Teaching the Cowboy (12 page)

He grinned as he clicked it open, anticipatory although the subject line was decidedly benign:
Can you tell me about it?
He’d sent the message early that morning, not really expecting a response so soon, but there it was.

His eyes scanned down the screen.

A
long
response.

He pushed his glasses up his nose and settled in to read Phil’s rambling exchange. At the bottom of all that excited prose about schools and the South and his tumultuous trip back from Wyoming, he’d typed,
How’s Ronnie? Is she grinding her teeth much?

Landon grinned and started his response.

Only when Dad comes into the room. I’m 70% sure he’s put the moves on her.

-Landon

He clicked send, sorted through the remaining messages in his inbox, and was about to go fetch his dessert when the program pinged.

It was Phil.

I know for certain he did, but last I heard it was all very chaste and proper. I’d be surprised to hear that Ronnie’s let her hair down. I feel like an asshole for even asking, but…well?

-P

Landon responded:

Don’t know what to tell you, really, but they seem pretty familiar. He sort of softens when she’s nearby. I may just be projecting that though. Still, I think he needs a Ronnie.

-Landon

This time, Landon waited. Phil didn’t disappoint. Five minutes later, there was a message.

Oh, fuck.

-P

Ronnie stood in front of the perking coffeemaker, padding her thumbs over the touch-screen of her Lundstrom Ranch Smartphone, and sent the text message before she could change her mind for the third time.
Your brother is drunk as a skunk. Advice?

She regretted it as soon as she sent it. She would have hated for someone to seek advice from her brother behind her back. She and Allen didn’t get on that well, much like John and Sidney, but who else could she trust? At least Sid would have his best interests at heart, more or less. More if those interests were
liberal
, probably. She took a deep breath and opened cabinets to search for mugs.

The teacher/organizer part of Ronnie’s brain kicked in as she mumbled about how nothing arranged in the kitchen made any sense. Why was the utensil drawer so far from the dishes? Why was the dish soap in the pantry and not underneath the sink? She’d even started moving things around when the phone buzzed at her hip.

Sid said,
Is he mobile?

Ronnie responded,
Yes. I sent him to the shower.

Sid:
As long as he’s not laying face-down in his own puke, he’ll be fine.

Ronnie started typing out a response, but before she could get it in, she had to delete it. Sid pre-empted her.

Sid:
He might get talkative as the liquor metabolizes. Learned that when Charlene was pregnant with Landon. What a nag.

Ronnie let her forehead furrow.
Don’t worry, I never trust anything a drunk says.

Sid:
He’s not that kind of drunk.

Meaning?
The water shut off. Ronnie had a minute or two at most before he stumbled out and interrupted her fact-finding mission. That reminded her. She jogged down to the basement and transferred his wet clothes to the dryer and turned it on. She paused on the steps on the way back up to read Sid’s next quip.

He’s an honest drunk. Not that he isn’t usually honest, but he just talks more when he’s been lubricated. Less restrained. He’s trained himself to be stoic.

That good or bad? And is that some kind of cowboy thing?

Can’t say. I don’t know how well he knows you. He may deny the conversation ever happened later, though. And cowboy thing? No. Overcompensating for his ADHD.

Ronnie mulled that over.
Good to know.

While I have your attention, can I send Kitty over tomorrow? She wants to see Liss. I’d ask John but…

Sure, send her. Don’t be surprised if I put her to work, though. I do that whenever stray kids stumble into my classroom.

Doesn’t bother me. Maybe nag her about taking the S.A.T.? She won’t listen to me.

Ronnie sighed as she closed the basement door. Add another blonde head to the collection of pupils.

John hobbled past in his towels at exactly that moment and brushed her hip with his thigh as he passed.

She inhaled his much-improved spring rain and spearmint scent and made a small appreciative grunt. Nice, he’d brushed his teeth.

John walked straight to the stove and opened the cabinet over the vent fan to pull out a giant bottle of aspirin.

She suddenly had a good understanding of who organized the kitchen. Just how much time did he spend in the guesthouse?

“I made you coffee.” She walked to the one cabinet she hadn’t tried and met success in the form of twelve blue glass mugs. She took down one, paused, grabbed a second, and took both to the counter. “You should probably eat something, too. You’re missing dinner. Anna made spaghetti which smelled fabulous, by the way.”

He grunted as he threw back three aspirin. “She’s the best cook in the county. That’s why I hired her. Spent a lot of years eating shit. Figured I owed it to myself. Worth every penny.” He took the mug she extended to him and approached the machine to fill it up.

“I don’t imagine there’s anything in the refrigerator.” She opened it and her jaw dropped. Fully stocked.
What the hell?
She pulled out a stick of butter, some eggs, milk, ground hot sausage, and cheese.

He grunted again as he walked to the table. He pulled out the chair nearest the door, the chair facing the stove, and sat heavily onto it.

“I thought no one lived here.” She searched the cabinets again, trying to recall where she’d seen mixing bowls and on her third try, found them beneath the sink where the dish detergent should have been.

“I come out here every now and then. Anna keeps a few things stocked for me.”

Ronnie turned on the stove burner and turned around to see him slumped facedown onto the tabletop and his arms cradling his face.

“Hmm.” She crumbled a quarter pound of sausage into one pan and started heating another.

“I like seeing you flitting about in my kitchen. You belong there.”

She turned back around and found him resting with his chin propped atop his hands. “Ex
-cuse
me?”

He gave her a dismissive hand flick without deigning to raise his head.

She grabbed a wooden spatula from the cylinder positioned near the stove. At least
something
was stored in a place that made sense. She gave the sausage a few violent scrapes and turned her attention back to the eggs. She cracked four into the glass bowl she’d found and gave them a vigorous beating with her fork.

“How come you’re not married, Ronnie?”

She ignored the question and pretended to be very concerned about pouring the exact right amount of milk into the eggs.

“Answer me.”

She blew out a breath and studied the cabinets again. Where were the plates?
Eenie-meenie-minie…
“Ah.” She found them in the third compartment and took one down and covered it with several paper towels. As she scraped sausage to drain on top of the paper she said, “Not every woman needs to be married.” Next, she scraped a generous heaping of butter into the hot cast iron pan and watched it melt.

“You should be married, prize like you.”

She scoffed before she could stop herself. “I’m not a thing, John. I’m a woman. A twenty-eight-year-old one at that. I’m not particularly interested in marrying anyone right now. I’ve got goals, things I want to accomplish before I get saddled.”

His turn to scoff. He sat up and propped his elbows atop the table. “I got married at eighteen.”

“And how’d that work out for you?”

His jaw worked left then right, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “I never make the same mistake twice.”

“And your mistake was what?” She could guess but wanted to hear it in his own words.

“Married someone with no work ethic. What little she had disappeared the moment she said
I do
. You understand the need to work, how to get things done, even if you don’t wanna.”

“Like I said, John. I have goals.”

“I heard you. I think you should adjust your goals. Marry me. Take care of my kids. Take care of me.”

Her face burned, and she kept it hidden by tending the eggs she poured into the pan. “You’re doing okay on your own.”

“That’s debatable. What is it? You don’t like me? You could probably learn to like me a little.”

That made her turn. His face was an absolute blank as he sat there warming his hands around his coffee mug.

She sucked in some air and chose her words carefully. “John, I like you just fine, or else I wouldn’t have slept with you. That’s not the issue.” She didn’t want to be having this conversation. Not now. Not with a man who, according to Sid, might either forget he had it or pretend it didn’t happen. Best if she kept her responses simple and transparent.

“I like you more than a little. I love you, Ronnie.”

Oh-kay
,
then.

She turned back to the eggs. They’d congealed while her back was turned so she seasoned them, scraped in the drained sausage, and damn near smothered the scramble in cheese. Perfect food for a drunk’s empty belly. She turned off the flame and fetched two more plates.

“Did you hear me? I said I love you.”

“You hardly know me. You’re just saying that because you’re drunk.”

“No, I’m saying it because from the moment you stepped out of that little car, you did something to me. This isn’t a whim. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything. You’ve got me whipped without even trying, and let me tell you, my gut’s in knots over it. Now answer my question. If liking me isn’t the issue, what is? Is it because I’m white?”

That made her laugh outright before she started the systematic search of the drawers yet again until she found the table utensils. She pulled the whole damned tray out and set them on the counter. They didn’t belong there, and she was set on making the scheme make sense.

She heaped food onto a dish and slid it in front of him, standing there next to him with her hands on her hips for a while, watching him.

He locked that icy blue gaze on her, daring her to agree.

“No, it’s not because you’re white. You know, we have white people in North Carolina. Have a few as blood relatives.”

“So?”

“So.” She put a fork into his left hand, because she’d noticed amongst other things that he was a left-handed hunk, and wrapped his fingers around it. “I’m leaving in May. I don’t want this to get complicated.”

“It’s already complicated. How much more complicated do you think it’s going to get?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” She set her plate at the place farthest from him and pulled out the chair. “Under different circumstances, I’d pursue you. Maybe.” That Republican thing was kind of an issue for her.

“Why maybe? Is it the kids?”

That made her furrow her brow. “Don’t ever blame your kids for diminishing your attractiveness to a woman because they
don’t
. At least not this woman.” She stabbed her eggs with her fork, brought some to her mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “It’s because I would never want to live in a place like this. I can’t see this as being my forever home.”

He grunted and tucked into his food.

She thought he was going to let the subject drop, and thank God, but after he’d cleared nearly half his plate he said, “I think you should get over it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a grown-up. Sometimes grown-ups have to make sacrifices for the greater good.”

“And the greater good would be?”

“Taking care of my family.”

“You have Anna for that. She does a wonderful job.”

“So Charlene says. But Anna doesn’t take care of
me
.”

“Your fridge is stocked. Seems like she’s doing okay.”

“That’s not what I mean. You’re being purposefully dense. Stop it.”

“No, John, I’m not. This all sounds very convenient to you, and I guess if I’d been a different woman driving into this dustball community unattached and with nothing really to go home to, it would be a Godsend. What, two hundred years ago, we would have been married within a week, right? Without even knowing each other or having any affection whatsoever? Or was miscegenation illegal here?” She tapped her forehead, trying to remember her frontier state history. She shrugged.
Eh. I’ll look it up later.

“We can get married right now. Doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“I don’t think so. That same sort of compulsion is what made you get married at eighteen. I don’t want to be anyone’s mistake.” She carried her plate to the sink and scraped the leftover bits into the garbage disposal. She poured herself some coffee and leaned against the counter, staring at him.

Even in his towel the man was hard not to take seriously, especially with the way he had his arms crossed over that broad chest. “Mistake. Selling yourself a little short, aren’t you?”

“I’m a realist, John.”