“No, ma’am,” he said in a soft Texas drawl. “Never have been. How about you?”
She shook her head. So he was twenty-six; too pretty with those dimples that really weren’t dimples but long wrinkles that creased his angular cheeks when he smiled. And he wasn’t married. She chanced a long look at him. No, not her type. She liked them rugged, with dark hair and arms big enough to heft a steer.
“What kind of music do you like?”
“Country,” she said quickly. Please, God, don’t let him like classical or, worse yet, rap.
With his right hand he reached into the back seat of the club cab truck and brought out a zippered folder. “Pick your poison.”
“CDs? But an old Mustang wouldn’t have a CD player. Why did you bring these?”
“I had it customized. I expect you have a player in this thing?”
She pushed a button and a slim drawer slid out. He didn’t tell her that he already knew she was a country music fan or that the folder was filled with her favorite music.
“So you like country music too?”
“My favorite.”
Jodie leaned back on the seat, shut her eyes, and listened to Kenny Chesney sing about how forever feels. The ice was broken, and it didn’t look like it was going to be such a bad trip after all. Jimmy liked country music. At least she had that to offset tassels on his shoes.
At noon she turned off the music and began looking at the signs. “I’m hungry.”
“Fast food for lunch and a good dinner or the opposite?”
“I don’t care if it’s bologna sandwiches for both. I get grouchy when I’m hungry. If you aren’t going to find a place to eat pretty soon, I’ll drag out my crackers.”
“You are easy.”
“Is that a compliment or a derogatory remark?”
He smiled and the dimples deepened. “Take it however you want to. Next exit has McDonalds, Subway, pizza, or Hardees.”
“McDonalds.”
He nodded and put on the blinker. So she was cranky when he picked her up that morning. She didn’t mind fast food and got grouchy when she was hungry. He wondered what made her happy.
“I’ll be with you in a minute. Check the menu and have your order ready,” he said as he headed toward the men’s room.
She didn’t need to check the menu. She knew what she liked at McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, and most of the other fast food places along the way. She sat down at a booth where she could read the menu board just in case she did change her mind and decided to try one of their new sandwiches. She hadn’t talked herself into anything different by the time he joined her.
“Ready?”
She nodded.
“I’ll have a double quarter pounder with cheese, large fries, and a large drink,” she told the cashier.
“The chipotle wrap, a fruit parfait, and a medium drink.” He ordered and handed the woman a Visa card.
She stared at his meager lunch. “What did you eat for breakfast?”
“I had a bran muffin and a fruit smoothie. Why do you ask?”
She bit into the burger. “You’re twenty-six, not eighty-six. Why would you eat old people food?”
He waved toward her pile of french fries loaded with salt and pepper. “You are clogging your arteries with all that fat.”
“No, I’m not. I work hard so I can eat good. It’s people like you that sit on your hind ends all day in an office that have to eat like you are already looking St. Peter in the eyeball.”
“You are eating almost fifteen hundred calories and more than seventy fat grams in that meal right there. And I’d guess you are drinking soda with sugar, not diet?”
“You got it, honey. And I’m having a hot caramel sundae after I finish so don’t put that Visa card away too deeply. You can add the calories and fat grams from that too.”
He shuddered.
She giggled.
So that’s what made her happy. Fat-filled food that would give her a heart attack before she was fifty. He wasn’t surprised, not when he thought about her at five years old. No one picked on Jodie Cahill, and it wasn’t because Roseanna took up for her either. It was because Jodie didn’t take a bit of guff from anyone, boys or girls. With that attitude she probably had her veins and fat cells beaten into submission. They were afraid to hang onto an extra bit of cholesterol.
“Were you a fat little boy who got teased and pushed around or something? Bet that’s it. You were chubby and when you were a teenager you went on one of those diets that only let you eat water and celery sticks. Now you’ve got this obsession with fat grams and calories and preach it at every meal.” She dipped fries in ketchup and talked between bites.
“I’ve never been fat,” he said flatly.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve always been a big eater. I work it off most days. By the end of this trip, I might gain five pounds but it’ll all come off when I get home because spring will put me in the fields from daylight to dark.”
“You like ranching?”
“Love it. Can’t imagine anything else. My sisters all went to college, and Momma and Daddy were determined I’d follow in their footsteps. I tried one semester. Couldn’t stand it. Went home and told Daddy I’d rather shovel manure. I’ve been ridin’ the rodeo rounds or ranching ever since. Got a herd of cattle and a couple of horses that are mine. Help with the ranch and when Granny Etta needs it, she runs a bed and breakfast called Cahill Lodge. You might’ve noticed it when you turned down our lane. Anyway, I help her out some too. Mostly nowadays Granny is out galavantin’ around with her best friend, Roxie Hooper, and Rosy runs the lodge so I help her now that Greta isn’t there anymore. But that’s another story.” She was rambling.
“No offense taken, then,” he said curtly and finished the yogurt parfait.
She polished off the last bits of fries. “You going to get my sundae or is dessert not on the expense account?”
“Are you serious?”
“As the heart attack you think it will cause,” she said.
“I’ll get it,” he said. “Hot caramel, right? One or two?”
She smiled. Even with a tiny fleck of ketchup still hanging on the corner of her mouth she was sexy as hell. The one thing she didn’t look like was a bull rider. A model perhaps with those long legs and height. A movie star with that delicate nose and full mouth. Definitely not a woman who crawled on the back of a bull named Demon or White Lightning and held on for eight seconds.
“One will do until snack time in the middle of the afternoon. And get a large coffee to go,” she smarted right back at him.
Familiar landmarks went by at seventy-five miles an hour. She’d been down this same road many times, at first with her father driving and alone after high school graduation. It was the first time she’d traveled it with a total stranger. Even if she knew his birth month, that he hadn’t been a chubby kid, and that he was a friend of Thomas Klinger, he was still a stranger. With that icy aura surrounding him, she figured he probably would remain a stranger the day they finished the circuit and he took her back to Sulphur, Oklahoma.
Sometime in the late afternoon, about the time he was watching carefully for Exit 73, which would put them on US 49 South toward Richland/Hattiesburg, his cell phone began to ring. He was driving behind a semi with no place to go and couldn’t see the road signs until they were already gone.
He picked up the ringing phone from the console and pitched it in her lap. “Here, answer this and tell whoever it is that I’ll call them back.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” She flipped the phone open and said, “Hello.”
“Who is this?” A deep voice asked.
“This is Jodie. I’m supposed to tell whoever is calling that Jimmy will call you back. Name and number please? Of course, the answering machine could have told him that if he hadn’t been so rattled about a semi blocking all the signs, and I wouldn’t have to be talking to you, whoever you are.”
The voice chuckled. “So the infamous Jod
ie answers the phone. Tell him to call his therapist when he has time. I’ll be out after six tonight but it’s important that I speak to him so please tell him to call before six.”
“And why do you think I’m infamous? Are you a rodeo fan?”
“Let’s just say I’ve heard of you and leave it at that. Will you please tell Jimmy to call me?”
“Will do,” she said.
Tassels on his shoes. Watches his diet. A therapist. God Almighty, does one of those bags back there contain Prozac by the bucketful too? I’m traveling with a neurotic who can’t survive without daily visits from his therapist. And I thought Rosy’s husband, Trey, was a prissy city boy.
Jimmy successfully caught the off ramp. “Who was it?”
“Your therapist. He said to call him before six and it was important.”
“That would be Paul. I suppose we’ll be in our hotel by six so that won’t be a problem. Now, how many miles do we stay on this highway?”
He doesn’t even blush? He has a therapist at the age of twenty-six and he doesn’t even deny it or turn red?
“Little more than eighty miles, then we’ll catch Interstate 59 South for about ten miles. Then it’s about ninety miles to Mobile. That’s the halfway mark, or do you want to drive farther today and less tomorrow? I don’t have to be at the riding until tomorrow night, so we can make Fort Pierce easy by then if we leave early. We’ll be there two nights, and then do some heavy driving to make it to Denver by the night of the eighth.”
“Mobile is fine. That will give me plenty of time to get in touch with Paul.”
“So why do you see a therapist?”
“You don’t?” he asked.
“No, I do not! I’m well-adjusted. Only prone to be cranky or grouchy when I have to give up something I really want. Like this riding circuit. I don’t need a therapist. Why do you?”
He blushed. Deep crimson filled his cheeks. “It’s personal.”
She waited.
“Paul isn’t a real therapist. He’s my best friend, and I tell him everything so he teases and says he’s my therapist.”
Lord, it just got deeper and deeper.
“That sounds kind of sissy,” she said.
“Men can have best friends. Do you ever watch the television series ‘House’?”
“Love it. Hugh Laurie’s character is after my own dear heart.”
“What about Wilson? The oncologist on the show?”
She wondered where this was going, and why he’d changed the subject. “What about him?”
“I’m House. Paul is Wilson. We are both writers like they are doctors. We’ve been friends forever like they have. Does that explain?”
“A little,” she said. “So instead of Vicodan you take Prozac? Are you as mean as he is?”
He was visibly appalled. “No, I do not take Prozac and I hope I’m not that mean!”
“If you aren’t depressed, what’s your problem that’s so big you have to visit with Paul daily?”
“Personal and I’m not going there. Change the subject. Talk to me about something else.”
“No thanks. I’m taking a nap.” She fluffed up the pillow and laid it against the window. She shut her eyes but didn’t sleep. She’d make him tell her what his problem was by the end of three months. She wondered what Paul looked like. Did he dress in tight jeans and wear cowboy boots . . . without tassels? Was he rugged, with black hair and dark eyes, or too pretty like Jimmy?
They reached the Econolodge at 5:00. Jimmy booked two rooms with a connecting door and pushed a luggage carrier back out to the parking lot.
She leaned against the fender and waited. “I need that suitcase right there and my sack of snacks.”
“What about the rest of it?” he asked.
“That’s all I need to take into the hotel,” she said.
He piled every scrap of his belongings onto the cart. “Okay.”
She followed him into the lobby and down a hallway to an elevator. “You don’t travel much, do you?”
“All the time. I seldom get to stay home a whole week. I like to have my own things. It makes traveling easier,” he explained.
I’m going to gag if he sets up pictures of his girlfriend, his momma, and pet Chihuahua in the hotel room. My appetite will be ruined by the time I get back home. Even Chris will start lookin’ good compared to Jimmy Crowe.
He flipped out a folding suitcase holder in her room and set her luggage on it, put her sack on the dresser, and pushed his mountain of comfort through the connecting door. “We’ll find a good restaurant for supper as soon as I unpack and make a few calls. Do you have a preference since you know this part of the country better than I do?”
“There’s a wide variety or we can have pizza delivered if we want to stay in and munch on leftovers all evening,” she said.
“You decide.” He shut the door.
She heard the lock engage and groaned. She heard him talking, most likely to Paul. She envisioned him setting up a china tea set on the table in his room. Even with her ear pressed to the door, she couldn’t make out a single word, only a chuckle and his tone.
He doesn’t really carry around china, she scolded herself. Give the man a chance. But he unpacks! He takes all those clothes out of the bags and puts them in drawers for just one night. How can I give a man like that a chance?
The silent mental argument went on long after she’d opened her suitcase, retrieved a brush, and removed the tangles from her hair. It was still in progress when he knocked on the door and carefully inched it open.
“Have you decided on supper? If you haven’t, I think I would like to order pizza. I can get some work done if we don’t have to go out,” he said.
She turned from the mirror. “Hey, that’s fine. I’m a junk food junkie when I travel. What kind do you eat? I’ll order.”
“Whatever you like,” he said.
“Meatlovers?”
“Half black olive and half mushroom. And not a word from you about it either.”
“Who me?” She said in wide-eyed innocence.
Without an invitation he sat down at the tiny bistro table in the corner. “Yes, you.”
She thumbed through the folder on the dresser, found a pizza place willing to deliver, and made the call. “One large meatlovers and a large with half black olive and half mushrooms with extra cheese.”
He groaned.
She hung up. “Live a little. You got plenty of room in your fancy pleated pants to put on a pound or two.”
Chapter Two
“Ladies and gentlemen, how’d you like those opening ceremonies?”
Applause and catcalls filled the arena.
“Welcome to the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds and the Annual Bud Light US Smokeless Tobacco Company Challenger Tour. Tonight you will see the toughest, meanest bulls we could rustle up and the riders who think they’re tougher. Please welcome our judges. Fred Massey from Houston, Texas, who retired with more than one championship under his golden buckle. And a newcomer to the judging round but well qualified and not a stranger to the profession. Miss Jodie Cahill from Sulphur, Oklahoma, who won the gold buckle six years ago as the youngest female rider to win it. She’s been riding since before she can remember. The judge on the back of the chute tonight is Terrance Roswell. Let’s give it up for the judges, the riders, and even the rangy old bulls before the competition begins.” The announcer’s voice filled the convention center and the ensuing applause was deafening. He gave it time to settle before going on. “If you’ll all stand for the National Anthem presented by one of our judges, Jodie Cahill, and remain standing for a moment of silence for our troops.”
Jodie picked up the microphone as quiet filled the stands. Clowns placed their hands over their hearts. Cowboys and cowgirls held hats over their hearts. Jimmy stopped taking notes to feel the ambience of the crowd as Jodie stole their hearts with her soulful rendition of the National Anthem. When the last note died and everyone bowed their heads, he knew in that mome
nt this trip was exactly what he needed. He could never have described the feelings without having been there.
The announcer ended the silence with a boom. “Let’s ride bulls.”
Jimmy picked up his notebook.
Jodie picked up her scorecard.
“First up is Benny Tennyson riding a new bull named Sin. Eighteen hundred pounds of pure mean . . .”
Jodie watched carefully, noting every move the rider made and awarding or deducting points fairly. Eight seconds lasted eight years for the judges as well as the rider, who managed to hang on until the bell sounded. It was going to be a good season if they all showed that kind of talent. She tallied up her scores and was surprised to see that she and Fred had each awarded forty points. She’d been apprehensive that she’d score too highly. After the first ride, she settled into the job and the evening was over too fast.
Jimmy found her in the middle of riders, both male and female, members of the medical team that followed the PBR rounds and fans when the evening ended. He’d booked them a room for one night at the Radisson Beach Resort on Hutchison Island and had hired a taxi to bring them to the fairgrounds. He’d gotten the phone number and planned to call the same company to take them back to the hotel immediately after the event. His notebook was full and his mind was racing; he wanted to get back to his laptop and put in several hours while it was all fresh.
He touched her elbow. “Are you ready?”
Shivers tap danced down her neck. She attributed it to the first night’s excitement of the rounds. “No, I’m going for breakfast with some of the riders. It’s tradition. You can go with us. It’ll be good for you. If you want personal insight, here it is. IHOP after midnight out at Port St. Lucie. It’s where everyone goes.”
He couldn’t refuse to go but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to write about the way the dust boiled up under the bull’s hooves. The way the clowns drew the big raging monster’s attention away from the rider so he could dash to safety. He had a thousand questions to ask Jodie.
She ate pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, gravy and hash browns. He watched in amazement that someone so thin could put away so much food. Everyone knew her, and she introduced him to so many people that his mind was in a boggle. He’d never remember all those names or faces, but she’d been right. The camaraderie after the event and good-hearted jesting certainly did add another dimension to the stories he’d send off later that night. And it was invaluable to the detail in the novel he was producing.
To Hope Page 2
