The Princess of Coldwater Flats

by Nancy Bush

“How come the Corral hasn’t reported on this yet?” Sammy Jo asked, forcing a lightness she didn’t feel.

  “Next week’s edition,” Tommy predicted. He seemed completely amused by the whole thing, but then he and Bev had shared some wilder times when she was younger.

  Cooper and Bev spied their group just as Sammy Jo was trying to escape. They came over, arm in arm. Bev was delicately sucking on a gossamer strand of a lethal-looking blue cotton candy.

  Be polite, Sammy Jo warned herself a trifle desperately.

  “Hi, Cooper. Hi, Bev.”

  “Hello, Sammy Jo,” Bev said, smiling happily. “Cooper was just telling me how you and he are neighbors.”

  “Really?”

  Cooper was eyeing Tommy. Sammy Jo glanced at Tommy, too, trying to see him as a stranger might. Tall, lean, looking appealingly worn-out, Tom was really just an overgrown boy.

  But the look Cooper gave him could have melted steel. Sammy Jo’s heart lifted. Could he be just the tiniest bit jealous?

  “I’m bringing Emmy over on Saturday,” Bev said. “And she’s got a couple of friends. Ginny’s daughter, Vanessa, and of course, Tess’s daughter, Alex.” Sammy just stared at her. “For the riding lesson? Tess did tell you, didn’t she?” Bev asked anxiously. “She promised she would.”

  “Oh, yeah…‌I think she did mention it.”

  In truth, Sammy Jo wasn’t completely sure. Hadn’t she said no to Tess? They’d talked about riding lessons, but they’d never settled on a date, had they? Or, had Sammy Jo given Tess the impression that she’d changed her mind? If so, she’d been too unfocused to write the date down. With all her other problems in her life, she wasn’t even sure she could deliver on them.

  “Emmy would be so disappointed,” Bev babbled on, clearly picking up the correct vibes no matter what Sammy Jo said.

  “Saturday at ten o’clock?” Sammy Jo suggested reluctantly, thinking she might as well get the lessons over with.

  “Tess said noon, but ten o’clock would be fine if it’s more convenient. I can call the girls—”

  “No, noon’s fine,” Sammy Jo cut her off. She glanced at Cooper, but couldn’t read his thoughts. What did she care, anyway?

  “We’re headed over to the High Noon before the rodeo,” Josh said. “Want to join us?”

  Sammy Jo wasn’t certain if he meant her or Bev and Cooper. Apparently, his invitation was for all and sundry because when Bev and Cooper demurred, he turned to her. “Sure,” she said with a forced smile.

  It took all her willpower not to watch them walk away, arm in arm, Bev’s laughter light and sensual, mingling with the powerful scents and calliope music of the carnival in the glow of the multicolored lights that circled, kaleidoscope-like, from the Ferris wheel.

  * * *

  An hour’s worth of raucous High Noon patrons and a shot of tequila Tommy had practically poured down her throat and Sammy Jo was about fed up. She wished she’d called Brent. Tommy Weatherwood was no answer to her problems. In fact, he was a problem. If he’d really inherited money, he was bound to drink it all away before the new year.

  “Hey, where ya goin’?” Tommy demanded, clamping a hand on her shoulder.

  “To the rodeo.” She slipped away. Easy enough, since Tommy swayed uncertainly on his feet.

  Josh, who was a man who could hold his liquor, asked, “Can I take you?”

  “Thanks, Josh, but I’m feeling like being alone.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shrugged, happy enough to keep his barstool warm.

  Sammy Jo drew a deep breath as she stepped onto the wooden sidewalk. She strode toward the carnival and rodeo grounds, the sky a deep purple bowl overhead sprinkled with a dusting of stars.

  She stood in line and bought herself a ticket to the grandstand, then sat down beside a jolly, potbellied older man and his equally jolly wife. Calf-roping, wild cow milking, the tense acrobatics of the rodeo clown…‌it was always the same and its familiarity was soothing. Sammy Jo tensed during the barrel-racing, critically watching the latest contenders. They were good, and more important, the horses were good. Cheers rose in the crowd.

  The couple next to her bought a bucket of beer. Out of the corner of her eye, Sammy Jo watched them balance the oversize container as they passed it back and forth, giggling. Beer sloshed over the rim several times but they didn’t seem to notice.

  Through it all, the loudspeaker rang over the noise, the announcer’s voice a corny blend of homespun jokes and fast-talking patter guaranteed to whip the most lethargic spectator into a frenzy of excitement.

  Sammy Jo slipped out halfway through, feeling disappointed somehow. No Gil to laugh with. No one to enjoy the sheer silliness with. No one.

  Mad at herself over her doldrums, Sammy Jo set her jaw. Maybe marrying Brent had other possibilities. He could be with her.

  “I’ve been getting an earful about your rodeo history,” Cooper’s voice said, somewhere behind her.

  She turned swiftly. He was balancing two colas and a tray of curly fries. “From Bev?”

  “She thinks you’re going to turn her daughter into a rodeo queen.”

  Sammy Jo snorted. “Bev’s daughter? Only if she can stay on a horse. And sorry, I can’t picture it.”

  “Snob.” He grinned.

  “Yeah.” Sammy Jo shrugged, unrepentant. “So, what do you think of the rodeo?”

  “I’m getting a charge out of it. I like Coldwater Flats.” He slid a look to the stands. “Your friends waiting for you?”

  “I left Josh and Tommy drinking tequila at the High Noon Saloon.”

  He absorbed that in silence, and then Sammy Jo thought of Bev waiting for him in the stands. “See ya,” she said.

  Cooper walked back to his date. Bev took her drink and chattered about the rodeo, her daughter, and how she wished her soon-to-be ex-husband would stop bothering her. She’d practically invited herself to be his date, and Cooper, feeling oddly lonely, hadn’t turned her away.

  Besides, he needed a reason to forget about Sammy Jo. He’d been cold and ruthless and it was eating away at his insides like acid.

  “Happy Fourth of July,” Bev suddenly said, leaning upward, eyes shining. Her lips were bare millimeters from his, a deep, luscious rose-pink

  But Cooper couldn’t bring himself to do it. With a smile, he murmured, “Happy Fourth of July,” then turned back to the action of the rodeo.

  Saturday, promptly at noon, a car pulled up to the front of the house. Groaning, Sammy Jo met them on the gravel strewn front driveway. Emmy Hawkins jumped out, dressed in white jeans and a pink cowboy shirt with long, silvery fringe that jingled and danced as the five-year-old rodeo-queen wannabe ran to Sammy Jo.

  “Hello,” Sammy Jo drawled, shaking Emmy’s hand.

  “I want a white horse with blue eyes!” she cried.

  “Emmy, you take whatever Sammy Jo has,” Bev chided her. Bev wore black slacks and a white blouse. She carefully shook Sammy Jo’s hand, wrist limp as a noodle.

  “Emmy knows how to ride with a saddle. I don’t know about this,” she fussed.

  Bev clearly was getting cold feet. Sammy Jo could just picture it. Emmy’s father, Roy, probably suggested riding lessons to the little tomboy. Emmy had whooped and hollered and generally annoyed her mother until Bev, pleading a headache, had thrown up her hands and agreed. But clearly, Bev had dressed Emmy. No one who really rode horses wore white.

  “You won’t do anything dangerous, now?” Bev asked anxiously.

  “Emmy will do only what she’s capable of.”

  Bev glanced at her daughter and paled. “Oh, Lord! Look at her!”

  The little girl was doing cartwheels on the dusty gravel driveway. Even Sammy Jo was impressed that Emmy seemed to feel no pain in her palms.

  Emmy disregarded her mother entirely until Bev was screeching at the top of her lungs. Another car appeared as Bev sought vainly to corral her daughter. Emmy ran and squealed as the newcomer stopped. Sammy Jo felt like groaning again when she recognize
d Ginny. Ginny climbed from the driver’s side and another little girl, this one as stone-faced and stubborn-looking as Emmy was animated, reluctantly slid across the seat to stand in the hot sun.

  “Did Bev tell you I was bringing Van?” Ginny asked by way of greeting.

  “She mentioned it.” Ginny had suffered through one abortive marriage. It had been full of turmoil, fights and brawling—or so Sammy Jo had heard—and just when it was ending, Ginny had learned she was pregnant. The father left before the child’s birth and, as they say in the movies, had never been seen or heard from again.

  “Van wants to learn trick-riding,” Ginny explained.

  Sammy Jo smiled at the little girl who hid behind her mother’s leg and watched Sammy Jo with somber, suspicious eyes. “Van” did not appear to want to learn anything. Sammy Jo had the feeling this trick-riding lesson, as a means to further their daughters’ chances at the rodeo court, was more popularity contest between the mothers than anything else.

  Tess’s smoke-belching compact drove up next. “Hi there,” Tess greeted Sammy Jo with a big smile as she helped her daughter, Alex, from the car. “Y’all ready?”

  “Raring to go,” Sammy Jo told her dryly. “How about you?” she asked Alex.

  Alex’s thumb was firmly stuffed in her mouth. Since this was the child’s usual state of affairs, Sammy Jo grabbed the other hand and led all three girls to the fenced paddock where Pokey, her Shetland, whose irascible temperament could be tamed by succession of sugar cubes, waited under a solitary pine while flicking flies away with his tail.

  “Okay, who wants to be first?” Sammy Jo asked, keenly aware of the group of mothers waiting by the fence. Tess would be no problem, but anything could happen with Bev and Ginny. Bev stood apart from Ginny and Tess, brushing dust off her blouse. Sammy Jo and Ginny definitely had their differences, but Bev was in a class by herself.

  “I do! I do!” Emmy yelled.

  “I do,” Alex echoed in a subdued voice.

  Van said nothing. Sammy Jo smiled at her. “Don’t you want a ride?”

  “No.” Van was perfectly clear on that.

  “Okay, Emmy, let’s set you on Pokey.” Sammy Jo picked up the little girl and plumped her onto the bareback saddle, a thick foam pad covered with heavy-duty yellow cotton. It saved the uninitiated from the soreness of real bareback riding and got the saddle out of the way.

  Sammy Jo led Emmy around in a circle. The little girl squirmed and kicked and begged Pokey to speed up, but the Shetland listened only to Sammy Jo—and the call of the sugar cubes.

  “I want to stand up!” Emmy cried. “Stand up!”

  She struggled to her feet and Sammy Jo grabbed hold of her as Bev screeched from the sidelines. “Not yet. You’re not ready.”

  “Yes, I am! Yes, I am! You meany!”

  “Well, I may be a meany, but you’re not ready to stand on top of a horse while it’s moving. Look at your mom. Does she look happy with the idea?”

  Bev’s hand covered her mouth in horror.

  “Don’t care!” Emmy shrieked, kicking wildly. Sammy Jo hauled her off the horse and she ran screaming to Bev. Sighing, Sammy Jo looked at the other two. “Who’s next?”

  Van shrank back against the rails. If she could have melted into invisibility, it seems she would have. Tess threw Sammy Jo an amused look as Alex sucked her thumb vigorously and frowned down at her toes.

  “We can just walk around in a circle,” Sammy Jo encouraged. Alex scuffed her shoe in the dirt and nodded. Sammy Jo grabbed the little girl’s free hand and pulled her to Pokey. Plunking her onto the bareback saddle, Sammy Jo said, “Okay?”

  “‘Kay,” the little girl mumbled around her thumb.

  Walking Pokey around in a circle, Sammy Jo hazarded a glance at the mothers. Ginny was clearly annoyed that Van wasn’t joining in. Tess beamed with delight. Bev couldn’t decide whether to hug Emmy to her breast or save her silk blouse.

  By the time they left, Sammy Jo wondered if it was worth the few dollars the lessons earned her. But then, money was money. And she needed every penny.

  “See ya later,” Tess told her as she put the car into gear. “We need to talk.”

  “I’m afraid to ask what about.” Sammy Jo waved to the other departing cars.

  Tess hooked her thumb in the direction of Cooper’s ranch. “The rumors I’ve heard.”

  “He was with Bev on the Fourth of July.”

  “Did he really kiss you at the vet’s?” Tess asked, thrilled and scandalized.

  “I thought it was a strange place, too,” Sammy Jo answered, deliberately ignoring her friend’s meaning.

  “We need to talk!” she repeated fervently.

  “Goodbye, Tess. ‘Bye, Alex.”

  Sammy Jo stepped away from the car and waved as Tess headed down the long driveway. A breeze ruffled Sammy Jo’s hair, lifting it off her neck.

  As she swatted dust from her jeans, Sammy Jo saw dark storm clouds gather along the horizon. Squinting, she calculated how long she had before the thunderstorm hit the ranch. Not long.

  She considered a bath, but there was one more task she didn’t want to put off any longer. Grimacing, she put a hand on the telephone. Luckily she still had a phone since they’d cut off her cell service. She needed to get that beaver dam taken care of, she reasoned, and therefore she needed to talk to Cooper.

  She dialed swiftly, then glared down at her suddenly trembling fingers, infuriated by the hard, uneven beats of her heart. Clearing her throat several times, she listened to the line ring at his end. What in God’s name was wrong with her? He was just one solitary, chauvinistic, hard-headed, impossible man and—

  “Hello?” The deep timbre of Cooper’s voice sent a shiver down her spine.

  She had to force herself not to slam down the receiver. Uncharacteristically tongue-tied, she said, “Cooper? It’s Sammy Jo. I want to talk about the dam.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Can you meet me there? We need to work together on this.”

  “When?”

  “How about in an hour?”

  She didn’t have much faith that he would really drop everything and join her, but hey, it was time to make some decisions.

  “We might get wet,” Cooper observed.

  With a quick glance to the thick, slate clouds settled over the mountains, she said, “Not if we hurry.”

  To her surprise, Cooper agreed to meet her there, so she described exactly where the dam was located, postponing her bath until later and hurrying to the barn. By the time she had her favorite quarter horse, Goldie, following the near-dry creek bed, the storm clouds had drawn closer and she could see the jagged flash of lightning forks.

  “We’ll make this quick.” She patted Goldie’s neck. By now she’d gotten herself in control and was amazed by her overreaction at just making that phone call. Good grief. She’d handled more than her share of men. She’d even wrestled some to the ground when they’d bugged her. Of course, that was in grade school, but as far as she was concerned, it still counted.

  Just because some corporate-rancher-type had confused her with his good looks and tough attitude didn’t mean she was whipped, either. She just hadn’t expected him to kiss like that.

  Like what? her ever present impish conscience asked.

  “Like that,” she answered aloud, feeling ridiculous. And so what that she’d liked his kiss? She was female, after all, and maybe the slumbering feminine side of her was finally waking up. It had been one long, deep sleep, she had to admit, but now it was kind of nice to think maybe she could actually be interested in a man. Really interested. Interested in having one kiss her and touch her and maybe even make love to her. She was sure as hell past her pull date on that one.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured, then louder: “Oh, my God!” Birds flew from the trees, squawking in protest. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Sammy Jo.”

  Catching a glimpse of red through the trees, she realized Cooper was already at the beaver dam. His re
d-and-black plaid shirt moved between the branches, looking hot as the dickens.

  “Trying to bake yourself?” Sammy Jo asked, dropping lithely to the ground and winding Goldie’s reins around a scrub bush.

  He glanced down at his shirt. “Should I have come bare-chested?”

  “I just meant, it’s flannel and it looks…‌hot.” His eyes said he read more into her comment than was there. Suddenly all business, Sammy Jo asked crisply, “What do you think?”

  She gestured to the dam, which, if possible, looked even sturdier and more formidable than before, branches woven tightly with mud and twigs, the felled tree limbs, some at least ten inches in diameter, tough girders indeed.

  “This is going to take some serious work,” Cooper said. He tested one of the branches with his foot. It didn’t move an inch. “Where are the occupants?”

  “Hiding,” Sammy Jo said.

  “Did you call the forest service?”

  “We can relocate them to forest service land if we trap them and move them ourselves.”

  “And then after that, we’ll pull this thing down.” He looked at the dam.

  “Kind of a shame, isn’t it?” Sammy Jo said. “All that work.”

  Cooper shook his head. “It’s going to be hell to break this up. It needs dynamite.”

  “Can’t we dig it out?”

  He gave her slim frame a long look. “We?”

  “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But this would be backbreaking.”

  He smiled and Sammy Jo’s breath caught. He was handsome all right, but that smile was a killer. It took ten years off his age and sent her pulse rocketing into the ionosphere. Clearing her throat, Sammy Jo prayed that she appeared outwardly calm.

  “Carl will help. When do you want to take it out?”

  Thunder growled. Cooper glanced skyward and shrugged. “Some other time. This storm’s going to catch us.”

  “You think?” Sammy Jo shook her head. “We’ll make it back.” At that moment, a fat raindrop plopped on the back of her neck and slid down her spine. Gasping, she added, “Or maybe not.”

  Cooper laughed as raindrops spattered all around. He slapped his cowboy hat onto his head. Raindrops fell in a silver sheet. Sammy Jo ducked under a blanket of pine branches and Cooper joined her, his sleeve brushing her shoulder.