The Final Turn (Cajun Cowboys Book 2)

by Patricia Watters

  Trying not to sound eager, least Anne start to read between the lines, she said, "I'm just curious, so don't make anything of it, but what do you wear when you go to these fais do-dos?"

  "A dress or a skirt and blouse. A lot of the older women wear dresses, but most of the younger ones wear jeans. I always wear something with a skirt because Joe likes to see my legs."

  "He's your husband. I imagine he's seen a lot more than legs."

  "Sure, but he still likes it when I wear a dress that shows them off."

  Piper let out a dry huff. "What's with men and women's legs? They're just legs. Women show their arms all the time and men don't hang out their tongues, but show them some leg and they revert to cavemen."

  "Which isn't a bad thing if he's your husband," Anne said, lips tipping in a droll smile. "But why are you asking about what to wear to a fais do-do? I heard you showed up last week."

  "I did but… well…" Piper paused to collect her thoughts, not wanting Anne to learn what took place in the shed row.

  "Well what?" Anne asked, after the lengthy pause.

  "What I meant to say was I only went in hopes of talking to Edgar Robichau and getting some racing pointers, so I didn't notice what everyone was wearing, and now I'm curious. The Broussards have been throwing those things since we were kids and now you're one of them, and I'm wondering how you've adapted."

  "There's nothing to adapt to," Anne said. "Fais do-dos are lively and fun. Everybody's happy and enjoying the music and dancing, and each other."

  Piper couldn't argue that. It had definitely been lively and fun in the shed row, stomping around and kicking up dust while moving in and out of Ace's arms. And there was no question he liked the dress she wore, probably because he could see some leg. Then there was Rags and her squeaky chicken, keeping time with the music…

  "Now you're grinning," Anne said.

  "Huh?"

  "You were grinning about something."

  Reeling in her errant thoughts, Piper said, "I just had this image of you at a fais do-do decked out for one of Nana's teas and it just struck me as funny. Assuming that's not the way you dress, what exactly do you wear?"

  "Nothing from my old wardrobe, but since you're curious I'll show you my meager fais do-do attire." Anne left the room and returned with several dresses on hangers and flopped them over the back of the couch. Lifting the two dresses on top, both looking like throwbacks from a different era, though obviously new, she said, "I got these on Amazon. This flowery one's a retro vintage from the fifties, and the polka dot's a retro from the sixties. The others I picked up on Ebay. Obviously they aren't what you'd wear, but what you're wearing now would be fine at any fais do-do. No one cares how people dress. It's all about schmoozing and dancing up a storm. Why not hang around after the match races. There are always good-looking guys there besides the Broussard brothers, though you might not want to turn them down if any ask you to dance. They're dynamite on the dance floor."

  Piper refrained from telling Anne she knew all about dancing with a Broussard, not wanting Anne jumping to conclusions over something that would probably turn out to be nothing more than an infatuation for a red hot cowboy. One who was even now messing with her head because the idea of dancing in the shed row again was beginning to take hold. "I'll think about it."

  Anne set the dresses aside, and holding up a kind of nouveau vintage, she said, "Joe's such an earthy guy I wanted something that looked homespun. This was as close as I could get. It's a Gunne Sax dress I got on Ebay."

  Piper stared at a maroon calico dress with tiny white flowers on it, billowing white sleeves, and several rows of delicate tucks edged in lace running down the bodice. "Did Joe like it?" she asked, thinking his mindset was probably equivalent to Ace's when it came to women's clothing. Definitely homespun. But kind of quaint in a backwater swamp-people kind of way.

  "Joe loved it but never saw me in it because it's a couple sizes too small so I never wore it. Actually, it's about your size, but you wouldn't be caught dead in it."

  Piper laughed. "I'm thinking maybe I would. Nana would split a gut and Daddy wouldn't have a clue what to think." She took the dress and held it against herself.

  "Okay, that does it. I propose we deck you out like Elly May Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies. I'll fix curls on top of your head and pull two pony tails on each side of your face, and darken your lashes and add a little eyeliner and green eye shadow and maybe some freckles across your nose, and introduce you as a long lost cousin from Arkansas. You'll pile on the southern drawl with a lot of y'alls and throw in a few ain'ts and a couple of over yonders along with some them critters. They'll assume you came into the family under dubious conditions, which I'll confirm by explaining that one of my male cousins strayed from the fold while doing a magazine article about people in the Ozarks and ended up marrying one, and you're their daughter. We could pull it off. I even have a hat with a wide floppy brim that would cover half your face so no one could get a good look."

  "Are you serious?" Piper asked, when Anne gave no indication she was kidding.

  "Sure. It would be a hoot. I don't know how long we could get away with it but it would be great fun while it lasted. Keep in mind that Cajuns love a good joke, especially if it's on them. I'll tell them your name's Pearline and you were named after a soap."

  "A soap?"

  "I take it you haven't seen the laundry room since we painted the walls and fixed it up. I bought a vintage sign on Ebay." Anne left the room and returned carrying a framed laundry soap ad with the words scrawled across the top: Let the men wash if they won't get you Pearline, with the image of a man on his knees hovering over an old wooden wash tub.

  Piper took the sign while visualizing the whole silly charade. And if she ended up dancing with Ace in the shed row while accompanied by Rags and her squeaky toy, it would be sillier yet. Setting aside her earlier resolve to keep some distance from Ace in order to allow a little logical reasoning to take hold, she said, "Okay, let's do it."

  ***

  Ace was disappointed when Anne told him she had a cousin coming to the fais do-do and hoped he'd dance with her since she was shy around guys. When he mentioned that Piper said something about coming and he should spend time with her since they were in a kind of partnership with the filly, Anne told him Piper had other plans and wouldn't be coming.

  Ace knew it was Piper's excuse to stay away from him because he'd been pushing things with her, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. When he was around her it was like he had the kind of tunnel vision she had about racing. And that was the thrust of this whole affair. It was as one-sided as a closed door. She'd crack it open at times and he'd slip his hand in, or his foot, and maybe even step through the doorway and have the world in his arms for a few moments, then the door would shut again. And that's the way it had been since she kissed him in the field on returning from the bayou.

  For the rest of the week she'd shown up mornings to work Rags and left right after washing her down, though he'd helped by scraping off the water as he'd done before. But Piper still kept her distance, using the excuse that someone might see them getting cozy if he approached her with anything more than just a quick kiss. And taking the hint, he let her be.

  The encouraging part of the week was the way Rags responded to different workmates. His grandfather matched her with two of his best racers, one being Jetstream, and each time, Rags taunted and mocked and seemed to take ruthless gratification in harrying and humiliating them, until his grandfather feared she was sucking the joy of racing out of his top runners.

  What's more, the two times Piper breezed Rags, the filly ran with unlimited energy, speeding up at the turns and seeming to gather momentum as she continued around the track. At the end of each session, whether she'd been breezing or running with a workmate, Rags didn't even breathe hard, acting as if she could run another mile or two. The realization was beginning to dawn. With Rag's unbreakable spirit and abounding energy, fueled with a tenacious will t
o win, his grandfather just might have found his next Miss Maple.

  With the match races over for the afternoon, and Piper not even showing up for that, Ace sat in the barn for the fais do-do, unenthusiastically waiting for Anne to arrive with her cousin. Joe sat at a table with him, a sly smile on his lips, like he was taking pleasure in seeing him get stuck with a woman he described as being about as far removed from a Harrison as a person could be.

  "There are any number of guys around here who could dance with her," he groused.

  "She's shy," Joe replied. "She's pretty though, in a down home hillbilly sorta way. Even clog dances. Should fit right in with the kinda women you like."

  Ace let out a disgusted snort. "Okay, I admit an earthy, down-home woman turns me on, but that doesn't mean I want a hayseed in bib overalls who smells like a pigpen."

  Joe laughed. "Hayseed, maybe, but last I heard the women talkin', she was goin' to wear one of Anne's dresses since she didn't come prepared to go dancin'."

  Ace found himself unwittingly looking at the entrance, hoping to find a petite woman in a silky dress with big pink and yellow flowers on it…

  "Her name's Pearline and she looks a lot like Anne, though small like Piper," Joe said. "Same color hair as both Anne and Piper. Definitely a Harrison, though I imagine Charles Harrison must be about to bust a gut havin' a hillbilly in the family along with a Cajun." He grinned. "There's nothin' like diversity."

  Ace eyed Joe, who seemed a little too enthusiastic. "Is there something I'm missin' here?"

  "What d'ya mean?"

  "This… Pearline person. No one's ever mentioned her."

  "That's because the family never talks about her, but since she arrived unannounced they're stuck. I guess the Harrisons figured sendin' her to a Broussard fais do-do while visitin' would make her feel at home. And speak of the devil, here she is."

  Ace looked around to see Anne with a woman, about Piper's height and size, stepping into the barn. The woman wore a dress like Joe said she would, along with a floppy hat with a brim hiding half her face. "How come I've been singled out for this?" he grumbled.

  "Because you're completely unattached."

  That got Ace's attention. The fact was, he didn't feel unattached. In his mind he was connected to a woman who felt so slight in his arms he'd feared he could crack a rib if he held her too tight, yet the way she could handle an eleven-hundred-pound keg of racing dynamite made her seem invincible. But Joe was right. He wasn't attached to Piper except in his mind, and the more he tried to push thoughts of her away, the more insistent they became.

  Anne headed over to the table, dragging her cousin by the arm, and after giving Joe a quick kiss, she said to Ace, "This is my cousin, Pearline, from Arkansas."

  The woman said an almost inaudible "Hi, y'all."

  With the top half of her face hidden beneath the rim of a big floppy hat, Ace didn't see her eyes, but he saw a sprinkling of freckles on her nose, and he thought he detected the hint of a smile on her lips. He nodded, while thinking he probably should stand up, but the thought came too late and already the woman inserted herself between Joe and Anne, reminding him of the way Piper sandwiched herself between his grandfather and Edgar at the last fais do-do.

  Again he looked toward the barn door, wondering if Piper might change her mind and come after all. He was itching to dance with her, right out the barn to the shed row. And somewhere along the line he'd try to stake his claim on her. At least she'd agreed to ride a cow horse this coming week and help move cattle. He was tempted to take her by his house on the way back and see her reaction. It wasn't close to the kind of house she'd grown up in, but it was handcrafted from cypress and raised a half-story off the ground so flooding would never be an issue, and all the while he'd been setting in windows that week, he'd imagined Piper there…

  "…named after washing soap."

  Ace looked blankly across the table at Anne, who'd said something about soap. "Huh?"

  "Pearline. She was named after Pearline Laundry soap. It's popular back in the Ozarks where she comes from. Tell him about it, Pearline."

  Anne gave the poor woman a nudge, and Ace could tell she was shy, not saying a single word since her quick 'Hi y'all.' But this time she started in saying, "Maw used Pearline for everything includin' washin' us kids. And I used it to scrub critters before skinnin' 'em like just before comin' here. Plannin' the trip I couldn't decide what to take on the bus to eat, then Daddy hit a couple of young possum crossin' the road and I figured I'd take 'em along on the trip, but first I hadda clean ‘em, so I washed 'em in Pearline, then I fetched the skinnin’ board leanin’ on the side of the shed and before long I had a poke full 'o fried possum."

  For a shy woman she didn't seem short on words once she got started, and between glancing around to see if Piper might have arrived, while trying to act interested in what the woman was saying, Ace found himself picking up the pieces of a disjointed discourse about her bus ride…

  "I was settin' next to a woman who was dumber than a sack of rocks. She was all torn up 'bout somethin' and started tellin' me about it and next thing I know she's cryin' in the middle of her tellin'. I didn't know diddly squat what she was talkin' about so I pretended I was sleepin' and she just kept on talkin', all the while the bus was hotter'n blue blazes."

  As she rambled, Ace couldn't see much of the woman's face beneath the floppy hat, but he did note the way her lips moved when she talked, a distinctive mouth he not only recognized, but was intimately familiar with. He lowered his gaze to a pair of hands neatly folded together on the table, hands with short fingernails, ragged around the edges. He knew those hands too.

  Forcing himself to suppress a smile, he said to the nose and mouth revealed beneath the turned-down brim of the hat, "I've been told you do a mean clog dance so let's get hoppin'."

  "I can't. I didn't bring my clogs," was her quick reply.

  Ace walked around the table and said to the top of the hat, "No problem. The band's playin' and I'm itchin' to dance." He dragged her chair back and grabbed her hand, and when she started to pull away, he tightened his fingers and said, "Come on, babycakes, don't be shy."

  As soon as she stood, Ace tugged her toward the barn door.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked, while shambling along behind him.

  "To get some fresh air." Once outside, Ace snaked an arm around her waist, pulled her to him and kissed her soundly.

  But midway through the kiss, a pair of hands came up to his chest. "Do you behave like this with all the new women showing up at these things?" she asked in a peppery voice.

  Ace grinned. "Only with little Ozark gals with ragged fingernails."

  Piper yanked off the hat. "When did you figure it out?"

  Ace lifted her hand, splaying her fingers. "When I saw these ragtag nails. They're a dead giveaway." He kissed the tips of each finger then kissed her on the lips.

  The kiss lingered for a few moments before Piper braced her hands on his chest again. "I told you before, this has to stop. I need time to think."

  "Okay, I get it now." Ace removed his arms from around her. "What I want to know is why you didn't come to the match races? A rider cancelled and you could've raced."

  "I heard that from Anne, but I decided I didn't want to get all dusty and sweaty."

  Ace couldn't stop the wide grin. "Because you wanted to dress up for me and dance."

  "No! Because Anne said Cajuns love a good joke."

  "We do." Ace scanned the soft cotton dress draping over her slender frame, stopping just below the knees, revealing a pair of shapely legs in black sandals that looked a little large, though strapped tight to keep them on. But unlike the dress she wore before, this one was the color of burgundy wine, and sprinkled all over with tiny white flowers, with long white sleeves as sheer as lady's scarves, and little rows of lace down the front. Eyeing her with appreciation, he said, "You're as pretty in this dress as in the other one, and I have a hankerin' to dance in the shed row with th
e sweetest little hillbilly here"

  "Okay, but no hugging and kissing. Things are happening too soon."

  "Right. Got it." But as Ace took her hand and they scampered off to the shed row, he was hit with the urge to nibble on her neck, and tussle in a foot of fresh straw with their legs entangled, and kiss her until she saw stars, and finally get this thing he had for her out of his system so he could get his life back on track and focus on what really mattered: finding a nice Cajun woman to share his house and raise his kids. Which precluded chasing after a woman with a single-minded goal of becoming a jockey so she could chase around the country while pursuing her dream. He'd been there, done that, with the same kind of woman, and he'd been badly burned.

  Yet acknowledging that, he headed with Piper to the shed row, his arms itching to be around her, his resolve to find a nice Cajun woman relegated to some inaccessible recess in his mind.

  CHAPTER 13

  After pairing Rags with three different workmates over the next few days, every workout resulting in Rags using her harrying tactics and leaving in her wake a trio of sullen, submissive horses, Henri made the decision to match Rags with Cricket for workouts, and consign her intimidation and bullying to those she'd be racing against.

  Piper had been curious to know if Rags would pull her combative maneuvers with her stable companion, but she got her answer as soon as Cricket was brought out the following morning, when Rags greeted her pal with her ears tipped up, her eyes bright, and her face alert with eagerness to head down the track with her chum. It was playtime again. She never attempted to bully Cricket. With him it was all about fun and games.

  On returning after a six-furlong run, Henri informed Piper that tomorrow's workout would be a timed breezing, so she figured he'd be watching closely and making his decision before the end of the week whether or not she'd be running Rags in the upcoming claiming race.

  After hosing, scraping and wiping Rags down, with Ace's help, Piper released her into her pasture with Cricket and Gumbo. She'd thought Ace left the area, but on returning to the shed row, he met her halfway, and said, "Are you still game for movin' cattle today?"