Chasing McCree (4 page)

“
She’s a cutie.” Chase
mimicked.

“
Sorry, I should’ve warned
you.”

“
No,” he laughed. “I love
it. I’ve never been more entertained.”

We went into the kitchen and found
Grandma wielding a waffle iron, now wearing her Easter apron.
“Grandma, would it be possible to tell my dad a little
fib?”

“
You want me to lie to my
beloved son?” her drawn on eyebrows went way up.

“
Well, yes.”

“
What are we talking about?
Will I have to Hail Mary my way out of it?”

“
I’m not sure.” I went for
it. “If dad asks, could you tell him I slept here last
night?”

“
Only if you tell me where
you really were.”

“
I was with Chase, at his
house. We had parental supervision.”

She snorted, “I don’t care about
supervision. This is me we’re talking about here. I used to sneak
cigarettes outside on the fire escape when the nuns weren’t
looking. Just don’t end up in jail or get pregnant before you get
hitched, and I’ll be happy.”

“
So you won’t mind telling
dad that I stayed here last night?”

“
Briar, baby, your father
is a stuffed shirt with a tight ass. Sometimes I wonder if my real
son was switched at birth, and I got stuck with him. I have no
problem telling him a million little fibs.”

I gasped. “Thank you!”

“
I’m your grandmother, I’m
supposed to spoil you rotten. It’s all in a day’s work.”

She handed me a stack of plates, and I
found Grandpa at the dining room table. He had one of his snazzy
sweater vests on, and what was left of his hair was slicked back
with an oily gel that smelled like cheap cologne. “Hey Gramps, how
are you?”

“
What?” he
asked.

I repeated my question
louder.

“
Briar honey,” he patted my
hand and smiled. “When did you get here?”

“
Couple minutes ago,” I set
out the plates. “How are you?”

“
Eh, can’t complain.” He
chuckled, nodding at Grandma. “She’s bored.”

“
I know.”

Grandpa wagged his eyebrows. “So it’s
my job to spice it up, right?”

Crap, what was he going to do? Grandpa
was sometimes in and out of reality. Other times he pretended to be
out just to keep my grandmother on her toes.

“
Damn Germans keep taking
my pills.” He sent me a wink and grabbed the newspaper he’d been
reading and left the table, hobbling down the hall.

I looked back at Grandma, trying not to
laugh. “What happened with him?”

She flipped a waffle on to a plate and
loaded the iron with more batter. “He was watching the History
Channel again, and then he flushed his pills down the
toilet.”

“
Why?”

Grandma told Chase to man the waffles
and took my hands in hers, “Oh, baby. Grandpa is a little crazy…I
thought you knew.”

Chase snorted with laughter.

“
I did know.” I said,
wondering if she knew what he was doing and just played along for
the fun of it. “He’s never flushed his pills before.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“
But why did he do
it?”

She shrugged. “Beats the hell out of
me.”

Chapter 4

Chase

“
Tuesday nights I fix a
mean pot roast.” Grandma said, her frail, boney arms clutching me
in a tight hug. I was surprised by her strength, for such a small
older woman. “Look at you, not an ounce of fat.”

“
Uh, thanks.” My face went
red, and Briar pulled her off of me.

But Grandma wasn’t finished. “My hubby
was that fit once. A prized fighter. What a doll. A really awesome
boxer. He could knock em’ out. One two! Down on the mat they go,
stars in their eyes, teeth missing outta their heads.”

“
Wow, really?” I asked,
trying to hold in my laughter as she held her fists up and punched
the air.

“
Yup,” Grandma clicked her
tongue. “Unfortunately, he took one to many hits to the noggin, if
you catch my drift. Never was the same after the bar brawl of
eighty-two.”

“
Your grandfather was in a
bar fight?” I glanced at Briar.

She smiled. “I hear he was pretty
wild.”

Grandma purred. “An animal. Next time I
see you, I can tell you some stories about our trip to Africa. I
almost got married off to a tribal chief when Grandpa lost a poker
game to a witch doctor and a monkey who played the
harmonica.”

Briar laughed. “Grandma, I’m going to
say goodbye to Chase, why don’t you go check on your
sangria?”

“
Oh, I see how it is. You
kids want to smooch while the old bird isn’t looking.” Grandma
turned for the house, socks jingling as she opened the front door.
“I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I got these gray hairs and
wrinkles from a hotheaded husband and a son who couldn’t keep his
pecker in his pants. Don’t know how he’s managed to stay married to
your mother for so long. She must have a magical
vagina.”

The door shut. I looked at Briar. She
went pink with embarrassment, and I was about to tell her I loved
her grandmother, but the front door reopened. Grandma poked her
head back out. She narrowed her wrinkly eyes and pursed her lips
together, studying me closely, then Briar. “I know times are
different now, and you kids do things that would turn my hair
white. Do yourselves a favor and use protection. No glove, no
love.”

The door snapped shut behind her, and I
couldn’t make eye contact with Briar as we walked back for the
truck. Her grandmother didn’t mince words.

“
Well,” Briar let out a
breath and stopped next to the driver’s side door. “It was nice
meeting you Chase. Thanks for helping me last night. I owe
you.”

“
You’re
welcome.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets, not
quite ready to leave yet. Since I moved here to be with my mother,
Briar was the first person I formed any kind of connection with.
Come Monday, I knew, more than likely, things would go back to
normal. She’d go back to hanging with the popular crowd. The same
crowd that made it less than easy for me to make friends. Being the
new guy wasn’t exactly fun, but being ostracized by the general
school population because I didn’t drive a fifty thousand dollar
car or dress like a model, was verging on ridiculous. I would have
been happier at a public school around the average middle class. My
mother was trying to make up for all the years she’d been absent by
sending me to a pricy private school. A school where one of the
girls in my English class got a nose job for her
birthday.

I wasn’t poor by any means. In fact, I
owned a 50,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana and had enough money. I
wasn’t going to use it to support a gluttonous lifestyle bent on
impressing others.

My views were probably another reason
why I didn’t mesh so well with the other students. As I told Briar,
I was raised by my Grandparents. That makes an impression. It’s
vastly different from being born to parents who have friends with
other kids around your age. Especially when you are home schooled
on a ranch, and recess is learning how to run the family business
with a bunch of middle-aged cowboys for babysitters.

The difference between Briar and me was
that I already knew our peer’s opinions meant shit. Worrying about
what the popular crowd thought only wasted valuable time and brain
cells. The people Briar called friends were too self-absorbed to
notice anything beyond them. And if they did notice, as was the
case with me, they only made fun of me to sooth their
insecurities.

Ha, try walking up to any other
seventeen-year-old in the area, and I’m sure they wouldn’t know
half the shit I did.

“
Well, I’d better get
going.” I couldn’t stand in the driveway all day, even though Briar
was mighty pretty to look at. She really did look like some sort of
princess. Those springy curls and freckles were damn appealing,
too. I’d met girls back home, but none of them interested me like
her.

She nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

I climbed into the truck, but Briar
grabbed the door before I could shut it.

“
Uh,” she licked her lips.
“Do you, maybe…that is, if you want, I could give you my phone
number. We could hang out sometime, when I’m not drunk.”

“
Sure.” I grinned, saving
her number in my phone as she rattled it off. As far as stalling
went, I dragged out this goodbye session as long as possible. And I
got the feeling she didn’t want me to leave yet either. “How is it
that we’ve never met, Briar?”

“
What do you mean, at
school?”

“
Yeah. I recognize you, but
I know we’ve never talked.”

“
Well, I don’t think you’re
in any of my classes. Where do you sit at lunch?”

“
Wherever I can find a
spot. Sometimes it’s outside under the tree by the band
room.”

“
Oh, I sit in the
cafeteria.” She backed up from the truck, eyes flitting away from
mine. Her face pinched with a fretful worry. “At least, I think I
sit there… It’s possible that I won’t have any friends when I go to
school Monday. Alex and Rachel could ruin me.”

“
Aw, Briar.” I laid my hand
on her shoulder, not knowing what made me want to hug her and tell
her everything would be all right. We didn’t know each other very
well. I’d never been the territorial or confrontational kind of
guy, but Briar was bringing out a side of me I wasn’t familiar
with. Someone had to protect her from those assholes if they gave
her trouble, and I was the only one good for the job. “I’ll be your
friend.”

She blinked up at me. “Really? Just
like that?”

“
Why not?”

“
Uh,” she opened her mouth
and closed it. “No one’s ever told me they’d be my friend before.
People just don’t say that.”

“
First time for
everything.”

“
I’ve never been friends
with a cowboy, either.”

“
Well, I’ve never been
friends with a princess before.”

“
I’m not a princess, Chase,
far from it.” She crossed her arms, avoiding my gaze. That nickname
really riled her, but there was a small smile tugging at her
lips.

“
You’re the prettiest girl
I’ve ever met. In my book, that makes you a princess.”

“
That wasn’t a smooth come
on,” she teased, glancing back up at me. “You’re going to have to
do better.”

“
I wasn’t trying to be
smooth. I was just being honest, and paying you a compliment.” I
waited for her to react, but she stared at me with a vacant
expression. What kind of world had she grown up in? Hadn’t anyone
given her a compliment without any expectations or innuendo behind
it? “Let me guess, no one’s done that either.”

“
Er, no.”

I started the engine, shaking my head.
“Well city girl, this is going to be one interesting
friendship.”

“
What makes you say
that?”

“
We come from vastly
different worlds…might as well be another planet.” I winked, unable
to help myself. “See you at school.”

When I pulled up in the driveway my
mother and her husband Todd were doing their cool down stretches,
while my younger half-sister Amy snoozed in her stroller. I parked
the truck and started for the house, thinking I’d grab a few
carrots for Ash and groom him.

“
Hey, honey.” My mom said,
hefting Amy out of the stroller. She was tall for a three year old,
or so I’ve been told. “Where were you out so early in the
morning?”

“
I went to have breakfast
with a friend.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.

She beamed. “Oh, sweetie, that’s great!
See, I told you you’d start to like it here. Didn’t we tell him
Todd?”

“
Many times.” Todd folded
the stroller, not quite managing it while trying to have a
conversation.

Mom sighed, propping Amy on her hip.
“I’m thinking we should all go out to dinner tonight. How does the
steakhouse sound?”

“
Good.” I didn’t have
anything better to do.

Todd nodded, smoothing back his
white-blond hair. “Why don’t you take Amy in the house? Chase will
help me finish up out here.”

I watched my mother disappear inside.
Todd wanted to have a man to man. It was obvious.

We waited until the door was closed,
and he turned to me. He was a nice guy. My mom landed a great
husband. But we didn’t have much in common. He described himself as
a metro sexual, ex-model, lawyer. I’d never seen a pretty guy
before, until I met Todd. He had grooming habits that rivaled my
mothers. I’m thinking he wasn’t sure what to do with me. Hell, I
wasn’t sure what to do with me. I was a fish out of water in this
town.

“
So, you really have a
friend?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.

“
Yeah, her name is Briar.
She goes to my school.”

“
Huh,” he scratched his
chin. “As long as you’re trying.”