The Charmer in Chaps

by Julia London

  “Ohmigod, seriously, stop talking,” Ella said. “You never said that, and I was never excited. I was surprised.”

  “You were so excited—”

  “I was intrigued!”

  “Intrigued!” Stacy howled. “You practically had your wedding dress picked out after the senior dance!” She went back into the dressing room.

  “What are y’all talking about?” Mariah demanded.

  “Don’t you remember, Mariah?” Stacy called through the curtain. “Luca Prince kissed Ella that night, and she’s still swooning about it, even though he is clearly still a dog.”

  “Hey! Do not ruin my high school crush fantasy,” Ella said, trying to make light of it. “I have very little to live for as it is.”

  Mariah waved it off with a flick of her wrist. “Who didn’t have a crush on Prince Luca?”

  “Me,” Stacy said.

  “Anyway, who cares,” Mariah said. “High school crushes never turn out to be what you thought they were, right? It’s like when someone dies young, and they could have grown up to be the biggest asshole, but people believe that only the good die young, and after time, that person becomes a saint.”

  “Huh?” Ella asked, confused.

  “I’m just saying, people don’t turn out to be who we thought they would be. Luca Prince was hot, but he barely passed his classes.” She glanced up at them and said softly, “I’ve heard he can’t even read.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Ella said with a snort. “That can’t be true.”

  “But is it true?” Stacy asked as she emerged again with several pieces draped over her arm.

  “That’s what I’ve heard,” Mariah said with a shrug, and took the clothes Stacy was holding to the counter. “Regardless, my point is, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t have a lot going on upstairs. You know, a beauty with no brains. He’s no fairy tale, Ella.”

  Ella looked back and forth between Stacy and Mariah. “I don’t believe in fairy tales. Of the three of us standing here, I am the least likely to believe in fairy tales.” That was true—she really didn’t believe in them. She’d always been the moon of a lesser planet, at the far end of the galaxy, and nothing had changed. She could go on with her life knowing that her high school crush had finally paid attention to her. They’d had a moment. But high school crushes weren’t really things. They belonged in high school and not in real life.

  No, Ella didn’t believe in fairy tales. She wanted to. But she didn’t.

  “Okay, Ella, don’t freak out, but I’m taking these two,” Stacy said, pointing to two dresses on the counter.

  “I’m not freaking out—”

  “I can afford it!” Stacy said loudly. “And besides, I got a part-time job at the Cimarron County Sheriff’s Office.”

  This was news, and Ella gaped at her. “What?” Funny that Stacy hadn’t mentioned it until this moment.

  “How?” Mariah demanded.

  Stacy laughed. “I am not without skills and/or charm, thank you. Ella said I needed a part-time job until the band takes off. So I got one.” She shrugged.

  “Congratulations!” Ella said, surprised that Stacy had listened to her. “Stacy, I’m so proud of you.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t start turning cartwheels just yet. I start Monday.” She pulled out her wallet.

  They said good-bye to Mariah, and Ella drove a chatty Stacy back to her car. When she got out, she leaned into the window and lowered her sunglasses to look at Ella. “Had a great time,” she said. “See you Saturday?” She had a gig at the Broken Wheel.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Ella promised.

  Stacy winked, and she moved as if she meant to go, but she suddenly dipped back into the car window. “You know what? If I were you, I’d forget about Prince Luca. Sounds like he’s been up to his old tricks. You deserve better, Ella. You deserve . . . well, you just deserve the best.”

  Ella smiled. “Thanks. But I’m not thinking about him.”

  “Right,” Stacy said, backing out of the window. “Just remember, it’s easier to heal a skinned knee than a broken heart!” She wiggled her fingers at Ella. “Bye!”

  “What?” Ella muttered as she waved at Stacy. “That makes no sense.”

  Stacy truly didn’t have to worry about her. Ella had made herself forget about Luca Prince the night of the winter carnival, when he told her his timing sucked, he was leaving, and he would take a rain check.

  She knew all about rain checks. It never stopped raining.

  Chapter Ten

  It had been three months since Luca’s father died. Three months of feeling numb, of waking up every morning and having to remember all over again that Dad was gone. Three months of having a new half brother Luca couldn’t quite wrap his head around, and oh, right, three months of knowing his dad had also gambled away half the family’s considerable fortune and owed a lot of money around the state.

  It had been a lot to unpack.

  Since the afternoon Nick had met Luca in the drive, it seemed as if Luca had been battling a dull headache. For a time, he thought maybe Tanner’s punch had given him a concussion. But it probably had more to do with the drinking, which, of course, he’d done, in bars and honkytonks across Texas. Anything to get away. Anything to step out from under the collective misery that cloaked Three Rivers Ranch.

  Or maybe his headache was due to the fact his usually robust libido was in the toilet and he wasn’t getting enough recreation. He wasn’t even getting it up, a disturbing and horrifying turn of events. Or maybe he was just losing his mind altogether—he’d been forgetting the dumbest things, like where he’d left his phone. Or where he’d parked his car. Or where, exactly, he was driving.

  As the weeks passed, it had gotten a little easier, and the pain turned into a dull ache. Luca missed his father every day, but he was finally beginning to feel like himself again. He could keep up with his phone and his truck.

  Last week, Luca had felt enough like himself to come home. He didn’t know what changed, but one day, he woke up to a crisp, beautiful spring morning, looked out his window, and saw the blanket of bluebonnets that covered a dormant pasture, the Indian paintbrush and pink evening primrose filling in the holes. He’d looked at all the natural beauty and decided he was sick to death of grieving.

  He wanted to be in the sun. He wanted to look forward, not backward. He wanted to know why his father had left him what he had. He wanted to get back to reading, to planning the fund-raiser, to making phone calls and talking about sustainability. Was it ambition that drove him to snap out of it? That wasn’t like him, but maybe.

  The first thing he did when he finally came home was to call Karen.

  “Come today,” Karen had said. “Can’t put off getting back in the saddle, you know that.”

  His mother had said the same thing about two months ago, one day before the winter carnival. He’d come in late after a night in the city, Brandon dragging him inside and depositing him in his bed. “Get up,” his mother said, and punched his foot. “I don’t pay Frederica to entertain Brandon over breakfast while he waits for you to get out of bed.” She’d punched the button for the automatic shades to lift, and bright sunlight had spilled into his room and blinded him.

  “Jesus,” Luca had muttered, and had gone back to sleep.

  When he did eventually get up, he’d found his mother sitting on the floor of the master bedroom with the wooden box Dad had left for her. Luca didn’t know what was in that box, but whatever it was had upset his mother. Her face was puffy from crying, and she had a glass of Chardonnay in her hand even though it was only noon.

  “Mom,” he’d said, mildly alarmed. “Are you all right? It’s noon and you’re drinking wine.”

  “I’m fine. If I wasn’t fine, this whole place would fall apart, wouldn’t it? And it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. But you’re not fine, Luca. You have a busin
ess that needs running.” She’d said that in a shout that made her sound pretty tipsy. “Just leave me alone. I’ll be all right.” And she’d bent over the box.

  Luca had left her alone that day. His mother was angry with his dad for dying. He understood that; he understood her raging disappointment, because he felt it, too—disappointment that Dad had such a horrible gambling problem for which he’d not sought help. Wouldn’t it have been better to get help than lose so much money?

  Disappointment that he’d had a massive coronary event. He smoked cigars and ate like a trucker on the road. Would it have been so hard to hit the gym every now and again?

  To Luca’s way of thinking, Dad had checked out. He normally didn’t go in for the hippy-dippy stuff, but he believed souls choose—they choose when to show up, they choose when to exit, and Dad’s soul had chosen to exit.

  The day Luca had woken up to the bluebonnets, his soul made a decision. He chose life.

  He’d been home a week, and he felt good enough to ride out and look at the land his father had left him. Unfortunately, it began to rain, so Luca changed his mind. He decided to pay a visit to George Lowe, the family attorney. He needed to understand what his dad had left him and why.

  He showed up at George’s office with two cups of coffee from Jo’s. George had made them all copies of the will, but Luca couldn’t read it. He needed the CliffsNotes, to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. So he told George it was too upsetting to read it and asked him to just go over it with him.

  “It’s pretty simple, son,” George had said. “Your father left you two thousand acres. You can do what you want on that land as long as you don’t sell it and keep it in the family. And agree that no family money will go to whatever you do out there. You can use your trust if you like, but not the family money. Your old man wasn’t crazy.” He grinned. “But he was a softie.”

  “Why do you say that?” Luca asked. “Because he left land to me?”

  “Well, now, he knew you weren’t going to turn it into a cattle ranch or an oil field and make money off it, right?”

  Luca and his dad had never had a conversation like that, but okay, fair enough. He wasn’t a cattleman or an oilman.

  “Now, there’s a homestead out there, the Kendall place. It’s about thirty acres right in the middle of the property. That’s a bit the Princes never owned. But it’s abandoned, so you should be able to pick that up for next to nothing if you want it.”

  “It’s not abandoned,” Luca said. He thought of Ella, with her dark hair and pale blue eyes. He’d thought of her many times, actually. Of her house, that needed so much work. Of her skepticism of him, which, of course, had proven to be a healthy skepticism. He’d wanted to reach out so many times, but every time he thought to do it, he imagined the phone call or the text, and he hadn’t been able to face it. He couldn’t follow through. And what was he going to say? Hey, still floating out here in no man’s land. Still raining.

  “No, I’m pretty sure that old lady died,” George said. “I’ll have to do some digging.”

  “She died,” Luca confirmed. “But now her granddaughter is living out there.”

  “Huh,” George said. “Well, depending on what you’re going to do with the land, maybe you can make her an offer she can’t refuse. What are you going to do?”

  Luca had some ideas. He smiled and said, “You’ll see.”

  George looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. “You’re not thinking of doing some environmental thing, are you? You know your mama isn’t going to like it.”

  Luca wasn’t surprised by this—George was practically part of the family. He shrugged. “My mama has never liked much of anything I do.”

  “Well, son, if you’d keep your pecker in your pants, that might help.”

  Luca was momentarily taken aback—he wasn’t in the habit of discussing his pecker with anyone, especially George. Or his mother, for the love of God.

  George colored and sat up a little straighter in his seat. “Sorry. I know Delia was fit to be tied about that party in Houston.”

  Luca had to think a moment about what he was talking about. Then he remembered—about a year ago, he’d ended up in a River Oaks bedroom at a congressman’s house with the congressman’s daughter. The same daughter who was supposedly dating a general’s son. Yeah, it had been a mess, Luca would be the first to admit. “I can’t make any promises,” he said with a lopsided smile. Give the audience what it wants, right? “I’ll keep you posted on what I hope to accomplish with that land.”

  “If you need any help buying the old Kendall place, let me know,” George said, and rose from his seat.

  The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. That was Ella’s place, home to an assortment of abandoned animals.

  Maybe it was time to see if he could regroup with her. The only problem was, he didn’t know how to slide back into her life, not after an absence of several weeks. Ella had promised to show him that spring behind her house—maybe he could call her later and ask when he might come do that.

  Luca got in his truck and turned onto the highway, mulling it over. But as he passed Timmons Tire and Body, he spotted her dog, trotting alongside the highway in the rain.

  “What the hell?” he muttered, and pulled over ahead of the dog. He opened the passenger door and whistled. The dog trotted right up and jumped in, muddying his passenger seat, then shaking off his coat and spraying the rest of the interior and Luca. “What’s with you?” Luca asked as he scratched the dog behind the ears. “Are you trying to get killed?”

  He turned his truck around and headed for the county road that led down to the Kendall place.

  The dog had just given him a reason to cash in a rain check—ironically, while it was raining.

  Chapter Eleven

  Once, when Chrissy had come out to see Ella, she’d said with a shiver, “I couldn’t live out here by myself. I’d be a wreck.”

  “What is there to be afraid of?” Ella asked, sweeping her hand toward the dilapidated roof and sagging porch. “Other than the roof falling on your head.”

  She really did love the peace and quiet in the country. No planes overhead, no traffic from the nearby highway, no one arguing outside her apartment. So quiet that if there was the slightest breeze, the old windmill would creak and moan and wake her up.

  All right, who was she kidding? Everything woke her up. Everything! That’s why nights had taken some getting used to. Who would have thought there were so many things to be so loud at night? And coyotes! She could hear them calling to each other, and she imagined them advancing on her little house, closing in on the clueless pig, or worse, on her while she slept innocently and stupidly in her bed. She was startled awake by the strangest noises, and when she couldn’t determine what a particular noise was, she was convinced robbers were in her house, and she pulled out her baseball bat—guns scared her—and tiptoed around her house while the dog trotted alongside her, hoping for some excitement.

  She would find nothing amiss, and when the sun came up, she would remember that a robber would be pretty bad at his job if he went out of his way to rob this house, which clearly looked like it contained nothing of value. All her fears seemed ridiculous in sunlight.

  But come the night, they loomed large again.

  Fortunately, last night, steady rainfall had drowned out any other noises. She’d woken to the pitter-patter of rain against the window, and the steady drip-drip-drip of water into a pan in the living room where the roof had sprung a leak. But it was a pleasant drip, and she loved sleeping when it was raining, so she was very much annoyed when Dog began nudging her with his wet nose. It was hardly even dawn. Ella had stumbled sleepily to the door, had pushed him out, and had gone back to bed.

  She didn’t know what made her open her eyes again—a distant sound or maybe the windmill. But she slowly opened them, and through a tan
gle of hair she saw the big red number eleven glaring at her from the clock.

  “Damn it!” She sat up, looking wildly about her. She never slept this late! But she’d been cajoled into going out with Chrissy and Mateo after work last night, and had come home in the wee hours to find Dog pacing the porch and eyeing her very judgmentally.

  Thank goodness she had the day off.

  Ella yawned and stretched her arms high overhead—and then froze. She heard something again. She leaned forward, straining to hear, and then realized it was the sound of a vehicle coming down the road to her house. Someone was coming here? “No!” She shrieked. She threw off the bedspread, vaulted out of bed, grabbed a pair of jeans from the floor, and pogo-sticked her way into them. She heard a vehicle door slam as she yanked off the T-shirt she’d slept in and pulled on a tank from the clean laundry she’d hauled inside last night.

  Who was it? Was it cops? “Of course not!” she practically shouted at herself. She hadn’t done anything wrong except grow up in places where police officers and social workers were the most common types of unexpected visitors.

  She looked wildly about, grabbed the fake shotgun Mateo had given her when she’d first moved in, pushed the hair out of her eyes, and ran into the living room just as someone knocked. In her nervous haste, Ella nearly kicked the pan that was catching the water from the leak in the ceiling, hurdling over it just in time and falling, shoulder first, into the door. “For God’s sake,” she muttered. She straightened up and yanked the door open, nearly taking it off its old, rusty hinges.

  “Whoa!” A pair of hands shot up on the other side of the screen, and Dog, who was also there, went berserk, pawing at the screen door.

  “Hey!” Ella shouted. “Hey, hey, hey, stop!” she cried. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” She managed to unlatch the screen door, and Dog took the opportunity to launch himself at her with his whole body, planting his muddy, wet paws on her shoulders. And his breath was atrocious to boot.