The Counterfeit Cowgirl (8 page)

The man looked from her to Aaron with a startled expression on his dark face, then his lips parted in a huge grin. “I’m Chance Breaux, ma’am. Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. You rode that wild horse like a real pro.”

Felicity thought it was a shame everyone, no names mentioned, couldn’t be as sensible and as decent as Chance Breaux.

“We’d better get her home,” Aaron said, frowning.

“Sure thing, Aaron,” Chance said, still grinning. “I’ll help you. Then I’ve got to call my lawyer about the suit I’m going to file on you for letting your wild horse scare the life out of my poor little truck.”

“If you want to give a lawyer your money, why don’t you just mail him a fat donation?” Aaron responded. “He’d be very grateful, and I wouldn’t have to speak to Sheriff Darby about the way you race that miserable truck of yours up and down the road in front of my house.”

“I’ll testify that truck was doing less than twenty-five,” Felicity said. “Too bad I didn’t break a leg or something. Just think of the huge settlement I’d get.”

Aaron straightened and glared down at her. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” he rumbled. “Hell, so am I. What a chance for all your greedy relatives to descend. They’d probably clean me out like a freezer full of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream.”

“They still might,” a vibrant female voice said from behind him.

“Oh, no,” Felicity whispered. “
Mama
.”

“I just knew something was goin’ on around here with horses,” Becky Lozano said, brown eyes flashing with outrage. “I just knew it.”

Aaron turned. It was obvious he recognized Becky at once.

“And just what have you been doin’ to my baby, you low-down rat snake, you?” Becky demanded, hands on hips. “I ain’t gonna just clean you out like an ice cream freezer. I’m gonna
skin
you, and then I’m gonna hang that nasty-tempered hide of yours out to dry.”

Aaron stood quietly to one side and tried not to call attention to himself. It wasn’t easy in Lureen Tucker’s tiny, junk-filled living room.

“You can quit being mean to him now, Mama,” Felicity said from her reclining position on the sofa. “He’s let you order him around like a slave for the last ten minutes, so let him go home, please.”

Becky ignored her daughter and ignored Aaron, who stood ready to offer any help Becky might need. It was, he figured, the least he could do after what had almost happened to Becky’s daughter.

“Law, that woman was the meanest old witch that ever lived,” Becky said, disgusted. “Just look at this mess.”

“You’re lucky I’ve cleaned off the sofa,” Felicity said. “But it’s going to take a lot more time than I thought to go through everything. You should have waited another two weeks, Mama.”

“I want you getting rid of all this nasty, moldy old furniture. Ain’t nobody gonna want it. You, there.” Becky stood in the center of the living room, alternately glaring at the room and at Aaron. “Go fetch my baby an ice pack for her poor little forehead. And while you’re at it, make her a cup of that chamomile tea.”

“My head is fine, Mama. Let Mr. Whitaker go home.”

Becky sped Aaron on his way to the kitchen with a ferocious gesture. “He ain’t leaving this house until I’m sure my baby is all right. I knew something terrible was going to happen to you when you came down here to this place. I just knew it. That old witch cursed everything she ever touched.”

“Now, Mama, it’s time to let bygones be bygones.”

“Nothing doing,” Becky said. “I ought to go spit on her grave.”

“Now, Mama — ” Felicity began.

“Don’t you ‘now, Mama’ me, Felicity Clayton. How dare that ungrateful old biddy go around sayin’ you robbed her bank account?” Becky took a furious turn around the room. “I told you what would happen if you extended a helpin’ hand to her, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. She may have been my mother, but she was a wicked, vicious old hag. It’s her fault you’re lyin’ there at death’s door this very minute.”

Aaron stood quietly in the kitchen, just out of sight, and listened, unabashed. Like almost everyone who enjoyed country music, he was familiar with the high points of Becky Lozano’s career. But he never had a clue that Lureen Tucker was Becky’s mother. No one had. It was incredible.

“I’m hardly at death’s door.” Felicity’s voice was deliberately pitched, he suspected, to soothe her mother. “She was mentally sick. You can’t hold anything against her.”

“Oh, yes, I can,” Becky spat. “I could’ve forgiven her for anything she ever did to me — and that was a lot, let me tell you — but
never
for what she did to my baby.”

Felicity abandoned that argument. “Well, she certainly didn’t have anything to do with me trying to ride that horse.”

Fascinated, Aaron took care not to advertise his presence in the kitchen by rattling or clinking anything.

“Don’t you try and tell me she didn’t cause this,” Becky snarled. “Fenton told me what she was tellin’ people.”

“Mama … ”

“And I’ll bet all the neighbors around here think you stole your own money from the old witch. You in there,” Becky called. “Where’s that ice pack?”

Aaron appeared with ice in a plastic bag and a clean dish towel. He hoped his expression conveyed his deep concern for Felicity’s health. She lay with her eyes closed while Becky lovingly tended to her forehead. Aaron had never seen anything like it.

At least, not since the time two weeks ago when he’d watched Deborah place a similar pack on Joey when he fell and bumped his forehead. It was clear Becky intended to nurse her daughter back to health as if Felicity was a child.

Felicity lay in silence while Becky ordered Aaron back to the kitchen. When he returned with the chamomile tea, Becky carefully centered the tea cup on the coffee table within easy reach of Felicity’s hand.

Aaron said nothing. He knew better than to speak until Becky gave him leave. He’d thoughtfully made Becky a cup of chamomile tea also, and he set it on the coffee table before her.

After carrying Felicity in his arms all the way across his lawn and Felicity’s to the accompaniment of Becky’s scolding, he had offered further assistance. It looked as though Becky intended to make full use of his services.

Felicity’s brown eyes, so similar to Becky’s, watched him warily from beneath the edge of the ice pack. Aaron felt so ashamed of himself, he could hardly meet Felicity’s gaze. He still couldn’t believe he had been so obtuse. He had taken Lureen’s rambling statements as fact, even though he’d known she wasn’t quite normal.

It served him right if he had to grovel a little. He stared at Felicity’s slender figure and swallowed. He couldn’t have lived with himself if she’d been seriously hurt.

Becky gulped down scalding chamomile tea. “Thanks. I ain’t usually so rude, but seeing my baby all laid out on the ground by that awful bronco of yours was just too much.”

“My apologies, Ms. Lozano.” Aaron made no foolish attempt to defend his horse. “I should never have let her ride Rhyolite.”

“You sure as heck shouldn’t have,” Becky agreed, although her rich voice sounded much more mellow.

“She’s a very brave young woman,” Aaron said. “Not just anyone could stay on Rhyolite the way she did.”

Felicity rolled her eyes. He could see the slight movements of her face beneath the ice pack before Becky reached over and adjusted it.

Becky collapsed onto one of the dirty old armchairs that Felicity had thrown a sheet over. “Law, that child reminds me of her daddy more and more every day. Tell her she can’t do somethin’, and that’s exactly what she goes and does. What’s a poor mother to do?”

Aaron glanced at Felicity. She looked like a fallen cowgirl — a very colorful fallen cowgirl. He wanted to hold her and comfort away the residual terror he was sure she still felt, but the brown eyes glinting from under the ice pack warned him against that action.

“She has the sweetest little apartment in Nashville,” Becky said. “All my relatives help look after her. So maybe you can tell me what possessed her to come down here to this awful place instead of taking a nice Caribbean cruise or something if she wanted a vacation.” She shot another disgusted glance at the piles of old political magazines and newspapers that littered most of the floor space.

“A desire for independence?” Aaron asked, his voice a soft rumble.

He was pushing it, he knew, but he couldn’t stop himself. There was a lot more to Felicity Clayton than her fancy cowgirl clothes and he wanted to know more about her.

“Independence.” Becky reared up to frown at him. “She’s way too independent as it is. I sent her off to college so she wouldn’t grow up to be ignorant like I am, and what did she do? She decided she wanted to be a saleswoman. A
saleswoman
. And she took off all by herself through the whole state of Tennessee sellin’
tractors
.”

“That’s tough on a mother,” Aaron said. He could imagine young farmers all over Tennessee lining up to buy tractors from Felicity.

“No one can possibly call you ignorant, Mama,” Felicity said. “Your manager says you’re the smartest businesswoman he’s ever dealt with.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t smart,” Becky countered. “I said I was ignorant ’cause I quit school in the ninth grade. Your daddy wanted you to grow up and maybe be a teacher or something. We didn’t raise you to be no saleswoman.” Becky sipped tea, much aggrieved and looked at the ceiling. “Sorry, Johnny. I did my best, but she won’t listen to me.”

“She’s selling clothes now?” Aaron stared at Felicity.

Becky gave a short laugh. “Yep. Cowgirl clothes. Ain’t that a hoot? I thought she’d settle down when she turned twenty-one and inherited the money her daddy left her, but no, that wasn’t what she did. She bought my crazy old mama this house to keep her far away and out of my hair and then she took a job sellin’ heavy equipment all over the southern United States. After she almost turned me into a nervous wreck, she bought a shop in Nashville and moved home. At last.”

Becky was on a roll, Aaron realized, and nothing was going to stop her until she’d released all the nervous tension she’d built up from worrying over her daughter.

He tried to remember Becky Lozano’s history, or the version that had been given to the media. “I thought her father died when she was a baby.”

“He did.” Becky sighed and sipped tea. “But he stays around helpin’ me get her raised.” She lifted her tea cup to the ceiling in a salute to an unseen presence. “Guess he knows she takes after him too much and wants to help. How’s your head, baby?”

Aaron didn’t miss the tender, cooing note that entered Becky’s voice when she spoke to Felicity. He also noted the dry, laughter-tinged tone in which Felicity replied. Felicity understood and indulged her mother’s need to care for her. Aaron had never seen anything like it.

“It’s much better, Mama. May I take the ice pack off?”

Becky studied her watch. “Let’s leave it on a few more minutes, baby. We don’t want anything bruised now, do we?”

“No, Mama. Let Mr. Whitaker go on home. He’s got a lot of things to see to this afternoon.”

Aaron knew Felicity wanted to get him out of the house, but he wasn’t about to leave. “I’d better stick around a little longer, Ms. Lozano. Just in case your daughter turns out to have a concussion.”

Becky turned toward the sofa, alarmed.

“Not that she does,” he hastened to add. “I think she’s only shaken up. Felicity, would you mind telling me why you pretended you were an experienced rider?”

“I am an experienced rider,” Felicity snapped, glaring at him with one unobstructed brown eye.

“What?” Becky sat up, astounded. “She ain’t no more an experienced rider than a baby.”

“An experienced rider is someone who has ridden a horse before,” Felicity hastened to point out. “I’ve ridden a horse before.”

“Bull.” Becky sprang to her feet. “You spent more time flyin’ through the air than you did on the horse’s back. And your poor little mouth. I nearly fainted when I first saw you layin’ there on that hospital bed.”

Aaron studied Felicity’s mouth, appalled. “What happened to her mouth?”

“Why, she busted up every tooth in her head.” Becky waved her hands. The trauma of the event was obviously still fresh in her mind. “Even her poor little jaw was all shattered. They put everything back together again, thank God, but that’s why she’s still wearin’ all that metal stuff on her teeth. Gotta wear it another year, the doctor says.”

Aaron thought back, shocked. The album Becky released almost a year ago contained several songs about a loved one in the hospital. No one could get more pathos out of an event than Becky Lozano. Now that he’d met her, Aaron realized Becky felt ordinary things the way all great artists did, with tremendous depth and verve.

“Come on, Mama,” Felicity said. “It wasn’t that bad. The damage was mostly cosmetic, except for the injury to my pride. Let Mr. Whitaker go on home.”

“How badly were you hurt?” Aaron asked.

He stared at Felicity, stunned. He would never, never have let her get anywhere near a horse if he’d known that. She must have been terrified, but she had managed to cover it so well, he hadn’t realized there was a serious problem until she was already mounted on Rhyolite. Then, when it was too late, he’d finally put the correct interpretation on the way she’d reacted in the stable yesterday.

He had suspected she was bluffing about her riding ability, but he hadn’t realized she had any reason to fear horses.

“Mama’s exaggerating.” Felicity’s full lips tightened. “I was only in the hospital a few hours while a dental surgeon looked me over.”

“You could’ve been killed,” Becky said. “The yellow-bellied little weasel responsible had better not
ever
show his face in Nashville again.”

“Mama sued him,” Felicity said, carefully expressionless. “At least, the suit will be processed if they can ever find him.”

“Danged right, I sued him.” Becky’s powerful voice rose a notch. “Hurtin’ my baby like that.”

“Lord knows what she’ll do to
you
.” Felicity regarded Aaron with considerable relish. “Maybe you’d better move to another planet while you still can.”

Aaron stared, entranced. Here was a woman who knew how to enjoy being protected without allowing herself to be dominated. No wonder she had seen straight through his tough-guy act.