She looked at Forrest in confusion, then laughed softly as the meaning behind his comment registered. “It seems you Texans have a phrase for every occasion.”
“What does it take to get service in this joint, anyway?” the man complained loudly.
She heaved a weary sigh. “Excuse me, please,” she said to Forrest. “If I don’t serve Leon his fries soon, I’m afraid he might try to decide to stack the diner’s furniture.”
Forrest tossed back his head and laughed. “You’re catching on,” he said, lifting his cup in a salute. “You’ll have the lingo down in no time.”
He watched her hurry back to the counter, and noticed that a distant neighbor of his, Josie Walters, was among those huddled around the counter, listening to the news on the radio.
When the announcer issued a warning to those on the road to be on the alert for the possibility of wind gusts up to seventy miles per hour, Josie set aside her cup of coffee. As she turned from the counter, Forrest noticed the worry lines that plowed between her eyebrows, and wondered if it was the two hour drive that stretched between her and home that put the lines there. He watched as she stopped at a table to talk to Pete Mitchell, a drifter who did odd jobs around the county, and overheard her ask Pete if he would drop by her farm and make some repairs on her barn. Forrest saw Pete’s hand slip to Josie’s buttocks and started to rise, prepared to come to Josie’s defense, then sat back down, chuckling softly when Josie picked up a cup of coffee and poured it across Pete’s lap. Her face flushed with fury, Josie stormed for the door, fighting the wind as she pushed her way through it.
Forrest watched her fight the wind as she pushed her way through the diner’s front door. Twenty-nine years old and a widow, he reflected sadly, and left with a farm to manage on her own. A hell of a situation for a woman to be caught in.
The thought drew an image of another woman who struggled alone to keep a place running, and the need to convince that woman to marry him.
He scrubbed his hands over his face, then slid down in the booth and stretched out his legs. He needed a break from this thinking business. His brain was plumb wornout, and he still hadn’t come up with a decent plan as to how to romance Becky. He turned his head to stare out the diner’s window. Three days had passed since he’d last seen her and not one good idea had surfaced.
A boot hit his, snagging his attention, and he turned to find Hank standing beside his booth. Forrest sat up, drawing his legs underneath the table. He gestured toward the bench opposite him. “Have a seat.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Hank replied dryly as he slid into the booth. “Callie said you called.”
“Yeah. I need some help.”
Noticing the dark circles under his friend’s eyes, Hank leaned forward in concern. “Are you sick?”
Forrest snorted. “I’m never sick.”
Hank sagged back against the booth in relief, then frowned. “Well, you look like hell.” The comment won a scowl from Forrest. “If you’re not sick, then what’s ailing you? Did the bottom fall out of the cattle market? I’ve been gone a couple of days and I haven’t been keeping a close watch on things.”
Forrest shook his head, as he drew his coffee cup between his hands. “No. At least, I don’t think it has I haven’t been paying much attention to the market, either.”
Hank knitted his forehead in concern. If Forrest wasn’t watching the market, then something was definitely wrong. “What’s troubling you, then?”
Embarrassed to admit his problem, Forrest caught his upper lip between his teeth. He released it on a heavy sigh. “It’s Becky,” he finally admitted.
“Yeah, I heard what Shorty did. A crying shame, if you asked me.”
Forrest snapped his head up. “Shorty’s in town?”
“Was. He’s gone now.”
“What did he do?”
“You don’t know?”
When Forrest shook his head, Hank leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the table. “Sold the ranch right out from under her. Or rather, gambled it out from under her,” he amended, his voice heavy with disgust.
Forrest stared, unable to believe his ears. “How do you know about this?”
Hank lifted a shoulder, then sank back against the cushion, stretching out a leg and rubbing at the old scars there. “Heard it over in Del Rio. Seems Shorty bought a share in a sterile stud, using the ranch as collateral.” He wagged his head regretfully. “Poor Becky.”
Stunned by the news, Forrest simply stared. “Why didn’t she tell me? I’d have helped her.”
Hank lifted a shoulder. “You know Becky. She’s got a lot of pride.”
Forrest swallowed hard, dropping his gaze to his coffee cup. Yeah. He knew all about Becky’s pride. Over the years, he’d been thrown up against it more times than he cared to think about. And she had told him she was leaving, he remembered guiltily. But when she’d given him the two weeks notice, he’d assumed it was because she was getting married.
And she’d let him go right on believing that, rather than swallow her pride and tell him what Shorty had done.
He was on his feet before Hank knew he’d even moved. “Who loaned Shorty the money?” he demanded angrily.
Hank looked up at him “Some outfit over in New Mexico. The guy’s name is Reed, I think. Don’t recall hearing his first name.”
Forrest grabbed his hat and rammed it on his head. “That’s enough to go on. I’ll find him.”
“Hey, Forrest,” Hank called after him. “Why’d you want me to meet you here?”
Forrest waved a dismissive hand in the air. Romancing Becky was no longer on his mind. Getting her farm back was. “It’s not important.”
Hank watched Forrest push through the door, then gave the bench opposite him a frustrated kick, muttering, “And here I left my new bride, who I haven’t seen or slept with in three days, because she tells me Forrest called and asked me to meet him, sounding like he was caught in a life or death situation. And then the man has the gall to tell me whatever he wanted isn’t important.” He gave the bench another kick just for good measure, then pushed to his feet. “I wish he’d hurry up and get himself married,” he muttered contrarily as he limped for the door. “He’s puttin‘ a definite strain on my sex life.”
Tracking down a deal that was made in a bar, written on a cocktail napkin and sealed with nothing but a handshake, took awhile. But Forrest would have chased the shadowy leads to the ends of the earth and back, if that’s what it took to place the deed to the Rusty Corral back in Becky’s hands.
As it turned out, he only had to go as far as Del Rio.
He arrived at dusk, via Sterling’s plane, rented a car and headed for the Lowdown Saloon, a seedy watering hole where he’d learned Reed liked to conduct his business. Trucks of every description crowded the small lot he parked his rental in, and a neon sign blinked on and off promising cold beer on tap and topless waitresses.
After locking the car, Forrest pushed through the bar’s tinted glass door and paused a moment to give his eyes time to adjust to the dimly lit interior. The Lowdown Saloon was like a hundred other beer joints he’d frequented over the years. A long bar stretched across one wall with about a dozen bar stools bolted to the floor in front of it. The mirror behind the bar offered a view of the remainder of the smoke-filled room. Tables for four were scattered around and booths lined two walls. A sign that read Fillies hung cockeyed on the wall and an arrow beneath pointed toward a short, dark hall with a pay phone at the end. A second sign, hanging below the first, read Studs, but someone had struck a line through the word and scrawled Geldings above it. Probably a woman who’d had a run of bad luck with men, he thought with a chuckle.
He braced his hands low on his hips and looked around, searching for a man who fit the description he’d been given. He’d covered only half the room when he felt a hand on his back. Before he could turn, a woman was winding herself around him like honeysuckle on a tree.
She looped an arm through the crook in
his and smiled up at him through a layer of mascara thick enough to tar a mile of bad road. “Hi, cowboy. Buy me a drink?”
He forced a smile in return as he carefully unwound her arm from his. “Sorry. I’m meeting someone.”
She puckered her lips in a pout that he was sure she thought was sexy. “Not even one teensy weensy little drink?”
Hoping to get nd of her, he stuck a hand in his pocket and pulled out a money clip. He peeled off a fifty and handed it to her. “Here. Have one on me.”
She caught the bill between two fingers and tucked it into her cleavage, a bottomless pit as far as he could tell as he watched the money disappear. Smiling up at him, she sidled closer, laying a hand on the middle of his chest, while she drilled a knee between his. She drew a circle on his shirtfront with a nail that she ought to be required to register. It was deadlier than any pistol he’d ever seen.
“I’d like to have one on you, all right” she said suggestively. “Maybe even two,” she added with a wink.
Feeling the pressure of her knee rising higher on his thigh, Forrest cleared his throat and took a step back, separating himself from her. He strained to look over the top of a mountain of teased hair. “Excuse me,” he said, and brushed past her. “I believe I just found my man.”
He heard a huff of breath behind him, then her mutter something about why every good-looking man she met had to be gay.
He bit back a smile as he headed for the bar, wondering if she was the artist who’d redesigned the sign to the men’s rest room.
“Whiskey and branch water,” he said to the bartender.
“Be right with you” was the bartender’s reply as he shook up a margarita.
Forrest turned his back to the bar, and reared back against it, crossing his boots at the ankle. “Any action around here?” he said to no one in particular as he looked out over the room.
The man beside him shifted on his bar stool and lifted his glass. “Depends on what you’re looking for,” he replied and tossed back his drink.
“A game would be nice,” Forrest said, turning back to the bar just as the bartender plopped a napkin m front of him and his drink on top of it. Forrest pulled out his money clip, peeled off a hundred dollar bill and dropped it on the scarred bar. He raked a thumb along the edge of the remaining bills, watching the man’s reaction in the mirror. The guy all but drooled as he eyed the thick clip. “Though poker’s my personal preference,” Forrest added. He chuckled as he stuffed the wad of bills back into his pocket. “Course I promised my wife I wouldn’t play anymore, after I dropped nearly a quarter mil last time we were in Vegas.” He glanced over at the man. “You play?”
The guy lifted a shoulder. “Some.” He angled his head to look at Forrest. “You from around here?”
Forrest took a sip of his drink. “Nah. I’m just in town for the night.”
The man eyed him a moment longer, then stuck out his hand. “The name’s Reed,” he said.
Forrest accepted the hand, and smiled. “My friends call me Woody,” he replied.
“Well, welcome to Del Rio, Woody.” Reed thumped him on the back as he slid off his stool. “There’s usually a game going on in the back,” he said, as he gave his pants a hitch over a belly the size of a keg. “Follow me.”
Smiling, Forrest fell in behind him. “Now if I start losing too much,” he said to Reed’s back, “you pack me off to home. Otherwise, my wife’s liable to divorce me for sure this time.”
Reed turned and tossed an arm along Forrest’s shoulders as he led him to the back room and what he must have considered a sure slaughter. “Don’t you worry none, boy. I’ll take good care of you.”
Like taking candy from a baby, Forrest thought, smiling smugly. He tucked the deed into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, gave it a pat, then loped up the loading steps snugged up against Sterling’s airplane’s open door and ducked inside.
Nine
Boxes stood three deep in the gutted room and lined two walls, leaving only a narrow path that led to the kitchen beyond. Becky navigated the path carefully, straining to see over the top of the box she carried.
Her toe struck the leg of the kitchen table, and she sagged with relief as she eased her heavy load down onto the table’s surface. Glancing around, she shook her arms, trying to get the blood flowing again, as she tried to decide what to do next.
She still had the freezer to defrost, but first she’d have to do something with the meat stored there. Making a mental note to call the community kitchen that fed the homeless, she moved her gaze on. The café curtains in the window were of no use to her and would be left with the house. And the stove wasn’t worth what it would cost her to have it hauled off, so she’d leave it behind, as well.
She gnawed her thumbnail as she turned slowly. The walls really needed a coat of paint, she thought with regret, but it was ridiculous to think about buying paint for the pleasure of the new owners, when she didn’t even know where she, herself, was going to live.
Her gaze stopped at the hat rack by the back door and the tears she’d held at bay all morning swelled in her throat. Slowly she crossed the room and plucked a tattered Stetson from a peg. Woody had always left a hat at her house, along with a set of clothes and a pair of boots, never knowing when he might need a clean change of clothing. She turned the hat over and looked inside for the words she knew were printed there.
Like hell this hat is yours! This hat belongs to Forrest Cunningham.
The warning was pure Woody. Laughing through her tears, she pulled the hat to her face, inhaling deeply and drinking in his familiar scent—a combination of sweat and horses, blended with a pricey man’s cologne. Turning the worn felt against her cheek, she crossed back to the table and sank down in a chair.
She set the hat, crown down, on her lap and smoothed her fingers along the brim as she looked around the room. Mercy, but she hated the thought of leaving. This was the house she’d grown up in. The only one she had strong memories of. She looked at the doorway that led to her bedroom. Though Shorty was rarely home to enjoy the master bedroom, Becky had never taken it as her own. She’d preferred the smaller room off the kitchen where she’d slept as a child when she and her parents had first moved into the house. Sometimes at night when she was lying awake in her bed, she would imagine that she could still hear her mother moving around in the kitchen. She’d close her eyes, sure that she could smell chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven.
A tear slid down her cheek and she brushed it away. So many memories, she thought sadly. And so many regrets.
With a sigh, she rose and set the hat carefully on the table. But she didn’t have time for weeping, she told herself. She had chores to do still.
At least for another couple of days.
The first arrangement of flowers arrived at noon. The second arrived shortly after one. The deliveries continued throughout the day, marking each hour, until every available surface in the Rusty Corral’s kitchen was filled with a profusion of color and blooms.
Becky set the last arrangement—three dozen baby pink roses—on a burner on the stove—the only remaining space left in the small kitchen—and plucked the card from among the fragrant blooms. The card was signed simply “Woody,” as had every other card.
“This has got to stop,” she muttered and headed for the phone. She picked it up and quickly punched m his number. She waited through three rings, then heard his answering machine click on.
“Hello. You’ve reached the Golden Steer. I’m not here so leave a message.”
She rolled her eyes at the no-nonsense recording and waited for the tone. “Woody, it’s Becky,” she said, after hearing it. “Listen, the flowers are nice, but—”
There was a clattering noise, a curse, then Woody’s voice. “Don’t hang up. I’m here.”
Her fingers tightened on the receiver at the sound of his voice, her heart squeezing painfully in her chest.
“So you like ‘em, huh?” he asked.
Sh
e could hear the smile in his voice, the almost boyish pleasure, and had to lock her knees to keep from surrendering to it. She squeezed one hand at her temple. “Yeah, they’re nice, but this has got to stop.”
There was a long pause, then he said, ‘Why? I thought you wanted to be romanced?“
She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back the tears and drew in a long breath. “I never said that.”
“But—”
“Listen, Woody,” she said, knowing she had to end the conversation quickly. “The only thing you’re accomplishing is making Dee Dee nch, so stop sending the flowers, okay?” Ripping the receiver from her ear, she slammed the phone back on its base. A split second later, there was a knock at the door.
Pressing her fingertips at her temples, she drew in yet another breath, then squared her shoulders and headed for the front door, prepared to tell Dee Dee herself that she could quit making the deliveries. But a man stood on the front porch, not Dee Dee. She peered at him through the screen door. “What can I do for you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Are you—” he glanced down at his clipboard, then back up at her “—Becky Sullivan?”
“Yes.”
“I have a delivery for you. You’ll need to sign here.” He held up the clipboard and pen.
Hesitantly Becky pushed open the screen door. “What’s the delivery?”
He handed her clipboard. “Just sign on line eleven,” he said, passing her the pen. He drew a small package from the pocket of his jacket and exchanged it for the clipboard once she’d signed her name.
“Have a nice day, Miss Sullivan,” he said and turned and headed for his truck.
Becky let the screen door close slowly, staring at the small package she held. There was no logo, no writing whatsoever on the package to indicate its source, but something told her that it was another romantic offering from Woody.
Sinking down onto one of the packing boxes in dread, she peeled off the tape on one end of the package, and shook out the box enclosed. She opened the lid and found yet another box, this one velvet and with the name of a jeweler with a New York City address.
Billionaire Bridegroom Page 14