by Cathie Linz
“I ain’t wearin’ no dress,” she said belligerently. “And you can’t make me.” The look in her eyes went on to say You’d have to hog-tie me and pin me to an anthill before I’d be caught dead in those.
“You don’t like them?” Tracy stared at the clothing as if seeing it for the first time. Come to think of it, they did look a tad overdone. Had they always had so many frills? “Hmm, maybe you’re right. They are a bit too...”
“Girly.” Lucky said the word as if it were the ultimate of insults.
“What’s wrong with being girly? If there are no bows or frills involved?”
“My mom was a girl.”
Tracy nodded, not making the connection. “That’s right.”
“And she left and hurt my Pa. He doesn’t like girls as much as he likes boys.”
A strangled sound from the open doorway was the only indication of Zane’s arrival. “Hey, peanut.” He scooped Lucky up in his arms. “It’s not true that I like boys better than girls.”
“I can attest to that,” Tracy muttered, recalling that heated kiss in the barn.
“I love you just as much as I love Rusty,” Zane told his daughter, his voice husky with emotion. “And I think you’d look mighty beautiful dressed up for the Fourth of July.”
Lucky stared at him uncertainly, tweaking a strand of her short hair.
Ah, Tracy thought. Now I know why she has that cowlick of hair that stands straight up on top. It was the first time she’d ever seen the little girl actually tweaking her hair, but then it was also the first time she’d ever seen Lucky appear unsure about anything.
Two more nervous tweaks of her hair before Lucky said, “Does that mean I havta wear a dress?”
“Not if you really don’t want to,” Zane replied.
Tracy could tell that the little girl was at a momentary loss, torn between wanting to please her father by wearing a dress and her own aversion to the frilly bows.
Tracy offered her another option. “You can get dressed up without wearing a dress. What about this vest?” The denim vest was more toned down—no bows, just a touch of colorful floral embroidery on the front “You could wear this.”
The little girl reached out from her father’s arms to touch the article of clothing with a reverent yearning at odds with her tough exterior. “The flowers are pretty.”
“Yes, they are,” Tracy agreed.
“If I wore it, that doesn’t mean I’m a girly girl” Lucky’s comment was meant to be a warning.
Tracy nodded solemnly. “Understood.”
“You sure you love girls, too?” Lucky asked Zane.
“I’m positive, peanut.” Zane gave her a fierce bear hug before lowering her back to the ground and ruffling her hair. “Now I’ll let you and Tracy here get all prettied up. Don’t take too long, though. We need to be leaving in fifteen minutes.”
Back home in Chicago it would have taken Tracy fifteen minutes just to blend her eye shadow. But since coming to the ranch she’d learned to speed up her beauty routine.
Those first few days, she’d arranged her long hair in an intricate French chignon as she’d done back home. Not only had it come undone before half her workday was done, but it had also required that she get up half an hour earlier to fix it that way.
Forget that.
Next she’d settled for putting her hair in a French braid, but even that required too much time and effort. In the end Tracy settled for a simple ponytail, which seemed to suit her new lifestyle best.
Lucky was already wearing clean jeans and red T-shirt, so all Tracy needed to do was add the vest and then turn the little girl so she could see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. While in the inner sanctum, Lucky gazed in both awe and disdain at the bottles of perfume, bubble bath and body lotion that were on the counter next to the sink. Tracy didn’t say anything as she redid her own ponytail, adding a colorful red hair barrette to fasten it.
“My hair is too short for a ponytail,” Lucky said.
Tracy searched the little girl’s face for a clue as to whether or not that pleased her. She thought she caught another flash of that same yearning she’d seen before, when Lucky had touched the floral vest.
“It is too short for a ponytail,” Tracy agreed. “But I have some—” she almost said cute but decided that description would be the curse of death as far as Lucky was concerned “—some cool hair barrettes you could wear.” She showed the little girl the small star-shaped designs.
“Can you help me put them on?” Lucky asked with something almost resembling shyness.
“You bet.”
She picked Lucky up and set her on the counter so she could get a better handle on what she was doing. Once she’d put the barrettes on either side of Lucky’s part, she used a brush to smooth out the girl’s hair, swirling it around her cheek. “There. What do you think?”
Turning to look over her shoulder, Lucky stared at her own reflection, her pleasure clear to see in her blue eyes. But aloud all she said was, “Looks okay.” Then she reached out to give Tracy a kamikaze hug as short as it was unexpected.
It was the first time the little girl had made any physical overtures to her.
Just as Tracy felt tears coming to her eyes, Lucky released her and hopped down from the counter. “Thanks,” she added before scooting out of the room.
Five minutes later, Tracy joined them outside. She didn’t have time to do more than change into clean jeans and a red T-shirt and add some sterling silver jewelry—dangle earrings and a bracelet with bezelset turquoise. But she felt happier than if she’d spent the day at a beauty spa. Because Lucky had hugged her and made her feel that the work she was doing here made a difference.
Lucky also insisted on riding with Tracy in her car instead of with her father and Buck and Rusty in the truck. Murph’n’Earl were driving a battered-and-faded blue pickup attached to a double horse trailer. Tracy’s little red Miata stood out amid the monster trucks and trailers in Bliss, but she didn’t care.
She met Zane at the predesignated gathering place of the corner of First and Main.
“I see you made it in one piece,” he noted with a slow smile. He was wearing his standard attire—denim jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Today the shirt was white, the pearlized snaps gleaming in the Colorado sunshine.
“I only got lost that first day,” she replied. “Since then I’ve managed to find my way around pretty well.”
“You’ve managed to do several things pretty well.” His voice was unusually gruff. “I haven’t thanked you for what you did for my dad. Finding that catalog company to carry his sauce. I never thought that would happen.”
“I told you I’m good at what I do.”
“I’m starting to believe you.”
“I should hope so.” Her eyes meshed with his for a moment before she forced herself to look away. “So tell me about this parade. I’ll bet it dates back to Cockeyed Curly’s time, right?”
“As I recall, Curly did use the parade as a distraction for robbing the bank one year. We don’t have that kind of trouble anymore.”
“Because your brother is such a great lawman.”
Zane appeared surprised by her words. “You’ve met Reno?”
“Sure. That first time I came into town with the twins.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that. You need to watch out for my youngest brother. He’s a ladies’ man.”
“He’s a charmer,” she agreed and then wondered if she imagined the flash of jealousy she saw in Zane’s blue eyes. He was wearing that darn hat again so it was hard to always get a clear look into his eyes, unless he tilted back his head and gave you the full impact. Then it was sin city—full hormone alert. For a man who was serious and responsible, he sure did have sinful eyes.
“Uhm...” She grappled for a topic of conversation. “What about your other brother? Is he coming to the parade?”
“No. Cord is working on a special furniture order for a bank down in Glen
wood Springs. Besides he doesn’t like crowds.”
“This is a crowd?” she inquired with a teasing grin at the three dozen or so people lining the parade route.
“This is a bigger crowd than we used to get. One year everyone in town was in the parade, which meant there was no one standing along Main Street to watch it. So now we designate whether you’re assigned to march in the parade or be a spectator, and then we alternate that assignment each year. Last year our family all marched or rode, so this year we get to watch.”
“Watching is fine by me,” she murmured, surreptitiously keeping her gaze on him as he collared Rusty before the little boy stepped into the street. After a month out west, she had plenty of experience not only watching his kids but also watching Zane. Watching the way he moved with a cowboy swagger that was less about arrogance and more about poetry in motion. Other guys walked, Zane moved. And as a result, he moved her heart. Or was threatening to.
As the parade began with the Bliss Volunteer Fire Department truck at the forefront, Tracy couldn’t help thinking that she could use a cooling off as the firemen got things rolling by spraying everyone with a mist of water, to the great delight of the warm crowd. The intense sunshine was making the day a hot one. Or at least she liked to think it was the sun, and not Zane.
The parade was short and sweet, going to one end of the route and then turning around and coming back again, to make it seem longer than it actually was. There were high-stepping horses with fancy saddles and riders, the veterans from the American Legion in their uniforms and the high school marching band from Kendall, complete with baton-twirling and pompom-waving girls. And everywhere there were American flags, festooned from the light posts and waving in the crowd.
After the parade, everyone headed over to Bliss Park, the area behind the trailer that housed both the sheriff’s office and city hall. There, numerous picnic tables had been set up and the smells of summer—hot dogs and mustard, fries, cotton candy and freshcut watermelon—filled the mountain air.
The twins headed right for the watermelon area, where they competed in what was apparently a Bliss tradition, The Watermelon Contest. Lucky won the watermelon-seed-spitting contest for her age group while Rusty took top honors in the watermelon-eating segment—done in one minute, face first, with no hands. Lucky decided not to enter.
Tracy suspected it was because she didn’t want to mess up her hair, but Lucky wasn’t saying. However, Tracy did catch her holding up a metal plate and looking at her own reflection, and then smiling.
After a lunch of hot dogs and fries topped off with strawberry ice cream for dessert, the games began. Tracy and Lucky came in second place in the threelegged race, while Zane and Rusty took first place. When Buck invited Tracy to participate in a game of horseshoes, she was willing to give it a try. She ended up winning.
There was no time to celebrate, because she was snared by the Women’s Auxiliary to be a jam judge in the food tent. It seemed that Mrs. Battle, the same former housekeeper of Zane’s who could ride a horse even though she was now in her eighties, had to cancel at the last minute because of indigestion.
After tasting all the various jams—peach, chokecherry, wild strawberry and strawberry-rhubarb—Tracy proclaimed the wild strawberry by Contestant Three to be the finest of the lot. This created quite an uproar, as apparently every other year Mrs. Battle’s sister-in-law had won this event, as Mrs. Battle had been the only judge. This year’s winner was Annie Benton, a teacher in town.
Annie appeared stunned by the news that her jam was the best. The rest of the group applauded Tracy’s choice as she awarded the purple ribbon to the young teacher. Only Mrs. Battle’s sister-in-law looked as if she’d just sucked on a lemon as she huffed off.
“We’ve never had the nerve to stand up to Mrs. Battle’s decisions before,” one woman who’d introduced herself as Susan Grey said. “But you’ve given us the courage to do that.”
“Me?” Tracy stared at her in surprise. “All I did was pick the best jam.”
“That’s right. You picked the best jam, without prejudice. Which is what we should have been doing instead of letting Mrs. Battle boss us around.”
“I’ve never met her, but I get the impression she’s a formidable woman,” Tracy said.
“That’s right, but even she couldn’t handle the Best twins. And you’ve worked wonders with them.” Susan nodded her approval before confiding, “Last year they knocked down the bunting over Main Street, and it fell on the marching band, where it got caught up in the tuba before wrapping around all the other brass instruments as the kids kept to their marching formation, even with the bunting swaddled all around them. It took them a long time to get everything sorted out.”
Just then Rusty raced toward them, skidding to a halt as he reached Tracy’s side. “Beauty just got the purple ribbon for biggest hog in Bliss!” he breathlessly announced.
Tracy hadn’t even known that Beauty had left the ranch. “That’s great.”
“It’s all because of you.” Rusty gave her the same awed look he’d bestowed upon her when she’d told him about her dad working at the reptile house of the zoo. “Because of all that food you made that we couldn’t eat and had to feed to Beauty.”
Tracy couldn’t help laughing at the news. “Well, I’m glad someone benefited from my cooking experiments.”
ZANE HAD WATCHED Tracy make one conquest after another during the day’s celebrations. He couldn’t help but be impressed by the way she managed to fit in. Yet there was no mistaking her city-bred blond hair, with her ponytail swinging as she bobbed through the crowds, on her way to judge the jam contest or to toss a horseshoe. She fit in and stood out at the same time.
But the standing out wasn’t in a bad way. She no longer had “tenderfoot” written all over her, as she had that night she’d shown up damp and dripping on his front doorstep. She was no longer hopeless in the kitchen, even if she did still have a few mishaps now and then. And he had to secretly confess to himself that he was getting hooked on the fancy juices she made with that juice extractor of hers. The other morning he’d actually had a papaya-orange smoothie.
If someone had told him a month ago that he’d be sitting down to wild fruit drinks in the morning and coming home to twin time at night, to kids who, while not model kids, had certainly shed some of their hell-on-wheels ways—heck, he’d have never believed it. But she’d done that. Changed things.
And he wasn’t sure he liked it. He felt more comfortable when she was a fish out of water, when it was obvious that she couldn’t cope on the ranch, that she didn’t belong.
He reminded himself that she’d be leaving at the end of the summer, that the changes in her were temporary. She was still an advertising executive just pretending to be a housekeeper. How much longer would she enjoy the make-believe before heading back to the bright lights of Chicago? What could Bliss offer a woman like her?
Sure she ordered her clothes and books off the Internet and had them delivered to the ranch, but the time would come when she’d want to walk into a real store. And while she had gotten that fancy catalog to carry his dad’s barbecue sauce, that was small potatoes compared to the big ad accounts she’d talked about being in charge of in Chicago.
The time would come when she’d want to see a play or go to the museum. When she’d want to be part of a city crowd, not a Bliss crowd. He’d hated the crowds in Seattle, but some folks said they loved them, loved the energy. He could see Tracy being that kind of person.
You needed to be quiet in your own soul to like it out here.
And then there was the fact that she was seeing the area during the summer, when the weather was on its best behavior, if there was such a thing. The sky had been known to spit hail and sleet even in July. But the winters here were real bears.
“Can we go to the carnival, Pa?” Lucky tugged on his hand to ask.
“Hmm?”
“The carnival. I want to ride the merry-go-round.”
“That
’s for sissies,” Rusty scoffed. “I want to go in the haunted house.”
Last year Rusty hadn’t slept by himself for a month after taking the haunted house ride. While Zane loved his son, the little fella had tossed in his sleep like a hound with fleas.
“How about the Ferris wheel instead?” Zane suggested.
He rode with Rusty in one car while Tracy and Lucky got in the next one. Buck was afraid of heights, so he stayed on the ground and waved up at them.
As they went on to tour the fairgrounds, Lucky caught sight of a stuffed animal she just had to have. It was a giant purple bear, almost the size of the twins, on the back shelf of the Ponderosa Pines Shooting Gallery.
“Oh, Pa,” Lucky sighed, “if you could get that for me I’d never ask for anything ever again in my whole life.”
“Get that in writing,” Buck wryly suggested.
If his little girl wanted a giant teddy bear, by golly Zane would get it for her. Without further ado, he put his money down and picked up the rifle. Right off he hit two of the moving duck targets. Only three more to go. Ping. Ping. Only one left now.... He missed it.
“Here, let me try,” he heard Tracy say.
“You’d just be wasting your money,” he told her.
She just smiled at him. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that.”
“I’M TELLING YOU it was just a lucky shot,” Tracy said.
“I love my bear.” Lucky was beaming as she hung onto the bear for dear life. It was indeed almost as big as she was. “Thank you, Tracy.”
“You’re welcome, sweetie.”
Lucky didn’t even grimace at the endearment. She was too busy beaming from ear to ear.
Which left it up to Rusty to defend her reputation. “She’s not a sweetie, she’s a peanut. And a hellion.”
“Are you sure you didn’t want me to try and win that giant fire truck for you?” Tracy asked him.
“No. Besides, you said it was just a lucky shot.”
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Zane finally demanded.