Love Drunk Cowboy

by Carolyn Brown

  Not a single woman had ever affected Rye like Austin Lanier. He’d ridden bulls and broke broncs and had the scar on his left hip to prove it. But he’d never had a reaction where he couldn’t stop smiling, and his mind raced around at breakneck speed trying to figure out a way to ask her out on a date. The breeze from the air-conditioner blew a strand of hair across her face and he had to hold the tea glass with both hands to keep from reaching across the space and pushing it back just so he could touch her again. His hand tingled just from thinking about how that silky strand would feel as he rubbed it between his fingers and how he would touch her earlobe with his fingertip and then run his knuckles down her jaw and…

  Whoa, cowboy! Slow that horse down, he thought, shaking his head quickly to bring himself to his senses and then shifting his gaze to Raymond Jones, who headed right toward them.

  Raymond removed his hat, lowered his head reverently, and stopped at Austin’s booth. “Miz Lanier, I was sorry to hear about your granny. We miss her around these parts. We’ll really miss her come Sunday. She was the one who made sure the Easter egg hunt took place every year. She sure got a kick out of it.”

  Austin looked up at an older man in bibbed overalls and a chambray work shirt. His big ears hung too low on his head and he had wispy gray hair that barely covered his round pink head. When he smiled his teeth looked like a picket fence that a tornado had wrecked.

  “Thank you. I miss her too.”

  “Raymond, you old codger, I thought you died years ago,” Pearlita laughed.

  “Naw, but it’s my turn. Me and Verline had us a bet going. She won because she said she’d go before me. We was almost the same age but she always told people that I was only six days younger than God and would outlive everyone in the whole town of Terral. I wisht she woulda had a fun’ral so I could go and pay my respects. Still don’t seem right for her to just be gone.”

  “Me too, Raymond,” Pearlita said. “But I’m thinkin’ when I die I might just do the same thing Verline did. It was simple and there wasn’t a bunch of foo-rah around the whole thing.”

  “Not me. If there ain’t nobody left to sling snot over my dead body then I’m leaving it in my will to pay a bunch of women to come and moan and groan. I reckon if there’s enough noise made about me passin’ down here on earth maybe Saint Peter will hear it and think I done some good while I was here. Might give me a fightin’ chance at gettin’ through them pearly gates,” Raymond said. Austin stole a glance at Rye while Raymond and Pearlita were discussing their funerals. He was staring at her again but quickly looked away when she caught him. Could it be that he was as surprised at her as she was him? What had Granny Lanier told him about her? What had he expected?

  “So how long are you stayin’ in Terral, Miz Austin?” Raymond asked.

  She looked up at him. “A couple of weeks. That should give me enough time to clean things out and put the place up for sale or get an auction ready, shouldn’t it?”

  “Verline had her affairs in order. She was that kind of woman, so I reckon you could probably do the whole thing over the phone with her fancy-pants lawyer out of Wichita Falls.” He bent down and whispered, “I know he’s fancy-pants because we use the same man.”

  “So do I.” Pearlita nodded. “And he’ll be coming around in the morning at ten to discuss what she’s done with her affairs. He acts all prissy but he’s a damn good lawyer and I’m sure Verline did everything possible to make it easy on you.”

  Austin raised an eyebrow.

  Pearlita reached across the booth and patted Austin on the hand. “Verline gave me my orders when she first found out about the tumor. They were to pick up her ashes, go with you to scatter them on Easter weekend even if it was a year away, take you to lunch right here at the Peach Orchard, and tell you the lawyer was coming the next day. Now the responsibility falls on you when I die. You have to do the same for Pearl since Verline died before me.”

  “You are going to live forever,” Austin told her.

  “I’m plannin’ on it. But if I’m wrong, you are supposed to take care of things for me. I’ll call you when I get to feelin’ poorly.”

  Raymond waved at a rancher at another table, patted Austin on the shoulder, and was already talking to the newcomer as he walked away from their booth.

  The waitress brought their orders of fish and set a plate of homemade tartar sauce, sliced onions, pickles, and bread in the middle of the table for them to share.

  “Want me to put you back some pie?” she asked.

  “Save us two pieces of lemon. You do like lemon, don’t you?” Pearlita asked.

  “If it’s like Granny’s I like it. I don’t like that canned crap,” Austin answered.

  Rye chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Austin asked.

  How was it that she’d looked forward to talking to him on Thursday night and now that he was close enough that she could smell his aftershave lotion she couldn’t think of anything to start an intelligent conversation?

  His eyes sparkled even more. “What you said. That sounded just like Granny Lanier. She didn’t like that canned crap either, only she called it the real thing, not crap.”

  “It’s real, made from scratch this morning,” the waitress said.

  “Then save us two pieces,” Pearlita said.

  “And save us two pieces,” Rye said.

  “I don’t like lemon,” Kent told him. “Save me a couple of slices of German chocolate.”

  Austin looked past Rye at his friend but was fully aware of the cowboy still staring at her from his peripheral vision. Kent was shorter than Rye, less muscular, more sinewy, and had a thick mop of sandy hair that curled up on his shirt collar. The bottom part of a Celtic cross tattoo showed on his upper arm beneath his T-shirt sleeve. His face was slim and his nose almost feminine. His eyes were soft green and his smile genuine. Not one thing about him set her in an emotional tailwind like looking into Rye’s green eyes.

  A vision flashed through her mind of Rye lying beside her, both of them wrapped up in satin sheets in a fancy hotel, her hand gripping that muscular bicep, and she could almost feel that intriguing tattoo burning against her palm as she dug her fingers into his hard strength. She gasped. Where in the hell were such thoughts coming from? Austin wasn’t a hussy. She was a professional woman with a responsible career. She was being groomed to take over the operations department when the boss retired, and she’d worked her tail end off for five years for a chance at that position. And a department head didn’t undress a man with her eyes, no matter how sexy he was.

  It would have helped if Granny had told her exactly what Rye looked like in even one of the many conversations they’d had or if she’d shown her a picture of him. She’d never once mentioned that he was handsome and muscled up like a body builder. Or that he had amazing deep green bedroom eyes and hair that cried out to have Austin’s fingers tangled up in it. That brought on another vision of him all sweaty and hot, tangled up in sheets with the top half naked and a fist full of that thick dark hair in her hands as he nibbled on her earlobe and whispered sweet hot words in a breathless Texas drawl.

  Sweet Jesus, what is the matter with me? Sure he’s ruggedly handsome as hell but that doesn’t give me the right to think such thoughts. He started it by looking at me like he did. If he’d kept his eyes to himself I wouldn’t be having naughty notions.

  Austin had always pictured Rye with gray hair and a bushy mustache. Granny had said that he was a younger man and damn fine looking but she was eighty-three and her version of younger didn’t mean thirty-something. Now Austin understood why she was so happy when she got off the phone with him each week and why she looked forward to their conversations. She’d thought that he sure had young ideas when she talked to him, but then Granny had been ageless too.

  “You got a pretty big job ahead of you,” Rye said. “I’m right across the road so I’ll be glad to help.”

  His deep Texas drawl was enough to cause her bikini underwear to
start to inch down toward her ankles. She had the urge to reach inside the waistband of her slacks and give them a jerk to remind them that there was no way she was letting a cattle rancher get under her skin or in her pants.

  The waitress set two plastic baskets of food in front of Rye and Kent and they settled into it without talking. Rye kept his eyes on the fish and fries but continued to steal microsecond glances at Austin, burning real life pictures of her into his brain. Later he’d get them out, shut his eyes, and play them over and over again.

  Austin ate her fish and let her eyes wander to the barbed wire tat. It fascinated her and she had to hold her hands tightly in her lap to keep from leaning across the space and touching it to see if it was prickly.

  What would it be like to have those big arms around her? Why a barbed wire tat? And why on his left arm? Did he have any more artwork scattered on his body? If so, where was it?

  The waitress made a pass by their table. “Anything else I can get you?”

  “Ketchup. This bottle is dry,” Pearlita said.

  The waitress reached across Rye’s table, stole the full bottle, and set it between Pearlita and Austin.

  “Thanks,” Pearlita said. “They don’t make anything like this up there in Tulsa, I’ll bet.”

  “Aw, they’ve probably got anything a body would want up in the big city,” Rye drawled.

  “Not this good,” Austin admitted. Sure they were sitting so close that she could see that little dot on his sexy chin where he’d cut himself shaving, but he kept talking across the distance like they were sitting together. Maybe that was the way they did things in Terral.

  “I love fish but Momma hates the smell, so we never had it. When I get really hungry for it I usually just grab some at Long John Silver’s, but it’s sure not this good,” she said.

  “Verline loved fish. I guess you know there wasn’t any love lost between her momma and granny,” Pearlita said. “Woman stole her only son away from the watermelon farm. I told Verline that Eddie never did intend to make a life in Terral, Oklahoma. The day he left for college up in Stillwater I was out at his car when Verline remembered something she had forgotten. She ran back into the house to get it and I asked him what he was going to study at school. He grinned at me and said that he was going to go into business because he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life wiping sweat and plowing watermelon fields. She always thought he’d change his mind but after he met Barbara up there at OSU, I knew he’d never come back to Terral.”

  Kent finished his food and drank three glasses of tea before Rye finally pushed his basket back. “Well, it’s about time. I’d begun to think we were goin’ to laze around this café all afternoon.”

  Rye stood up and settled his hat back on his head. Walking away from her wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d be across the road and he vowed that he would be spending more time over there.

  Austin was near six feet tall with her high heels and she seldom looked up at any man, but when she watched him put that hat on she could’ve sworn there was seven feet of cowboy standing in front of her. “I’ll be around if you need anything,” he said.

  “Thank you, Rye. I’ll call if I do. I have your number,” she said. She wanted to say more but her brain wouldn’t work when her eyes were glued on that tat.

  “Nice to see you again, Miz Pearlita. Tell Pearl to come see me and the wife when she comes to visit,” Kent said.

  “I’ll do it but I don’t expect she’ll be comin’ around for a while. She chased through for a night last week and I probably won’t see her again until Christmas.”

  Austin wasn’t a bit surprised that Rye swaggered or that his jeans fit snuggly over a damn fine looking rear end. Not since the initial shock of seeing he wasn’t an old man had worn off, anyway.

  “Like what you see?” Pearlita asked.

  She spun around so fast that it made her light-headed. “Yes, I do. I wonder where on earth the owner found so many branding irons to hang on these walls.”

  “He didn’t. The ranchers brought them in along with the brands on the wood pieces above them. I’ll have to tell Rye that you were interested in using one on his ass,” Pearlita teased.

  “Why in the world would you say that?” For the second time that day Austin wished she could grab the words, douse them in ketchup, and put them back in her mouth.

  “Because evidently you’d like to brand his ass. That is where you were looking.”

  Austin blushed.

  Pearlita laughed. “Eat your fish. You’ve got a big job cleaning out Verline’s house and you will need the energy. She never threw away a damn thing. And now you’ve got to do it knowing that cowboy with a sexy ass lives across the street.”

  “Whew!” Austin wiped at her brow. “I got to tell you, Pearlita, that was a shock. Granny never told me what Rye looked like. I figured him for a seventy-year-old cowboy with bowlegs, a gray moustache and hair, and walking with a cane. Came close to giving me a heart attack when he introduced himself. I didn’t drool, did I?”

  Pearlita had to swallow fast to keep from spewing tea across the table. “Girl, you are just like Verline. I’ve missed her. We’ll have to do this more often.”

  Austin laughed with her. “I don’t know if my poor heart could take it if every time we eat here I get a shock like that.”

  Pearlita poured ketchup over the top of her fries. “Rye lives in one of them big double wide trailers right across the street from Verline’s place. The old house on the property finally got too worn out to put a patch on, so he tore it down, used what lumber wasn’t termite infested to build a hay shed, and bought him a trailer. Put it right where the old house used to stand. I guess it had something to do with insurance but he said it was so he could run across to Verline’s when he smelled the cinnamon rolls cookin’. She loved that boy like a son. Sometimes I think he became Eddie in her eyes. He moved up here the same year Eddie died and they had a grandma-grandson thing going from day one. She should’ve told you all that instead of letting you believe he was an old man.”

  Austin dipped a piece of fish into the best homemade tartar sauce she’d ever eaten and bit into it. “Yes, she should’ve. I bet she’s laughing her butt off right now. Tell me more about this thing with Granny and Mother. I know Mother hates this place but I had no idea that Granny wasn’t too fond of her.”

  Pearlita swallowed a bite and said, “Your mother was a city girl. By the time she finished college her parents were ready to retire. Your mother and Eddie married right after they graduated from college, so her parents bought them a house in Tulsa and gave them both high-powered jobs. They taught her and Eddie about the car dealership for a couple of years and then gave them the business and retired.”

  “That explains a lot,” Austin said.

  Pearlita nodded. “Well, darlin’, I’ve got a one-thirty appointment at the hairdressers to see if she can get the yellow out of my hair without making it blue, so I’m going to scoot on out of here. You give me a call if that house overwhelms you and I’ll bring a couple of scoop shovels and a box of heavy duty garbage bags.”

  Pearlita motioned for the waitress and handed her a fifty dollar bill. “You settle up our bill and put the rest in your pocket.”

  “Thank you!” The waitress gasped at the huge tip.

  Pearlita stood up and patted Austin on the shoulder. “Verline gave me that very bill when she got sick and said for me to keep it for this day. Remember what I said, Austin. I’m less than half an hour away and Rosa, my hired help, can run the motel if you need me.”

  “I will and if Pearl comes around in the next couple of weeks, tell her to drop in on me,” Austin said.

  She finished every bite of her lunch after Pearlita disappeared but her thoughts kept wandering back to Rye and hoping that he stayed on his side of the road while she was there. Or she would need one of those big old adult bibs like they use in nursing homes to catch the drooling.

  When she finished she drove through town and o
ut past the cemetery where Granny should have been laid to rest beside her husband but instead she was nothing but bits of ashes floating down the Red River.

  When she turned right into the driveway she saw the hired hands gathered around the porch, hats in hands, waiting for their new boss. She took a deep breath and crawled out of her little bright red Corvette. She had no idea if there were watermelons in the ground or if they were sprouting, and she didn’t know anything about farming them. But Rye had told her the crew had arrived from Mexico and was hard at work getting the ground ready to plant.

  “Miz Austin, we are sorry to lose Miz Lanier. We didn’t even know she had passed on until we got here last week. We could go back to Mexico but we will stay and keep things going until you make up your mind what to do with this place,” Felix said. “This is Angelo, Estefan, Hugo, Jacinto, and Lobo. They are all my kinfolks and we all have work visas through the summer.” He pointed to each man as he introduced them. Angelo was short and thick bodied with a round face. Estefan was tall and thin with a slim nose and a thin mouth. Jacinto had a shaved head and a tattoo of a rosary on his bicep. Lobo had kinky curly hair and soft brown eyes. Hugo had a dimple in his chin, not unlike the one on Rye’s face.

  Damn it! I’m not going to think about the neighbor, she thought.

  “And I’m Rye,” a deep Texas drawl said from the shadows of the porch.

  “Rye’s been working with us since we got here,” Felix said.

  “I’ve met Rye and I’m glad to meet you all, and since I’m not familiar with what it takes to run this farm, I’ll leave it all in your hands, Felix. Is there anything else I’m supposed to know?”

  “We get paid on Friday. Miz Lanier writes us a check and we sign the back. Then she takes them to the bank and sends all but twenty dollars to our families in Mexico. She brings us back each twenty dollars for things we need in the week. Today is Friday and the bank in Ryan closes at four,” Felix said.

  “Then I’ll find the checkbook first thing and get your checks written. Give me thirty minutes and come back. Is that all right?”