The Counterfeit Cowgirl (19 page)

Felicity sighed again. “Sure. It’s just such a nuisance to have somebody deliberately undo all that work, even though it looks like there’s no real harm done.”

He leaned back and rested his arm along the back of the sofa behind her. “Come on, honey. Cheer up. If you’re worried about the mess, I’m going to help you.”

Felicity looked at the mess and winced. “Thank you. Tomorrow I’ll start taking apart all this old furniture and getting rid of it. Then I’ll rent some furniture so Mama can stay with me during the Rice Festival. She says she’s looking forward to sleeping in a real bed for a change.”

The kitchen telephone rang before Aaron could reply.

“You’d better get that,” Aaron said. “It’s bound to be your mother.”

Felicity rose automatically. “I don’t know why she’d call that phone when she knows I’ve got my cell.”

“Why are you here?” Becky demanded. “I thought you were going over to eat supper at Aaron’s house.”

“Hello, Mama. I did, and he just walked me back.”

“Tell her about Carlisle,” Aaron ordered from the sofa. If he knew Felicity, she had no intentions of worrying her mother by mentioning the night’s events.

Felicity shook her head violently, as he expected.

“What did he say?” Becky asked. “Did I hear him mention that nasty ol’ Gary Carlisle?”

Felicity glanced toward the living room and directed an exaggerated frown at Aaron. “Yes, Mama. I told him the story, and he’s with you on that subject.”

“Tell her what happened tonight,” Aaron said loudly.

Felicity slapped her hand over the receiver mouthpiece. “Hush up, Aaron. We don’t need her flying down here.”

He could hear Becky’s annoyed exclamations from where he was. “If you don’t tell her, I will.”

“Oh, all right.” Exasperated, Felicity scowled at him and turned her back. “Calm down, Mama. It’s just that someone broke in and trashed the house tonight while I was next door eating supper with Aaron and his family. Nothing was damaged, but — ”

At once, Aaron heard Becky erupt. He smothered his grin.

“Now, Mama, Aaron is with me, and he’s already searched the house. Everything is fine, and the sheriff says so, too. But I’m going to go back to Aaron’s house and spend the night there.” She paused and listened a moment. “No, Mama, I don’t know why anyone would trash this place. There’s nothing worth stealing here except my clothes, but — ”

“Unless it was that Carlisle fellow,” Aaron nearly shouted.

Felicity held the phone out to Aaron. “She wants to talk to you.”

Aaron took the phone and informed Becky in succinct terms of what had happened and what he suspected while watching Felicity wander about the room uprighting chairs.

He finished with, “Felicity thinks all he wants is for you to stop your pursuit and drop the charges against him. Otherwise, she thinks he would have shredded her clothes and done some real damage.”

There was a silence while Becky assimilated the information. “What do you think, Aaron?” she asked at last. “Should I let him get away with hurtin’ my baby the way he did?”

Aaron gave a grim chuckle and watched Felicity kneel to pick up and thumb through books that were scattered across the floor from a small, overturned bookcase. “Felicity thinks he’s been punished enough, but if you want to know what I think, there’s no punishment harsh enough for the kind of screwball who’d pull something like what he pulled.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Becky said with considerable satisfaction. “There ain’t no bribe big enough to get me off his case.”

“Aaron,” Felicity shrieked suddenly. She knelt before the overturned bookcase, staring at something on the bottom of it.

“What’s happened?” Becky yelled.

He held the phone away from his ear. “What is it? I don’t — Say, what is that?”

Felicity pointed to the exposed bottom shelf of the bookcase, where an old manila envelope had been fastened with silver duct tape. “It could be Mama’s songs. But don’t say anything to her. Let me look first.” She reached for a strip of the duct tape with trembling hands and gently worked it away from the envelope.

“What is it?” Becky demanded. “What’s happening?”

“Hold on a minute,” Aaron said. “There’s no danger, but Felicity thinks she’s found something. Give us a minute while we look to see what it is.”

Becky subsided, although Aaron sensed the rising motherly anxiety on the other end of the wire. He laid the receiver on the kitchen counter and went to kneel beside Felicity. He used his pocket knife to detach the envelope from the layers of ancient duct tape that secured it to the underside of the small book case. Slitting the envelope open carefully, he pulled out a stack of yellowed paper covered with bold, dark pencil script and musical notations and held them before Felicity’s wide gaze.

“Go speak to your mother, honey. Ask her if one of her songs was called ‘The Outcome of Our Love.’”

Felicity’s eyes had filled with tears, but she obeyed him with alacrity, barely able to choke out the question. She held the receiver away from her ear when it gave vent to a loud shriek and closed her eyes as two big tears rolled down her cheeks.

“That’s them,” Becky yelled. “Praise the Lord.”

Aaron could hear the words clearly from across the room. He laughed exultantly and held the songs out to Felicity. The sight of her tears tore at his heart.

He reached for her. “Now, honey, don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it.” Felicity let him hold her, clutching the telephone receiver to her ear. “You have no idea what this means to Mama. She wants to thank you for your part in helping find them.”

Aaron took the receiver she held out to him. To his discomfort, Becky was crying, too. In the way of great artists, she fully experienced her emotional release by crying out loud and with great zest.

He listened to Becky’s loud sobbing a moment and passed the phone back to Felicity. “I think she’d rather talk to you.”

• • •

Felicity barely noticed when Aaron helped her into his truck. Dazed, she peered through the darkness at the house and cradled Becky’s precious songs in her arms. Now that she had actually found the songs, she could call in professionals to clean the house and trash all the furniture.

Aaron obligingly drove her to a print shop that acted as a pickup point for Federal Express and waited while she photocopied each song, then addressed a mailer to the address of Becky’s next stop.

“Now, sugar, don’t worry,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Federal Express doesn’t lose things. That package will reach your mother’s hands by tomorrow afternoon.”

Felicity nodded, biting her lip and squeezing back tears. “I’ve made two sets of copies, just in case it doesn’t.” She smiled at him gratefully. “We can probably expect a new album soon that’ll be different from anything she’s ever done before.”

“She wrote those songs while your father was still alive, didn’t she?” Aaron asked. “Do you think he knew about them?”

Felicity turned the mailer over to the clerk and paid the fee. Aaron’s rough, gentle voice played on every nerve ending she had, plus a few new ones. “That’s the only thing she’s held on to all these years. She says she sang every one of them to him before he was killed.”

Aaron touched her arm gently. “She must have loved him a lot.”

“She did. He was her world.”

Felicity stared at Aaron’s sun-darkened hand with its calloused palms and fingers. When he touched her, she felt almost as if she’d been jolted by several hundred volts of electricity. She opened her mouth to tell him she wanted to go to a motel rather than back to his house. Something told her it would be far safer for her peace of mind.

“Come on, honey,” Aaron said. “If your mouth is still open when we get back outside, you’ll wind up swallowing love bugs.”

Felicity closed her mouth. “Love bugs?”

“They’re the little black bugs plastered all over the front of your truck. You’d better get them off pretty soon or they’ll ruin the finish.”

“Oh.” The collection of small, black insects on her truck grill and windshield was growing steadily thicker. She hadn’t yet had time to find a car wash.

“The place down the street has some new carwash liquid in,” the clerk offered, returning Felicity’s change. “It’s guaranteed to get love bugs off your paint job.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Felicity followed Aaron out the door. “I know I’ll be sorry for asking, but why do you call them love bugs?”

Aaron lifted his hand and closed it around one of the black forms floating in the air. He held it before her face and opened it to show the black bug centered on his palm. “Take a look.”

She looked and saw that the little black bug wasn’t one insect but two. “Oh.”

Aaron let the bugs go, chuckling. “When they’re flying, any moving vehicle is soon plastered with them, and they’re hell to get off.”

She tried not to dwell on the thoughts of lovemaking the bugs conjured up. “Is that right?” She felt like an idiot, blushing like this, and Aaron was obviously enjoying her discomfiture.

“Stop blushing, honey. You look like a virgin.”

Little did he know. “I’m not blushing. I’m cooling off my core.”

“I affect you that strongly?” He was laughing as he opened his truck door and helped her step inside. “Someday very soon I am going to affect you just that way.”

Felicity gulped back a reply. She could say nothing without sounding like a blushing virgin. God forbid Aaron should learn that was exactly what she was, and that he already affected her more powerfully than any other man ever had.

“In fact,” Aaron continued provocatively, “by this time next week, you’ll be blushing every time I smile at you.”

“A week?” Felicity’s head whirled. “My, you cowboys sure do work fast, don’t you? Are you planning to walk past me in your G-string or something?”

“Or something,” Aaron said, grinning. “Must be the love bugs.”

Felicity sucked in her breath. Maybe it was the love bugs. Who knew? But it did not matter at all to her, because Aaron was the man she wanted for her first lover, and the sooner, the better.

So how did one go about propositioning a man? She ran a few trite phrases through her mind and rejected them one by one while Aaron drove them back to his home.

“Let’s go back to my house,” she said, as a preliminary. “I don’t think Gary will bother me anymore, now that he’s delivered his message.”

Aaron was silent while he turned his truck in her driveway. “You do realize, I hope, that I can’t leave you alone in this house, with no lock on the door.” It was a statement rather than a question.

Felicity smiled inwardly and said, “We’ll talk about it inside.”

He parked the truck and came around to help her down. “There’s plenty of room at my place. You wouldn’t be in the way at all.”

“I can see that.” She stood in the circle of his arms and gazed up at him in the dim, yellowish light cast by the front porch light. “Ranching those red cows of yours must be a mighty lucrative business.”

“Selling trucks and cars is what keeps the bills paid, honey.” Aaron smiled. “Those Brahmins keep the pastures in good shape and give my horses some useful work to do.” He ran his hands down her arms and pulled her flush against his body. “What I need is a woman who can do the same for me.”

“Oh, I have lots of useful work you can do,” Felicity said, surprising herself. “In fact, there’s something really useful you can do for me tonight.”

Aaron drew in his breath as if he didn’t trust her meaning. “Since I’ve already bagged the trash and straightened the furniture, am I allowed to hope this useful work involves you and a comfortable bed?”

“They do say visualization makes things happen the way you want them to.” She hoped he heard the sincerity in her voice. “The sooner you begin the better, as far as I’m concerned.”

His hands, flattened on her back, trembled slightly. “You took the words right out of my mouth. Come on in, cowgirl. Let’s see if we can make a start on all this work.”

Felicity shivered with anticipation and hurried inside. The lights, which they had left on, were way too bright for what she had in mind, so she turned off every one of them except a small lamp beside the old sofa. Aaron stacked a couple of chairs against the broken door.

He walked her to her bedroom and stepped back reluctantly. “I’d better check the other rooms, just in case. Stay right here, honey.”

Felicity was so far gone, she almost told him to forget the house. She stood in the center of the bedroom, temporarily at a loss, and wondered what to do next.

Whatever comes naturally
, ran the words of one of Becky’s songs, in answer to that very question. This was not a good time to discover she had no idea what ought to come naturally. Fortunately, Aaron knew what to do next and how to go about it. He returned a moment later, locked the bedroom door behind him and turned to stare at her.

Felicity melted. Something about the hungry look on his face spoke to her deepest instincts. Moving slowly, with great deliberation, she unfastened her silver cufflinks and laid them on the dresser. Next off was the coral and turquoise necklace. For a moment she regretted all the different articles she had to remove, one at a time, in order to perform a proper striptease, until she saw Aaron’s face. Then she wished she had worn a few more items that needed removing. His appreciation spurred her on. He remained by the door, watching her every move in a silence fraught with tension.

She removed the silver rosette belt she wore and laid it on the dresser then took the silver wires out of her ears. The coral bits clicked together in a gentle tinkling as she laid them beside the matching necklace. Then she removed her two coral and turquoise rings and placed them beside her earrings, and sat down on the bed to remove her red-fringed black boots.

She began on the buttons of her blouse, gently working each one loose, until the entire blouse was unbuttoned. She unsnapped the catch of her long, black denim skirt and stepped out of it. Carefully she draped both items over the dresser chair and stood before him wearing only a chemise and long half-slip.

He remained standing beside the door with both feet firmly planted, watching her every move with narrowed, hungry eyes. For a moment, she wished he would take command and remove the rest of her clothing himself, until she realized he was allowing her to control the encounter. Warmth washed through her and she was no longer afraid. Perhaps she had been misinformed about women’s first experiences with men.