by Anna Jeffrey
Piggy roused and reached for the mug. “Doughnuts?”
Dahlia took the other cup with a meek thank you.
She supposed she and Piggy did look as if they didn’t know where their next meal might come from. They had been wearing the same clothes since yesterday morning when they had put them on in a cheap motel outside Salt Lake City. “I hope you don’t mind if we wait here,” she said to Gretchen. “We’re meeting someone.”
Gretchen turned on a Miss America smile. “Hey, you can wait as long as you want to. You're taxpayers, ain’tcha? This building belongs to you.”
Considering what had been taken from her by the IRS after her husband’s death, Dahlia felt that could be true. “If you only knew,” she mumbled.
One sip of the strong coffee and her stomach rolled and growled its displeasure. Oh well, she didn’t like coffee in the first place, but the mug felt warm against her cold hands.
A few feet to her right, from behind a closed door, she could hear muffled male voices in discussion. A meeting, she surmised. Vignettes of her former life flashed in her mind. A surge of longing, unexpected and bittersweet, welled up. A year and a half had crawled by since she had gone home to Dad in Loretta, Texas. Simply picked up and walked away from a fast-track job with a top advertising and PR firm in Dallas. She didn’t miss Dallas so much, but sometimes she missed the hubbub, the cutting edge excitement, the exchange of ideas with her former peers, all young Turks with MBAs and BMWs who pursued their goals with the zeal of hungry sharks.
It wasn’t too late to go back and she intended to. Twenty-nine wasn’t too old to start over. She had some catching-up to do, maybe some classes to take, but just as soon as she got her feet on the ground again…
A male voice, suddenly loud, came from behind the closed door. “Now Luke, the government’s policy—”
“No! No way, Ted.” It was a louder, angry voice. “I’m not listening to that policy crap. It’s one thing to cut back my allotment, but damned if you’re gonna tell me what to do on my own land. I ain’t building no damn fence between my cows and a drink of water. I’ll call every sonofabitch in Washington if I have to.”
The door burst open. Dahlia jumped sideways a second too late. A tall, scowling man plowed headlong into her. She reeled backward, crashing across a table. Her mug flew from her hand and coffee drenched the image of SMU’s galloping mustang on the front of her T-shirt. Pain ripped through her hip and elbow as she hit the floor.
The next thing she knew, she was lying supine and Piggy, Gretchen and the stranger were hovering over her. Piggy’s voice filtered through. “Dal?..Dal?..You okay, Dal?”
Dahlia forced herself up, bracing on the uninjured elbow. Several other men and women came out of offices, ogling.
The stranger squatted, slid one arm around her waist and grasped her upper arm with his opposite hand, his knuckles nudging into her left breast. “Lord, lady. I’m sorry.” As if she were weightless, he lifted her and set her on her feet. She limped toward a chair and braced her hand on its back for support. He brushed at her clothing and petted her hair. “You all right, ma'am? You hurt anywhere?”
The low murmurs of onlookers surrounded her. Embarrassment heated her face and she refused to look up. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”
She batted away the stranger’s hands, slid her jacket sleeve off her arm and examined her smarting elbow.
He was there, lifting her arm to look, too, moving long, strong fingers up and down, palpating her forearm. “Don’t feel any broken bones. Don’t see any blood.” He turned her and looked behind her. “How’s that hip? Let’s—”
“It’s fine.” Her palm flew up like a shield. She took a step back and away from him. Finally, she looked him full in the face and the connection was as instant as the skip in her heartbeat. He towered above her, an oak tree in a blue and white plaid shirt and a navy quilted vest. His eyes, sober and intense, were the color of the sky outside, deep-set beneath a ledge of reddish-brown brow and framed by thick, dark lashes. He smelled of masculinity and a hint of woodsy aftershave.
An odd awareness slithered through her, curled itself around her secret places and gave a hard squeeze. She felt weak in the knees, yet she freed her arm from his grasp and skimmed her palm down her shirt front. “Really, I’m okay. Don’t worry about it.”
His gaze followed her hand and stopped. She looked down. Through the clinging wet T-shirt, she saw distinct impressions of her lacy bra and dark brown nipples. She might as well have been shirtless. Hoisting her chin, she roasted him with a glare and yanked one side of her jacket across her front. Jerk!
His gaze moved up to hers, his mouth tipped into a lazy, knowing grin. “I’m usually not so clumsy. I was just so damn mad there for a minute.
He stooped and picked up the pale gray cowboy hat he had lost in the collision and dusted the crown with his fingertips.
A cowboy! I might have known.
“Sure you’re all right? If you think you oughtta see a doctor…”
She waggled a dismissive hand. “I’m fine. Really.” She eased down to the chair seat.
“Well, okay then.” He turned to the receptionist with a stern look and a pointing finger. “Remind Ted I’m waiting for his call. The minute he finishes that range report. Don’t forget.”
“Got it.” Gretchen gave him a two-fingered salute.
He left in long strides through the front doorway, adjusting his hat as he went.
Piggy stared after him, slack jawed. “Who the hell is that? He got a posse waiting outside or something?”
Gretchen cackled and went to stand beside Piggy, placing her hands on elephantine hips and dwarfing Piggy’s hundred twenty pounds. “He’s enough to give a gal a heart attack, ain’t he? I usually don’t like the looks of a red-headed man, but sometimes it’s just all put together real good.”
“So who is he? Or who does he think he is?”
“Oh, he knows who he is all right and so does everybody else. Luke McRae. Rancher. I ain’t seen him so ticked-off in months. Him and the range manager must have had a fuss. They do that sometimes.”
“I think I’m in love,” Piggy said, staring at the door.
Not again. Dahlia rolled her eyes and flopped back against her chair back.
The phone at the desk warbled. Gretchen shuffled toward it, fanning a plump hand behind her. “It better hadn’t be with him. He’s left a string of wishing women from Moscow to Winnemucca. I can think of a dozen who thought they could land him.”
Piggy frowned. “Mos-co? You don’t mean Russia.”
A geography moment flitted through Dahlia’s mind, making sense of Gretchen’s remark. She had to be speaking of Moscow, Idaho, spelled like the Russian capitol. Dahlia had seen it on maps, but she couldn’t recall ever hearing it pronounced. To most Texas natives, the Idaho city would seem just as distant as the one in Russia.
The receptionist’s brow raised in an are-you-for-real arch. “Up north, by Lewiston.” She yanked up the receiver. “Forest Service. Callister District….We ain’t got them here. Call Boise.” She clacked the receiver back into its cradle. “Pest,” she mumbled.
Undeterred by Gretchen’s look, Piggy went to the midriff-high reception desk and found a rest for her forearms. “A dozen, you say?”
“At least. When it comes to women, that man’s a heartless hound.” Her gaze swerved to Dahlia. “You should go to the doctor. Make him pay for it. He’s worth a fortune. McRaes own the Double Deuce Ranches. The home place takes up a goodly part of this county. No telling what they own down in the Owyhee.”
The fortune of a clumsy cowboy was the farthest thing from Dahlia’s mind. His perfectly sculpted mouth had made a much more profound impression.
Piggy’s forehead crinkled into a frown. “You look a little green, Dal. Let’s go home. Jerry can find us there.”
Chapter 2
“I mean it, Piggy. If an airport existed within a hundred miles of this place, I’d leave today.”
Dahlia half-limped, half-stalked across the wet grass in the front yard of the small house Piggy’s cousin had rented for them, their home for the summer. Besides being cold, now she was injured and angry. At Piggy, at clumsy cowboys and most of all, at her life. The wasteland it had become had brought her to this appalling situation. “This is the last time I let you talk me into doing something this stupid.”
Piggy, door key in hand, overtook her, taking two short steps to each of Dahlia’s long ones. “You don’t mean it, Dal, that you’d just up and go home?”
“In a heartbeat. We haven’t been here twenty-four hours and things are already a disaster. It’s the end of April, for godssake. In Texas, people are water skiing. Here, it’s thirty-three degrees. Besides not telling us what we were getting into here, Jerry lied about this house. He told us it was decent.”
Piggy unlocked the door and Dahlia breezed past her, headed for the bedroom.
“It is decent. It’s clean, got new paint. It’s only two blocks from town. I like it.”
“Piggy, when the temperature is freezing, a house with a broken furnace doesn’t qualify as decent. Just look at this.” She swept an open-handed arc around the ten-by-ten bedroom. Its only furnishings were her army surplus cot and her bags and suitcases. “We don’t have a stick of furniture. If we hadn’t hauled these cots with us, we’d be sleeping on the floor.”
“Wait, Dal. Jerry told us the house was unfurnished. That’s why we brought the cots. You’re not being fair. Maybe he doesn’t know the heat’s not working. You promised me you’d make the best of this.”
“That was before some good-for-nothing cowboy knocked me down and broke my hip.”
Piggy gave her a cat-like smile. “Don’t forget, girlfriend. I’m not the only one you promised. You also promised your dad.”
Ka-pow! Piggy knew right where to land a punch. Dahlia could still hear her dad’s arguments: Chuck’s here to help me, Dally. You go and unwind. . . . When you come back from Idaho, Dally, we’ll jump into the Christmas season with both feet . . . Fall is a better time to look into that mail order idea you’ve been talking about…
Dad. Her fortress. Her Anglo connection to the human race. Since before she was born, he had owned and operated the only grocery store in Loretta, Texas. The Handy Pantry, in all its outdated, small-town glory. What would she have done if he and the rundown little store hadn’t been there for her after the catastrophe her husband’s life and death left in her lap? Tears lumped in her throat. She swallowed hard, recognizing she was skirting the edge of self-pity.
If you waste all your tears on nothing, you won’t have them when you need them. It was a voice from long ago, spoken in the soft, rhythmic accent of her Filipino mother.
Get a grip, she told herself.
She sank to her knees, opened her big suitcase and dug for dry clothing. Even the front of her jeans was wet and she smelled like coffee. “Okay, forget it. I’m not going home. But you have to admit this is ridiculous. We don’t even have a place to sit, for crying out loud.”
Yanking off her wet T-shirt, her teeth began to chatter and another rush of tears filled her eyes. She ducked her head to hide them as she hooked the front clasp of a pink lace bra. A lightweight turtleneck sweater was the warmest thing she had brought. She wiped her nose with the heel of her hand and pulled the burgundy garment on, catching her mane of curls in its neck.
She freed them on a sniff, then pushed to her feet and peeled off her wet jeans and panties. “My hip’s killing me.” She turned her back to Piggy. “Do you see a bruise?”
“Oooh, that’s gonna be a good one. You must have hit that table on its corner.”
Dahlia stepped into pink lacy panties to match the bra she had just put on. “Dumb, unconscious cowboys. Is there any place in the universe they’re not worthless? I’m surprised I didn’t break something. Then what would we have done?”
She zipped herself into clean, dry jeans and slipped back into her jacket. “Listen to me, Piggy.” She began counting off on her fingers. “Number one, you may think this is fun, but I nearly froze last night. And I want to take a bath. If we’re going to stay here, this house has to have heat.”
“Hey, didn’t I help you fool with that stinky oil thing for an hour last night? We’ll find somebody to fix it. Chill out.” Piggy broke into a laugh. “Chill out. Get it?”
Dahlia threw an exasperated look at the ceiling and ticked off a second finger. “Number two, I’m not staying in this place if we don’t get some kind of window coverings. I don’t intend to provide this town with four months of daily strip shows.
“And number three, I’m hungry. All we’ve swallowed for a week is gas station pizza and Pepsi-Cola. If it takes my last penny, we’re going to buy some groceries. I presume the stove and refrigerator work. We sure don't need to spend money eating out. I’ve got less than twenty dollars to last until we get a paycheck.”
“Relax. I’ve still got a fifty tucked away. And we can always fall back on plastic.”
“Plastic? Are you kidding?” Dahlia strode to the bathroom, ripped off a strip of toilet paper and blew her nose. “You seem to forget my plastic is long gone.” Yet another fact that was enough to make her weep. Once she’d had more credit cards than her purse would hold. Bankruptcy had left her with none.
Piggy moved from propping up the bedroom door jamb to the same posture in the bathroom doorway. “Look on the bright side. We’re better off than the Russians. We’ve got toilet paper. So why’re you so weepy?”
“I’m not weepy. It’s just tension.”
“And is that not why we’re here? A little tension relief? A change of scenery? You’ve sat around in Loretta for nearly two years, Dal. You’ve done nothing but work twelve-hour days and feel sorry for yourself. That’s long enough. I want my old fun-loving friend back.”
“Bite me, Piggy. I don’t feel sorry for myself. Work never hurt anybody. And this is definitely a change of scenery.” Dahlia squeezed past her. “C’mon. If I don’t eat, I’m going to faint.”
As she trekked toward the kitchen, guilt nipped at her for being churlish toward the one person who had been her unwavering friend since kindergarten. In the entire world, only Dad and this zany redhead cared about her. The truth of that, as piercing as a needle, brought a swell of comradeship and she stopped and looked back. Piggy, right on her heels, ran into her. They laughed—through thick and thin they had always been able to laugh—-and Dahlia wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I suppose spending a summer in the wilderness isn’t so bad. Looks like it’ll be cool.”
“Atta girl. You can’t say that about West Texas. The way I look at it, this is a chance to expand our horizons.”
“I can just imagine the horizon-expanding we’re going to do in a town like this.”
In the kitchen, Dahlia rummaged through the cabinets, looking for peanut butter. “I still say we’re too old for this nonsense. It was one thing to go off and do something crazy for the summer when we were kids, but that was a long time ago. I know absolutely nothing about surveying and neither do you. What if we screw up? Jerry will hate us.”
Piggy popped the tops on two cans of Pepsi. “Jeez, we're college graduates. How hard can it be? This may be our last chance for a crazy adventure together. Like you say, before long, we’ll be old and too decrepit. We’ll have to get serious and get real jobs or something.”
Dahlia found the giant jar of peanut butter and a box of saltines, her first food since yesterday afternoon. Her mouth watered. She fished a plastic spoon from a sack on the counter.”I remind you, Piggy, you could’ve already had a real job. Why you didn’t take it, I still don’t know. I gave mine up for a good reason.”
“Oh, gimme a break. You’re not gonna lay that martyr-helping-my-dad trip on me again, are you?”
The sarcasm hurt. Dahlia’s spine stiffened. She was glad, no, eager, to help her aging father, but there was no fooling a friend of twenty-five years. Helping Dad was only part of the reason she had move
d back from Dallas. In truth, the manner of her husband’s death and all that followed had whipped her. Admitting it was as painful as a leg cramp.
“I was helping him. Until I let you drag me off on this wild goose chase.” She went back to piling peanut butter onto a cracker. “You’re not kidding anybody either, you know. Staying in Loretta? Keeping books at the cotton co-op? That couldn’t exactly be classified a career move.” She thrust a cracker toward Piggy. “Here. Have some lunch.”
Piggy took the cracker and licked off the peanut butter. “You're the career girl. I went to college to kill time. I'll be mad forever ’cause I didn’t join the Navy and see the world. Threw away all those years learning number-crunching when I could have been sailing all over with a boatload of horny guys.”
“Hah. A boatload of horny guys. Every woman’s dream.”
Piggy reached for a second cracker. “Couldn’t have been any worse than marrying Kenneth Jarrett. Crook. Self-centered asshole extraordinaire. As far as I’m concerned, that Corvette and the North Fork of the Trinity River did you a big favor.”
“Stop saying that, Piggy. Lightning’s going to strike you. And I might be standing beside you when it happens.”
“It already did, remember?”
Dahlia did remember. Piggy’s senior year at UT. Her fiancé of two years left her at the altar and Piggy's attitude about men had turned a hundred-eighty degrees.
“Anyway,” Piggy went on, “we’re not gonna discuss the asshole of assholes this whole summer, right? We’re gonna resolve one more time, here and now, that what he did wasn’t your fault. His estate’s settled, the lawsuit’s settled, the IRS is off your back. You couldn’t be more cleansed if you ate a whole package of laxative. It’s time to stop beating up on yourself. Elton thinks so, too. That’s why he pushed you to come with me on this trip.”
“I’m more than cleansed. I feel like I’ve been skinned.”
“So? Now you grow new skin. Make a fresh start.”
As she always did with Piggy, Dahlia felt herself relenting. She sighed as some of the deep anger that had become so much a part of her sneaked back into its dark hole. “Well, at least I’ve got something of a reprieve. For the next four months, you won’t be trying to push me into bed with Mick Ivey.”
