One Texas Night (22 page)

She laughed suddenly, thinking that after tonight Filmore wouldn’t want her anyway. She wouldn’t be a virgin. She might spend the rest of her life a very proper old maid, but tonight she’d make a memory. One night with the man she loved was worth more than a lifetime of nights with one she could never give her heart to.

The second rider stayed on, but his horse looked half asleep. The mounts didn’t seem as wild and fresh as they had the first night. No one had come close to Rowdy’s saddle bronc ride the first night, but the scores for bareback riding were high.

She turned and watched as Rowdy came out of the shoot riding the one horse she’d thought no one would attempt. The animal bucked wildly as if in a death fight. Now Rowdy had no saddle to hang on to. She counted the seconds in her mind. One, two, three.

As she watched him being jerked back and forth she realized he was doing this for her. If she’d stayed out of it, he would have won one event and gone home a winner like Dan had. He wouldn’t have put his body through four nights of torture. Her father’s men wouldn’t have beaten him.

He couldn’t say he loved her, but he’d done this for her. He’d risked dying for her.

The crowd began to scream and she realized she’d lost count of the seconds. A moment after she heard a man yell time, Rowdy flew through the air and hit the ground hard. His whole body crumbled as if every bone and muscle liquefied.

Laurel thought of nothing but him. She jumped over the barrier and ran across the field. A rodeo clown and one of the stock cowboys tried to stop her, but she shoved them aside. By the time they had the horse pulled away, she was kneeling at Rowdy’s head, tears streaming down her face.

“Rowdy. Dear God, don’t let him die! Rowdy.” Her hand trembled as she brushed his dark hair aside. “Please don’t die on me,” she whispered. “Please.”

He twisted slightly and rolled to one knee. “You praying over me again, Laurel?”

He’d scared her so badly, anger flashed along with relief. She swung at him, hitting him on the arm.

He stood slowly as if testing bones. Once standing, he offered her a hand. “How about waiting until I find out if I won before you kill me.”

She realized everyone in town was watching them. Cheering as he stood. Seeing her cry.

Dan, near the judges’ table, gave Rowdy a thumbs-up.

“We won,” he whispered. “We won.” The joy she’d expected was missing from his tone. “You’ll get your money.”

She couldn’t look up to see what was wrong with him. She’d never made a public scene in her life and she just made one in front of everyone.

When he turned to wave at the crowd, she bolted toward the side of the arena, wishing she could just disappear into the crowd. Trying to think of some way to explain away what she’d done, she moved toward the surrey. Her father looked furious and Filmore, beside him, had turned purple with anger.

“What in the hell were you doing!” Half the crowd heard her father yell when he spotted her coming toward him.

“I thought he was hurt,” Laurel yelled. No one seemed to hear her.

He waited until she was five feet away before saying in his low, demeaning tone. “That was not proper behavior, Laurel. I’ll be having a few words with you when we get home. I’ll not tolerate such a show.”

She could hear her sisters laughing and joking.

Laurel realized there would be no controlling the damage she’d done. But, for one moment, Rowdy was all she thought about, not the crowds or her father or the consequences of her action. She could bare her father’s anger. She could ignore Filmore. But Rowdy’s hard words echoed in her brain.

The crowd was still cheering. Laurel glanced toward the arena, hoping to catch sight of Rowdy. It wasn’t hard. He was riding straight toward her at full gallop.

Everyone took a step back when Cinnamon pushed the barrier trying to stop. Laurel stood her ground, letting the horse’s powerful shoulder brush against her.

Rowdy didn’t look like he saw another person around but her. “I have to know,” he said quick and angry. “Are you still my partner or was this all a game?”

She couldn’t breathe. She saw hurt and confusion in his dark eyes.

Her father moved toward her, shoving people out of his way.

“I’m still your partner,” she answered and lifted her chin.

Rowdy slid his boot out of the stirrup and offered his hand. “Then take the victory ride with me.”

She gripped his fingers and stepped into the saddle as he shoved back to make room. A moment later, his arms were around her holding tight.

As her father’s hand went out to grab her leg, Rowdy kicked Cinnamon into action. They shot out into the arena.

Laurel closed her eyes and leaned into his warmth. Nothing mattered but him, not the rodeo or the crowds or even her father. Only Rowdy.

As they circled, she whispered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a scene.”

“That doesn’t matter, but it took me a minute to figure out what you’d done. How unlike my shy Laurel to run to me.” His fingers circled her waist. “God, I missed the feel of you all day, darling.”

Everyone waved and yelled as they rounded the arena, but she didn’t care. Rowdy and she had their own private world.

“Stop calling me darling,” she said, laughing.

“Why, because you don’t love me?”

“No, because
you
don’t love me.”

“You’re wrong there, I do love you. I think I have since the sixth grade. I just didn’t know it until that horse knocked the brains out of me.”

Dan opened the side gate and Rowdy shot out of it away from the crowds and into the night. He rode for a while until the noise of town was only a whisper behind them, then he slowed.

She relaxed against him trying to let herself believe she’d just heard him say he loved her.

“It took me awhile to figure out why you told me not to sell and why it was so important you acted like I wasn’t in the room with you. I spent most of the day mad because you walked away, but then it hit me and you’re right.”

She started to ask about what, but he twisted her chin and kissed her hard.

“That wasn’t my best,” he said as he straightened. “But I’ll work on it later.”

She laughed and he kissed her again.

When he backed an inch away, he whispered against her cheek, “You do love me?”

“Yes.” She smiled, watching the last hint of doubt disappear from his eyes.

“Good, then we go with your plan, but you got to promise never to call me dear.”

“My plan? What plan?”

He nodded. “I keep the ranch and we don’t sell the cattle. In a year we’ll have a great place and who cares if no one in town will talk to us. Between the work and the nights together we won’t notice.”

“We’ll be partners?” she said.

He smiled. “We’ll be a lot more than that, darling.”

Afterword

Rowdy Darnell and Laurel Hayes were married the last night of the 1890 Kasota Springs Rodeo. Within five years the RL Ranch became one of the most profitable spreads in West Texas.

They had three sons and a daughter.

In 1912, Laurel Darnell was elected mayor of Kasota Springs.

Rowdy never rode in another rodeo, but folks talked about his rides for years.

Rowdy and Laurel’s partnership lasted fifty-seven years, until she died of a heart attack. Her headstone read, “Beloved wife, mother and partner.”

Rowdy didn’t mourn her death as his father had mourned his mother. Instead, he passed the ranch along to his children and spent the next two years teaching his eleven grandchildren to ride.

Two years to the day Laurel had died, he passed away in his sleep.

The children were surprised when they learned he’d already ordered his headstone. It was placed next to Laurel’s in a small cemetery on their ranch.

His stone read, “Keep praying for me, darling, I’ll be there by supper.”

THE OUTLAW

Chapter 1

January 15, 1852
Big Bend Country, Texas

Cozette Camanez straightened the pearl-white lace of her wedding gown, hating the dress almost as much as she hated herself. Everything about her life was a lie and it was all about to come crashing down around her.

Two months ago she’d made a mistake. She’d trusted a man she thought she loved and found out one stormy night that he wasn’t worth loving, or trusting.

The next morning, she’d thought she could walk away, as he had, but when it was far too late to admit what had happened between them, she’d discovered he’d left her with a reminder of what he’d done to her. A reminder that would cause her father to disown her.

Desperate, she did the only thing she could think to do. She lied. First to herself, then to others, building a world around her as she had as a child. The lies grew so thick, they now walled her in, making escape impossible.

Leaning back on the old wooden church pew of the ranch mission, Cozette wished she could close her eyes to everything and just drift away into nothingness. She took a deep breath, inhaling the musty smell of dust and cobwebs and candle wax.

She’d rushed home with her broken heart to find her father dying. She couldn’t tell him the truth then. He was in enough pain already. If he knew she might be pregnant, he’d probably use his last breath to yell at her.

But, as the days passed and he grew weaker, she thought her secret might be safe. She sat beside his bed telling stories of an imaginary love who planned to come for her. She even lied and told her father that they’d already been married by a judge in Austin. As she guessed he would, her father complained that as soon as her love arrived, they’d be married by the priest. Until then, her father had claimed it wasn’t a real marriage.

The rafters rattled as the wind blew through the holes in the old mission roof. Cozette looked up into the shadows of the loft thinking how hard it would be for an imaginary groom to appear tonight.

She’d thought she would slip away once her father recovered a little, or passed. Maybe she’d be gone for a few months, or even a year, and return home, an imaginary widow with a real baby. Only she’d gone too far with details, saying her husband planned to meet her at the Grand Hotel in Odessa.

When her father took a turn for the worse, her uncle Raymond told her she had to stay. He took the liberty, without telling Cozette, to send word for the man waiting for her in Odessa to come to the ranch.

From then on, her ball of lies began to unravel amid wedding plans. The house staff took over. They all knew the road to Odessa. A week’s journey in a wagon, half that on horseback. As they helped Cozette care for her father, they prepared for the proper wedding. It would have to be as soon as the groom arrived, for her father’s days were numbered.

Whispers circled in the hallways. The groom would be there in a few days, the housekeeper announced to everyone, and the maids began to clean while the cooks cooked. A week at the most, the housekeeper reasoned. Later, everyone except Cozette decided it would be three days if the weather held.

Two days.

Tomorrow.

And finally, last night they all agreed that he’d come before dawn.

Cozette thought she’d go mad worrying about when her imaginary groom would show up. She’d even let them dress her in her mother’s dress to wait, though she knew she was waiting for no one.

Then, her father, who’d never forgiven his wife for delivering him with a girl as their only child, did something Cozette never expected. At her uncle’s insistence, her father changed his will, leaving the huge ranch not to Cozette, but to her legal husband.

Cozette jumped off the bench and began to pace. Lying on the pew trying not to think wasn’t working. She had no one to blame but herself for this mess. She’d piled one lie on top of another and the chaos that was about to start at dawn, when no husband showed up, would be her funeral pyre.

She’d promised her father a hundred times when she was growing up that she’d never lie again. Without her mother to buffer his rage, he’d die hating her, disowning her, demanding she leave and never return. Her father and her uncle weren’t men who tempered rage. They didn’t just get mad, they got deadly, and at dawn they’d both be furious with her.

Without a husband showing up to claim her and the baby growing inside, her uncle would inherit the only home she’d ever known and kick her out with his dying brother’s blessing.

Since she had no hope of an imaginary husband showing up, she had only one path left. She planned to pray herself dead before morning and save everyone else the trouble of murdering her.

There was no other way out.

Better to die now with the priest waiting outside the door. He could perform the funeral. Cooks were baking all night for the wedding breakfast. It would serve as the meal for the wake. More gifts and guests would arrive tomorrow. Everyone would attend her funeral instead of a celebration. After all, they were much the same. All the women cried and everyone would say how nice she looked.

A rustling sounded in the loft. For a second Cozette thought she might be rescued, maybe by a tornado, or a hailstorm, either of which would take everyone’s mind off the wedding. Then reality weighed against her heart. A storm wouldn’t make the ranch hers. Nothing would. Until a few hours ago her father had wanted the priest to perform the marriage at his bedside when the groom arrived, but he’d finally demanded she marry in the tiny chapel. She’d seen the blood in his handkerchief each time he coughed and guessed the reason.