You Had Me at Cowboy

by Jennie Marts

  Quinn was pretty great. She’d reminded Rock that they’d all made mistakes, done things they were ashamed of, and she said she admired Tess for coming clean and telling them the truth. She actually loved the article and had convinced Rock to let her turn it in. He had admitted that it was pretty good, and they had finally forgiven her for not being up front and honest with them.

  But Rock had warned her that Mason would be a lot less likely to. He told her his brother was stubborn and wouldn’t take being deceived lightly. He was right.

  She’d been planning to tell Mason the truth as soon as he came home. She’d spent the last hour sweating and rehearsing exactly what she’d say, how she would word it so he would understand. Her hands had been shaking all afternoon, and her back ached from tensing her muscles against his imagined reactions. But whatever the outcome, she wanted him to know the truth about what she did, what had happened with her grandmother, the article, all of it. But most of all, she wanted to tell him the truth about how she felt about him.

  She’d fallen in love with him and wanted them to have a future together. A future that wasn’t tainted by lies and deception.

  But it was too late now. He’d made up his mind and didn’t want to hear anything she had to say. Any chance she’d had with him had just slipped through her fingers.

  Nausea spiraled through her stomach and her knees threatened to buckle, because now not only had her beautiful world with Mason fallen apart, but something terrible must have happened with her grandmother. With the only person she had left.

  Her pulse raced as she threw her bag in the car, then pressed the screen to return the call. Come on. Pick up.

  The phone hadn’t even finished the first ring when Tess heard an engine racing toward her. She looked up to see a small cherry-red car come screaming down the driveway, followed by a cloud of dust.

  A small cherry-red car that looked suspiciously like her grandmother’s.

  What in the hell?

  What was her grandmother doing here?

  Pain shot through her chest, like a hand squeezing her heart. Now she knew something terrible must have happened.

  But what? If something had happened to Mimi, she would be in the hospital, not blowing up her granddaughter’s phone and driving up the pass. Tess shook her head.

  She hadn’t been able to believe it when Mimi had first brought the flashy red Mini Cooper home. It made her nervous the way her grandmother zipped around in the little thing, but Tess didn’t think she’d ever taken the car much farther than their neighborhood, let alone driven it up the mountain.

  The Mini Cooper pulled to a stop, dust flying as the driver hit the brakes. The door opened, and her grandmother stumbled from the car. Her normally tidy hair was sticking up in some places and hanging in loose strands in others. Her clothes were in disarray—part of her shirt was loose and untucked, and a big tear ran down the front of one of her pant legs.

  And she appeared to be missing a shoe.

  Holy crap! What was going on?

  Tess raced to her grandmother. “Mimi! What happened? Are you okay?” She reached her just as the older woman collapsed into her arms.

  “Oh, Tess. I’m so glad you’re here,” Mimi said, hanging onto her arms as her body sagged against Tess.

  The screen door of the main house slammed, and Vivi came rushing down the stairs, Rock and Quinn on her heels.

  “What’s happened?” Vivi asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Tess told her. “This is my grandmother, Mimi. I mean, Miriam Kane.”

  “Let’s get her inside,” Mason’s deep voice said from behind her. He must have heard the commotion and followed her out, but in the craziness of rushing to her grandmother, Tess hadn’t noticed him.

  She wanted to lean back against him, to take comfort in his arms. But those days were over. That time was done.

  Besides, she needed to focus on Mimi right now. She helped her grandmother up the stairs and into the kitchen of the farmhouse.

  “Can we get you something?” Vivi asked, pulling out a chair and helping to ease the older woman into it. “A glass of tea or some water?”

  “Some water would be nice. Thank you.”

  Tess was thankful Mimi hadn’t asked for a beer. She wouldn’t put it past the woman. But the fact she was asking for water, looked so disheveled, and wasn’t cracking any of her trademark jokes told her something serious was going on.

  Quinn hurried to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, then set it in on the table.

  Mimi picked it up and took a long swig. “I’m sorry to be such a bother. I didn’t want to intrude on you folks. I just needed to find my granddaughter.”

  “Well, you found her,” Tess said. “Now tell me what’s going on. You raced in here like someone was chasing you.”

  Mimi’s cast her eyes down and pulled the edges of the tear in her pant leg together. “Oh look. I’ve torn my pants. And this is one of my good pairs.”

  Tess arched an eyebrow. She was well acquainted with the evasive tactics of Miriam Kane. “Mimi, what is going on? Are you being chased by someone?”

  Her grandmother still refused to meet her eye. “In a way, I guess. I mean, maybe someone could perceive that…”

  Maybe someone could perceive that? What was she talking about?

  “Mimi, is someone chasing you or not?”

  She blinked, tipping her chin up in a peevish way and pursing her lips. “I don’t think you need to take that tone with me, young lady.”

  Tess made a growling sound in her throat.

  “Okay, fine. Yes. Someone is chasing me. Are you happy?”

  “No, I’m not happy. Of course I’m not happy that someone is after you. I just don’t understand what’s going on. Why would anyone be chasing you?” Tess’s thoughts went to the money scammers who had swindled all her grandmother’s money from her. Had they somehow found Mimi and tried to get more cash from her?

  “Are you in danger?” Mason asked. He’d been leaning against the side of the counter, apparently letting his mom and Quinn fuss over Mimi while he stood back. “Should we call the police?”

  Mimi vigorously shook her head, sending the mussed white shocks of hair into more disarray. “No police.” She narrowed her eyes at Mason. “You must be Mason, the guy Tess can’t stop talking about.”

  “I am. Mason, I mean.” His brow furrowed as he dodged Tess’s gaze. “I wouldn’t know about that other stuff.”

  Tess’s lungs constricted, and a painful tightness squeezed her chest. He would know about that other stuff if she’d only had a chance to talk to him before he’d found her press pass and notes in her car. If she’d only had a chance to tell him the truth.

  Or if I’d been honest with him from the start.

  She didn’t have time to dwell on that right now. Something had happened, and the way her grandmother was dodging and sidestepping her questions told her that it was something serious.

  “Mimi,” she said, her tone stern as she tried to recapture the woman’s attention, “can you please tell me what is going on?”

  They had all settled around the table, except for Mason, who continued to lean on the edge of the kitchen counter.

  “Well, I may have gotten myself in over my head,” Mimi said, her voice a little shaky as she held up her hand, her thumb and forefinger not quite pinched together. “Just a little bit. And really, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “What seemed like a good idea?” Tess asked. “And how big of a ‘little bit’ are we talking about?”

  “Oh, Tessa, you always worry too much.”

  “Mimi, you drove halfway up the mountain in a car the size of a tin can and must have used the GPS in it for the first time ever in an effort to find me, so I’m assuming that my worry level right now should be somewhere between a major catastrophe and DEFCON 5.” />
  Her grandmother gave a small shrug of her shoulders as she pursed her lips together. “All right. My plan might have gotten a little out of my control. It’s just that I was talking to a couple of men down at the senior center, and they told me about these guys who would loan money to people who needed quick cash and had a few blemishes on their credit records.”

  A few blemishes? With the recent scandal, Mimi’s credit had taken a nose dive into a full-blown acne attack.

  “And these men… Apparently a few of them do a little gambling on the side and have some connections. They gave me a couple of names, and Arthur… You remember Arthur, Tess? He’s the one with the messy pompadour. He’s really quite handsome, for being in his eighties. He’s still got his hair and all of his own teeth, you know.”

  “Not for long,” Tess muttered.

  “Don’t be fresh.” Her grandmother gave her a quick stink eye.

  Seriously? Mimi was the one cavorting with criminals, and she was giving Tess the stink eye?

  “So anyway, I guess I was a little desperate.” She turned to Rock, Quinn, and Vivi, who had been silently watching the conversational exchange. “I’m sure Tess told you I got taken in by a fraud ring posing as Nigerian royalty, and they swindled me out of thousands of dollars. We’re now in peril of losing our home.”

  The three of them didn’t say anything, just collectively shook their heads and blinked at the older woman.

  “No, Mimi. I did not tell them all that. I try not to tell anyone that.” She offered the others an apologetic glance. All except Mason. She was avoiding looking at him altogether. She lowered her voice as she turned back to her grandmother. “And besides, I told you I was taking care of it.”

  “I know, honey. But you were having such a rough time at your job, and I didn’t want you to have to solve my problems. And this seemed like the answer. So I called Arthur, and he took me to see this guy, Vinnie the Rake.”

  “Vinnie the Rake?” Tess’s voice rose two octaves, and her blood pressure skyrocketed. She could feel a pulse beating on the side of her forehead. “Why in the heck would you borrow money from a guy named Vinnie the Rake?”

  “It was either him or Tommy the Fist, and I thought a rake sounded a little more pleasant. More like a regular household item.”

  “There is nothing pleasant about a man who has a gangster name that includes some type of weapon, household or otherwise.”

  Mimi pursed her lips again. “Do you want me to tell you what happened, or do you just want to lecture me?”

  Tess rubbed her forehead. “Fine. Go on. Please tell us what happened when you visited Vinnie the Rake.”

  “Well, it was really quite simple the first time.”

  The first time?

  Tess pressed her lips together and squeezed her hands into fists underneath the table.

  “He seemed perfectly nice and loaned me two thousand dollars, no questions asked. But when I took that down to the bank, they said it wasn’t enough.”

  “What do you mean, it wasn’t enough? I thought two thousand was all we needed.”

  “Well, I might have underestimated the amount.”

  “Underestimated?”

  “I might owe a little more.”

  “Might?”

  “Okay. Fine. A lot more. Apparently the two thousand barely made a dent in the money that was overdue. Between the overdraft fees and the late charges on the mortgage and the rest of the bills, I needed a couple thousand more.”

  “A couple thousand?” Tess’s heart sank. She didn’t know if Gordon would come through with even two thousand dollars for her article—especially since she’d changed it so much from the kind of story he’d originally asked for. But there was no way she could find another two thousand dollars.

  “So I had to go back to Vinnie,” Mimi said, her voice lowering as she wiped at a smudge of dirt on her arm. “And this time he wasn’t as nice.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Mason interrupted, his voice as cold as steel.

  “No, honey. Not physically at least. But he did make a few overt remarks about how I could pay the money back. I assumed he meant with my body in some kinky sex acts, and I emphatically told him I was not into whatever weird, sexual old-lady fetishes he had in mind. And I may have mentioned something about a rake.”

  Rock let out a chuckle, then covered his mouth with his hand and tried to pass it off as a cough.

  Tess was not amused.

  Mimi shrugged. “Apparently, he had been talking about me giving him my car. But at that point, the comment about the rake was evidently a sore spot with him, and he got all pissy and demanded I immediately pay him back the money I owed him plus a ridiculous amount of interest. So now I still owe the bank two thousand dollars, and I owe Vinnie three thousand dollars, both due immediately.”

  Tess sucked in her breath. “Wait. You owe Vinnie three thousand dollars now? That’s fifty percent interest. That’s straight-out robbery.”

  “Did you miss the part about Vinnie being a criminal?”

  “Well, there’s criminal and then there’s outrageous. Surely, he’ll listen to reason. Maybe I can talk to him…try to reason with him.”

  “There’s no reasoning with him. Especially now.”

  “What do mean, especially now?”

  “Because now he’s mad, and he’s hell-bent on me paying the money back. That’s why he sent his two goons to collect the cash today.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sent’?”

  “What do you think I mean? Two guys showed up at the house a few hours ago—interrupted my soaps and about scared the life out of me. I didn’t know who they were at first. They didn’t look so bad. Both of them had on dark suits. I thought maybe they were a couple of those religious types and just wanted to give me a leaflet. Then they pushed their way into the house and started busting things up. The short one… He had a crew cut. Who even wears a crew cut anymore? He tipped over the coffee table and started pulling the cushions off the couch. Like maybe instead of some stale Cheetos and dust bunnies, he thought he was actually going to find two thousand dollars in the sofa cushions.”

  Tess knew he wasn’t. They’d already raided the couch, the kitchen drawers, and the dryer to collect any spare change that may have been hidden in the house.

  “The tall one… He didn’t have any hair. His head was shaved,” Mimi continued. “But he’s the one who had a gun.”

  Chapter 20

  Tess gasped. “A gun?”

  Her grandmother nodded. “He didn’t wave it around or point it at me. He just calmly took it out and set it on the kitchen table. Like he wanted me to know it was there. He was the smarter dressed of the two. He was wearing this purple shirt… You know, the kind all the Mafia guys wear on television, the kind that probably cost more than my car. So obviously they didn’t need the money that I’d borrowed that badly.”

  Tessa rolled her eyes so hard she was surprised she didn’t see her brain. She didn’t care how the guy’s hair was cut or how expensive his stupid shirt was. She cared about the fact that two men had been in their house, and one of them had a gun. “So what did you do?”

  “They said they wanted the money, and they weren’t leaving until I gave it to them. They said they would take cash or my car. Well, I clearly didn’t have any cash, and I can tell you I wasn’t about to give them my car. I love that car. So, I told them all the excitement had set my bladder off, and if they didn’t let me pee, I’d have an accident. Then I snuck out the bedroom window. I think that’s when I ripped my pants. Thank goodness I’d been planning to go to the grocery store, so I had my phone and my car keys in my pocket.”

  “Yeah, thank goodness,” Tess muttered.

  Mimi offered her an impish grin. “I also had my smarts with me. They’d driven up in this big, black Cadillac and had my car blocked in. But that Mini Cooper is small,
and I knew I had enough room to squeak it out of the driveway if I cut through the lawn. I also knew that I didn’t want them to be able to follow me, but didn’t have much at my disposal to slow them down. My purse was still inside, and of course that’s where I keep my pepper spray. I had to think fast and use what was handy, so I may have broken a couple of those cute ceramic garden gnomes—you know, the ones with the metal stakes up their heinies—and propped them under their tire. But I’m not copping to anything for sure.”

  Not copping to anything? Who was this woman?

  “Mimi, this is not an episode of Law & Order. These are actual bad men. Men who will not think twice about hurting an old woman.”

  “Who are you calling old?”

  Oh. My. Gosh.

  Tess held up her hands. “I’m sorry. Of course you’re not old.”

  “No, I’m not. But I am smart.” She tapped the side of her head. “And I will admit I wanted to drive those stakes into their whitewalls to flatten them, but I wasn’t strong enough. So I just hope the glass and the stakes were enough to puncture a tire and slow them down. Otherwise, those garden gnomes sacrificed themselves for nothing.”

  Tess cradled her head in her hands. “How could this have happened? I’ve only been gone for four days.”

  Mimi patted her arm. “A lot can happen in four days, honey.”

  True. Her last four days had certainly been eventful.

  She’d made new friends, helped save some cows, been caught in a rainstorm, found a dog, watched a hockey game, survived sleeping the night in her car, and fallen in love.

  And lied to the guy she’d fallen in love with—don’t forget about that. Lied, deceived, and broken both of their hearts in the process.

  So yeah, a lot could happen in four days.

  The sound of an engine drew their attention to the open front window. The hair on Tess’s arms stood on end as she glimpsed the black car speeding down the driveway in a cloud of dust.