by Joey Light
“Fair enough.” He found it amusing that she doubted it.
He continued to sit and look at her. It was a thing he could get used to in a heartbeat.
“I watched the stagecoach robbery very closely. It certainly needs work.”
Bristling again, Victoria sighed loudly. She had been the one to choreograph that. What did the big man have to say about it? “So?”
“Thieves wouldn’t run off from a woman with a derringer. Especially after she had fired the two rounds.”
“Oh.” Damn. It was so simple yet she had overlooked it. And the men? They were probably laughing at her behind her back.
Very annoyed, Victoria reached for the washcloth that was by her knee and tossed it in his general direction. She was glad she missed when she watched him cut his eyes from the cloth, then back to her.
She watched him rise and bend down to pick it up. Water dribbled soundlessly from the cloth to the floor. Slowly, he carried it over and kneeled down by the tub.
The audacity! The unmitigated gall! Oaf! “What are you doing?” she demanded, jerking sideways, sloshing water over the edge of the tub.
Eyeing her directly from only inches away, he smiled. “You want me to wash your back, don’t you? That could be the only reason you threw this at me.” He let the wet cloth dangle from his fingers.
Victoria snatched it from him and submarined it into the water. “Out,” she ordered with more grit than she felt.
He glanced down at his watch and, still smiling, slowly stood up and turned for the door.
Hesitating as he reached for the doorknob, he glanced back once more and shot an amused wink her way. “Been an interesting day. Water must be getting cold.” He sauntered out of the room, pulling the door shut, hard, behind him. Wes chuckled when he heard the wet slap of the washcloth thud against the wood of the closed door.
Victoria hadn’t realized how tense she was until, alone again, she relaxed her muscles. She growled through her teeth. Who the heck did he think he was? So now things are more complicated than they were yesterday. Another male for her to contend with. Was there no end to the fight she would have to prove herself able to be a partner in Glory Town? Well, maybe they had a lesson to learn themselves. New resolve grew in her. It wasn’t nice being somewhere you weren’t wanted, and she had never been in a situation like it. She felt they could all eventually get along quite easily and happily. Didn’t they realize she had a lot to offer the town? And that she didn’t give up so easily? Besides, she had nothing to go back to in Virginia. Nothing but an overbearing mother who was still terribly insulted that she hadn’t made her marriage to David work. Nothing but her mother’s country club friends all bent on supplying her with new prospects. She squeezed her eyes shut tight. She felt totally worthless back home. This chance was like an unplanned escape route. She wanted it to work. She needed it to. With the toe of her right foot, she flipped the hot water handle on and lay back.
It was then she heard him jog down the stairs instead of going into his room as she had expected. It had been obvious that he was going to bathe and, she assumed, turn in for the night. She wondered where he was going…and then put the thought from her mind. It was absolutely none of her business. And neither was the beige-on-dark-brown robe that still lay in a heap on the floor.
Chapter Two
The barn had been left to go too long. Once the host of some raucous barn dances, it now stood abandoned and from the looks of it was used for a shed or a catchall.
Tools lined the walls and the floor. Old harnesses and saddles, blankets, moldy hay, and various pieces of trash were strewn here and there. Victoria shook her head. Never had their barn and stables been in such a state. Of course, in Virginia there had been stableboys and grooms to see to such things. Out here you had your own two hands wrapped around a pitchfork and a broom.
Rolling her sleeves up to her elbows, Victoria started at the end closest to the door. Her hands had already begun to callus from some of the work she had done and from learning to work with some of the horses. Twice, one of the more stubborn mustangs had pulled the leather through her hands. She preferred the gentle company of her own gelding to some of the less disciplined mounts here, but she didn’t mind it really. She found a certain amount of satisfaction in the doing as opposed to the directing. She lined the tools up according to size. The older, nonfunctional ones were thrown in the wheelbarrow. Half this stuff was going to the dump.
Not many people were awake at this hour. The sun had barely cleared the horizon, sending strong beams of light through the morning haze. The stillness was broken only by the sounds Victoria made as she moved around the barn and the early morning birds in search of the elusive worm.
As she worked, Victoria looked around, planning. Once the floor was cleaned down to the packed dirt, she would start on the stalls. They hadn’t been used for horses in years but she planned on bringing Tonka up here from the new barn on the back lot. She liked that it was authentic and not a metal building with a cement floor.
They could advertise a dance for Saturday nights. Tables could be set up nearest the office, laden with pies and cakes and punch, just as she had seen on TV. A not so very authentic stereo system would serve until she could find a few fiddlers and a caller. Square dancing. It would be the social event of the county. Romantic slow dances. The Western two-step. It could become a monthly event bringing steady streams of new money into Glory Town. Aside from the tourists, people from the surrounding towns could enjoy them, too.
A small anvil resisted Victoria’s efforts to move it. Pushing her sleeves up farther and taking a deep breath, she bent down and grabbed it on both ends and tugged.
“Trying to give yourself a hernia?”
Without breaking her pace, she dragged the heavy iron block toward the tack room door. “You’re up early, Mr. Cooper. Funny, I didn’t figure you for it. Some of the men around here are as lazy as sheep and…” She felt the heat of embarrassment. The last time they had been together in the same room, she had been naked A slight rush of pink flushed her cheeks.
He moved past her and lifted the anvil as if it were filled with helium. Returning, he cast her an absent smile. “Ladies shouldn’t pick up anything that weighs that much. There’s plenty of men around here who would be glad to do it for you.”
Grabbing the rake, she pulled hay and straw toward the door. She watched him as he looked around and moved to one corner, then began pacing off the distance with a cocky, long-legged stride. Curious, she leaned her cheek on the rake handle and watched him.
He reached for a pad and pencil he had stuffed in his rear pocket and began to scribble notes on it. Walking to the door, he stepped off the distance to the back wall.
“What are you doing?” she asked, setting the rake against the paddock door just a mite incensed that he was here, making some sort of plan…in her barn.
“Measuring. I intend to set up a few classes in here. We can use the haymow for the falls. Here, I can choreograph the gunfights and practice instinct shooting. I think we need a good sharp-shooting show. That always keeps the tourists interested.” He tested the strength of the beams holding up the loft.
Her chin tilted upward, automatically. “I was cleaning this up for barn dancing on Saturday nights.”
He nodded only half listening, caught up in his own thoughts. “Good idea. We can do all of it.”
She picked up a crushed beer can and tossed it, hard, into the wheelbarrow to make her point. “I’m glad to have your permission. And I want it kept clean.”
He made the time to take a good look at her. There was no sense irritating her even though right now he would have loved to stomp all over her queenly attitude. “Yes, ma’am,” Wes agreed grinning and went on about his business. He could feel her eyes on him, at his back. He didn’t mind. It had the effect of standing with your back to the sunshine on a cold winter’s day.
Why did it infuriate her when he said yes ma’am? It was the way he said it, she d
ecided. Insolent. He had sort of a takeover attitude, a little or maybe a lot of disregard for her even though he claimed he was here to do what she wanted.
Victoria had enough of that with Buck. “Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, Wes Cooper. If you’re going to use this place, too, then the least you can do is help clean it up.”
Wes turned slowly to survey the room with a lengthy look. “I was hired to teach, not sweep. I’ll get some of the men in here to help.”
Her fists slapped onto her hips. “Look here, Cooper. Teach yes, not run this entire place according to you. Go on about your business. I can take care of this myself.” Watching him light a cigarette, she fumed. “And don’t smoke in the barn.”
He looked from the cigarette in his hand and back to her. “I’ve been smoking in and around barns since I was fourteen. I know how to smoke in a barn.” Turning his attention back to the pad in his hand, he jotted a few numbers.
“Oh, not my barn.” She stared at him defiantly, the toe of her dusty boot tapping the floor.
Earlier, when Buck had explained to him that she was a spoiled brat from some rich family in Virginia, he hadn’t even come close to an actual description. They stood there eyeing each other as two prizefighters might before a bout. Normally a patient man, Wes shrugged mentally. He might have to work around her but he surely didn’t have to bow to her moods. He tipped his hat and was out the door, completely missing the face she made at his back.
Later, strolling through town in her new period costume, Victoria bid good day to the tourists and patted the children on the head. She loved her dress. The lace collar curled around her neck and the flounced hem swirled around her ankles. It was yellow with tiny daisies on it and lace down the entire front following the pearly buttons.
Some days she wore jeans; on others she felt feminine and indulged in the pretty dresses their seamstress toiled over for hours in her trailer. A bonnet was pertly tied under her chin and a parasol dangled from her hand.
She felt as if she were waiting for the stage to roll in, bringing her husband back from business in the East. She chuckled. She could definitely get carried away with the role playing. But she also noticed it was good for her. She smiled as she looked around at her town. The ambience of this place filled her with a peace she had never known. No tensions. No pressures to perform, to be Marcia Clay’s daughter. Before, there had always been some tea to attend, or a charity to work on. The life-style her mother lived and simply expected that she live also had become a hollow existence to Victoria. At exactly what point in her life she had decided this, she wasn’t sure, but it had hit hard after her divorce from David. Real hard.
As she made her way toward the hotel, she spotted Wes walking out of the saloon. He, too, had purposely dressed to fool the sightseers…in black, with a white neckerchief flowing in the light breeze. His authenticity almost took her breath away. Colt ammunition. He wore a new Stetson with the brim turned down. A real go-to-hell hat. He looked a man to stand aside from. Spotting her, he smiled and flicked the brim of his hat with a hand snugged into a black leather gunfighter’s glove.
Victoria sashayed on into the hotel and took a seat at one of the tables. Joe came over right away. “What’ll it be, Ms. Clay? The usual?”
Flashing him a sweet smile, she answered, “Yes, Joe, and let me have a few of those sugar cookies, please.”
A long, dark shadow fell across her table as J. Weston Cooper sidled up to it. His deep, smooth voice reverberated across the room. “Mind if I join you, ma’am?”
She smiled coyly for the tourists humming around them but said between her teeth, “Quit calling me that.” And then a little louder, “Why, of course, Mr. Weston.”
Joe brought her tea and cookies and set them in the middle of the table. Victoria didn’t miss Wes’s raised eyebrow. “Mr. Cooper, what can I get for you?” Joe asked.
Without once taking his eyes off her, Wes smiled and answered, “Sarsaparilla, Joe. No ice.”
Joe nodded and left them. Victoria tasted one of the cookies she had smelled baking early this morning, it was delicious.
“Tea?” Wes queried, purposely goading her.
“It’s four o’clock. And like you said, some habits are hard to break. Cookie?” she offered sweetly, but Wes picked up the sharpness of her look.
He shook his head. “I’m trying to give them up. So it’s true that you Virginians have tea in the afternoon.” He sat back in the chair and relaxed.
She looked up at him and, remembering they were part of a play, smiled again. “True enough, Mr. Cooper. What do you Oklahomans lay claim to? Plundering and pillaging?”
Without taking a moment to think, he answered. “Red Dog and poker games.”
“I see. You’ll have to teach me,” she said, with no interest at all.
“To drink Red Dog? I don’t think so. Poker I can take care of. The boys are getting together in your nice clean barn Friday night for a friendly game. Want to join us?”
He was laughing at her again. “Hardly.” She adjusted her skirt. He was making her feel uncomfortable, too. Did he do it on purpose? He seemed so sure of himself, yet
there was something she picked up on that said he wasn’t; he just wanted everyone to think so. She would strive for a decent conversation as long as they were on display for the public. “How are you getting along with the men?”
He thanked Joe for the sarsaparilla and took a long drink. “Most of them fine. What’s with Nick? He have a problem with everybody or just me?”
“Oh, Nick. Yes, well, I figured he’d really resent your being here. He thinks everything is just fine the way it is. He seems to live this life twenty-four hours a day. Has nothing else going for him since his wife died some years back, they tell me. Sometimes I watch him. He takes this much too much to heart, but if it’s all a man has, who am I to judge? He’s been very nice to me since I arrived. He was more than willing to show me around when Buck couldn’t be bothered.” She dunked a cookie in her tea and took a bite. Smiling coldly, she added, “Besides, he hates it when a new man…a handsome one, comes on the set and turns the ladies’ heads.”
“I turn heads?”
She laughed and dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Don’t pretend you don’t realize you cut quite a figure in that getup. Even the married ones are making eyes at you.”
He shrugged as he raised the glass to his lips, remembering another woman who had once “made eyes at him.”
Victoria followed the glass to his lips with her gaze. “Most men like that.”
“It is good,” he teased, pretending to examine the dark liquid in the bottom of the tumbler.
“That women like to admire them.” She knew he was playing mental gymnastics with her, but then, he had no way of knowing she knew how to play that game as well as he did. She may have been a smothered Virginia lady, one protected and pampered, but she had worked with veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars…listened to them, cared about them and for them. They were a wily bunch. Stuffed full of emotions and careful who they shared them with. They were witty, capable, and sharp. She had learned to parry and banter.
“Are you divorced?” she asked, thinking that might be the reason for his indifference to his appeal.
His eyes snapped back to hers. She was blunt, and he wondered before answering her what about him revealed that to her. “Yep.”
“I’m divorced, too, but I haven’t lost interest in the opposite sex as your shrug would indicate.”
So that was it. He seemed not to be concerned with women in general. Well, she wasn’t that far off, he admitted to himself.
“You weren’t married to my wife. But I have nothing against women. At least not at the moment.” He signaled Joe for another drink.
“It just happened and you’re still hurt, right?” she guessed, somehow feeling a little satisfaction along with it.
When Wes chose not to answer her, she merely smiled. She had learned about silence, too, and how to respect it at times. “It
’s about time for the stage to roll in and get rightfully robbed again. The boys and I made some changes but you might still find it needs work.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” He was wondering, now, what had possessed him to stop in to talk to her.
Used to asking questions when she wanted to know something, Victoria didn’t hesitate. “Why did you quit the state police?”
His interested gaze fell on her mouth as she slipped a small sugar cookie between her lips. He wished he didn’t keep wondering what it would feel like for him to be there. This lady just wasn’t his type. He didn’t like pushy. “It was a get-nothing-done job.”
Chuckling, she asked him, “How so? Couldn’t you keep up with your quota of traffic tickets?”
“Don’t like cops, huh? I’ll save us both a very boring conversation. No matter what an officer does…it doesn’t change anything. The perpetrators just come back in different suits with different reasons. I got tired.”
“I wouldn’t think that to be true. You get criminals off the streets, save lives, assist…”
Glad to hear the heavy creak of wheels and the thunder of horses’ hooves, Wes looked out the window. “Here comes the stage. You coming out?” he asked her as he pushed his chair back.
Victoria rose along with him and took the arm he offered her. So being a cop was a sore spot with him for some reason. She sensed he had a number of tender areas. That was fine with her. But still none of this fit. Why was he here?
She answered it herself. He was here because Buck jumped the gun. Because Buck wanted to be sure she didn’t go out and hire a man who would do a great job and make her look good.
After the announcement cleared the streets to prevent accidents, the stage thundered into town with “Ghost Riders in the Sky” blaring out over the grainy intercom system. The sidewalks were overflowing. Some of the children still had oversized hats and vests on that they had borrowed from some of the reenactors. They paused in their mock shootouts. Other children were either on their parents’ shoulders, pulled up and propped on their hips, or swinging from the porch posts. From the looks of the smiles of anticipation, the adults were just as fascinated as the kids.
