Long, Hot Texas Summer

by Brown, Carolyn

  Loretta had come to the ranch focused on a mission. It damn sure wasn’t planning a party for the whole canyon, but the notebook was in front of her and Rosie’s expression said she meant business.

  “Rosie, you know how you love planning for the party,” Jackson said.

  She pointed her finger at him and her dark eyes flashed. “Don’t turn on that charm with me, Jackson Bailey. I’ll be at the party, but I’m not lifting a single finger to plan it, to keep it going, or to play nice with all the people. I’m going to eat good food, sit in my lawn chair, and visit with the folks and then watch the fireworks show.”

  “Will you help us pick out someone to take care of cooking and cleaning?” Jackson asked.

  Rosie shook her head. “I’ll help train if the new person needs it. I won’t do any picking or choosing. That’s y’all’s job. You’re the ones who’ll have to live with her, not me.”

  “And where is this new person going to live?” Nona asked.

  “That’s your business, long as you don’t expect her to share my house. I’m too damned old and set in my ways to have to worry with someone else’s coming and going. And besides, my youngest sister is coming for a long visit this fall and you know my kids come for Christmas every year, so don’t go puttin’ some stranger in my house,” Rosie answered.

  Jackson nodded. “I’ve been expecting this for the past five years. Just promise me you won’t leave the ranch.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. The ranch will need a granny someday.” She grinned.

  Loretta wasn’t worried about the party. She had a book with all the past caterers, party supply rentals, phone numbers, and everything she needed to get it all together. She laid the binder on the coffee table. Her phone rang at the same time she flipped the book open.

  “Mama, I’ve been tricked by Rosie,” she said.

  “She’s always been a sneaky one, but after what your sisters told me, you deserve it. What’s she done now?” Katy asked.

  “Tricked me into staying until after the big July blowout on the ranch and turned the whole party over to me to plan. I’m sitting here looking at an old picture of me and Jackson the first year I came to the ranch party. I bet that cruise she went on was planned at the last minute too, just to keep me here for that week,” Loretta said.

  “Well, darlin’ daughter, their time is limited. We have decided that we’re coming to the canyon for the Fourth of July party,” Katy said. “I swear to God. That Heather and Maria were wild when y’all were teenagers and evidently they haven’t grown up yet. Drinking at eleven o’clock in the morning? What were you thinking?”

  “That it tasted damn fine. We started two hours before that and I was tossing back whiskey like it was water by eleven,” Loretta said.

  “Lord, love a duck! What has happened to my sweet daughter?”

  Loretta laughed. “We all have a devil inside us, don’t we, Mama?”

  “Yes, and yours is Jackson Bailey.”

  Loretta really laughed then. “Mama, think about what you just said.”

  “Oh, hush! That canyon brings out the worst in you. I’ll see you on the Fourth and between your sisters and me, we will straighten you out.”

  “You too busy to take a ride?” Jackson yelled from the foyer.

  “I’m plannin’ a party for the next two weeks,” Loretta shouted back.

  He swaggered into the living room in faded jeans, a plaid work shirt, an old straw hat, and cowboy boots that had seen lots of wear. Her chest tightened and her pulse jacked up into high gear.

  “Is that Jackson I hear?” Katy asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

  “Your voice changes when he’s in the room. I don’t like it, never did.”

  “I’ll call you later,” she said.

  He stopped inside the door. “Tell your mother hello for me.”

  “I hear him. Get your bags packed. Your vacation is over the day after your Fourth of July party,” Katy said.

  The line went dead.

  She looked up at Jackson. “Take a ride where?”

  “Wherever you want to go long as it’s in Silverton. I need to pick up a tractor part for Flint up there,” he said.

  “I want a snow cone. A rainbow one with cherry, grape, and banana,” she said.

  “Silverton it is. They’ve got a little stand set up across from the courthouse that makes the kind like we had in high school. Even put them in a cone-shaped container.” He smiled.

  “I’ll get my boots on,” she said.

  Jackson sniffed the air when she came down the stairs. Was that perfume?

  Loretta had changed into denim shorts and tied her long red hair to one side. He longed to bury his face in her soft neck and kiss his way around to her full lips. And yes, that was perfume, he decided when he got a better whiff of it. It was the same scent she’d used in high school and it took him back to those days.

  He quickly shook his head. He was a grown man. A woman’s perfume shouldn’t turn him inside out.

  But the heart doesn’t have eyes or ears and it doesn’t give a damn about time or age, his conscience reminded him.

  “Ready?” he asked hoarsely.

  She nodded. “Do they stay open this late? Don’t get my hopes up for a rainbow snow cone and then disappoint me, cowboy.”

  “They’re open until nine every night, and believe me, you won’t be disappointed.” He laid a hand on the small of her back and guided her through the house to the back door.

  He started the engine and pulled around the house to the lane. “Why didn’t you tell me you were stressing out? It’s a wonder you didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.”

  “Guess I’m a tough old broad. I came out on the other side with only a little scorch on my wings,” Loretta said.

  “I don’t smell smoke. I smell that perfume you’ve always worn. The kind that I bought you for Christmas when we were about sixteen.”

  “I was fifteen. And I still wear it. Now what?”

  “I could buy it for you again this Christmas if you’ll put it on your list.” He grinned.

  “You know what I’m talking about, Jackson. It’s been too long. We can’t take up where we left off all those years ago.” She turned toward him, their gazes meeting.

  “You are right. We’ve changed and we’re two different people now. Crazy thing is”—he looked back at the road—“my heart still feels the same. It didn’t get the memo about us growing up.”

  “So what now?” she asked again.

  “I’m as attracted to you as I was in the fifth grade, Loretta, and ever’ bit as much as I was in high school. I’ve measured every woman I’ve gone out with by your yardstick and they came up lacking. So I vote that we start with right now, leave the past alone and move forward. Loretta, would you go to dinner and dancing with me on Saturday night after work?”

  “Well?” Jackson finally asked when she didn’t answer right away.

  “The Sugar Shack?” she asked. Somehow that didn’t seem like a real date.

  You’ve slept with him. What does a real date matter anyway? that irritating voice in her head asked.

  It means another step in a direction I don’t know if I’m ready to take, she argued.

  “Wherever you want to go. I’ll pick you up at seven and you choose the place,” he said.

  “What if I want to go to Mustang and eat at my favorite restaurant?”

  “Then I guess we’ll knock off work at noon,” he grinned.

  “Why are you being nice? You wasted a whole afternoon sitting with me in a cabin with no air-conditioning and it was hot as hell in there,” she asked.

  He raised a dark eyebrow as they came up out of the canyon into land so flat and far-reaching that cotton fields met the sky out there in the distance.

  “Did you miss our beautiful su
nsets when you left? Do the ones in your part of Oklahoma compare to that?” he asked.

  “Yes, I miss them very much. And no, Oklahoma sunsets are gorgeous, but they damn sure aren’t as pretty as that,” she said.

  “Where are we going to dinner Saturday night?” he asked.

  “The creek with a picnic.” She said the first thing that came to her mind.

  He drove down the wide Main Street in Silverton. “That sounds like fun, but I want to take you to a nice place with maybe a live band and good food.”

  “Then you choose,” she said. It was all moot anyway, since her mother had said that Friday was the end of her vacation time. On Saturday she had to be ready to go back to her job or forfeit it forever—yet another decision to be made in a swirling sea of craziness.

  He parked in front of the courthouse and hand in hand they walked across the street to the snow-cone stand, where he ordered two with cherry on one side, grape on the other, and a strip of banana right down the middle. They carried them back to the pickup, where they sat on the tailgate to eat them as they watched the occasional pickup or car go by.

  “Things haven’t changed much around here. I am surprised that there aren’t more teenagers in pickup trucks out this time of evening,” she said.

  “They all go to Amarillo on the weekends nowadays,” he said.

  Some things do change, she thought.

  “Do you remember Cooper Wilson?” Jackson asked.

  “Of course. He was a little shit. Is he in prison?”

  “No.” Jackson grinned. “He’s the sheriff and that’s him coming out of the courthouse right now.”

  “Are you joking? Bobby Lee is preaching and Cooper is in law enforcement? Holy shit!” Loretta exclaimed.

  “Hey, Cooper,” Jackson yelled and waved.

  The officer waved back and headed toward them.

  “That’s not Cooper. He’s just a little kid,” she said.

  “He’s about thirty now,” Jackson said.

  “He does look like a grown-up version of the little kid who used to sing that kissing song in the church parking lot,” she said.

  Jackson laughed. “Hey, you want a snow cone, Coop? I’m buying if you do,” Jackson asked. “You remember Loretta, right?”

  He leaned on the side of the truck. “Naw, I done had two snow cones today, but thank you all the same. Good to see that you’re back home, Loretta. I probably owe both of you an apology the way I picked on you when I was a little kid. But I thought you was the prettiest girl in the world and I was jealous of Jackson. That might be the reason I got this thing for red-haired women.”

  “I can’t believe you are the sheriff,” Loretta said.

  “I only got elected because I didn’t draw an opponent. Still do some ranchin’ down in the canyon on the side. It’s an elected position, so I have to have something to fall back on in case someone goes up against me next time around,” Cooper said. “I got a little spread next to Ezra’s place. I’d love to buy him out, but I hear that Ezra is leaving it to his three daughters.”

  His radio made a fuzzy noise and he touched a button. The grainy voice said he’d left behind some papers and needed to come back to the sheriff’s station before he left town.

  “Guess I’ll be going. Y’all enjoy your snow cones. You havin’ the big party on the Fourth, Jackson?”

  “Like always. Bring your lawn chair or a blanket and a big appetite. Waylon and Travis are in charge of the barbecue this year. We’ll see what they can produce,” Jackson said.

  “I’ll be there, and, Miz Loretta, you see any redheads, you herd them up in a corral for me.” He tipped his hat and headed off into the dusk.

  “I can’t believe little Cooper Wilson is old enough to be a sheriff,” Loretta whispered.

  Jackson slowly shook his head from side to side. “It’s a lot harder to believe that our daughter is as old as she is. She should still be four years old and lugging around that old stuffed cow toy. We should have known then that she was a rancher. She always liked that old cow better than dolls.”

  “She did, didn’t she?” Loretta said. “Speakin’ of little kids, I want to do something different at the ranch party this summer. I’m thinking a bounce house and maybe a small carnival.”

  He set his jaw and almost shot the rest of his snow cone out into his lap when he squeezed the paper too tightly.

  “You got a problem with that?” she asked.

  He hesitated a couple of seconds before he answered. “No, but I had one back when Nona was little. She loved it, but the clowns made her cry.”

  “Well, then scratch that. I don’t want crying kids. We’ll just have a bounce house and lots of games.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and before she could even shut her eyes, his lips were on hers in a kiss that rivaled the hot summer wind. His tongue slipped inside her mouth and did a mating dance with hers, causing her to forget all about carnivals, parties, and even her daughter.

  “Holy shit!” she murmured when he broke away.

  “Point proven.”

  She touched her lips to see if they were as hot as they felt. “What point?”

  “That we don’t have to argue to have passion, darlin’. Now let’s go get a beer and put a few quarters in the jukebox at the Sugar Shack. I’ve got enough energy left to do some serious dancin’ with this redhead I’ve had my eye on for a while.”

  “Am I going to be jealous?”

  “I don’t know. I fell in love with her back in the fifth grade and she’s pretty damn sexy,” he teased.

  Loretta wanted more than a couple of beers and a dance or two. She wanted to fall backward into a bed with Jackson, not dance around the floor of a smoky, noisy honky-tonk with him. Sex, in today’s world, didn’t mean they were on any kind of road to reconciliation. It didn’t mean commitment or even a relationship.

  She wanted to feel Jackson’s body next to hers, to cuddle up with him in the afterglow, to have those moments of pillow talk. The heart wants what it wants, as her daughter so aptly said.

  She touched him on the leg. “I don’t want to go to the Sugar Shack. I want to go back to the hunting cabin.”

  His face searched hers. “Are you sure, Loretta?”

  She nodded and inhaled deeply. “I’m sure.”

  The ruts in the overgrown path were barely visible even in the moonlight, but Jackson kept going, sometimes at less than ten miles an hour as he kept time to the country music with his thumbs on the steering wheel. Even if there had been deep mud holes, she couldn’t have slid across to sit beside him, not with bucket seats and a wide console between them.

  Folks said the new trucks were the best thing since sliced bread with their comfortable seats and fancy bells and whistles. For Loretta’s part, she’d rather have the old work truck with a wide bench seat.

  The cabin appeared like a small brown blob at first, then slowly it became more visible, each stone that had been laid so carefully taking on a personality of its own to make a small house right up against the wall of the west bank of the canyon.

  “I bet Ezra’s place isn’t two miles away over in that direction.” She pointed.

  “Probably about three as the crow flies. One of my great-grandpas built this when he first got his chunk of the canyon. I hear there’s a similar one somewhere over there on Ezra’s place, but I’ve never seen it. Are we getting out or just sitting here and looking at the stars?” Jackson asked.

  “I want to go inside.” She opened the door and started that way without waiting for him. She was already about to lose her nerve, and she wanted to see if that shower sex had really been that damn good or if it was a fluke.

  The door wasn’t locked and when she opened it, the smell of cold ashes and coffee grounds floated out. Jackson stepped in behind her, found a box of matches in the dark, and lit a hurricane lamp. It
hadn’t changed since the last time she’d been there. She lowered herself onto a bottom bunkbed covered with an old patch work quilt. “This smells like it was just brought in off the line,” she said. “Did you plan this, Jackson?”

  “Guilty of premeditation. I’d like to make a deal. Three years of confinement in this cabin with you,” he teased.

  “How did you know I’d want to come back here?” she asked.

  “I didn’t, but I could always hope you might,” he answered.

  A wood table with four mismatched chairs sat beside makeshift cabinets with curtains in place of doors and a big bearskin rug in front of a cold fireplace. The last time they’d come back here, they’d made love on that rug in front of a blazing fireplace.

  “Want some coffee? There’s a gas-powered little hot plate. We wouldn’t have to heat up the place with a fire,” he asked.

  She walked right into his chest, put her arms around his neck, and rolled up on her toes until her lips were even with his. “I want you, Jackson Bailey. No questions. No future plans. I want you right now in this moment.”

  “Those’re the sweetest words I’ve heard in years.” He scooped her up and carried her to the bed, where he sat down with her in his lap and, without breaking a string of kisses, began to unfasten one button at a time on her shirt. His big rough hands gently pushed the shirt back and caressed her ribs, her back and slipped even higher, past her bra, to massage her neck as he laid her on the bed and stretched out beside her.

  “I want to take my time and savor every moment of this night,” he whispered.

  She didn’t care if he took all night. Not when every touch and every word proved that what happened in the shower hadn’t been a flash in the pan, but the real thing.

  He peeled her bra off an inch at a time, his eyes getting softer and softer with each bit of revealed skin. “You take my breath away, just like you always have.”

  She did hear him talking, but as she felt his hands moving over her body, taking off her boots, kissing the arches of her feet, removing her jeans, the words blurred in the passion of the moment.