by Lisa Wingate
On the other hand, it was kind of fun being a local celebrity, the topic of small-town scandal and speculation. But there was a part of me that worried I might be enjoying this too much. I had a daughter, and a job, and a real life waiting for me a thousand miles away. Getting involved with Zach Truitt was only going to make it that much harder to go home again.
Crossing the parking lot, I hummed the theme to The Sound of Music, blocking out the negative thoughts. Live for today, I told myself. Enjoy what is, for a change, without worrying about what might be.
I mentally practiced my new motto as I was working in Melvin’s storeroom, bumping into shelves laden with old peanut jars containing every possible type of screws, nails, nuts, and bolts. An artificial Christmas wreath fell on my head and deposited a fine layer of dust as I moved around the fossil, carefully taking measurements and jotting them down in a notepad. Pushing the plastic wreath aside impatiently, I finished my work, then gently covered the specimen and backed out the storeroom door, closing it softly, having a vision of peanut jars falling on the valuable fossil.
When I turned around, the Blum sisters were on the porch, peering through the dusty glass like goldfish in a bowl, right beneath the words BAIT and AMMO. They jumped, and I jumped.
Catching my breath, I proceeded to the door.
The sisters met me there, pretending to be looking at a display of fishing poles. “We thought Melvin might be back,” one of them said.
“He doesn’t seem to be here,” I answered sweetly as they peered past my shoulders toward the storeroom like a couple of savvy old hens eyeing the corncrib. Flipping the lock on the door, I pulled it closed, and added, “I think he’ll be back around one.” Then I trotted off down the steps.
Behind me, the Blum sisters tried the door and snorted in frustration, one of them whispering to the other, “I’m sure she’s with the FBI. Vanita said bones. I heard her… .”
Chuckling to myself, I scurried off, expecting the Jubilee Ranch pickup to be at the café. I was unprepared for the level of my disappointment when it wasn’t. I found myself lingering by my Jeep watching the dog, who was still sound asleep in the front seat, drooling on my upholstery. Gazing up and down the highway, I wished Zach would materialize from the heat waves. It was five minutes after twelve. He was late. Heroes weren’t supposed to be late.
“C’mon in and play a round of forty-two with us,” Pop hollered from the dining car window. “Zach got held up this mornin’ with some important call from his work. Been on and off the phone tryin’ to straighten out some mess in Fedora, Texas. He’ll be here directly, I reckon.”
“All right,” I called, and gave up my lonely vigil to enter the Big Lizard.
The next thing I knew, I was engrossed in a life-or-death domino tournament with Pop, Dandy Roads, and another old gent named Ham, who I gathered had once been the vet in town, Zach’s idol and inspiration for a career in veterinary medicine. He patted my hand and told me what a fine young fellow Zach was, and how he sure wanted to see Zach finally settle down and be happy, preferably in San Saline, which didn’t have a vet since Doc Ham retired. Doc Ham was none too subtle in his matchmaking, and I was glad when the domino competition became intense enough that Dandy Roads told him to hush up and concentrate.
The game was Pop and me against Dandy and Ham. I was relieved that most of the morning domino crowd had cleared out, because I hadn’t played dominoes since summer camp in the seventh grade. Under pressure, I brushed up my skills quickly. Fifteen minutes passed without my even noticing.
Vanita came by at twelve twenty, brought me a glass of tea, and told me Zach had just called and he would be there in five minutes.
“No problem,” I said, and made a startlingly brilliant domino play.
Pop was impressed. “Pretty … and smart.” He wiggled a bushy eyebrow at me. “Just my kind of gal.”
Doc Ham scoffed. “You cain’t have her, Pop. She’s already taken. Didn’t you hear? Her and Zach was down under the oak tree last evenin’ wrapped around each other like lizards on a beanpole.”
Shaking my head, I covered my eyes with my hand.
“Ham!” Vanita scolded. “Mind your manners. She’s a guest.”
Doc Ham cleared his throat irritably. “Well, not for long. It’s only a matter of time before—”
“Willard Ham!” Vanita scolded again, popping the top of his baldhead with her dishrag, leaving behind bread crumbs, coffee grounds, and a little red mark.
Bracing an elbow on the table, he wagged his chin indignantly, rubbing his head. “They been together under the Lover’s Oak. Like lizards on a beanpole. You know what that means.”
“Hush now,” Vanita muttered, then turned as the doorbell jingled. “Well, hi, Zach, there you are.”
Everyone looked up, and Pop peeked at Willard’s last two dominoes, then winked at me.
“Ready?” Crossing the dining car with a long, unhurried stride, Zach smiled the exact lopsided smile I’d been waiting for, and stood above the table.
I resisted the urge act giddy right there in front of everyone. “Well … you know, now I’m sort of engrossed in a domino game with three handsome men.”
Pop’s lips twisted sideways beneath his gray mustache. “Got good taste. I like that in a woman.”
Zach leaned against the booth, and his nearness went through me like a bolt of electricity. He touched my hair, and I felt myself moving closer. “You’ve got tinsel in your hair,” he teased, pulling out a long strand of silver that must have come from the Christmas wreath in Melvin’s closet.
Employing supreme restraint, I managed to play a domino before I answered. “Yes, well, that must be a piece of my halo showing, because otherwise I’d be mad at you for being late.”
“Spunky, too,” Pop commented, and Zach chuckled. The deep, resonant sound was more than I could resist. I loved his laugh.
“All right, I give,” I said, passing my dominoes over to Pop and standing up. “I’m about to starve to death.”
“If you’re nice, I’ll let you have a snack on the way,” Zach said, then turned to Vanita. “Everything ready?”
Pressing her lips together, Vanita fended off a self-satisfied grin. “By the door. In the picnic basket.”
“Picnic basket?” I questioned, glancing toward the exit, where a huge basket was, indeed, waiting on one of the tables. “I thought we were eating here.”
Zach leaned close to my ear, so that I felt the warmth of his breath against my skin. “I had something more private in mind.”
He needn’t have whispered. Everyone at the table heard. The old men chuckled, and Vanita shushed them. I realized this was all part of a plan, and everybody knew about it all along. Everyone but me.
EIGHTEEN
IQUICKLY FORGAVE ZACH FOR BEING LATE FOR OUR LUNCH DATE. AS it turned out, he had been busy planning a picnic for the two of us. He’d even arranged for Pop and Doc Ham, who’d ridden to the café together, to take my SUV back to the ranch and put Mr. Grits in the dog kennel, where we wouldn’t have to worry about him. Pop and Doc Ham drew straws for the pleasure of driving the dog back to the ranch, and Doc Ham won—or lost, depending on how you looked at it.
We left them finishing a cutthroat domino game with Dandy Roads. Zach shook his head as the domino discussion rose in volume, following us out the door. “Sorry you got roped into a game with those old reprobates. Although it looks like you were pretty good at it.”
“Actually, it was kind of fun,” I admitted as we checked on Mr. Grits, then climbed into the Jubilee Ranch truck and headed out. “Pop said you’d been tied up all morning with phone calls from work.”
Frowning, Zach waited for a UPS truck to turn off into a driveway outside of town. “We’ve got an Exotic Newcastle Disease scare at a commercial poultry facility in Fedora. It looks like the area manager and the state vet have it contained at this point, but I’ll have to make an overnight trip to west Texas.”
I felt a sharp pang of disappointmen
t. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” I said as we turned onto a back road, heading for some special place Zach had in mind.
“Yeah, me too,” he agreed. “Technically, I’m on leave for a couple more weeks to take care of Pop, but things come up. We’ve got one vet out with a slipped disk and another on paternity leave, so I’m it for this little junket to Fedora. I’d ask you to ride along, but the only hotel in Fedora is so bad the truckers don’t even stay in it, and it’s a long way from Fedora to anywhere else. I’m just going to get the inspection done as quickly as possible and head home.” Pausing, he tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel contemplatively, and for an instant I thought he was going to ask me to go along, even though there was no decent hotel in Fedora. Then he finished with, “Not much fun.”
“Not like fixing windmills.” For a fleeting moment I considered offering to go, in spite of the problem with accommodations, but an overnight trip brought up all kinds of issues. Besides, I needed to be here, studying the track site and watching to see if the mystery truck came back.
“I do know how to show a girl a good time, don’t I?” He grinned wickedly beneath the straw cowboy hat as we pulled off the road and drove across a cattle guard into a pasture.
“Yes, you do,” I said, smitten anew.
Beyond the cattle guard the road faded quickly, and we jounced along a dry creek bed that looked a little like the surface of the moon. The back end of the truck bumped over a rock, and I popped out of my seat like a Super Ball, caught myself against the roof, and landed practically in Zach’s lap.
He set me upright again. “Whoa, there, little lady, you all right?” He did a pretty good John Wayne impression.
“I think I need a visit to the chiropractor. I don’t know if I’m cut out for all this cowgirl stuff.”
“Could have fooled me.” His grin made my heart flutter. Before I could answer, he stopped the truck, killed the engine, and said, “We’re here.”
“We are?” Leaning close to the front window, I peered out skeptically. We were parked at the base of a small mountain, an old volcanic cone that rose from the surrounding flatland like someone had dropped it there by accident. The terrain around it was rocky and bare. Not an ideal spot for a picnic. “Where are we eating?”
“Up there.” Zach pointed toward an ancient volcanic deposit that had worn smooth over time.
“Up there?” I echoed doubtfully, craning to look out the top of the window. “Way up there?”
Stepping out, he grabbed the picnic basket from the backseat, then extended a hand. “Come on. You’ll love the view.”
Slipping my fingers into his, I slid out the driver’s side. “I’ll need more than a chiropractor if I go up there. I’ll need CPR.”
Zach raised a brow. “Don’t forget—you’re with a highly trained medical professional.”
“Geez.” I groaned at the lame joke. “You are so bad.”
He chuckled low in his throat. “Not usually. You just bring it out in me.”
I shook my head, wondering how that could be true. I’d never been the type to bring out the bad in any man. “You don’t get out enough.”
Catching my gaze for a moment, he shrugged ruefully, and I had a sense that his life was much like mine. Could it be that the last few days were as much a change for him as they were for me?
Winding through a thick stand of cedar, we crossed the distance to the bottom of the hill. “Are you sure there’s a way up?” I said, shading my eyes and doubtfully surveying the boulder-strewn slope.
“I’m sure.” Confident as usual, he started out ahead of me with the basket. “There’s a goat trail all the way up.”
I followed, because I didn’t have much choice. I tried not to think about what it was going to actually be like when I got to the top and looked down. Then again, I would be with Zach, which was all that seemed to matter.
“The trouble is …” I puffed, my breath coming in short gasps as the trail turned steep and rocky, “I’m not a goat.” I couldn’t believe how out of shape I’d let myself get during these last few months of worrying over Sydney’s custody case.
Ahead, Zach laughed. “Come on,” he said again. “You’ll love the view.”
Bracing my hands on my hips, I sucked in air, watching him move easily up the trail, his strides, graceful, strong. I didn’t hurry to catch up, just stood enjoying the moment, admiring the way he moved. Actually, I loved the view already… .
We spent the afternoon at the third-highest point in San Saba County. The scenery was breathtaking, the food excellent, and the company absolutely perfect. By the time we finally returned to the Jubilee so that Zach could leave on his trip, I felt like I could have floated down from the mountain.
He kissed me one last time behind the corner of the barn at ranch headquarters. I hung on a moment and so did he. It seemed that if he left, something would change, and I didn’t want it to. I wondered if he felt the same way.
“Be careful,” I said, with an odd prickle of sadness in my throat, feeling like this was the end of my Cinderella fantasy.
“I will.” Checking his watch, he frowned reluctantly, the carefree cowboy looking much more like a USDA veterinarian with obligations. “I’ve already got my things in the truck. I’d better head out.” He motioned vaguely toward a brown pickup, which I surmised was what he drove when he wasn’t in the Jubilee Ranch monster truck. “I’ll be back late tomorrow afternoon.” He kissed my hand before breaking the bond of our intertwined fingers, then touched my cheek, turned, and left.
“I’ll be here,” I replied softly, watching until he had climbed into the truck and driven out of sight.
I wandered by the stone water trough with the goldfish inside. Stopping to watch the fish swim in and out of the dappled sunlight, I touched the water’s surface and thought about our first meeting there—a day that began with the insanity of my all-night drive from Colorado, and ended in a place I could never have imagined, with me romanticizing about, of all things, a cowboy.
A lot can happen in a day, my mother would have said, in her ever-cheerful Pollyanna way. Keep your chin up. All things are possible.
Are they? I wondered as I headed for the ranch house.
Pop Truitt was waiting on the porch, and my Jeep was parked in the drive with the back hatch raised. Mr. Grits popped his head over the passenger seat and whined at me when I looked inside. “What are you doing in there?” I asked.
Pop hobbled toward the gate to meet me. “We tried to convince him to go in the dog kennel, but he wasn’t willin,’ and Ham and me … well, we figured our steer-wrastlin’ days was over, so we just let him stay in there. I opened the back door so he could get some breeze. He got out, did his business on the grass, took hisself a drink out of the flowerpot, then got back in again. I just been sittin’ out here keepin’ an eye on him since Ham left.”
“Thank you,” I said as the dog poked his head out the window, greeting us. “I’m sorry he was so much trouble.”
“Wasn’t no trouble,” Pop insisted. “Jocelyn won’t let me do anything but hang around the house anyhow. Every time I try to pick up somethin’ heavier than a domino, she squeals like I just committed dadgum grand larceny. Why don’cha just put that feller in the dog pen over there, let him stretch his legs while you and I talk? Got some iced tea in the fridge.”
“Oh, I really just came to—”
Mr. Grits stumbled sideways, hitting the GPS and causing Gertie to begin giving directions to get from Texas back home to Denver. Before the dog could go into panic mode, I opened the door and took him out of the car.
Sticking his head into the car, Pop gave the dash an uncertain frown. “Well, what in the world? I never.”
“Maybe it would be a good idea if I put the dog in the kennel, just for a minute,” I said, silencing Gertie as Mr. Grits tugged at the rope.
“Reckon so,” Pop agreed and we walked Mr. Grits to the kennel. “That car always do that? Doc Ham said it was a-talkin’ to him all the
way back from town. I thought old Doc had finally gone plumb over the fence.” He glanced back at the car like it might be possessed. “Guess not.”
“It’s a GPS,” I replied, and Pop delivered a cross-eyed frown through his Coke-bottle glasses, so I explained, “Global Positioning System. I bought it with the car.”
“On purpose?” Pop asked, and I chuckled.
“Well, now that you mention it, it is pretty annoying. It keeps you from getting lost, though.”
Pop raised an incredulous brow. “Think I’d rather be lost.”
Laughing together, we secured Mr. Grits in the shady dog kennel and walked toward the house. I could see where Zach got his sense of humor.
Pop moved his lips beneath the gray mustache, chewing on a thought. “That’s what’s wrong with the world these days. Folks think everything’s got to be planned out, guaranteed, and insured. Don’t nobody ever want to take a risk.”
Frowning, I considered the unpredictable events that had led me to the Jubilee Ranch. The last few days I’d been learning to take risks. So far the risks had paid off, but where this would eventually lead, I couldn’t imagine. “Guess so,” I agreed.
Pop leaned on my arm as we walked slowly up the steps. “All the best things in life start with a risk.” We stood for a moment on the porch while Pop caught his balance and his breath. His eyes were wise and thoughtful. “When I was a young pup … ” He stopped to check his watch, then said, “Hang. We’d better get on inside. It’s time for the gardening show on the Home Shopping Network.”
“Oh … all right,” Bemused by the switch from “life’s an adventure” to gardening on TV, I followed Pop inside, where he offered me iced tea and gave me a tour while the Home Shopping Network blared through the rooms.
By the end of our visit, I knew all about the history of the main ranch house, I’d heard several potentially embarrassing stories about Zach’s childhood, and I’d been introduced to a half dozen new gardening tools on the Home Shopping Network. I waited by the player piano in the front parlor while Pop retrieved a box of documents about Big Lizard Bottoms.
