ROMANCE: Badass Boss (Billionaire Alpha Bad Boy Romance) (Western Mail Order Bride Calendar Contemporary) (64 page)

Chapter 6

The Match

Sandra does not bother to hide her excitement, even though she can see that her brother is flummoxed at the arrival of Pauline. She looks on happily as Pauline introduces herself to Dwight.

“Hello, Mr. Butler, my name is Pauline Murhpy,” she says in her soft Georgia drawl.  “Your lovely sister here has been explaining to me the strange circumstances that have led to our meeting today. Am I right to say that you did not know that I was coming?”

“Yes,” Dwight says, feeling weak at the knees.

“Well,” she says, matter of factly, “it seems to me that we have two choices. Either I can go home, and we will forget this as nonsense…or, we can give it a try. Sandra has been explaining to me that the Matchmaker has not failed yet, and that despite the many obstacles presented to the matched couples, they have endured and both have gotten married, and one is expecting a child.”

“Yeah…yeah, I, um…” Dwight begins, still ogling the strikingly beautiful woman. Tall and slender, Pauline has literally taken Dwight’s breath with her beauty. Fair and pale, the red-headed woman betrays a hint of her Irish ancestry on her visage in the form of freckles that stand out strikingly against her very nearly white skin. Her long neck rests upon her shoulders, which perfectly frame her large breasts which shine very obviously through her many layers of clothing.

Her waist is thin, and her posture perfect. Dwight finally clears his throat and says, “Yeah. Junior and Ruth got married alright, and Dandy and Sarah Anne are expecting a baby.”

“Well? What do you think?”

Dwight thinks that he is completely smitten with the younger woman, as her looks combine with her poignant, pointed, and poised demeanor to cause him to be attracted to a woman other than his dearly departed Amanda for the first time in eighteen years. “I…I, uh…”

“Oh, out with it, you buffoon!” Sandra exclaims. “You know full well you think she’s gorgeous! Why in the world would you deny it? Just give it a try! The Lord knows that Emily needs a mother figure to help her find a man!”

Pauline looks from Dwight to Sandra and back again. “Look, Mr. Butler,” she says, “I know how hard it is to lose someone so special to you. I myself am a widow, as my previous husband died five years ago. It is very important to never forget those that we have loved and lost,” she said, “But we can not be so focused on what we have lost to forget that which is staring us full in the face.”

Dwight thinks these words over for a few moments before he looks up at Pauline. Staring into her fiery blue eyes, he realizes that she is right. He has spent the months following Amanda’s death last fall in a catatonic state, simply going through the motions of what it means to live. Finally, he clears his voice, and says, “Yes…let’s give it a try.”

Excellent, Sandra thinks to herself. Neither one of them suspect that I am the one who brought them together!

Chapter 7

Trouble Ahead

That night, Dwight and Pauline went back to the home he had shared with Amanda. Dwight would later say that there was never a night more uncomfortable as that, because he not only had to explain to his daughter why Pauline was there, but also had to deal with the ghosts of Amanda that still haunted every sound that went through the house. The breeze would rustle the flowers outside, and reminded him of Amanda’s laugh, and Emily would smile while cooking with Pauline, which reminded him of the way Amanda would always smile as she baked cakes for Christmas or birthdays.

Finally, after four days of brooding on these things, Dwight sat down with Emily and Pauline, to talk about their living arrangements.

“I’m going to be honest,” he began, “it has been very hard for me these last few days.”

“How so, Daddy?” Emily asked promptly.

“Well, sweetheart, this is the home that I built with your momma, and with Pauline here,” he says, nodding in the older woman’s direction, “It’s been pretty hard, because everything reminds me of your momma.”

“That’s normal, Dwight,” Pauline says gently. “There is no way that anyone can expect you to be completely over her this quickly, after you loved her so well for so long.”

“Thank you, Pauline…” Dwight says, fighting to keep his composure. “I was thinking, though, it’s going to be hard enough getting to know a new woman as it is, why compound it by staying where I had lived with her.”

“What are you saying, Daddy?” Emily cuts in.

“Well, perhaps I need to move on…away from this place.”

“Okay?” Emily says, looking over to Pauline in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“I think that in order to give Pauline and I the best chance, we need to move.”

“You mean, leave our home?”

“Yes.”

“But Daddy, we can’t leave this house! It’s the only home I’ve ever known!”

“Which is why I’m going to give it to you,” Dwight says, dropping a bombshell on the conversation.

“You aren’t going to sell it?” Emily asks.

“No. I am going to leave it in my name, so that no one can ever take it from you, even if you’re married to them.”

“But where will you two live?” Emily asks, perplexed.

“Didn’t I tell you where I went with Deputy Darby the day Pauline came home with me?”

“No?”

“We went to the bank. He sold me your Uncle David’s house. It’s where I grew up, and Dandy was buying Junior Parker’s old place, so he sold me the family home.”

“Okay, so wait a moment,” Emily says, seemingly confused. “So, you bought a house, and aren’t getting rid of this one, and it’ll belong to me, right?”

“Right.”  This one word caused Emily to jump up as if she had been bitten and to run around the table to hug her father. Just as she pulled back, there came a loud knock on the door. “Who is it?” Dwight called to the person outside.

“It’s me! Dandy!”

“What the hell?” Dwight asks himself under his breath, but getting up to open the door. “What’s going on Dandy? Is everything okay with Sarah Anne? The baby?”

“Yeah, yeah…they’re fine,” Dandy answers.

“Then what are you doing in Santa Ana at this time of night.

“Two things really…I wanted to let you know that we are out of the house, and I have some bad news as well.”

“Oh?” Dwight asks quizzically.

“Yep. It seems that the elders at the church up in Atoka are having a fit, and that pompous asshole, Tyson Abrams came by ‘La Hacienda del Dandi’ looking to start some trouble.”

“What the hell?” Dwight asks, completely shocked that the members of the church would try to start a fight with Dandy, the local hero who had taken out Doc Dawson.  “Why in the world would they be coming to ‘La Ahseemento?’”

Dwight’s butchered attempt to pronounce the new Spanish name of Dandy’s ranch brings a smile onto the younger man’s face. “It’s ‘La Hacienda del Dandi,’” Dandy tells him. “It means ‘the Estate of the Dandy’ in Spanish. Learnt it from one of the Mexican ‘vaqueros’ at the Hanged Man”

“Yeah, well, I’m not Mexican, and I don’t speak Spanish. Anyway, why would Abrams be coming to La Hacienda?”

“Because of Sarah Anne. Basically, he was telling me that she is a whore and that if I have any self respect, I will divorce her as soon as possible.”

“That’s just his wife, Emily, talkin’. She used to be really good friends with Sandra, so that probably explains part of her being such a bitch (pardon the term ladies).”

“Yeah, I know, but still, with Pauline being here, they’re probably going to be coming here too, so I wanted to come let you know.”

“How’d you get him to leave anyway?”

“I told him that I’ve fucked every whore in the county several times. If my wife’s a whore too, then she and I’ll get along perfectly. He got all pissed and left.” At these words, Pauline took Emily by the hand and went into the other room. “I hope I didn’t offend them, ‘Wight,” Dandy finishes lamely.

“It seems so, Dandy,” Dwight replies with a grin. “It’s okay, friend. My Emily has heard much worse out of me because a storm was coming before.”

“Still, I didn’t mean to offend no one,” Dandy says. “Do tell ‘em, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell ‘em.”

“Thanks, I need to get back home to Sarah Anne, y’all have a good night, ‘Wight,” Dandy says before retreating.

“You too!” Dwight calls out to the young man before calling the women back into the room.

“So, anyway, Pauline, I’ve thought that you and I could move into my brother’s old place, and Emily, you could stay here.”

“What about Mr. Abrams and the church in Atoka, Daddy?” Emily asks.

“I suppose it’s probably gonna come here nex,’ because Junior is gone. But that’s fine. I know some things that will shut Tyson Abrams right up.”

Chapter 8

Fight

This can’t be happening! Sandra thinks to herself as the group forms up into ranks like an army heading into battle. Much like Santa Anna’s forces 52 years before, the mob of men and their wives were marching onward to take control of a crucial defensive position…that of Dwight Butler’s new home. Torn by what to do, Sandra can not decide whether to join the mob and so protect her identity as the matchmaker, or to go to her brother’s defense, urging calm.

Another key problem facing Sandra is that Dandy and Sarah Anne, the second couple she matched, are having Sunday dinner with her brother, Pauline, and Emily at her family home, which Dandy sold to Dwight on Monday of this week. She has no way of knowing what the mob is going to do when they arrive, but with a madman like the extremely hypocritical Tyson Abrams at the head of the column, he looks every bit the part of the conquering Santa Anna as he marched into the Alamo after Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, and every other defender lay dead.

The truly sad thing is that the only man who has ever been able to exert some control over the sycophantic Abrams no longer lives in Coleman County, Mr. Robert Parker Jr. has sold everything and moved north with the former Ruth Stafford. Junior was Tyson’s former employer, before he had to fire him for unknown reasons. He did not hate Tyson, because even after Junior had to fire him, he made a deal with the sheriff to make him the jailer in Atoka, working for the county. He refused to ever tell anyone why he fired Tyson, but they knew that he didn’t fire anyone from his cattle operation without good reason. And they knew that Tyson had been fired, because Junior paid his cattlemen almost double what any other rancher would pay, so the boys he had working for him when he left had been with him for some time. Dandy Darby himself had been one for over three years.

And so it was that a crowd of nearly forty members of the Atoka Church of God were literally marching down McCulloch Street like a military unit heading for battle.  They were even singing songs like “the Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “Dixie.” 

Occasionally, she can hear one particularly loud woman call out “down with the matchmaker!” This causes Sandra to get up and look out the window, and to her surprise, it was Sally Amstead, the black, former slave-girl prostitute that was once so popular with Dandy when he stayed at The Hanged Man.

Running out into the street before the marching column of protesters, Sandra screams out, “People! What is going on?! Why are you all causing such a ruckus in the streets of our quiet town?”

“Get out of the way, Sandra!” Tyson Abrams says back, the mob at his back watching how their leader takes on their first obstacle.

“I will not get out of the way, Tyson! I did not allow my dead husband (God rest his soul) to speak to me like that, and I am not going to allow you to!”

“It is not what you will allow, Sandra, you crazy wench! This is about the will of God!  We will not allow any more moral debauchery in Coleman County!”

“Moral debauchery?” she asks, incredulous.

“Yes! Debauchery! Dandy Darby and his whore of a wife are at your brother’s house right now, having dinner! Showing your niece (who has no mother) that it is okay to run round and act ridiculous in order to get a husband! And then, your brother is living with a woman who is not his wife in the home that you grew up in! I would think that you care more for your niece and your dead sister-in-law than to watch your brother lead her astray! It is an insult to Amanda’s memory!”

“I knew my sister-in-law very well, actually!” Sandra responds with fire in her eyes and gravel in her belly. The jibes about Amanda and Emily have caused her to get severely upset at this crowd, led by the pompous prick, Tyson Abrams.

“She and I talked several times about what we would want from our family if we ever died, and I happen to know that she wanted Dwight to move on with his life! To find a woman to replace her in Emily’s life! A woman who would teach Emily how to be a good, Christian woman and wife! The problem here is that you are all ignorant of what the matchmaker is doing!”

“There it is! The way you are speaking, it sounds as if you could be the matchmaker!”

“As if!” Sandra screams in his face, thoroughly deranged. “I have said all along that I don’t like what the matchmaker is doing! If it weren’t for him or her, my dear brother David would still be here! How dare you insult me, and his memory?! The truth is, the whores in this mob of yours are just angry because they couldn’t snag Junior Parker or Dandy Darby!”

“I had Dandy Darby!” came a voice from the crowd, causing all to turn and look upon the chocolate colored face of Sally Amstead. “I had him! His wallet too! The match-maker has stolen my best source of income!”

“The matchmaker didn’t do anything! It was that whore from Kentucky what stole your customer, nigger!” said one of the men in the group.  “And really, we like you no more than the bitch he married!”

Suddenly, a single gunshot rings through the air, and the crowd turns around to see Deputy Sheriff Coleman S. “Dandy” Darby, his pregnant wife—Sarah Anne—Dwight Butler, and Pauline Murphy.  The gun is one of Dandy’s ivory handled peacemakers, but the finger on the trigger is Sarah Anne’s.

“Listen here, you assholes!” Sarah Anne screams out, her temper so close to the surface from her hormones wrenching her thick Kentucky accent in the early afternoon air. “I am sick and gawd damned tired of this shit! Dandy is my husband! I was going to leave after he got shot, but I didn’t! He asked me to stay, so I did, and now we’re married, and gonna have a baby! And as for you, Sally! You ain’t nothing but a dirty, filthy nigger whore! You gots no right to say that you ever had my husband!  Do I make myself clear?! You can all go to hell!”

“Shut up, whore!” Tyson screams, with his eyes looking as if they are about to pop out of his head.  “You and this other whore,” he says, pointing at Pauline, “y’all can just get your asses out of our town!”  With that, Dwight slowly steps forward, and faces off with the deranged religious nutcase.

“Now, Tyson, I don’t think that you should be talking like that in front of the ladies.”

“Who? These whores?” Abrams says, pointing to Sarah Anne and Pauline in turn, while the crowd continues to yell its assent.

“Yes, the women behind me,” Dwight replies, the very picture of calm. “Now, I may not be the smartest man when it comes to the good-book, because I can’t read the best. But I follows that what I can read. Can you say the same?”

“Fool! I am an Elder of the Church of Christ!”

“Well, didn’t Jesus say that any who calls his brother a fool will be in danger of hell-fire?”

“Well, I…”

“And didn’t he also say that ‘he who hasn’t sinned’ can cast the first stone?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“Well then, Tyson Abrams: are you sinless? Are you able to cast the first stone?”  Turning to the crowd, Dwight calls out, “Is anyone here allowed to cast the first stone?”  and just as in the story in the bible, everyone in the crowd was “convicted of his or her sin,” and so no one responded to Dwight’s challenge. And so it was, that with mutinous looks on everyone’s faces, the entire crowd dispersed.

Turning to Sandra, Pauline, Sarah Anne, and Dandy, Dwight has a large smile on his face.  He walks over and shakes Dandy’s hand, kisses Sarah Anne on the cheek, and hugs his sister. Looking at each in turn, he finally takes Pauline by the waist, and pulls her in for a deeply moving kiss, right there in the middle of McCulloch Street.

When they break apart, Sandra laughs and says, “Go home, you two.”

“We will, Sandra,” Dwight answers, “but first, you have to answer a question for me.”

“Oh? And what’s that?”

“Are you the matchmaker?”

“No, of course not! I meant what I said to that prick, Tyson. I don’t approve of all the bachelors in the county marrying women from out of town. At least…I was. After this fiasco, I’m not sure that it’s a bad idea, actually.”

“Okay. You aren’t lying right?”

“No! Of course not!” Sandra asks, guilt ripping at her stomach wall. “Why would you think such a thing?!”

“Because of the way you were defending me before Sarah Anne fired that shot. The way you stared at Pauline and I that day at the train station. Because I have often wondered if you are crazy enough to do something as harebrained as matchmaking.”

“Dwight, as your sister, no. Now go home!”