With trembling fingers, she thumbed up the lid. An ivory card lay inside.
One for each ear. They’re the color of your eyes. Woody.
Afraid to look, but unable to resist the temptation to do anything else, she hfted a corner of the card. She gasped, her eyes going wide. Two large emeralds sparkled up at her from a satin bed. She snapped the lid back down, squeezed her eyes shut, then lifted it again, unable to believe what she’d seen.
But the emeralds were still there, staring up at her like the eyes of a cat from a bed of plush satin.
Not cat eyes. They’re much too pretty to be compared to something as common as a cat.
Tears filled her eyes, blurring the stones, as she remembered Woody’s words.
She closed her eyes again, pressing the velvet box against her breasts.
Oh, Woody, she cried silently. Why are you doing this to me?
Forrest snatched the sling-back shoe from the top of his desk and stuffed it into his jacket pocket as he stormed from his house. Every woman likes flowers, he told himself. That’s why florists have such a booming business on Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. Hadn’t his mother always gone all sappy-eyed when he’d thought to send her flowers on special occasions? Hadn’t his own father worked his way back into his mother’s good graces by sending her roses after they’d had a spat?
He climbed into his truck, flipped on the headlights and revved the engine. Poems were written about women going weak- kneed when they received flowers from a man, he told himself as he sped toward the highway. Hell, entire plots of movies were based on just such an event!
He flew past Windmill Hill without even seeing the landmark. Becky was different from most women, he had to admit, but she wasn’t that different. He wheeled onto the lane that led to the Rusty Corral and passed beneath the sagging sign that arced above it. He didn’t know what her game was, but he was growing a little weary of trying to figure it out. He wanted to get married, dammit. And she wasn’t cooperating one bit.
He braked to a stop in front of the house and was jogging up the porch steps before the door slammed behind him. He rapped his knuckles against the screen door, then pressed his nose against the screen’s mesh. The living room was pitch-black but a light was on over the sink in the kitchen.
“Becky!” he called loudly. When he didn’t hear a response, he jerked open the door and stepped inside. He tripped over something and swore. Fumbling for the light switch by the door, he finally found it and flipped it on.
“Damn,” he whispered as he stared at the tightly wrapped packing boxes covering the floor. He swallowed hard and forced his gaze up. “Becky!” he called again, his heart racing.
He started toward the kitchen, weaving his way down the narrow path the boxes created. “Becky? Where are you?”
He braced his hands on the door frame and stuck his head inside the kitchen. The scent of flowers hit him full force. Roses. Tulips. Delicate gardenias. Maybe he had overdone it, he thought belatedly. But he honestly thought he was giving her what she wanted.
Seeing a light beneath her bedroom door, he stared at it a moment. Though he’d been in her house a thousand times or more over the years, he’d never once seen the inside of her bedroom. He crossed to the partially open door and pressed his ear against it, listening. “Becky?” he said uncertainly. He gave the door a nudge and it swung open on creaking hinges.
The light that had drawn him came from a lamp on the bedside table next to an old iron bed. An oak wardrobe that looked as if it had come to Texas on one of the first wagon’s headed west stood against one wall. There were two boxes on the floor, one sealed and with one with its flaps open, and a straight back chair angled beside the bed.
But no Becky.
He stepped inside the room, feeling like a burglar, or at the least a Peeping Tom, but was unable to contain his curiosity. A quilt was spread over the neatly made bed, its colors reminding him of a summer sky, soft blues and billowy whites. Pillows cased in white were propped against the iron headboard. On one post at the foot of the bed hung her battered hat. On the other a soft cotton gown.
Two steps was all it took to cross to the bed. A bare stretch of the arm to finger the soft cotton. Simple, he thought, and as unassuming as the woman who wore it. He dropped his fingers from the cloth and looked to his right. The wall was covered with pictures and an odd assortment of items, kept in place with tacks pressed into the faded wallpaper. He stepped closer, squinting in the dim light to better see.
There was a picture of him, taken on the day he left for boot camp. Another of him, shot at the airport the day he returned home a civilian. He stepped closer, moving his gaze from picture to picture. He was in nearly every one.
He lifted his hand to a scrap of paper and pulled it from the wall to read and recognized his own handwriting.
To Becky. Love, Woody.
He frowned trying to remember the occasion, the gift to which it had been attached, but couldn’t. Pushing the tack back into place, his hand brushed a dried rose, its petals crumbling at his accidental touch. Fearing she’d know he’d been snooping, he tried to straighten the flower and discovered a ribbon tied to its stem with something written along its faded length.
Woody gave me this to me on July 4, 1984.
Nineteen eighty-four? She couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, at the time. And why had he given her a rose? He tried to think back to the year. He would’ve been twenty, and in his junior year at college. He frowned, rubbing at his temple, trying to remember.
And then it hit him. His parent’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. There’d been a huge party at the Golden Steer. People had come from all over the state to help his parents celebrate the event. He remembered going to the kitchen in search of a knife to cut the cake and had found Becky there, sitting at the breakfast bar alone.
When he’d asked her why she wasn’t out on the patio with everyone else, partying, she’d said that she felt out of place because everyone else was all dressed up. He’d laughed at her insecurities and plucked the flower from an arrangement on the kitchen counter, and stuck it through one of the buttonholes on her shirt, telling her that now she was as dressed up as everyone else.
And she’d saved that rose all these years.
He backed up a step and sat down on the edge of the bed, his knees suddenly too weak to hold him, and stared at the wall of memories.
She’d loved him, he thought, emotion spinning through his head. All these years she’d loved him and he’d been so blind, so wrapped up in himself and his own life that he’d never even noticed.
Becky bent down and wrapped her arms around the new foal, picking him up to hold him in her arms to begin the bonding process. “Such a beautiful baby,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek against his still damp coat. The mare swung her head around and butted her nose against the colt’s side. Becky chuckled softly. “Getting even, are you, for all those times he was bumping around inside you?” She set the colt down at his mother’s side, holding on to him until she was sure he had his hooves beneath him. He immediately stuck his nose beneath the mare’s belly, searching for her bag.
Becky laughed at the greedy sucking sounds he made when he found a teat. With a sigh, she moved to the mare’s head. “You did good, mama,” she said, rubbing the horse’s velvet nose. “You did real good.”
“Colt or filly?”
Becky tensed at the sound of Woody’s voice, then resumed her rubbing. “Colt.”
“Have you named him yet?”
She lifted a shoulder, keeping her back to him. “No. I figured you’d want to name him.”
“But you’ve always named the foals.” She heard the gate open, then close, and Woody’s muffled tread on the soft bed of shavings.
“Not this time,” she said, then tensed again when she felt the warmth of his chest against her back. His hand appeared on the mare’s face next to hers and began to rub.
“Any problems with the birth?”
“N-no,” she stammered, finding it difficult to breathe with him so close. “She’ll make a good brood mare for you.”
“For us,” he corrected.
Becky closed her eyes against the yearning that squeezed at her heart. “Don’t, Woody, please,” she murmured. “I told you. I can’t marry you.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
She dropped her hand from the mare’s face and turned away, putting distance between them. “Same difference.”
“No,” he said, turning to watch her as she picked up the veterinary supplies she’d had on hand during the birth. “Can’t means there’s something stopping you. Won’t means you’re just being stubborn.” He folded his arms across his chest. “The ‘can’t‘ no longer exist, since there’s no fiancé to keep you from marrying me. So I guess that just leaves ’won‘t’ and you’re just being stubborn.”
“Think what you like,” she said, weary from arguing with him. “The fact is, I’m pulling out tomorrow.”
“Where are you going?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Probably to Riodoso, for a while at least.”
“What’s in Riodoso?”
“Who,” she corrected, “not what.” She rolled up the supplies in the canvas bag she kept them stored in and secured it with a strip of leather. “Shorty’s there.”
Forrest looked at her in surprise. “Shorty? You’re still speaking to him after what he did?”
He watched her cheeks flush with embarrassment. “He’s still my father,” she mumbled, as if that explained everything.
And for Becky, he supposed it did. He only hoped that she could forgive him as easily. He followed her out of the stall and into the small room where she kept her supphes. She hit the light switch and a bald bulb on the ceiling popped on, filling the room with light.
He braced a shoulder against the door frame and watched her as she tidied the room, replacing the equipment. He saw the dark circles beneath her eyes, the puffy red nms, and knew that leaving the Rusty Corral was hard on her. He hoped, selfishly, that he might be at least partly responsible for her sadness.
“What if you didn’t have to leave? What if you could stay on at the Rusty Corral?”
She whipped her head around to look at him, and he would swear that he saw hope flare in her eyes. Then she ducked her head and wiped a hand along the counter, whisking away imaginary dirt. “The ranch belongs to someone else now. The owners will be here tomorrow to claim ownership.”
“The owner is already here.”
She turned her head slowly to look at him. “What are you saying?”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out the deed and held it out to her. “Here,” he said. “See for yourself.”
“You bought the Rusty Corral?”
He nodded toward the folded paper. “See for yourself.”
Nervously, she wet her lips and wiped her hand down her thigh before taking the deed from him. She shook it open and held it to the light. He watched her eyes move across the page, scanning, then they shot to his.
“My name’s on this deed,” she cried in a hoarse whisper.
“Yep,” he agreed with a nod of his head. “It sure is.”
“But how?” She turned her gaze to the deed again as if to make certain her name was really there.
“I tracked down the man who held Shorty’s note.”
“You bought the Rusty Corral?”
“In a matter of speaking.”
She quickly folded the deed back up and held it out to him. “Then your name should be on the deed, not mine.”
“I didn’t buy it,” he said. “I won it in a poker game.” When she tried to force the paper into his hands, he lifted them above his head, refusing to accept it. “The ranch is yours,” he argued, “as it should be, and it’s in your name now, so you don’t have to worry about losing it ever again.”
Setting her jaw, she stuffed the paper into his shirt pocket, then flipped off the light and stalked from the room.
He stared after her, wondering what he could possibly have done to make her mad this time. “Becky!” he shouted, following her. “What is wrong with you? I just gave you the deed to your ranch. I’d think you’d be jumping for joy.”
She wheeled to glare at him, her face mottled with fury. “I don’t want your charity, Forrest Cunningham. I can take care of myself.” Spinning back around, she strode angrily for the house.
Forrest stared after her a good two seconds, then took out after her. “Gawldangit, Becky Lee!” he cried. “Wait just a darn minute.” He grabbed her by the arm and spun her around to face him. “I’ve had it up to here,” he shouted, making a slash through the air at eye level, “with your damn pride.”
Her chin shot up. “Well, that’s too bad, because my pnde is all that I’ve got left.”
He closed his eyes and let his head fall back, striving for patience. How was a man supposed to argue with a statement like that? Becky Sullivan had more dignity in the tip of her finger, than most folks could claim in a lifetime. But there had to be a way to give her back her ranch without damaging her Texas-size pride.
Slowly he lowered his chin to meet her gaze. “Flip me for it.”
She quit struggling against his hold to stare. “What?”
“Flip me for it,” he said again. He released her to dig a coin from his pocket. “Heads or tails?”
She backed away from him. “No. The ranch is yours.”
“Hell! I didn’t buy it. I won it gambling. And Shorty lost it in the same damn way. What’s the difference if you win it back on a bet?”
She opened her mouth to argue the point, then closed it, frowning, when she couldn’t come up with a viable reason to offer him.
Knowing the chances of her winning the flip were only fifty-fifty, he sent up a silent prayer that the coin would fall in her favor. “Heads or tails?”
“Heads,” she muttered, folding her arms tightly across her chest.
He tossed the corn in the air, watching as it flipped end over end and dropped to the ground between them. He nearly sagged with relief when the face of a past president stared up at him from the ground. “Heads, it is,” he said and pulled the deed from his pocket. Taking her hand, he pressed the papers into it. “Congratulations, Miss Sullivan. You’re now the proud owner of the Rusty Corral.”
She hesitated a moment, then curled her fingers around the papers. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“I have something else for you.”
She looked up at him warily. “What?”
He slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the black sling-back. “I think this is yours.”
Judging by the color that rose to stain her cheeks as she stared at the shoe, he figured she remembered the night she’d lost it, and the events that followed.
He took a step closer. “There’s a fairy tale about a young woman who loses her shoe and the prince who returns it. They end up getting married. But first she has to try it on and makes sure it fits.”
“Don’t do this,” she murmured and turned away.
He heaved a frustrated breath as he watched her walk toward the house. He counted to ten, then started after her.
She must have heard him coming, because she broke into a run.
He ran, too.
She ran faster.
Weary of chasing her and of arguing with her, he made a dive for her, caught her around the knees and brought her to the ground. Before she had a chance to catch her breath, he was crawling his way up her back and flipping her over. Straddling her, with his knees pressed against her sides, he caught her hands and held them to the ground above her head. He shoved his face up close to hers. “You have to be the stubbornest, most contrary woman I’ve ever met in my life!”
She thrashed beneath him. “Let me up!”
“No, I’m not letting you up, until you hear me out.” He hauled in a deep breath, fighting for patience, and losing. “Here I am, busting my butt, tryi
ng everything in the world that I can think of to try to romance you into agreeing to marry me, and you keep refusing my proposals, which doesn’t make a lick of sense because I know damn good and well you’ve been in love with me for years. I saw that wall in your room and that rose that’s been hanging there for God only knows how long.”
She grew still so fast, it took Forrest a moment to realize she wasn’t fighting him any longer. It took another couple of seconds for him to realize he’d just told on himself.
“You went into my bedroom?” she said, the blood draining from her face.
He huffed a breath. “Yeah,” he admitted in embarrassment. “But I wasn’t snooping,” he added quickly. “I was looking for you and thought maybe you were m bed asleep.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please let me up.”
“Aww, now, Becky,” he began. But then he saw a tear slip down her cheek. He quickly rolled off her and pulled her up from the ground and onto his lap. “Don’t cry,” he begged, holding her against his chest. “Please don’t. You know I can’t stand it when you cry.”
Instead of calming her, his words only seemed to make her sob that much harder. He smoothed a hand over her hair, brushing it back from her face as he rocked back and forth, trying to soothe her. He pressed his lips against her temple. “Becky, please,” he whispered, desperate for her to stop. “I love you. I’d never do anything to hurt you. You’ve got to know that.”
Her fingernails dug into his skin as she pushed away from him, lifting her face to meet his gaze. “W-what did you say?” she whispered.
“That I wouldn’t hurt you?”
She dashed a hand beneath her eyes, swiping at the tears. “No. Before that.”
He frowned down at her. “That I love you?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting up straighter on his lap. “That part.”
“I love you,” he repeated, and watched her face crumple and her eyes flood with tears again. Then she was twisting around and throwing her arms around his neck.
The force overbalanced Forrest and he fell backwards with her sprawled across his chest. But he didn’t let go, and neither did she. She just kept squeezing her arms tighter around his neck and wetting his cheek with her tears. Slowly he wound his arms around her, unsure what had brought about the sudden change in her. “I love you,” he said again, waiting for her response.
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