You Had Me at Cowboy

by Jennie Marts

  She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

  All she had to do was say she didn’t have him anymore. She didn’t know anyone in this town, and she wasn’t ever coming back. She could take Dewey and run, and no one would ever know.

  Except that she would know.

  And she could never actually do that. It wasn’t fair to the dog’s owners, and it wasn’t fair to Dewey. Or whatever his name was.

  If they loved him half as much as she did, they had to be going out of their minds trying to find him. She had to give the dog back. Besides, she’d already screwed up enough people’s day today. It would be kind of nice to actually make someone’s better.

  “Yes,” she told the dispatcher. “I’ll be right there.”

  “Thanks, hon. I’ll tell them to wait for you in reception.”

  Tess had seen the sheriff’s office on her way into town, and it only took her five minutes to backtrack and pull into the lot. She turned off the engine and slumped in the seat. Dewey crawled across the console and into her lap.

  Blinking back tears, she put her arms around him, cuddling him to her chest. “I love you, you little mutt. But I’m sure your real owners love you just as much. I’ll bet they’ve been out of their minds wondering what happened to you.” She imagined a cute, little old couple like Lee and Helen, the Kansas folks with the RV who she’d met at the KOA campground.

  Holding the dog in her arms, she grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder as she trudged into the sheriff’s office.

  Pushing through the door, she glanced around for a cute couple or even a distraught family, but all she saw were two scruffy guys whose similarly disheveled brown hair and freckled faces distinguished them as brothers.

  They looked to be in their mid-twenties, and both wore ratty T-shirts and faded jeans with dirty knees. One nudged the other when he spotted the dog, and they both clamored to their feet.

  “There he is,” the taller of the two said, reaching out his hand for the dog.

  Dewey trembled in her arms, and Tess clutched him to her chest, horrified at the thought of turning him over to these two. “Are you sure this is your dog?”

  “Sure as shit we are,” the shorter brother said. He gave her a condescending smile. His teeth were stained yellow, and bits of chewing tobacco clung to his dry and cracked bottom lip. “The dumb mongrel must have jumped out of our truck when we were in town the other day. We’ve been looking all over for him.”

  The taller one held up a length of rope. “We know to tie him in now. He won’t get away again.”

  Cold fingers of dread snaked their way through Tess’s chest. Where was the nice family with the weeping little children who had been missing their dog? Where was the sweet little old lady who was going to cuddle him and feed him extra treats now that she’d found him?

  There was no way she was going to hand her dog over to these two.

  Except that he wasn’t her dog. He belonged to them.

  She glanced at the clerk sitting at the reception desk, praying he would see her predicament and offer his help, but the man only shrugged. “Sorry, lady. If he’s their dog, you’ve got to give him back.”

  Why had she listened to her stupid conscience? She should have kept driving and told the dispatcher she had the wrong number.

  She couldn’t bring herself to let go of the dog. Maybe they would listen to reason. She had to try, at least. “You know, I’m happy to keep him,” she told them. “I’ve grown quite attached to him and would be glad to take him off your hands. Since he’s so much trouble and all.”

  A knowing glance passed between the brothers.

  “Nah,” the short one said. “We want him back. And he belongs to us.”

  The taller one sneered down at her. “Yeah, he belongs to us, so hand him over, lady.”

  She had no choice. She was in the sheriff’s office, for goodness sake. She couldn’t just make a run for it. She loved the dog, but she didn’t really want to get arrested for him.

  Tipping her head, she kissed Dewey on his furry head and gave him one last squeeze. Her hands shook as she held him out.

  The shorter brother roughly grabbed him, and a shiver of disgust ran through her as his filthy hand brushed against hers. Dewey let out a heartbreaking whine, his feet scrambling in midair as he tried to climb back to her.

  Oh gosh. She couldn’t do this.

  Her throat burned, and tears stung her eyes. She turned away, hurrying toward the door. She couldn’t bear to see the little dog with them, couldn’t handle the sound of his pitiful cries.

  She stumbled toward her car, fighting for control as despair threatened to overwhelm her. She’d lost everything she loved today. Mason. Dewey.

  Well, not everything. She still had Mimi. And the thought of how close those two thugs had come to hurting her grandmother stole the breath from Tess’s lungs.

  How had things gotten to this point? She’d let them all down, and her heart felt as if it had shattered to pieces. Her chest burned with the pain of it. She just wanted to get in her car and fall apart.

  A shadow fell across her car, and the scent of unwashed skin surrounded her as she felt a presence behind her. She jumped as one of the scruffy brothers stuck an arm out, pressing his hand against her car door, blocking her from getting away.

  “Hey, lady,” he said, “my brother and I were thinking about what you said. How you were so attached to this here dog and all. And we were thinking that you might want to buy him back from us.”

  Buy him back? Was that what this whole thing was about? Was this all a scam to get money?

  She turned around and took a step back, hoping they wouldn’t actually get rough with her in front of the sheriff’s office.

  The taller one had Dewey tucked into his arm, the rope wound tightly around his neck. These guys didn’t give one fig about the dog. The little shits.

  Well, she did. She loved him, and she’d give them whatever she had to get him back.

  “How much do you want for him?” She tried to keep her tone casual, as if she didn’t really care about the dog.

  Although these two bastards already knew she did.

  The shorter one narrowed his eyes, studying her. “Two hundred dollars.”

  “Two hundred dollars? Are you kidding me? I don’t have that kind of money.” She gestured to the Ford Taurus. “Look at the car I’m driving. Do I look rich to you?”

  “Yeah. You do.” He spat a long stream of tobacco on the ground next to her feet.

  Disgusting pig.

  But she didn’t flinch. She knew they were trying to bully her.

  “And you also look like you want this dog pretty bad.”

  You sound like you could use a lesson in grammar. Ignoring his poor sentence structure, she racked her brain for how she could possibly come up with two hundred dollars or any dollars for that matter.

  She suddenly remembered the bag of tip money Quinn had given her. She’d looked inside it the night before, expecting it to hold an assortment of ones and maybe a five, but had been surprised to see several tens and twenties mixed in as well.

  “Listen, I just worked the snack bar at the hockey game, and I have my tips from that night.” She pulled the crumpled paper sack from her bag and held it out. “There’s got to be close to eighty dollars in there. You can have it, but that’s all I’ve got.”

  “We didn’t expect you to have it on you. We can wait while you go to the ATM.”

  “Then you’ll be waiting a long damn time. I just got fired from my job, and my bank account is completely drained. I can’t even buy a cup of coffee. Literally, what is in this bag is all the money I have to my name.”

  The shorter one eyed her with suspicion. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. It’s the truth. I’ve been sleeping in my car for t
he last few nights because I’m so broke.”

  The taller brother peered into the back seat of her car. “We might take something in trade. You got anything in there you can give us? Anything valuable like a car stereo or an iPad? What about a laptop?”

  She shook her head. “I wish I did. You can have the radio, if you want. I don’t care.”

  “That radio is a piece of crap. It’s not worth anything.”

  She racked her brain again for anything she had that was worth any value at all. All she had were a few toiletries, several fast-food condiment packets, an emergency blanket, and the clothes on her back. She mentally ran through the items in her bag. Her makeup was mostly drugstore brands, and somehow she didn’t think these guys were interested in a few tampons and her seventeen tubes of lip gloss.

  She did have one thing though. One thing of value.

  “Listen, fellas, we both have an objective here. I want the dog, and you want money or something you can sell.” She pointed to her bag. “This purse is the most expensive thing that I own. I’ll trade you it for the dog.”

  The taller one scoffed. “What the hell are we gonna do with a purse? You think we’re some kind of cross-dressers?”

  “No, of course not.” Not the least reason being they had zero sense of style and didn’t recognize a good designer bag when they saw it. “It’s just that this is an expensive bag. It’s designer, and you can easily pawn it for a couple hundred dollars.”

  The shorter one nudged his brother. “You could give it to Angie. Then she might forget about the two hundred bucks you owe her.”

  The taller one seemed to be thinking it over. “You sure that’s all you got?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Yeah. Okay. We’ll take the bag of money and the purse.”

  Tess unlocked and opened the back door of the car and dumped the contents of her purse into the seat. She quickly brushed a hand lovingly over the row of leather daisies, but knew her mother would totally approve of the swap.

  Straightening, she pushed the back door closed with her rump, then handed the paper sack and the purse to one brother as the other unceremoniously dumped the dog into her arms.

  Dewey’s body wriggled with joy as he licked her neck and chin.

  “Nice doing business with you,” she said, clutching the dog to her chest as she slid into the driver’s seat and slammed her car door.

  Not.

  She turned over the engine and fled the parking lot before either brother changed his mind.

  Dewey sat in her lap for the whole drive home. His fur smelled a little like the brothers had, but she’d give him a bath when they got to Mimi’s. Until then, she was content to stroke his back and know that while she might have lost her most valuable possession, she’d gained a prize worth more than any treasure.

  * * *

  Mason picked at his food, his appetite apparently having left with Tess when she’d pulled out of the driveway earlier that day.

  Had it really been only a few hours since she’d left?

  He looked around the table at his family and the small wedding party and tried not to think about the fact that Tess was supposed to be here at the rehearsal dinner. With him.

  The rest of the afternoon had gone by in a flurry of activity as he showered and dressed, then piled into the trucks with his family and went into town to the church. They’d spent well over an hour rehearsing the fifteen-minute ceremony, and Mason had done his best to pay attention and be happy for his brother. His job as the best man wasn’t all that difficult—stand next to Rock, hand him the rings, then smile and walk down the aisle with Leanne Perkins on his arm.

  He wouldn’t have to give the toast until the reception tomorrow, but luckily, he’d written it weeks ago. Of course he had. He was the levelheaded brother, the one who took care of things, who got things done. Who planned for the best and prepared for the worst.

  Well, he’d planned for the best with Tess, and the worst had happened.

  He was still in shock—pretty sure that he’d just missed the last ten minutes of the story Colt had been telling him. The food on his plate, normally his favorite, had his stomach churning and nausea building in his throat. He just wanted this night to be over. He wanted to go home, to crawl into bed and lick his wounds.

  The whole point of asking Tess to be his date was so he wouldn’t have to show up at all of these events as a single. So he wouldn’t have to explain why he still wasn’t married or why he hadn’t found a nice girl to settle down with yet. It was supposed to make the wedding festivities easier on him. Instead, he felt even more humiliated, even more self-conscious of the fact that he was alone.

  Because he’d had someone. For one fleeting second, he’d had a girl. And not just any girl, but the girl. The one he’d thought would stay.

  But he’d been wrong.

  * * *

  Tessa padded barefoot into the kitchen. She couldn’t sleep.

  The clock read close to midnight, and she hoped some warm hot chocolate would help her sleep. But no amount of chocolate was enough to soothe the pain in her heart.

  She slumped into the chair and laid her head on the kitchen table, her energy drained just from walking down the stairs. She didn’t care about the stupid hot chocolate anymore, didn’t have enough strength even to get up and find a cup.

  She’d royally stepped in it, and this was one mess she didn’t know how to fix.

  She’d tried to text Mason a couple of times that night—short messages that said how sorry she was and that she hoped maybe they could talk again in a couple of days. He hadn’t responded to either text, and she knew it was over. That she’d ruined everything this time.

  Dewey stood by her chair, the one thing she’d done right in the last four days. She reached down and picked him up, cuddling the little dog against her chest. He nuzzled his head into her neck.

  It was hard to believe she could love something so desperately after only having it in her life for a few days, but it had only taken her five minutes to fall madly in love with this dog.

  And the same went for Mason.

  Although it might have taken ten minutes to fall in love with him.

  It didn’t seem possible that she could feel so much for a man she’d just met, didn’t seem feasible that her heart could ache this awfully bad after having spent only four days with him. But the pain in her chest was real. The desolate ache of her bones was genuine. And the despair she suffered from knowing that this pain was all her own doing was as authentic as any emotion she’d ever felt.

  Forgetting the hot chocolate, she stumbled back to bed, fell onto the mattress, and pulled the covers over her head. Pressing her face into the pillow, she bit back the screams she wanted to roar into the fabric.

  The pain in her chest built until she feared her skin would tear and split from the force of it. Her throat burned, filled with thick emotion.

  Drawing in a long, shuddering breath, she finally broke. Finally allowed the desperation to take her and let the sobs loose. Deep, racking sobs that came from a cavernous place of heartache and heartbreak.

  Dewey curled up on the pillow next to her head, standing guard over her as she cried herself out and finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  Mason sat on his front porch, his feet propped up on the railing in front of him. Theo lay on the floor next to his chair, and he absently scratched the dog’s back as he rocked back and forth.

  It was late, had to be past midnight. He knew he should get some rest, but he didn’t want to go inside. Didn’t want to climb into his bed and smell the scent of Tess on his sheets. Instead, he’d spent the last hour staring into the darkness, listening to the crickets and the night sounds.

  The soft thud of footsteps had Theo lifting his head and letting out a sniff. A dark shadow approached from the house, and Mason was surprised t
o see his older brother climb the few steps to his porch.

  “Hey, Rock. What are you still doing up? Aren’t you supposed to be tucked in bed getting your beauty rest for the big day tomorrow?”

  “Beauty rest is overrated,” Rock said, passing Mason one of the two opened bottles of beer he held before sinking into the rocking chair next to him. “How you holding up, Brother?”

  Mason shrugged and tipped the bottle to his mouth, letting the cold beer soothe his dry and achy throat. “I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve been better.”

  “I bet.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, each staring out over the pasture.

  “That was a good thing you did today,” Rock finally said. “You know, giving them the money. You didn’t have to. Especially after Tess…”

  “Lied to me? Used me?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “I know I didn’t have to. But it was the right thing to do. I couldn’t let them lose their house. Or let those goons rough up that little old lady. Although, I think they would have had their hands full on the drive back to Denver. That old gal has some spunk.”

  “Just like her granddaughter.”

  Mason sighed. “Yeah, just like her granddaughter.”

  “I know she lied to you, lied to all of us, and that was wrong. But I think she did it for the right reasons.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Rock tipped his beer back and took another swallow. “Seems to me you really liked this girl.”

  “I did. That’s what makes it sting so much.”

  “I know how you feel about people lying to you, so I know this has got to be tearing you up, but are you going to at least talk to her? Try to work things out?”

  “What’s the point? She wasn’t interested in me anyway. All she wanted was to get close to you. Just like every other woman I’ve let into my life.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Tess didn’t give a crap about me. She didn’t even know I was in the room if you were around.”