The Love of a Cowboy

by Anna Jeffrey

  Dahlia flopped her head back to her pillow and stared at the ceiling. Definitely too complicated.

  “Well, I’m hitting the sack. My feet think I’ve gone crazy. If I’m asleep when you get up, don’t let the day start without me. I’m going fishing with Pete.” Piggy flipped off the light.

  “By the way,” she called from her bedroom a minute later. “Luke’s got two more kids besides Jimmy. Two daughters who live with him. They’re fourteen and fifteen. He must’ve gotten married when he was an infant. He can’t be much over thirty.”

  Thirty-three, thirty-four in a couple of weeks.

  Dahlia frowned so hard her brow ached. Definitely too complicated.

  Chapter 8

  A cold deluge held Dahlia, Piggy and Jerry captive in Jerry’s Suburban on an isolated rugged road, half-way to the top of Wolf Mountain. Wind gusts rocked them. With a deafening roar, giant raindrops beat the vehicle like angry fists and blurred the landscape.

  In the backseat, while Piggy nagged, Dahlia pawed through her lunch cooler. “If you keep telling him no, he’ll quit calling”

  Luke had called last night with another dinner invitation, but Dahlia had declined before he could so much as say where.

  Jerry hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. “Shit. We’re gonna have to quit.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend, for crying out loud,” Dahlia said. From the gossip you hear, more than one. Besides, food isn’t what’s on his mind.”

  “Who y’all talking about?” Jerry asked.

  “Nobody you’d know,” Piggy said cocked her head at Dahlia. “Did he make a move on you or something? And where was I?”

  Dahlia hadn’t told Piggy about the incident on the front stoop. She concentrated on the layers of her ham and cheese sandwich. “Arranging furniture.”

  Piggy’s eyes narrowed. “You mean last Saturday morning? In broad daylight and you didn’t tell me?”

  “Oh, stop it, Piggy. He just kissed me.”

  Jerry made a high-pitched heh-heh-heh.

  Piggy reached across the back of the front seat and slapped his shoulder. “Butt out. This is girl talk.”

  Wind howled. Rain pounded harder.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Jerry cranked the engine. “Y’all got all your gear, right?”

  That question got Piggy’s attention. “We’re leaving?”

  “Can’t work if we can’t see, babe. Besides, I don’t want you two cream puffs to drown.”

  “Awesome. Just let me put my machete in my purse,” Piggy said.

  Giving Piggy a wry look, Dahlia wrapped up what remained of her sandwich and put it into her lunch cooler. “Do that, Lucy. You never know when you’ll need a manicure.”

  Piggy sighed. “I wonder if it’s gonna be like this tomorrow. Pete was gonna take me boat-riding. Up the Snake River.”

  “That’ll put a pucker in a new place.” Jerry pushed a cassette into the tape player.

  “Who says?”

  “The Snake River ain’t the Brazos, Cuz. Last I knew, you couldn’t even swim.

  “I’m not planning to swim.”

  “Up here, these rivers ain’t no Sunday boat ride. They got boulders bigger’n your house. You could end up plastered against one. Hope your boyfriend knows what he’s doing.”

  “He’s a river guide, hot-shot.”

  Dahlia closed her eyes and did her best to hear Ricky Van Shelton in the background while Piggy and her cousin sniped at each other all the way back to town.

  In Callister, the weather was no kinder. Clouds hugged the ground. Through a cold, gray drizzle, the town looked gloomy and static, buttoned up against the elements. Jerry dropped them off at the red Blazer in the Forest Service parking lot.

  As soon as they arrived at the cottage, Dahlia built a fire.

  Piggy prattled on as if their conversation on the mountainside hadn’t been interrupted.

  “Even if you kissed him back, it doesn’t mean you have to sleep with him. But you do have to eat.”

  As the fire took hold and began to give heat, they settled on the floor in front of it. “There was more to it than that. He wanted me to go to Boise. To a hotel.”

  Piggy stared at her a few beats, then tilted her head back and laughed.

  Dahlia turned up her palms. “What’s funny about that?”

  “So that’s why you’ve been in a blue funk all week. And here I thought you were homesick. I told you he’d be back.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “You are so anal, Dahlia. If you like the guy, why can’t you just go with the flow and have a good time?”

  “It isn’t that simple. You know I can’t just . . . do that. I have to think about it before I make a decision.”

  “So much for spontaneity. . . . Okay, let’s analyze this. On the A side, you’re healthy and unmarried. And though you won’t admit it, you’ve got to be horny. My God, you haven’t had any since you moved back to Loretta and maybe a long time before that. On the B side, he’s unmarried, looks like Adonis and is probably hung like one of his bulls. One side offsets the other. I fail to see the problem.”

  Dahlia gasped. “For crying out loud, Piggy, I knew better than to mention this to you. If I wanted to just sleep with someone for the heck of it, I could do it back home in Texas. Like with Mick Ivey. Just forget it.” Dahlia got to her feet. “Are we going to rent movies or not?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Piggy said, following Dahlia up. “But we should’ve rented them before we came home.”

  “Poor planning,” Dahlia replied. As usual, she thought.

  Saturday dawned in struggling sunshine. The world outdoors dripped, but a promise of improvement peeked through breaking clouds. Boat in tow, Pete came to pick up Piggy. In one way, Dahlia was glad. She loved Piggy like a sister, but after three solid weeks of her in-your-face personality, Dahlia looked forward to some time to herself. Despite the everlasting battle she fought against loneliness, she often enjoyed being alone.

  The beautiful day and the physical exertion of the job they had taken on had her spirits soaring higher than they had been in months. An evening confined to reading or watching TV in their bare house held no appeal. Nor did dining out at Carlton’s or Betty’s Road Kill. She wanted a good meal in a nice place and for a moment, she wished she had accepted Luke’s invitation to dinner. Oh, well, the Blazer sat idle in the driveway and Piggy expected her to drive it. Who needed an escort?

  She showered leisurely, put on matching blue lace panties and bra, then slipped into the only “going out” dress she had brought—embroidered rayon gauze, also blue, with cap sleeves a sweetheart neckline and tiny pearl buttons down the front. It’s a-line skirt fell from princess styling and struck her above the knee. The ultimate floaty, feminine dress was designed for a hot Texas summer, not a cold Idaho spring. She didn’t care if she froze wearing it. She felt good, like the old Dahlia who enjoyed dressing up and going out, even alone.

  Primping finished, she strapped on the sexy Ferragamo sandals and hooked a pair of huge silver shrimps in her ears. Last, she splashed on “True Love,” a fragrance that reminded her of her dad’s flower gardens. Though she had given up the spendy Estee Lauder cosmetics for a brand Dad stocked in the grocery store, good perfume, like Italian shoes, couldn’t be substituted.

  Studying the map the Forest Service had supplied, she found Indian Mountain Resort, called “the ski lodge” by the locals. The thirty-eight-mile highway to it was marked as a scenic drive. As she shrugged into the stadium coat she had bought off the mark-down rack at K-Mart in Boise—besides the jacket she same with, it was her only coat—she thought of how she had changed. Once, she would have stayed home before going out wearing a coat that didn’t complement her dress. The thought brought a smile. In Dallas, fashion savvy had been so important she would go to the mall or risk a trip to some drug store in a bad part of town late at night to buy the right color stockings to wear the next day.

  Once on the highway, she drove s
lowly, enjoying the scenery along the steep, winding ascent to Indian Mountain. The pavement was clear of snow, but on either side, dirty patches thawed beneath towering evergreens. Water ran in every ditch and crevice and she regretted wearing her best shoes.

  The pinks and blues of sunset colored the sky by the time she found the ski lodge. Her expectation had been of something primitive. A log and gray stone hotel flaunting a rough-hewn elegance was a pleasant surprise. Sprawled at the foot of several long ski runs, the massive, tri-level structure made the resorts where she had skied in New Mexico look pitiable.

  She parked the Blazer nose-in against the long front deck. The parking lot was wet from water trickling from high snow banks surrounding it. As she picked her way on the rickety high heels to the deck steps, the cold bit into her feet and legs. Thin stockings weren’t much of a barrier.

  It occurred to her that the temperature would drop after sunset and the roads might be hazardous going home. Oh, well. This is a hotel, she told herself. If the roads are dangerous, I’ll just rent a room.

  Independence. Decisiveness. Yes! The old Dahlia was back.

  The hotel’s interior looked like a ski lodge. Rustic, homey décor with walls of varnished, stacked logs aged to a golden hue. She found her way to the dining room and stepped inside to a huge room. A cute and flirty young waiter met her and led her down two steps that descended to the dining room. She counted a couple dozen tables, but only three were occupied. “Where are all the customers?” she asked him.

  “It’s off season,” he told her. “In the winter, we’re full of skiers. In the summer, not so much. We get tourists, but this time of year, we don’t get many. May’s the pits.”

  Chunks of wood burned in a mammoth gray stone fireplace. Open-beamed ceilings soared above the huge room, but low light and dark furnishings exuded an air of intimacy. Dahlia could imagine red-cheeked, sweater-clad skiers sipping hot drinks and enjoying the ambience.

  “Could I sit over there?” She gestured toward a table near the fireplace.

  He seated her at a table for four and informed her that the special for the evening was fresh, grilled trout just brought in this morning from a nearby fish farm.

  Breakfast had been tea with milk, lunch, a hunk of sharp cheese. She was famished and smells from the kitchen had set her mouth watering the moment she entered. She ordered the trout and a bottle of champagne.

  The other customers soon left and she sat alone among empty tables and chairs. The waiter brought her meal and poured her champagne, bustling as if he were rushed to serve twenty diners. The pink trout steak was the size of her hand, an inch thick and slathered in butter and garlic sauce. She took her time and savored each bite. Growing up around the grocery business, then living with Kenneth, she had become something of a gourmet.

  Along the back of the dining room, she saw a wall of windows that allowed the scenic outdoors into the room. By the time Dahlia finished her meal, dusk had dimmed the light to mauve. In the middle of the window wall, a wide bypassing door opened onto a wooden deck. She put on her coat and walked outside.

  The deck extended the length of the long building. In warmer weather, it would be filled with tables for dining, she surmised, but this evening, its vacancy exaggerated its expanse. Ignoring the cold chilling her knees and feet, she strolled toward the rail, her high heels making a hollow clonk.

  Like an airfoil, the structure thrust into space, far over the brink of a steep cliff. She leaned on the waist-high wood railing, pushing her face into the waning light. The thin, cold air stung her cheeks and brought tears to her eyes.

  A vast, frozen lake filled the foreground of the stunning view. Lights, tiny as stars, winked from homes on the lake’s far end. Beyond, layer after layer of snow-covered ridges lay like giant, plump pillows between stands of frosted, dark green trees. A string of jagged peaks stood against the horizon and clutched at the sky with mammoth fingers. Never had she felt so small or heard such silence. She could be the only person alive.

  A whispering breeze rose from below and echoed across the grand vista. It came to her as if she were its destination and as delicate as a fairy wing, touched her face. An eerie sense of place, of belonging, stole through her, hummed at her center in perfect harmony with her soul. She breathed in the chilled air and held it inside her lungs as if by so doing she could grab onto the moment and store it within herself.

  The rare feeling flicked away as quickly as it came and she realized her hands were cold. As she tucked them into her armpits, her ring mounting caught on a thread from her coat. She pulled back her hand, snapped the stray thread loose, then held out her hand to study the arty arrangement of diamonds and sapphires. The stones had been part of her wedding set she’d had re-designed.

  She tried not to think of her marriage much anymore, but she hadn’t been able to remove the scar from her heart and soul. In quiet moments, her mind tricked her. Now, as her gaze froze on the ring, her memory spun backward to the events that had left the final indelible bruise. It was the week of Christmas again, two and a half years ago. Monday, six days before the holiday. She and Kenneth had quarreled when he refused to postpone his trip to Austin. He accused her of nagging and stormed out of the house.

  That evening, he made an uncharacteristic effort to make up with her and they made love for the first time in more than a year. She had never told anyone, not even Piggy. He had been tender and attentive, like when they were first married, hadn’t worried about birth control as he usually did, even told her he thought she would be beautiful pregnant. The next morning in the bathroom while dressing for the day, they kissed and held each other like lovers and she told him she hoped she was pregnant. She wished him a good trip and told him to hurry home. They would have the best Christmas yet.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, the call came from the Denton County sheriff’s office. Like a death spiral, her life plunged into one long nightmare. What of Kenneth’s company records the SEC didn’t seize, the IRS did. Every day brought a new and shocking revelation of duplicity. The toxicology report revealed drugs as well as alcohol. Their auto insurance company rejected the claim for Kenneth’s totaled $70,000 Corvette. The bank holding the large note sued. Bonnie Gibson’s husband filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of their three small children.

  There had been no choice but to defend Kenneth. Dahlia’s own survival depended on it. She dealt with all of it in the manner of the professional she had been back then, keeping most of the gory details a secret from her dad. The culminating moment came when the IRS claimed her home and all that was in it. Bankrupt, she stoically walked out, handed over the keys to a government agent and left town.

  Things were better now. Calmer. She no longer felt she might snap at any minute. Loretta was quiet. No one expected anything heroic from her. Only Piggy knew all that had happened in Dallas. She worked hard in Dad’s store, lived in Dad’s old house that didn’t even have the a dishwasher and took life one day at a time. She had even grown accustomed to the inconvenience of having no credit.

  Now, she took a deep breath and thought of the ring’s cost. It and her car—a jazzy BMW Z3—were the most expensive material possessions she owned. A Dallas lawyer had salvaged the car from her bankruptcy and she had kept the ring hidden through her trials with the IRS. It held no sentimental value. The four-carat center diamond had been more a statement of her husband’s success than a gift of love and affection. She didn’t wear it often and lately, she had considered selling it and repaying her dad.

  She had always suspected he had dipped into his retirement funds to pay for her education, had done so again to pay for her expensive wedding. She worked and helped, of course, but he had borne the majority of the expense. Money wasted. The education was going as unused as her wedding dress stored in a box in his attic and the marriage had been…no words would describe what her marriage to Kenneth Jarrett had been.

  Guilt tweaked her. With the salary she had earned in Dallas, she could have already
paid Dad back. But obsessed with trying to please a man who didn’t love her and his family who didn’t respect her, her own caring, undemanding father had been pushed to the back burner. Yes, when she returned to Texas, she would pursue selling the ring.

  Luke sat on a stool in the Hearth Room, a dark bar between the Indian Mountain Hotel lobby and the restaurant. He sipped at a double shot of Jack Daniel’s and watched some politicians yammer at low volume on the TV. The whiskey had begun to seep into his bloodstream along with a lazy lonesomeness. His kids had gone to Boise to visit their mother. His folks and his grandmother had gone to Twin Falls to visit relatives. His sisters and their husbands, as they often did, had disappeared and wouldn’t return until Sunday night. He had given the housekeeper the weekend off. No sense making her hang around to cook for just him.

  After a long day working with his colts, he had cleaned up, come here and devoured a good steak dinner. He didn’t like throwing away an evening in a bar, but that ranch house had seemed awful empty. He wished he had gone to Boise. Down there, he could have called Belinda Hughes or any of several other numbers and found more than company for supper.

  “Hit you again, Luke?” The bartender, married to a cousin on Luke’s mother’s side, approached with the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  “No thanks, Cal. I’m gonna go when I finish this one.” Luke looked around. No one else had entered the bar since he dropped in. “You could close this joint up. Sharon would probably be glad to see you come home early.”

  “I’m gonna be busy here a while. Got a convention coming in on Monday. Some club studying Sioux history. They’ve got a little party planned.” He slid the Jack Daniel’s bottle back into its slot and began to wipe down the counter. “Heard you took Jimmy down below to some school.”

  “Yep, I did.”

  “Bet that upset Aunt Claire.”

  Luke’s mother’s good-bye to Jimmy on the front deck had been emotional and teary. “She’s getting over it. It’s the best thing. We miss him though.”