One True Love (Cupid, Texas 0.5) (4 page)

Nothing to do but face this head-on.

My chest tightened. I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I steeled my body and raised my chin. “Hello.”

“What are you doing way out here all by yourself, Millie?” drawled a familiar voice.

Blood that had earlier set my pulse racing was now pumping happy relief through my veins.

The cowboy was none other than John Fant.

Chapter Four

“I
WAS OUT
for a walk,” I answered, not wanting to get Rosalie in trouble, although I wasn’t sure why I was skirting the truth for her. She had abandoned me to my own devices to go off joyriding with a rumrunner. “I wanted to see the Cupid Caverns.”

“All by yourself?”

Not wanting to tell a bald-faced lie, I didn’t answer.

“And did you?” he asked, coming closer, a quirky smile on his lips. “See the caverns?”

“I did.”

Up close, he was more handsome than ever in those cowboy clothes. I’d never seen him in a Stetson, boots, chaps, spurs, and gun. I couldn’t forget the gun. I was fascinated by his transformation from business-suited executive to rangy cowpoke. Now I understood the calluses on his palms.

“Would you like a ride home?” he asked.

Ride on a horse behind John Fant? My entire body tingled at the thought.

“Where have you been on a Sunday?” I asked.

“Checking the herd.”

“How often do you do that?”

“Every Sunday. I have a foreman that runs the spread, but I like getting my hands dirty.”

“You work on Sunday?”

“Livestock has to eat seven days a week. Besides, I believe working is the best way to commune with God,” he said. “What’s more pious than an honest day’s labor working with your hands?”

It was a different way of looking at things, a way that intrigued me. “Don’t you ever take a day off?”

“Work settles my mind.”

That I understood. “Where do you keep your horse in town?” I asked.

“There’s a livery in Cupid. I board her there.”

“What’s her name?”

“Goldie.”

“She’s a pretty filly.”

His gaze was fixed on my face. “That she is.”

“I always wanted a horse of my own,” I said wistfully. “All we had was an old Shetland pony for everyone to use.”

“You want a ride into town, Miss Millie? It’s a good six miles back to Cupid.”

He hadn’t meant anything by the invitation. Only being neighborly. Couldn’t go daydreaming about things I could never have. “Thank you kindly. I will accept that ride.”

He escorted me to his horse, climbed on, and then reached down a hand to help me swing up in the saddle behind him. His big hand held tight to my smaller one until I was safely in the seat.

“You might want to hold on,” he said. “We’re going down a steep grade.”

I wrapped my arms around his waist. It felt too intimate with my breasts mashed up against his back, my legs on either side of his, my hands clasped over his chest, but I secretly thrilled to the closeness.

It was wrong, I know, but I couldn’t help having a few fantasies. What would it feel like to kiss him? I’d never been kissed. Never been courted. There hadn’t been much opportunity for it out in the hardscrabble sagebrush land where I’d been hatched. Cupid felt a million miles from where I’d come from, even though it was just a short distance south. It was a completely different planet.

I locked my fingers together and held on tight, felt the steady rise and fall of John’s chest. Who knew that he would be so strong, his muscles so honed? His scent was honest, sunshine and leather and hard work. He did not smell of perfume as he had on the day I’d met him. I liked the contrast in him. He was both a man of the world and an ordinary cowboy. He could wear a fancy fragrance and six-shooters with equal ease. Not many people could straddle two worlds, but he made it look so easy.

“How are you liking Cupid?” he asked.

“Very much.”

“My sister says you’re a good worker.”

“I appreciate the job.” It was strange, having a conversation when I couldn’t see his face. Impossible to gauge what he was thinking.

“How is your family?”

“They’re doing well.”

“Do you get homesick?”

“Not as much as I did at first.”

“It’s got to be hard, leaving your loved ones behind.”

“You left your family behind when you went to the war,” I pointed out.

“That’s how I know it’s hard.”

“What was it like?” I asked.

“The war?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ugly,” he said. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

Chastised, I shut my mouth.

“You’re very brave,” he said after a while. “I admire that about you.”

He admired me! “I’m not,” I argued.

“You propped your mother up after your father died.”

“She was destroyed. My daddy was her one true love.”

“One true love, huh?”

“Most people don’t get that in their lifetime,” I said. “They were very lucky.”

“How do you know when someone is your one true love?”

“You feel it,” I said, even though I had no personal experience of such a thing. “In every part of your being.”

“And what exactly does that feel like?” He sounded completely amused.

“Heaven.” I breathed.

“What does heaven feel like?”

“Home.”

“So finding your one true love is like coming home?”

“Yes.” I nodded even though he couldn’t see. “Except better.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s like coming home, Christmas, and your birthday all rolled into one and it lasts a lifetime.”

“Tall order for anyone.”

“But worth holding out for.”

“Is that what you’re doing, Millie?” he said softly. “Holding out for one true love?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

“You don’t know if you going to wait to find your one true love?”

“I don’t know if I
want
to find my one true love.”

“Why not? It sounds wonderful, coming home, Christmas, your birthday all rolled into one and the feeling lasts a lifetime.”

“Because,” I said, “when you lose that love, the way my mother did, it’s the worst pain in the world.”

“Are you saying a lifetime of loving isn’t worth the pain?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it scares me.”

We said nothing else for a while as Goldie picked her way over the rocky trail. Gravity pulled me forward in the seat, a natural slide closer to John, and then I did the most daring thing imaginable.

I rested my cheek against his back.

My audacity shocked me, but I did not move my head. Just rested my ear against him, and listened to the steady beating of his heart, my fingers still interlaced in front of his ribs.

I held my breath, waiting to see how he would react. I wasn’t the only one full of surprises.

John placed a hand over mine, his calloused thumb rubbed across my knuckles; a comforting touch to be sure, but it also aroused feelings deep inside me. Feelings I’d been struggling to suppress for weeks.

My skin tingled. My heart was a trapped dove inside my chest, fluttering and flapping. Way down low, I felt a feminine stirring. A stirring that I could not name, but it was an overwhelming, primal force, urgent and demanding. I wanted to dance and sing and laugh and cry. I wanted to both praise God and do all manner of sin with this man.

But it was a tenuous thrill and I well and truly knew it. I would be no Ruthie, no matter how much I might want to lie down with John and give my body over to him. And it wasn’t because I was a good girl, although I usually tried hard to be one.

Rather, my restraint arose from the huge class chasm between us. He was a rich man at the top of the heap, the king of the Trans-Pecos, and I was nothing more than a maid at best. At worst, I was simply the pity-case daughter of a man who’d been killed in one of his mines. I understood my place in the world and it was not with a man like John Fant.

The problem was that with John dressed like a cowboy, the lines between us blurred. For a few minutes, it was easy to pretend that he was just a lonesome cowpoke, raised on the land, not so different from me. He even smelled familiar, like Jeff Davis County earth. Home. He smelled like home.

For a dangerous stretch of time, I foolishly let myself dream.

We rode like that for several minutes, not speaking, just being there together in the saddle.

“Millie,” he said after a while.

My eyes were closed and I was concentrating on listening to the beating of his heart and absorbing the heat from his body and marveling how good it felt to be so close to him. I knew this moment couldn’t last and I was milking it for everything it was worth. “Uh-huh.”

“I’ve made a decision.”

“About what?” I murmured.

“The mine.”

“Are you going to close it?”

“I’m going to repair the mine and keep it open.”

“Even though it will cost you more money than you can get back out of it?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

I squeezed him tight, letting him know how much that meant to me.

He chuckled. “Ease up a bit, I need to breathe.”

Embarrassed, I dropped my arms.

“You can still hang on,” he said. “Don’t want you to fall, Millipede.”

Millipede! He’d given me a nickname.

We were long past the rocky incline, on the flat ground of the valley floor; there was no need for me to keep hanging on tight, but I did it anyway. Sliding my arms around him, feeling his warmth seep through me all over again.

Millipede. He’d called me Millipede.

A grin spread over my face bigger than Texas. This was the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me.

But my grin quickly faded away. This was also the most wretched thing, because even though I could never say the words out loud, I realized something that my heart had known since that day on my daddy’s porch.

John Fant was my one true love and there was no way in the whole wide world that we could ever be together.

A
FTER OUR HORSEBACK
ride, I didn’t see John again for an entire month. By day, he filled my thoughts. By night, he ransacked my dreams and I’d awake achy and restless.

Finally, I worked up the courage to ask Mabel about his absence.

“Oh, he’s out at the Fant Oil Field in Pecos County. They’re drilling a new well and he’s helping to get it started.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why are you asking?”

I shrugged. “Just noticed he hadn’t been around lately. That’s all.”

Mabel’s frown deepened. “Well, stop noticing. His comings and goings are not the business of a maid. Now wash out those Mason jars. We’re canning tomatoes today.”

It was late August and miserable hot. That’s one thing I hate about gardening. The crops come due at the hottest part of the year and you have to fire up the stoves for canning. Mabel had all the windows raised and the electric ceiling fan whirling, but it didn’t do anything except stir the heat.

Right in the big middle of canning, when Mabel and I had every surface in the kitchen covered with either tomatoes, tomato skin peelings, Mason jars, or vats of boiling water, Mrs. Bossier strolled in.

“My Lord, it’s hot in here,” Penelope said, fanning herself with a copy of
Harper’s Bazaar
that the postman had delivered that very morning.

“Canning, ma’am,” Mabel said.

“I can see that,” Penelope said a bit peevishly, scooted a basket of tomatoes off a kitchen chair, and set them on the floor, before flopping down to where the tomatoes had just been.

“Is there something you need, ma’am?” Mabel asked. “Glass of ice cold water?”

“Indeed.”

Mabel snapped a finger at me and pointed to the icebox. I turned to fetch the glass of ice water.

“I’m in charge of the Ladies’ League charity event this year and I’m all out of ideas. I can’t think of a theme that hasn’t been done to death.” Penelope picked up a kitchen towel and dabbed the sweat from her forehead.

“I thought you were through with that bunch,” Mabel said, screwing the lids down tight on a batch of canned tomatoes she was readying for the boiling water.

“One can never be free from charity responsibilities and this is my opportunity to redeem my family name.”

“You didn’t do nothing to ruin the family name,” Mabel said. “It was all Ruthie’s fault.”

Penelope clucked her tongue. “What did I tell you about mentioning that girl’s name in this house?”

Mabel pantomimed like she was locking her lips shut and throwing the key away over her shoulder.

I set the glass of water down in front of Mrs. Bossier.

“Thank you, Millie.” She smiled at me, but I couldn’t help feeling she was comparing me to the infamous Ruthie.

And to tell the truth, I was feeling a sad kinship with the Bossiers’ unfortunate former maid, loving a man she could never have.

Penelope sipped her water and leafed through the magazine. What was she doing hanging out in the kitchen?

Mabel met my gaze, shrugged, and inclined her head toward the stove. Message received. Get back to work.

I was snagging blanched tomatoes from the hot water with a slotted spoon and dumping them into a bowl of cold water so I could peel the skin right off them after they cooled down, when Penelope let out a whoop.

Mabel and I both jumped and turned back to see what had made her squawk.

Penelope was on her feet doing a little dance and flapping the page of
Harper’s Bazaar
around.

“You okay, Mrs. Bossier?” Mabel asked.

“I’ve got it! I’ve got it?”

The way she was dancing, I was wondering if she had chiggers.

Mabel pushed a damp strand of gray hair from her forehead with the back of her hand, wiped her hands on her apron, and went over to Penelope. “What is it?”

“The theme of the Ladies’ League charity event. It’s right here in
Harper’s Bazaar
. They’re all the rage on the East Coast.” She thumped the page. “We’re going to hold a dance marathon.”

Mabel took the magazine from her, read the article about dance marathons. Fascinated, I peered over her shoulder to read it for myself and discovered that dance marathons for charity required the contestants to get sponsors to pay them for the length of time they danced, say a penny an hour. The marathon continued until there was only one couple left dancing.

“Not only am I going to put on the dance marathon, but I’m going to dance it and earn the most money for charity, and then those old biddies on the Ladies’ League will have to stop turning their noses up at over that unfortunate incident with that unfortunate girl.”