Red's Hot Cowboy
Page 25
“This’ll be your first plantin’ season without Gramps around. You’ll miss him,” Wil said when Ace propped a leg on the fence beside him.
“Already do. Old codger had to have his way about everything in the world and wouldn’t change a thing. I kept thinkin’ about how I’d do things when the ranch was mine and now that it is, be damned if I’m not gettin’ more like him every day.” Ace looked out over the cattle. “You might as well ride over to the big city with me and we’ll get some dinner over there. I heard you been keepin’ company with Austin’s friend, Pearl. That so?”
“Guess I have,” Wil said slowly.
“You got anything you have to be doin’ this mornin’?” Ace asked.
“Jack is plowing up the west forty getting it ready for spring planting. I’ve been thinkin’ about buyin’ another tractor, so I could take a look at what the prices are if I go along.” He thought aloud but didn’t take his foot off the fence.
Ace nodded in agreement. “You need another tractor. One tractor ain’t enough for a section.”
“I might add another hand come spring. Been thinkin’ about building a bunkhouse out beyond the barns. Maybe start off little with only three rooms and a small den and kitchen all together, but make it so I can add on later. I really hope to buy the farm next to me when it comes up for sale and then I’ll have to have more help.”
Ace headed toward his truck.
Wil followed.
Red said she needed time to see if this was going to die in its sleep, but he didn’t want it to die. He wanted it to survive and grow. It was time to stop worrying the whole thing to death and begin feeding it. He flipped open his phone and sent a text message to her cell: I miss you, Red.
***
Pearl was cleaning room number twenty-four and trying to figure out why the whole place felt as sinister as if Lucifer had spent the night in it when her cell phone set up a vibration in her hip pocket. She pulled it out and read his message. Those few words sent a tingling shiver down her spine almost as hot as when he touched her skin. She sent a message back: Me too.
She’d dreamed about Wil again the night before. She tried to remember the dream as she dusted, vacuumed, and carried the towels and sheets out to the maid’s cart, but it wouldn’t materialize. She just knew that she’d dreamed about him and when she awoke she was scared that he wouldn’t go with her on Sunday. She’d be left out in the cold holding the bag again just like she was when Vince left.
The cell phone vibrated again. She pulled it out, expecting another message from Wil, but it was Jasmine: On my way to see you.
Lucy stuck her head in the door. “I’m grabbing this laundry and it’ll be the last load today. I thought I’d take the truck to the library when I’m finished. You need anything from town?”
Pearl shook her head. “My friend is on her way over here from Sherman to see me. Want to have a late lunch with us?”
Lucy’s smile brightened the whole parking lot. “I’d love to. Where are we going?”
“Probably just the Dairy Queen. Jasmine loves a good hamburger.”
“So do I,” Lucy said and disappeared down the sidewalk pushing a cart in front of her.
Pearl had just put the finishing touches on the room when a small blue truck pulled up in front of the lobby. She recognized it immediately and waved at Jasmine when she stepped out and looked around.
“This is Psycho!” Jasmine yelled.
Pearl hurried across the lot and hugged her friend. “I told you so. Did you think I was exaggerating? Don’t answer that.”
“Does it have ghosts that haunt it at night?”
“If you’d have asked me that yesterday I’d have laughed at you, but today I’m not so sure.”
Jasmine looped her arm through Pearl’s. “I’m starving. Can we go eat?”
She was a couple of inches shorter than Pearl, tipping the height chart at just under five feet two inches. A brunette with a delicate, angular face, full mouth, and wide set light green eyes. She wore a red sweater, jeans, and red high-heeled shoes.
“Let me call Lucy and tell her to put the laundry on hold. What is all that?” Pearl pointed at the suitcases in the back of the truck.
“My stuff. You said there was a café for sale. I’d like to look at it and then go to the bank if I like it. I’ve got my 401(k) money that I could use for a down payment. You said if I came to visit I could have a room.” Jasmine talked too fast without catching her breath.
Pearl patted her arm. “What happened?”
“I need a change.”
“What about your job at Texas Instruments?”
“I quit. Used my vacation time as notice time and quit. I’ve got to get out of Sherman and away from Eddie Jay and my momma who is driving me crazy.”
Pearl led her inside the lobby. “It’s just a little café with an apartment above it. It’s been for sale for a year and no one has been interested. Serves breakfast and lunch, closes about two in the afternoon. Doesn’t require much staff. The waitress might stay until you could get the hang of things, or you two might hit it off and she’ll stay forever.”
“You’re not going to yell and scream at me for quitting a gravy job?” Jasmine asked.
“Not me! I run the Psycho motel. We are thirty. It’s time to change or mold. I never did look good in the color of nasty old mold and neither did you. Pick out whichever room you want. You can have it as long as you want it.”
“I’ll clean or keep the lobby open or whatever to pay for it. I’ll need everything I can scrape up to buy that café,” Jasmine said.
“Lucy and I might take you up on that.”
Pearl dialed the laundry room from the phone on the counter. Lucy picked up on the second ring.
“Jasmine is here and she gets cranky when she’s hungry so leave the laundry until later and let’s go get a hamburger.”
“Do I need to change clothes?” Lucy asked.
“I’m not.”
“Then I’m on my way.”
Jasmine and Pearl were sitting in the recliners in the lobby when Lucy pushed through the door. They stood up at the same time and Lucy was amazed that Jasmine was even shorter than her or Pearl. From what she’d heard about the woman she expected her to be six feet tall, bulletproof, and maybe even clad in a red, white, and blue superwoman cape.
“What’s the matter, Lucy?” Pearl asked.
“Nothing. I just wasn’t expecting someone short like us.”
Jasmine giggled. “I wasn’t expecting you to be a small woman. From what Pearl has told me about you and your escape I kinda figured you for Wonder Woman.”
Lucy’s smile was slow but bright. “Guess we both had different ideas. I hear you like hamburgers?”
“My favorite food in the world. I’m a real cheap date. Hamburger, fries, and a chocolate malt and a man can topple me right into bed purring the whole way.”
Lucy laughed. “Didn’t work that way with Cleet, but I do like hamburgers.”
Pearl locked the door and led the way back through her apartment. “We’ll take the Caddy.”
Jasmine cocked her head to one side. “Cadillac?”
“It’s not what you think,” Lucy said.
“Oh. My. Sweet. Lord,” Jasmine said when the doors to the garage rolled up.
“Like it?” Pearl asked.
Jasmine opened the passenger door and crawled into the backseat. “Can I have it? I’ll go beg my old job back and use my 401(k) to buy this if you’ll sell it to me. Did it come with this motel?”
Lucy settled into the front seat. “It is one fancy thing, isn’t it?”
Jasmine ran her hands over the leather seat. “It’s beautiful.”
“Wil already asked if he could buy it,” Pearl said as she started up the engine.
“Well, he’s not your friend. I am. And he only saved your life one time. I got you out of trouble that would have gotten you killed by your momma millions of times so I get first dibs when you sell it.”
“Your face got serious all of a sudden,” Jasmine said.
“I’m hungry.” It was the truth even if it wasn’t the reason she’d gone quiet trying to sort out where Wil Marshall fit into her life.
“How far is it?” Jasmine asked.
“About five minutes,” Lucy said. “Be glad the noon rush is over. When school lets out for noon there’s not a place to park or to sit down in the Dairy Queen.”
Pearl nosed the Caddy in between two Silverado pickup trucks and carefully opened the door. Aunt Pearlita would come back to life and haunt her if she was careless and banged up the doors to the car. Her phone rang and she flipped it open as she was getting out of the car.
“What’s the matter?” Lucy asked.
“Nothing. Guess it was a wrong number. They hung up.”
Lucy shivered. “That gives me creeps when that happens.”
“Do-da-do-do,” Jasmine made noises like a scary movie. “Tell me more. Am I going to have to chase ghosts away from the Longhorn Inn?”
Lucy giggled. “No! It’s harmless.”
“Who are you trying to convince, Lucy? Me or you?”
“Me, of course. I still have trouble going out the door without checking to see if Cleet’s truck is out there in the lot.”
Jasmine threw an arm around Lucy’s shoulders and led the way into the Dairy Queen. “That sorry sumbitch pokes his head up out of the sand and us three women will take care of him in a hurry.”
Lucy giggled. “Yes, we will.”
They ordered hamburgers, fries, and malts at the counter and were on their way to sit down at a booth when Wil pushed his way inside. He got a cup of coffee at the counter and carried it to the booth where he slid in beside Pearl.
“Y’all havin’ food or ice cream?” he asked.
“Food. Wil, meet my friend, Jasmine, who is going to stay a while at the motel and plans to look at the Chicken Fried to see if she wants to buy it,” Pearl said. “And this is Wil, the infamous man you’ve all heard about. Who got rousted out of my motel on a trumped-up murder charge and then had to wake me up every hour all night after I tried to sprout wings and fly backwards down his stairs.”
Wil smiled at the ladies across the booth from him. “Hello, Jasmine, and hi, Lucy.”
“Hello, what are you having besides coffee?” Lucy asked.
“Ace and I had steaks over in Wichita Falls. Came home and had to do some book work and make a bank deposit. Saw your car out there and thought I’d stop in. I’ve got to get on home though. Jack has got plans so I need to do the night chores, and there’s a cow in the barn that I’m probably going to have to spend the night with. It’s her first calf.” He brushed a kiss across her lips and said, “I’ll call you later, Red.”
He’d barely gotten outside when Jasmine grabbed her heart and fluttered her eyelids. “That is Wil? He’s one damn hot cowboy. And how come he gets to call you Red when you’d tear the limbs off anyone else for even thinking that nickname?”
Lucy nodded seriously. “That is Wil and the stories will take all afternoon and most of the night if she hasn’t kept you up-to-date on what’s goin’ on. He even cleans motel rooms and can match her in a shot challenge.”
“You are shittin’ me!” Jasmine gasped. “He didn’t pass out before you?”
“I’m not sayin’ a word,” Pearl declared.
Jasmine looked at Lucy. “You tell me. I bet you know. You live there and see everything.”
Lucy shook her head. “Can’t tell what I don’t know. If she gives you the details of what happened in the motel room you come on down to my room and tell me because I can’t get her to tell nothin’ about that part. Wake me up no matter what time of night it is. All I know is that on New Year’s mornin’ that room was already halfway clean when I got to it. Makes a body wonder what they were coverin’ up, don’t it?”
“Start talkin’ right now. I can chew and listen,” Jasmine said.
“I’ll give you the short version,” Pearl said.
“Before you start, explain to me why that sexy cowboy gets to call you Red,” Jasmine said.
The waitress brought their food on a tray and set it in the middle of the table. “Anything else I can get you ladies?”
“More ketchup,” Lucy said.
“Comin’ right up,” she said and pulled a full bottle from the booth behind them. “Holler right loud if you need anything more.”
Lucy covered her fries with ketchup and picked up her burger. “He’s got special privileges that only she knows about. I don’t think me or you get to call her that, though.”
“Hell, I wouldn’t even try. Only fight we ever had was in kindergarten when I got mad at her and called her Red. She blacked both my eyes and bloodied my nose. We were best friends from that day on and I never called her that again,” Jasmine said.
Lucy almost choked before she could swallow the bite of hamburger. “Did you really?”
Pearl grinned. “I did. Nobody in the whole school ever called me that again, either.”
“I guess not,” Lucy said. “Damn, I wish I’d been that spunky. If I had been I’d have never put up with Cleet.”
“Why didn’t you just beat the shit out of him? You could’ve waited until he was asleep and tied him up, then taught him a lesson,” Jasmine said.
Lucy slowly shook her head. “I didn’t ever have that kind of nerve. I dreamed about killin’ him more than once, but dreamin’ about it and doin’ it is two different things.”
“Why didn’t you beat the shit out of Eddie Jay?” Pearl asked.
“Same reason Lucy didn’t whoop her husband. We get comfortable in our rut and before long it’s just life. It isn’t right but it’s what happens,” Jasmine answered. “Now talk about what has been goin’ on in this place since you took over that motel. I thought I was coming to a boring area, but I’m beginning to wish I’d quit my job weeks ago.”
Pearl dipped fries in a pool of ketchup. “Most of the time it is kind of boring, isn’t it, Lucy?”
“Not to me. I love it at the motel. I’m never leaving. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” Lucy declared.
“Okay, here goes,” Pearl said.
They’d finished their late lunch and had had two cups of coffee each when she ended the story. School had let out for the day and the line of after-school traffic went from the counter to the door.
“Why haven’t you branded him? You belong on a ranch. You were always happy when you were herding your daddy’s cattle with a four-wheeler or throwin’ hay in the barn,” Jasmine said.
“I was not! I was happiest all dressed up and going out on dates. It was you who liked coming out to the ranch. We were switched at birth. I should’ve been your momma’s kid because she likes big parties and having fun. And you should have belonged to my daddy,” Pearl argued.
“You like to have fun, but your heart and soul is on a ranch. And you are avoiding my question about why in the hell you aren’t already wearing an engagement ring?” Jasmine asked.
“Because I think we need a few days to let things simmer down, and because we haven’t even gotten so far as to think that we’re in a serious relationship. So we sure haven’t discussed the m-word.”
“Are you dumb-ass crazy? You can see him, can’t you? You aren’t blind. And he gets this dreamy look in his eyes when he looks at you like he could have you for breakfast, dinner, and supper and still be hungry. I damn sure wouldn’t tell him to wait a week.”
“Then you can have him,” Pearl said shortly.
“I’d take him, but you don’t mean that. Don’t slam the door of opportunity. If you do it might not open when you decide you should’ve walked through it rather than s
hut it.”
“Ah, Jasmine has put on her therapy hat.”
“And I look beautiful in it, don’t I, Lucy?”
Lucy looked from one to the other. “Don’t get me in the middle of your fight. I’m the last person to judge whether a man is worth the bullet to shoot him or not.”
“Let’s go home and give those kids a place to sit,” Pearl said.
“They look so young,” Jasmine said.
“And they’re looking at us and wondering why three old women are taking up space in their booth,” Lucy said.
“I’m not an old woman!” Jasmine said.
“Remember when you were sixteen. How old was thirty?” Pearl asked.
Jasmine giggled. “Ancient.”
“Right! Let’s go home and get you settled into a room. Tomorrow we’ll go over to the café and have lunch. Let you see if you even like the idea once you’ve eaten there,” Pearl said.
Home! Pearl thought. It had taken a while but Henrietta really was home.
“What café?” Lucy asked.
“It’s called Chicken Fried. It’s south of Ringgold. Gemma O’Donnell has a beauty shop right next door to it and it’s the only café in Ringgold and the only beauty shop. We’ll all three go to lunch there,” Pearl said. “But I’m tellin’ you right now and straight up, Lucy is my help and you cannot coerce her into coming to work for you.”
Lucy beamed. Nothing could take her away from the Longhorn Inn, but it was nice to be needed and wanted.
At eleven o’clock that night Pearl had filled fifteen rooms. She stepped outside for a breath of cold, fresh air and saw a thin beam of light filtering through the slim opening in Lucy’s drapes. Evidently she was engrossed in a thick romance book. Jasmine had decided on the last room at the end of the east side of the motel. Everything was dark in that area so she had turned in for the night. The rest of the place was quiet so Pearl went back inside, flipped on the NO VACANCY sign, and headed back to her apartment.
The phone rang the minute she’d kicked off her shoes and she groaned. “Longhorn Inn, may I help you?” she answered on the third ring.