Cowboy For Hire (32 page)

“Oh, yes, they’re lovely. And the fragrance
of orange blossoms must be the most intoxicating one in the
world.”

Charlie wouldn’t know about that, having had
little experience with oranges or their blossoms. Amy’s own
personal fragrance intoxicated him more than any other ever had.
“I’ll bet,” he said, in order to be saying something.

She looked up at him quickly. “Haven’t you
ever smelled orange blossoms?”

He gave a little shrug. “At my sister’s
wedding. I think she had orange blossoms. Um, I think I remember
them smelling nice.” He remembered no such thing, but feared Amy
would discard him as a worthless piece of nothing if he admitted
it.

“Oh, you must come to my uncle’s health spa
in April. There are huge groves of orange trees surrounding it, and
the fragrance is heavenly.”

“Must be.” Charlie cleared his throat. “Um,
Amy, I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“You have?” Again, she glanced up at him. He
couldn’t see the color of her eyes, but he could see the sparkle in
them, and his heart gave an enormous twang, not unlike a banjo
string being plucked hard.

“Yup.” Oh, great, his mouth had dried out and
his lips were sticking to his teeth. Not exactly romantic. He
swallowed and blundered on. “Um, you see, it’s like this….” It’s
like what?

“Yes?” Her voice was as sweet as the putative
orange blossoms.

“Um, well, you know, I ‘m fairly well set up
in the world.”

The pause that ensued after this piece of
information seemed to drag on into infinity. Charlie figured he was
being fanciful, although it was a mighty long space of silence.

Evidently, Amy felt it, too, because she said
after a moment, “I’m glad for you. It must give you a grand sense
of security to know that you’re well set up.”

“Yeah. It does.” He shuffled and jammed his
hands into the pockets of his new dress pants. If Karen Crenshaw
saw him, she’d probably have an apoplectic attack. “Look, Amy, I
can support a wife and family really fine.”

She blinked. “You can? How nice.”

Shoot, was he a lamebrain or what? “What I
mean is … well, there’s the ranch in Sedona. It’s not only
thriving, but it’s in the prettiest countryside God ever made. I
don’t know if oranges would grow there, but it’s beautiful.”

“Oh.” Amy looked confused. “I’m sure it must
be. How nice.”

“Yeah, it’s nice, all right. And you said
you’d like to see it someday.” He spoke in a rush, and realized he
sounded as if he were daring her to deny it. What a damned fool he
was.

“Yes,” she said. “I remember. I would like to
see it.”

“Well, then, that’s good.”

“It is?”

“Sure. Because I can take you there, and you
can see it all you want.”

“You can? I mean, I can?” Her expression of
confusion was giving way to one of irritation.

Lord, why didn’t somebody just come along and
shoot him? It would be easier on him than this. “Blast it, Amy, I’m
not saying this right.”

“No?” She looked as though she agreed with
him but was too polite to say so.

“No. What I’m trying to tell you is that I
can support a wife really good. We might not be rich. Not at first,
anyway. But I’ve saved my money for years now, and I’m getting a
bundle from working in this picture, and when I put everything
together, I’ll be able to start a family right and proper.”

She stared at him. “Er … I’m glad for you,”
she said presently.

“Dagnabbit, what I’m trying to say is that I
love you, Amy, and I want to marry you.”

Her eyelashes fluttered like a butterfly for
a second or two, and her mouth fell open. “You … you what?”

“I love you. I love you more than anything
else on earth. More than my family in Arizona. More than the ranch.
More than anything.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He licked his lips, swallowed, cleared
his throat, and fumbled forward. “And if you can find it in you
somewhere to look kindly on me—the good Lord knows I’m not worthy
of you—then I thought—mind you, it’s probably a stupid thing to
think—but I thought that maybe we could hitch up together and have
a pretty nice life.”

“You did?”

Out of words, Charlie could only nod.

“You … you really love me?”

She sounded incredulous, a circumstance
Charlie didn’t understand at all. “Lord, yes. You’re the most
wonderful female I’ve ever met in my life.”

“I am?”

“Yup.”

“And … and….” She hesitated, as if she
weren’t sure she should be speaking of whatever it was she wanted
to bring up.

Charlie, wanting to encourage her in any way
possible, as long as she was leaning toward a yes, said, “Ask me
anything, Amy. I want you to know everything about me so you can
make a decision.”

She lowered her eyes and gazed at the ground.
“I don’t want you to think I’m a terrible, grasping woman,
Charlie.”

“What?” It was his turn to be incredulous.
“You’re kidding me, right? I know you better than that, Amy. You’re
wonderful. You’re not grasping, and you couldn’t be terrible if you
tried.”

When she raised her head, a crooked smile
decorated her beautiful lips. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Well, then, I guess I’ll ask.” She added
quickly, “I don’t care about wealth, you understand. It’s only that
… well, it’s only that I’m scared of being left like I was as a
child, Charlie. All alone and without resources. I swore to myself
when I was seven years old that I’d never be alone and helpless
like that again.”

Thinking of his enormous family and all of
his brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews,
and everyone else in his orbit, Charlie shook his head positively.
“If you marry me, you’ll never have to face anything like that
again, Amy. I can promise you that.”

“Really? I mean, you have sufficient … well,
resources … so that if the worst happened, I’d be taken care of?”
She turned away with an impatient gesture. “Oh, that sounds so
crass! I don’t mean to sound like some kind of gold-digging harpy,
Charlie. Honestly, I don’t.”

Good God, she was crying. Charlie was a man
of enormous self-control, and he’d been taught proper behavior by
his mother and father and a whole slew of interfering aunts and
uncles, but he was a man nevertheless, and he could only take so
much. “Here, Amy!” He reached out for her. “Please don’t cry,
sweetheart. Golly, I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He pulled her
into his arms.

“I’m so stupid,” she mumbled into his
shirtfront. “I didn’t mean to cry.” She gave an enormous sniffle.
“You surprised me so much.”

“Did I?”

He felt her nod and heard a muffled,
“Yes.”

“I’m surprised you’re surprised. I figured
everybody on the set must know how much I love you by this time. I
can’t stop staring at you from morning till night, and I’m with you
every single second I can manage. Shoot, I figured you might be so
used to me by this time that it would only seem natural to keep me
around forever. Sort of like a puppy dog or something.” He supposed
that was pretty lame, but he was trying to lighten the
atmosphere.

It worked to a degree. She gave a watery
giggle. “Oh, Charlie, don’t be silly.”

“Is it silly?” It seemed like the truth to
him.

He felt her nod again.

“So,” he asked after a minute of nothing at
all but holding her and feeling her and listening to his heart
whack against his ribs in the night. “What do you say? Do you need
time to think about it?”

She took a deep breath and a step away from
him. He was loath to let her go, but knew he had to. “No, Charlie,
I don’t need any time to think about it.”

“You don’t?” He wasn’t sure if that was good
or bad and licked his lips. “So, um, what do you think? Is it the
worst idea you’ve ever entertained in your life?”

“No, it’s not.”

Lord, Lord. Charlie didn’t dare get his hopes
up for fear the crash would kill him if they fell, but it looked to
him as if she were smiling awfully prettily for a girl who was
about to administer a death blow. He gazed down at her, holding his
breath.

“I would be the happiest woman on earth if we
were to be married, Charlie Fox. Yes, I accept your proposal.”

“You do?” Charlie hadn’t been prepared for
failure, but he also didn’t quite know what to do about success. He
was thunderstruck. Knocked cockeyed. Stricken silly. Bereft of
speech and coherent thought. All he could do for the next few
seconds was stare at her like a complete idiot.

“I love you, Charlie,” she added softly, in
her orange blossom voice. “I love you very much.”

It was too much for Charlie. He couldn’t
believe his ears. She loved him. She loved him? He stared at her
harder, trying to catch her in a lie. He couldn’t do it.

By God, she loved him.

Charlie let out a whoop that could almost
have been heard over the band and picked her right up off the
ground. As their lips met and the band played “I Love You Truly,”
he kissed her the way he’d been wanting to kiss her for day
snow.

And she kissed him back.

* * *

For more than a decade, Amy had not expected
a whole lot out of life. She’d never, for example, expected a
thrilling romantic adventure to befall her, mainly because she
didn’t ever want to experience another adventure again for as long
as life remained to her. Alaska had been a sufficient adventure for
ten lives. The most she’d dared hope for was a tidy and secure life
with Vernon Catesby in Pasadena, California. She’d never really
expected love to tag along with the rest of the package.

But Charlie Fox loved her. And she loved him.
And he could support her perfectly well. She’d probably never have
the luxuries she’d have had with Vernon, but she didn’t care about
them anyway. She’d never been so happy.

“Oh, Charlie, I can’t believe you really love
me.”

“You’re joshing me, Amy. I know you are.”

Laughing and crying, Amy shook her head. “I’m
not. I can’t imagine why you’d love me. I was so scared when we
first met, I could hardly get my mouth open, and I acted
abominably, and I know you didn’t like me. You can’t deny it.”

He laughed—a huge, open laugh that went
perfectly with the huge, open spaces around them. “Gosh, Amy, I
thought you were such a prude. I didn’t realize that … well, that
you were protecting yourself.”

Amy hadn’t considered her prim manners in the
light of protection before. But they were. And Charlie had figured
it out. What a brilliant, marvelous man he was. “You’re right. Oh,
Charlie, you’re so wonderful. I love you so much.”

“Now, that,” said he, “is what I can’t figure
out. Why a beautiful lady like you would ever love a big lug like
me.”

“You’re not a big lug. You’re my own special
cowboy.”

“Ha! I’m not really a cowboy, you know.”

“You’re not?”

He hadn’t yet put her down, but Amy didn’t
care. In fact, she’d just as soon he hold her forever. At present,
he was carrying her to the hotel entrance, where, she guessed he
aimed to take her to her door and leave her. She didn’t want to
part from him this evening.

“Nope, I’m a rancher. The cowboys are the
hired hands on a ranch. They work for the ranchers.”

Wasn’t that nice? Although Amy wouldn’t mind
being married to a cowboy, as long as he was Charlie and his pay
was sufficient to support a family, it sounded much nicer to be the
wife of the person who owned the ranch. “That sounds so nice.”

“What does?” He was nuzzling her ear and
almost fell up the steps to the hotel entrance.

“Being a rancher’s wife. Tell me about the
ranch, Charlie.” She sighed into his arms, feeling loved and
protected.

“Well, it’s real pretty in Sedona. There are
huge rock formations all over the place, and big canyons, and the
sky looks like magic most days.”

“Magic,” Amy breathed, trying to picture it.
Her life had been deficient in magic, for the most part.

“The canyons and rocks look almost like
they’ve been painted, there are so many different colors in lines
and streaks and so forth.”

“Are there Indians around there?”

She felt him shrug. “Oh, sure, but they’re
mostly on the reservations now. They’re not a problem any longer.
I’m afraid we’ve wiped most of them out altogether.”

“Really?” Intrigued because he sounded
unhappy about it, she asked, “Is that a bad thing?”

“Well,” he said after a judicious pause, “I’m
not sure it’s a good idea to run over an entire race of people like
we ran over the Indians. On the other hand, we wanted to use land
they only sort of skimmed over, and it worked out the way it worked
out. I suspect the same thing goes on all over the world. A
stronger civilization will overpower one that doesn’t have enough
power to fight for its right to preserve life the way they live
it.”

Amy had never thought about the Indian
situation in the United States along those lines, although what
Charlie said made sense to her. She did not, however, aim to spend
this particular night fretting about lost civilizations and
murderous interlopers. “Is there a big city anywhere near the
ranch?”

“It’s not too far from a couple of fair-sized
cities, although there are none the size of, say, Denver. Or New
York City. Say, have you ever heard of the Grand Canyon?”

Amy felt her eyes widen. “The Grand Canyon?
Yes. One of my uncle’s inmates had some photographs of the Grand
Canyon. It looked magnificent. I wish I could see it in person. And
in color.”

“Sedona’s kind of close to the Grand
Canyon.”

“Oh, my.” Amy could hardly take it in. Not
only was she going to marry the most wonderful man in the world,
but she was going to live in the most beautiful place on earth. “Do
you suppose they’ll ever pass a law to protect it, like Theodore
Roosevelt is talking about?”