red, this is my dad, Jesse. The tall man on his left is Amelia’s husband, Thomas, and the one on his right is Matthew, who belongs to Carleen.”
It was easy for Pearl to see where Wil got his looks. In forty years he’d be the spittin’ image of his father. Jesse was shorter than Wil, had the same thick dark hair and brown eyes. His shoulders were as wide as Wil’s, but evidently too much fried chicken and gravy had taken its toll on his waistline because he was probably six inches bigger in that area than Wil.
Thomas was taller than Wil, built on a lanky frame rather than a solid one. He had thinning brown hair with a receding hairline and hazel eyes and not a single thing that would stand out in a crowd. Matthew had light brown hair, steely blue eyes, and a smile that would draw women from across the room. He was several inches shorter than Thomas and probably twenty pounds heavier. His shoulders weren’t as wide as Wil’s and his waistline was much larger but he looked friendly.
She smiled her brightest and said, “I’m glad to meet y’all.”
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