Hot Cowboy Nights (15 page)

“How long was it until you got to that place?”

“More than a year.”

“You always were a slow learner,” Lizzy teased.

“You are going to see Toby tonight, aren’t you?”

“What makes you ask that question out of the clear blue sky?” Lizzy asked.

“All I can say is be careful, sister. Now pinky-swear that you won’t tattle on me.”

Lizzy held up her smallest finger and crooked it around an imaginary one. “I pinky-swear and cross my heart and all that shit. Love you, Fiona,” Lizzy’s voice squeaked out around the lump in her throat. “And miss you.”

“Right back atcha.”

T
oby popped out an old green webbed lawn chair and sat down with Blue right beside him. He rubbed Blue’s ears with one hand and held a glass of sweating iced tea in the other. His phone rang and he answered it after he’d checked the picture to be sure it wasn’t Sharlene.

“Hello, darlin’,” he said in his sexiest drawl.

“Don’t you ‘hello, darlin’’ me, Toby Dawson. You promised you’d call and it’s been two months. I’ve sent you dozens of texts and went back to the bar where we met every weekend. Where in the hell are you?” Teresa asked.

Thank goodness her name had come on the phone with her picture or he would have had no idea who he was talking to. “Well, sweetheart, it’s like this. I moved out of the area. Bought a little chunk of land and haven’t had time to go back to our favorite bar. But I might come home for a visit in a few weeks, so don’t give up on me.”

“Never.” She giggled. “The sex was that good but so was the breakfast afterwards.”

“Well, I’m right glad that you have such good memories.” He said the right words, but his heart wasn’t in it. He would have rather been bantering with Lizzy. “Got to go, but you keep a watch out for me and we might have another weekend like the last one.”

Blue’s tail thumped against the ground and a coyote howled in the distance. The dog backed his ears and growled down deep in his throat, warning those varmints to keep their distance.

Toby made up his mind that the next day he would buy a donkey. A pack of coyotes could bring down a heifer. One or two could drag off a newborn calf. He should have brought his old donkey, Lucifer, with him to the Lucky Penny, but Toby couldn’t bear to take him away from his surroundings. Even with his advanced age, Lucifer could stomp a coyote to death if he thought for one second the varmint was coming after a calf in his pasture.

Toby set the tea down on the ground and started walking slowly, thinking about all the changes he wanted to make to the place, the cattle he planned to breed and raise there, and the future for him, his cousin, and his brother. He came to the fence separating the Lucky Penny from the property on Audrey’s Place and sat down on a flat rock. Blue plopped down on the ground and tucked his nose under his paw. The high wind that had accompanied the tornado had blown some of the petals from the red roses from the tangled mass on the barbed wire. But there were enough blossoms left to permeate the air with their scent.

All thoughts of a donkey vanished. The roses reminded him of Lizzy. She was beautiful and yet tough enough to endure a tornado, just like those beautiful roses. His eyes shifted to all the wildflowers dotting the distance from him to the fence, and that made him think of the fierceness of her feelings for her family and loved ones. Wind, rain, hot broiling sun, or drought couldn’t kill out those wildflowers any more than anything could ever get between Lizzy and someone that she truly loved.

Lizzy paced the floor after she finished talking to Fiona. The room got smaller and smaller and the walls began to move toward the center. She jerked on her work boots and started outside, meeting her mother halfway down the stairs.

“Where are you off to?” Katy asked.

“I can’t remember if I fed Stormy, so I’m going to take a drive, feed the cat, and clear my head,” she answered.

“Got something stuck in there like Toby Dawson?” Katy asked.

One of Lizzy’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Maybe so.”

Katy patted her on the shoulder. “Pet Stormy for me. She’s a good cat. Now that your grandmother isn’t living here we could bring her home if you want. She was so allergic to anything that had to do with cats and she didn’t like dogs, so you kids couldn’t have pets in the house.”

“If she doesn’t adapt to the store we will.” She had to get out of the house, away from the confinement so she could think. Once she was outside in the fresh air with no walls around her, she took a deep breath and sat down on the swing. A coyote howled off to the south and another one answered from somewhere over near the old well on the other side of the Lucky Penny. Hopefully, they weren’t planning to meet in the middle and have one of Toby’s new calves for supper that night.

He needed a couple of donkeys to keep the cattle safe. Coyotes and wild animals had ruled the Lucky Penny for years. They had no idea that whatever was on the ranch wasn’t fair game. But a donkey or a couple of them would keep the coyotes at bay for sure. She should tell him tonight before he lost a baby calf.

She popped up off the swing with a purpose and jogged out across the yard, jumped the rail fence by putting a hand on the top rail and bailing over it like a kid, and then slowed her pace to a fast walk toward the fence separating the two places.

The waning moon gave enough light that she could see well enough without a flashlight. Good thing since she’d left her purse sitting on the swing and the tiny light attached to her key chain was the only one she owned. The coyote sounded closer that time so she hurried.

“You cannot pull a donkey out of thin air just by putting some extra giddy-up in your step. Blue won’t let a coyote get a calf tonight and neither will Shooter.” She fussed out loud.

“No they won’t,” Toby said from the other side of the fence.

Her hand flew to her chest and her lungs deflated. It took a full five seconds before she remembered to inhale and when she did, all she could smell was roses. “Dammit! You startled me so bad my heart nearly stopped.”

“Maybe it was trying to pull a donkey out of thin air,” Toby teased.

“What are you doing over there anyway?” She leaned on a crooked wooden fence post.

“Thinkin’ about asking Herman or Deke where I could buy a couple of donkeys to keep those pesky coyotes away from my cattle,” he answered.

She sat down on the green grass. “Herman has donkeys for sale sometimes. When he or his kids get too many they sell a few off. You’d have to ask him, but if he’s not getting rid of any, then Deke will know someone. The coyotes aren’t the only predators on your ranch, Toby. We’ve seen bobcats although I don’t think they’d bother your cattle but the mountain lions might.”

“Maybe I’d better buy more than two then,” he said. “I’m glad you thought of donkeys when you heard the coyotes singing tonight, Lizzy. I wanted to talk to you but I didn’t have the courage to climb over this fence and knock on your door.”

“Why?” Lizzy asked. Less than a foot of space and a barbed wire fence separated them but with the fence between them it seemed like a mile.

“It involves a whole new scene for me. I don’t know how to date so I’m not sure how to go about any of this,” he said.

Her chest tightened. “You’ve been doing a pretty good job of practicin’.”

Was he about to tell her that he’d found a woman he wanted to see and that this artificial thing between them was over? Bad timing was a bigger bitch than karma.

“Ah, that was nothing but showin’ off. It’s real dating that scares the bejesus right out of me. Never was any good at it,” he admitted.

“Bullshit!” Lizzy said. “You are a player. You know all the moves.”

“Yes, I am. Yes, I do. But that’s the game of take a woman home, take her to bed, feed her breakfast, kiss her good-bye, and start a new game the next week. Dating and getting to really know a woman is a different game. Kind of like the difference in Monopoly and Texas Hold ’Em.”

“You mean one is exciting and the other is boring. I wouldn’t want to be the Monopoly lady then,” she said.

“Nothing boring about you, Lizzy Logan,” he said, and chuckled. “Will you go on a date with me Friday night? A real date, not a pretend one? I’ll probably be so clumsy that you won’t go out with me a second time, but please say yes.”

“Where are we going? Bar? Ice cream?”

“Is that a yes?” He slipped his hand under the barbed wire and laced his fingers with hers.

“It’s a yes, but I don’t know if I’m ready to tell our relatives that this has turned from fake to real,” she said.

He squeezed her hand gently. “I agree and don’t expect too much from me here at first. I’m new at this.”

“This new Lizzy Logan is pretty new at it, too. The old one was busy trying to be something she wasn’t. This new one is going to be herself, so you might not want to ask her out on a second real date,” she said. “Just one thing before we get out the chisel and set this in that rock you are sitting on right now and be honest with me. Is this one of your pickup lines?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I have not asked a woman on a date since my senior year in high school. I asked Betsy Dulaney to the prom and the night was a disaster. From then on I honed my player skills and to hell with dating.”

“What changed your mind?” she asked.

“Promise you won’t laugh,” he whispered.

A warm breeze kicked up under her hair and kissed that soft spot on her neck right below her ear. It wasn’t hard to imagine that it was his whisper that caused it or to embrace the feeling that it evoked.

“I promise,” she said softly.

He removed his cowboy hat and laid it in his lap. “I do not believe in voodoo or spirits or any of that hocus-pocus crap. But I got a feeling this evening as Blue and I were sitting out behind my trailer that something is missing in me.”

“I know the feeling.”

His face was half in shadows and half dimly lit by the moon, creating an air of mystery about him. There was a dark side that had honed the craft of a player, but there was a light side that wanted so badly to open up his heart. One side would win and like the story Granny told about the wolf and the baby rabbit. The side that got fed would emerge the winner. The one that he starved would eventually fade away into the dust of the history books.

“What time should I be ready and what should I wear?” she asked.

“Something very comfortable. Jeans will be fine.”

“Really? Then I take it we are not going to one of those fancy restaurants where it takes all evening to eat a meal?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise but we might be late getting back home.”

She drew her knees up to her chin, pulled her hand free, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Mama is leaving Friday and won’t be home until Sunday. I don’t have to worry about anyone comin’ to look for us. Sure you don’t want to tell me what this date involves?”

“No, I want it to be perfect enough that you’ll say you want to go out with me again,” he answered. “And to do that it has to be a surprise. I will pick you up at seven.”

“Okay.” She tried to ignore the jitters, but it wasn’t possible. She had just agreed to go on a real date with Toby that did not involve sex or a breakfast afterward. Her heart rate jacked up a notch or two at the idea, and she couldn’t help but smile.

He bounced up on his feet, grabbed his hat before it hit the ground, put a hand on a fence post, and cleared the barbed wire like an expert high jumper. “I’ll walk you back to your house. Wouldn’t look too good if that imaginary man with the binoculars in the tree saw us going our own way. By morning it would be all over Dry Creek that we’d had a fight and broken up and we couldn’t go on our real date without everyone knowing.”

With his hat settled on his head, he threw an arm around her shoulders and kept pace with her all the way to the yard fence, where he opened the gate for her. “I swear I caught a faint glimpse of a flash over there to the east.”

“It was probably a fallen star,” she said.

He started humming the old song by that name, coming in with parts of lines as he remembered them. When the lyrics said that she was a fallen star, he drew her close and danced with her on the green lawn. He sang a line when it said that she must have strayed from the Milky Way and went back to humming as he waltzed her around the yard under the stars and moon.

There wasn’t a person over there in the fork of an old scrub oak tree but in case there was, she moved in closer to Toby to give them a good show. The gossip vines would not wither up and die in Dry Creek that week, for sure.

He stopped humming, bent her backward, and gave her a real Hollywood kiss. When he righted her, she was totally breathless and the stars were spinning blurs in the sky.

“Wow!” she said.

“Did you recognize the song?” he asked.

She leaned on him for support until the world was set upright again. “Granny had it on a vinyl record with Jimmy Newman singing and played it all the time when I was a little girl. She said that it was hers and Grandpa’s song. I remember the singer because I thought Newman was a strange name.”

He smiled down at her. “You are amazing because not many people of our generation even know that song! And that’s not a line, either. I’ll see you tomorrow probably but definitely on Friday. Good night, Lizzy.”

She sat down on the swing until her heart stopped thumping around, threatening to bust the straps on her bra. What kind of date was he thinking about?

She picked up her purse and smiled all the way to her bedroom. This was a real honest-to-God date, and she had several days to be excited about it.

E
lbows on the checkout counter, chin resting in her hands, Lizzy tried to figure out where Toby was taking her on their first real date. Since he’d said jeans would be fine, maybe it was fishing. She loved to sit on the riverbank under the moonlight and fish. If he’d tell her, then she could offer to pack a cooler full of food and beer.

Stormy hopped out of the basket, leaving her four squirmy babies behind to tumble around and fight with each other. Lizzy absentmindedly rubbed Stormy’s fur from nose to tail. Maybe it was a movie he’d picked out to watch in his trailer. Lizzy’s eyes popped wide open. That would mean the bed would be within falling-down distance, and under those circumstances she might start up the old fling again.

The cowbell above the door sounded and she jumped as if she’d been caught strip stark naked in the bed with Toby. In one leap the cat went from the counter to the floor and into the basket to protect her babies.

“Good morning, Dora June. What can I do for you this fine Tuesday?” Lizzy fanned her face with a catalog that had come in the mail that day. “Kinda warm, isn’t it? I forgot to adjust the thermostat this morning.” Anything to explain away the high color burning her cheeks.

“Feels pretty good to me. Wait until August when it really gets hot, then you’ll need that air conditioner for sure. What is that horrible noise out back?”

Lizzy laid the book aside. “Allie and her crew have started putting up the studs.” Crap! The word
stud
brought up another picture that turned her face crimson again. There in her mind, in living color, was Toby, bare-chested with only a sheet covering his lower half. He was propped up on an elbow and his blue eyes were locked with hers. “For the new back room,” she stammered.

“She has no business doing construction work in her condition,” Dora June hissed. “When I was expecting,” she whispered the word, “we stayed out of the public eye as much as possible and that last six weeks, wild horses couldn’t have even hauled us to church.”

“Times change. What can I do for you today?” Lizzy asked.

“For starters you could stop seeing that man you spent the night with on Saturday night.” Dora June’s nose tilted up so high that if the roof had still been leaking, she might’ve drowned. She was, after all, standing right under the place where the water streamed down. “I was your grandmother’s friend and she is not able in her present state of mind to advise you, so I feel it my God-given duty to help you see things right.”

“And that would be to not see Toby anymore, right?” Lizzy asked.

“I’m glad you see the light.” Dora June nodded several times, all of her chins in agreement.

“Miz Dora June, I am way past needing my granny or you to steer me right in the ways of love, politics, or religion. I have no intentions of breaking up with Toby. And besides, if Granny was in her right mind, she’d fall in love with Toby. She’d tell me to follow my heart and not let anyone tell me it was wrong.” Lizzy picked up the catalog again.

Dora June leaned over the counter and sniffed loudly. “Have you been drinkin’?”

Lizzy dropped the magazine and it landed on the floor beside the basket of cats. “Why would you suggest such a thing?”

“Your face is beet red. You’ve been drinkin’ or else you’ve got unholy thoughts in your head about that wild cowboy, girl. Nothing else could make them cheeks that red. In either case you’d better be careful. If you are drinkin’, then stop right now.” Dora June straightened up. “I don’t smell no liquor.”

“Must be wicked, sexy thoughts about what I’d do with Toby Dawson if I could just peel those jeans off his body and jump his bones, then.” Lizzy leaned forward and whispered. “To tell the truth, I’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in my office and a couple of red plastic cups. You want to have a little nip with me? That’s why I keep peppermints on the counter in the bowl.” Lizzy winked. “Folks think it’s for the kids but it sure covers up the smell of whiskey on my breath. You couldn’t even detect it, could you?”

“Well, I never,” Dora June huffed. “No, I don’t want to drink with you and I think it’s a cryin’ shame that you’ve gone so far backward from that sweet girl who was going to be a preacher’s wife.”

“Don’t blame me for Mitch’s sins,” Lizzy said coldly.

Allie pushed through the back door and closed it behind her. “Hey, I’m taking a break and thought we might get something to drink in your office. Oh, hello, Dora June. What brings you to town this fine spring morning?”

“I’m going home to pray for you girls. Since Irene was put away up there in that glorified nursing home, the whole bunch of you.” She threw up a palm, shut her eyes, and shivered. “Y’all have gone over the edge. This one talking about…about…”

“Hot cowboy sex that gets you all sweaty?” Lizzy finished the sentence for her.

“Edge of what?” Allie asked.

“The edge of morality. Pregnant and right out in public doing a man’s work. Drinking? Irene would be ashamed. I’m going to gather up the ladies from the church and we’re going to have a prayer vigil for you.”

“I thought we’d been excommunicated from your ladies’ group,” Allie said.

“We pray for all sinners,” Dora June mumbled on her way to the door. She was still shaking her head when the cowbell announced that she had left.

“What caused all that? I only wanted a soda from your refrigerator,” Allie said.

Lizzy led the way to the office where she sank down into her chair. “It’s a long story. Help yourself to a soda and pull up a chair. I’ll tell you the rest while you take a break.”

Allie came close to spewing soda pop right out her nose several times during the story, which Lizzy embellished with hand movements and different voices.

“Lord, Lizzy, you sound enough like her that you could call Truman and he wouldn’t know that he wasn’t talking to his wife.” Allie hiccupped.

“And then you came in and asked for a drink. It was the icing on the cupcake.” Lizzy laughed with her sister. “Tomorrow we will both be drunks. You’ll have a baby addicted to alcohol and you and Mama will be looking for rehab centers to put me in. And I’m sure,” Lizzy went on, “that all of this will be blamed on those sexy Dawson cowboys. I can’t wait until Jud gets here in the fall. That will give the rumors about time to die down, and his arrival can start a whole new bunch.”

The laughter stopped and Allie’s face turned serious. “You aren’t in love with Toby, are you?”

“The townspeople don’t know that. They think we are a hot little item, remember,” Lizzy quickly covered her tracks.

“Don’t you wish that they’d leave us alone and pray for someone else for a change?” Allie sighed.

Lizzy left the chair, rounded the desk, and hugged her sister. “It will burn itself out pretty soon and they’ll move on. When they see that these Dawson cowboys are going to turn that ranch into a fine place they’ll gag on their words, and how much whiskey they think we drink won’t even be worth mentioning.”

“I hope it happens real soon,” Allie said.

On Wednesday morning Toby and Blue settled into the truck, put in an Alan Jackson CD, and drove out to the back pasture. Today he and Blake were going to work cattle. Castrate the bull calves, vaccinate them all, and check them over good to make sure they were healthy.

Blake was standing beside a couple four-wheelers when Toby got to the pasture. Not a cow or calf was in sight, but he did hear a calf bawling off to the left where they were all probably either belly deep in the farm pond or else bunched up together under the shade of a scrub oak tree.

“There’s one old cow that produces good-size calves, but she’s wild as hell and she usually throws that DNA right over into her calves. Crawl on one of these things and we’ll go round up as many as we can into the corral,” Blake said.

“Come on, Blue. It’s time to run some of that bologna fat off your ribs,” Toby said as he settled down into the seat of the four-wheeler. “I like horses better for this,” he yelled over the noise of the engine.

“Me, too, and maybe next year we’ll have a few but today, this is what we have,” Blake said. He made a clucking noise with his tongue and Shooter took off toward the mesquite.

The cows came right along to the corral with the calves, meandering around the mesquite like they had all day to go nowhere. But the guys didn’t rush them. A stampede might cause them to veer off to either side and refuse to go into the corral at all.

By midmorning the job of separating the calves from their mamas had started. That was where the muscle work came in and the sweating really started. Toby got a hand around one little bull calf and led him to the round pen with no problem, but the minute he started bawling for his mama, the others got the message loud and clear and they huddled up in the far corner.

Blake nodded and got out his kit containing the vaccines. “Bring her on in the chute and down to the head gate and let’s get her shots so she can get back with her mama. Soon as you see what cow she goes with, we’ll pop an ear tag in her ear. Bulls can go from there to the table to get their rings.”

Toby started the black calf toward the chute leading to the head gate, but the feisty animal turned at the last minute and made a beeline back toward her mama on the other side of the fence. Blue steered her away and back toward Toby, but when she saw him, she put her head down and ran right at him. When she was close enough he reached down and scooped her up into his arms.

“Shit!” he groaned. “You weigh a ton already.”

“Fine-lookin’ calf there.” Blake laughed.

“You try carryin’ her to the chute and then tell me how fine she is.” Toby set her down and she took off like greased lightning toward the other end. Blake waited until she was almost to the end and opened the gate enough she could get her head through it, then clamped it shut.

“I’ll get both her shots while you go get another one. And Toby, you don’t have to carry them all like babies,” Blake teased.

Toby’s arms were aching by noon. He hadn’t had to carry another one, but wrestling calves all morning let him remember exactly how many times he’d been bucked off of two tons of raging bull and exactly what bones he’d landed on. They had half the herd done, which meant they should be done by suppertime.

When the hot broiling sun was straight up in the sky, they took a break to eat dinner. They grabbed a sack lunch out of Toby’s truck and sat down on the ground on the shady side of the pickup, two paper bags in their laps and a gallon of sweet tea between them.

“I’d about as soon have a nap as eat,” Toby said.

“It’s all that fake dating that’s wearing you out.” Blake laughed. “Settle down like I have and you’ll have more energy to use for ranchin’.”

“I ain’t ready for that.” Toby reached into the sack and pulled out a thick ham and cheese sandwich. “I might bitch and gripe when I have to manhandle calves, but I love this job, brother.”

“Me, too,” Blake said.

“You think that marriage has helped you understand womenfolk?” Toby asked.

“Hell no! Sometimes I wonder why God couldn’t have given Mama and Daddy a daughter. Boys need a sister so they’ll get some inkling of the way a female’s brain works.”

“You got that right. Maybe that’s why us Dawsons are so wild. We don’t have a lot of girls in the family. I could use a sister.”

“You can talk to Allie,” Blake said. “Or if it’s about Lizzy, maybe you’d better call up Josie, but then she’ll tell her brother and then Jud will tell me and I’ll have to tell Allie because we don’t keep secrets. So you might as well spit out what’s on your mind rather than going through all that shit.”

A mosquito made several buzzes around his ear before he located it and swatted it mid-air as it made a dive for Blue’s ear. With mosquitoes as big as buzzards, maybe he shouldn’t plan something outside for this big date with Lizzy, and yet the picture in his mind kept centering on a secluded area with just the two of them on a blanket on the ground with a picnic basket in front of them.

That’s when he remembered that his mother always lit citronella candles when they were outside in the summertime. Lizzy had them at the store but it would ruin the surprise if he walked in and asked for candles. He could make a trip to Throckmorton or maybe over to Olney or…he grinned…Deke could buy them for him and he could repay him.

The whole date started with candles so exactly how many did he need? Enough to outline a blanket on the ground? Only a couple? He decided on a dozen of the ones in pint-size mason jars.

He had a blanket and one dozen candles. Now what did he do with them and where did he put them?

“You got quiet all of a sudden,” Blake said.

“Just thinkin’ about how buyin’ this ranch turned our lives around,” Toby said.

“It sure did do that.” Blake nodded. “And since I love my wife so much, I’m right glad for the changes it’s brought about.”

Toby’s phone buzzed. He laid his sandwich to the side and read the sexy text from one of his previous women. Any other time he would have shot a message right back—and it would have been so hot that the woman on the other end would have been panting when she finished it. But not today.

“Sharlene?” Blake asked.

“No, she hasn’t called in…”

The phone buzzed again before he could even finish his sentence. Another woman and this time the text was accompanied by a picture of her in a sexy nightgown on satin sheets. She had a come-hither look in her eyes and was blowing kisses toward him.

“Holy hell, Toby, who is that?” Blake asked.

“One of those lovely ladies that I’ve made breakfast for in the past.” Toby smiled.

“Miss those days?”

“Not when I’m this tired.”

At quitting time on Thursday, Deke popped into the store. “Allie has gone home and the boys are cleaning up the rest of the mess back there. Y’all can haul your supplies back in from the Lucky Penny over the weekend. We’ve worked like termites, but it’s all done.”

“I can’t believe it.” Lizzy made her way to the back of the store. “It’s amazing what you and these guys have all accomplished. And Deke, thank you for all you did to make sure Allie…” she paused.