City Girl (6 page)

What a ridiculous sight! There sat her transportation to a new life, a gleaming silver-and-blue El Camino loaded down with the meager sum of her life's belongings, towing a horse trailer full of expensive bulls, driven by an incongruous cowboy who was too handsome and too complex for her own good, taking her to an encounter with only God knew what. Why, then, was she so excited and anxious to be under way? And why did her heart leap happily now that the dreaded moment had come?

With an almost invisible shrug Crystal pulled the door closed with a crack and skipped down the walk, feeling oddly like a little girl off on her first picnic.

The sleek, low pickup truck topped a hill and glided smoothly down the other side. Crystal twisted in her seat to view as much of the vast panorama of Texas countryside as she could catch at fifty-five miles per hour. This was the first time that she had journeyed outside of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, and only now was she beginning to understand how large and open her state was.

She gasped with delight as the top of each new hill brought a rolling vista of land: fields of knee-high grasses contrasting with colors from the deepest and richest greens to the palest golds, the dense stands of oaks and cedars or tall cottonwood trees, wide red patches of Indian paintbrushes, and the glorious zaffer of prairie clover. Here and there the land was pockmarked with green-brown pools of water, sometimes manmade watering tanks for livestock and sometimes the product of nature's streams or springs. Everywhere were fences, miles and miles of them, constructed mostly of barbed wire strung tightly between poles of metal or wood.

Occasionally Crystal would glimpse a courthouse spire or a church steeple in the distance, but along the highway there were few buildings, until they reached a city which had grown up on either side of the modern interstate. There were several such cities, for Texas is an industrialized state, but it was the distance between them that impressed her.

The carefully cultivated fields of maize and wheat and alfalfa hay patterned against the open vastness of the land enthralled her. One forgot about the wide-open spaces in the city or considered them a leftover illusion of the past. Yet, in spite of the size of some of its major cities, the vast majority of Texas soil lays untouched by metropolitan life.

The farther south they drove, the higher the hills became and the denser the brush. Scrubby willows covered sandy hillsides. Variant clusters of trees formed windbreaks. The carefully cultivated geometric patches of ground gave way to rocky slopes where cattle grazed in little clumps upon coastal Bermuda or Johnson grasses, and, in some cases, the sturdy wheat-colored love grass.

Crystal sensed the gradual change of the land with a growing sense of excitement. She was in love with the naked space. Gone were any unhappy thoughts of missed graduations and abandoned childhood homes. She was caught up in the adventure of Texas.

Garrett Dean was a quiet man, but he answered Crystal's few inquiries about the land good-naturedly, and she was thankful for the opportunity to drink in the countryside as they swept by it. She could not, however, keep her eyes continually on the view. From time to time she stole a silent glance in his direction.

Had she known beforehand that they would have been traveling together like this, she might have been nervous just thinking about it. But since he had given her no opportunity to contemplate the situation, she was able to take it in stride. It helped that he was content to travel in silence, devoting most of his attention to his driving.

Crystal gave no thought to the trailer gliding easily behind them. He had maneuvered the awkward contraption easily through the confusing network of city interchanges, his big hands resting comfortably and familiarly upon the steering wheel.

A couple of hours into their journey, he had switched on the radio, and it played softly now. Crystal was familiar with popular country-and-western music, and she hummed along occasionally. At those times, she would look up to find his stunning blue gaze on her, and a tingle would course through her body. After a while she was careful not to hum with the music. Those intriguing eyes and the odd sensation they evoked were too interesting, too exciting to be allowed.

Still, she could not resist the impulse to look at him, and more and more she found herself gazing at that arresting profile: the strong square line of his jaw, the firm suggestive width of his mouth, the smooth high cheekbones, and the slight jut of his straight, strangely dark brows above the deep sockets that housed those stunning blue eyes. Occasionally she would think he was about to turn his head and catch her watching him, so she would quickly turn her eyes away. She did that now, and was delighted to view a rustic two-story farmhouse, complete with spinning windmill and root cellar.

It was a very old house, perhaps a hundred years or more, freshly whitewashed and well kept. Its clapboard siding rose straight and rigid above golden wheatfields. The sheet-metal roof gleamed brilliantly in the midday sun. In the distance, Crystal spotted a small cloud of dust following a slowly moving tractor and a cavorting collie dog running about in rings around a small flock of woolly sheep in a pen.

"You getting hungry?"

Crystal tore her eyes away from the window. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

A strange gleam lighted the eyes that rested on her, and she looked quickly away.

"I asked if you were getting hungry."

"Yes, I guess I am, now that you mention it," she replied, surprised that it was so, but kept her eyes on the window, though the farmhouse was well behind them now.

"You find the scenery interesting." It was more of a statement than a question, and Crystal was impressed by the intuitiveness that precipitated the remark.

"It really is beautiful." She sighed, chancing a glance in his direction. "I just get all caught up in it."

He smiled at the wistful expression of her green eyes. "So, you are really a country girl at heart, eh?"

"I guess maybe I am." She laughed, remembering the scalding lecture she had delivered him the day before. Was it only yesterday? She could hardly believe it.

"Well, I guess we will see about that, huh?" The sides of his mouth tugged down in a cryptic frown. "I've seen city girls try to make it out here before. I'm betting that you will be ready for the bright lights again before the month is out."

"Why do you say that?". Crystal tried to keep the question light, though she rankled inwardly at his opinion of her. She did not like being lumped together disparagingly with all those city girls he seemed to know. And it was not fair of him to jump to conclusions about her like that.

"Just call it a hunch based on lots of experience," he said with a grin and turned with full intensity back to his driving.

"Maybe you've been experiencing the wrong women!" she snapped without thinking.

A wide grin broke across his handsome face then, lending a devilish quality to his rugged good looks. His eyes flicked over her. "Maybe." He watched her a second longer before turning his attention back to the road. "If that's an invitation, I accept."

Crystal's eyes flew wide in alarm. "It most definitely is not!"

A silent, unconcerned shrug was his only reply. Huffily Crystal turned into her corner, shaking with anger and… What? Excitement?

She was famished by the time they exited the interstate highway at Georgetown and headed west. They passed several eating establishments, and Crystal's mouth watered hungrily as each disappeared behind them into a jumble of buildings. She wanted to demand that he stop and feed her, but she kept her mouth stubbornly shut. She would not ask him to stop if she had to sit right here and expire from starvation. Under no circumstances would she give him the satisfaction of hearing her complain. She had already told him once that she was hungry, and though it seemed like hours ago now, she would not tell him again.

To her dismay, the city gave way to country again all too soon. They were deep in the heart of the Texas hill country by now, a land of gentle mountains and grazing slopes, of ancient rock formations and beautiful lakes. White-tailed deer munched alongside the sheep and cattle in the open fields and darted in and out among the trees, which often grew in dense stands right up next to the edge of the paved road.

This was fabulous land, compelling and majestic. Were it not for the empty grumblings of her stomach, Crystal would have hoped that it could go on and on forever. Soon, however, their curious rig topped a hill, revealing a small city lying alongside the wide two-lane road. Crystal straightened up hopefully in her seat and caught just a glimpse of a wry smile on Garrett's lips as she did so.

Much to her relief, he steered the El Camino toward a gasoline station and pulled up at a row of pumps.

"We'll be here a few minutes," he told her. "You can just wait in the truck."

Crystal wanted to snap out at him again. She did not like the way he had of making every question sound like a statement and every statement sound like a command, but she wisely kept her tongue still. Her stomach growled ravenously, but she refused to complain. She would show this arrogant cowboy the stern stuff of which city girls were made.

Garrett got out of the truck, reached back in for his ever-present hat, and began giving orders to the station attendant. Crystal busied herself by watching a sleek yellow dog make its way lazily across the empty lot next to the station. This was obviously his territory, and though he was used to this steady influx of newcomers disrupting his peace, he seemed to feel it his duty to check out the rig now violating his space.

Crystal tried to find a great deal of interest in the dog's lethargic movements, hoping it would keep her mind off food, but she finally gave up and turned her mind to more relevant things. Where was Garrett? What was taking so long?

She craned her head every which way, twisting in her seat, but the pumps to one side and the trailer behind obstructed her view. She looked toward the gasoline-station office, thinking it possible that Garrett had followed the attendant inside to settle the bill, and was a little embarrassed to see the attendant sitting in a chair, his feet propped up on a rack of oil cans, alone, except for the lazy yellow dog, watching her disinterestedly.

Quickly she turned away, putting her back to the window, and her eye snagged on a hatted figure moving with long strides across the sleepy street. A car moving down the road passed between them, momentarily blocking her view of him. For the first time she noticed the little building from which he must have come. It was painted a cool powder blue, and above its door was a crudely lettered sign that read "BLUE SKY CAFE."

For a stunned moment she thought that he must have gone there to eat—without her! Then the car between them was gone and she saw that he carried two white paper sacks. Immediately she chastised herself, feeling petty and unfair.

Garrett handed the sacks through the open window, and the welcome aromas of hot hamburgers and fries filled the interior of the truck cab and Crystal's nostrils.

"You interested in a picnic lunch?" he asked, opening the door and settling himself in his seat.