Love With a Perfect Cowboy

by Lori Wilde

  “Strong romantic relationships are based on honesty and trust.” His assistant scuttled across the room to straighten a pile of papers on his desk.

  “Good Lord, Eloise,” he blustered. “What on earth are you talking about? I have no romantic designs on Melody Spencer.”

  “There’s no love like your first love, especially when your particular young love ended so tragically.”

  “We weren’t in love,” he growled. “We were just kids fooling around.”

  “And yet you think you know exactly what she needs. Why is that, Mayor?” She tilted her head like a curious sparrow and gave him the hard edge of her stare.

  Luke pushed back from the desk, got to his feet and grabbed his Stetson from the deer antler hat rack mounted on the wall.

  “She’s going to resent you trying to control her, you know.” Eloise tracked after him as he stalked toward the door. “Why do you think she moved all the way to New York? She was desperate to get away from that mother of hers and the bad blood bubbling between your families.”

  Luke stopped short.

  Eloise smacked into his back. “Good gravy, Nielson. Warn a woman when you’re going to jam on the brakes.”

  He spun around, lowered his head until he was eye to eye with Eloise, and growled, “Don’t follow on a man’s heels nipping at him like a Jack Russell terrier if you can’t accept the consequences.”

  Eloise notched up her chin. “You don’t scare me, cowboy. I wiped your snotty nose right along with my own kids.”

  “Which is why I’m saying this politely. Butt out of my personal business.”

  “Now see, you’re speaking from both sides of your mouth,” Eloise yammered and it was all Luke could do to keep from rolling his eyes. “On the one hand, you claim you’re luring Melody back to Cupid for the town’s sake. Then you say it’s because she belongs here. On top of all that you declare you have no romantic intentions toward her and yet you tell me to butt out of your personal life. Which is it?”

  He decided not to answer, pulled his Stetson down over his eyes, and walked right out the door.

  “Run away all you want, Mayor,” Eloise called after him. “It’s not going to change the fact that your feelings for Melody run deep and if you bring her back here, it’s going to cause more problems than it will solve.”

  Chapter 9

  UNABLE to catch a flight out of LaGuardia until late afternoon, Melody spent Thursday night in a layover at DFW before catching another flight to El Paso. In El Paso, she picked up the Corvette she kept in storage for the drive home. Her father had bought her the 1971 white convertible muscle car for high school graduation. She smiled and stroked the dashboard, remembering. She named the car Courtney and they’d had a helluva summer, playing chase with the boys up and down the back roads of Jeff Davis County, until she got accepted at NYU and everything changed. Courtney was the only vehicle she’d ever owned and they were going home.

  Home.

  She was going home.

  For the last twelve years, home had been New York City. But had it really been home or just the place she lived and worked? The Trans-­Pecos was the place of her heart. It was also the place she’d been desperate to escape, in no small part because of Luke and the Fant-­Nielson feud. She had wanted to get as far away from all that craziness as she could get.

  And then there was her lofty dream to be somebody. That’s what she told her high school guidance counselor when the woman asked Melody what she wanted to be. Somebody.

  Look at you now, big shot, Little Miss Nobody, running home with her tail between her legs.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she told Courtney, even as an instant headache bloomed the minute she drove the Corvette out of the car storage parking garage and into the baking sun. “We’ll be back on top. This is just a hiccup in the grand scheme of things. We have to look at it as an opportunity to redeem ourselves. Think how good this will look on our résumé. Facilitated the town of Cupid’s turnaround after a record-­breaking drought. How many ­people can say that?”

  She stopped for gas, bottled water, ibuprofen, and a pair of cheap sunglasses. Her three-­hundred-­dollar Oakleys were MIA in the midst of her life’s upheaval. Just one more thing lost.

  No matter how she sliced it, coming home was a culture shock. Trading fast pace for slow moving. Tight confines for wide open spaces. Cement for sand. Humid for arid. Shopping for … well, nothing. Whenever she came for visits, she didn’t feel the same impact because she knew she’d be leaving again, but now, there were no guarantees.

  She commiserated with Eva Gabor in Green Acres, her grandmother Rose’s favorite show. Even as a kid, whenever she watched the reruns with her grandmother, she wondered why in the hell Eva hadn’t packed her bags, served Eddie Albert with divorce papers, and beat a hasty retreat back to the Big Apple.

  Yeah, and why don’t you?

  No means, baby. No means.

  Eva’s character Lisa Douglas had been rich. Melody was not.

  The farther southeast she drove from El Paso, the more arid the terrain became. Cupid dangled on the edge of Chihuahuan Desert, in the Davis Mountain Range, so while the area was dry and warm, the elevation kept it from being insufferable and the mountains added an austere beauty found nowhere else in Texas. It was a climate of rugged contrasts and fascinating vistas; the interplay of shifting shadow and light drew the eye to the mountains jutting above the flat rocks, desert sand, and outcroppings. The extreme landscape drew artists from all over the world, eager to capture the isolated extremes of earth and sky with a brush and canvas.

  She hadn’t been home in almost a year, since her cousin Lace’s wedding the previous summer. Her parents had come to New York for the Christmas holidays to see her because she’d simply been too busy at work to get away.

  Whenever she took the drive from El Paso to Cupid, Melody couldn’t help feeling awed, humbled, inspired, and insignificant in the face of such vastness, but this time she felt something more.

  This time, she was scared.

  There was the normal desert, full of interest and charm, and then there was this … this … blight, burning malignant and long-­armed, scalding the earth from El Paso southeastward across the Trans-­Pecos. The dragon’s-­breath of a west wind scorching every last bit of green to the color of dried bones. Familiar water holes were nothing but dry gulches. Sand billowed across the asphalt, covering long stretches of lonely road in serpentine ropes that shifted with the wind, in haunting, mesmerizing undulations.

  She gnawed on her bottom lip, dried out already from the lack of moisture in the air. Steering one-­handed, she drank from her water bottle, dug a tube of Carmex from her purse and dabbed it on her lips.

  The drive took her from one small town after another. “For Sale” signs peppered yards. Businesses were boarded up. Lean cattle with hipbones showing wandered barren fields, trying to graze dirt.

  Her throat tightened and her eyes were dry and itchy.

  Why hadn’t anyone told her it was this bad? Of course, her mother had spoken of how dry it was, but she hadn’t really paid much attention. Dry spells were nothing new in the Trans-­Pecos. It always rained. Eventually.

  Except clearly it had not.

  The baling-­wire sensation came over her and the closer she got to Cupid, the tighter the band around her lungs grew. Relentless sun had baked the once bright blue awning over the roadside farmers’ market stall west of town to a dingy gray. The stalls were empty. No cars in the parking lot. No produce to sell.

  She drove past the True Love Performance Hall, where local theater troupes, musicians, dancers, and stand-­up comedians brought their art to life every weekend during tourist season. A big white banner, declaring, “All Performances Canceled Until Further Notice Due to Extreme Drought,” stretched across the entrance.

  Melody stopped at one of three stoplights in Cupid. No cars were coming in either direction. Idly, she waited for the light to turn green and glanced over at the Perfect Bud
dies Animal Shelter that boasted an ironclad “no kill” policy. A “No Vacancy” sign was posted in the window, with an added plea penciled in underneath. “Please don’t abandon your pets, but if you’re absolutely desperate, Angi Morgan can take one or two more. Call 432–555–5555.”

  Her heart wrenched. ­People were in such dire straits they were having to surrender their beloved pets? By the time she pulled up in front of her parents’ house on the affluent Stone Street, the muscle in her left eyelid was jumping so hard and fast she could barely see.

  It struck her then exactly what she was up against in this laughable attempt to bring tourism back to Cupid.

  Mother Nature was a vicious bitch of a villain and Melody was armed with nothing but the ridiculous belief that she could possibly make a difference.

  “CAN YOU BELIEVE my darling daughter gave up her career on Madison Avenue to come home and save our town?” Melody’s mother, Carol Ann, pressed a hand against her heart like she was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance and glanced around the table at the women who gathered at the Cupid Community Center every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at noon to answer the letters from the lovelorn who wrote to Cupid.

  “Mother,” Melody protested, “that’s not—­”

  “Don’t be modest, darling.” Her mother draped a hand over Melody’s shoulder, a subtle warning to go along with her version of events. “Everyone knows what a sacrifice it was for you to leave Manhattan and give up everything you’ve built in order to aid in our town’s struggle for survival.”

  Her mother sure knew how to spin things. As much as Melody hated to admit that she was anything like her mother, it was probably where she’d gotten her talent for casting things in a creative light.

  She had no more walked into her parents’ home than her mother had grabbed her arm and said, “Come on. Now that you’re back home, you’re permanently on the volunteer committee. We’re shorthanded this week because Mignon and Sandra decided to go on a cruise together and we lost Zoey to love when she got engaged to Jericho and they took off for some dig site in Belize.”

  Zoey was Melody’s youngest first cousin, and the latest of Millie Greenwood’s four great-­granddaughters to find love. Of the four women, Melody was the lone holdout. She never really bought into the romantic notion that if you wrote a letter to Cupid, begging for his help with your love life, you’d find your soul mate. Great-­Grandmother Millie, a pretty housemaid, had been the genesis of the legend in 1924, when she wrote a letter to Cupid begging divine intervention in her seemingly hopeless love for the wealthiest man in town, John Fant. On his wedding day, John had left his betrothed, Elizabeth Nielson, standing at the altar and declared his undying love for Millie, sparking the infamous family feud.

  Then again, Melody’s three cousins had believed the legend and look, they all found enduring relationships.

  Pah!

  That soul mate stuff was wish fulfillment, nothing more. They expected to find love and so they had. Honestly, how on earth could writing a letter to a mythical god cause a person to find her soul mate?

  And what the hell was a soul mate anyway?

  “So why did you really leave New York?” Great-­Aunt Delia asked from her place at the head of the table. The old gal was closing in on eighty and believed she’d earned the right to freely speak her mind.

  Melody took the empty seat to Great-­Aunt Delia’s right. “Well—­”

  “It was a broken romance,” her mother interjected. “Melody’s former boyfriend, the renowned photographer Jean-­Claude Laurent, was always off on a photo shoot. You know it’s so hard maintaining a long-­distance relationship. They decided it just wasn’t working.”

  Great-­Aunt Delia slid a look at Carol Ann, who was standing between her and Melody. “So your lover dumped ya, huh?”

  The veins in her mother’s neck bulged. “Must we say the word ‘lover’?”

  “It is a more accurate term than boyfriend,” logical Lace Bettingfield Hollister pointed out. Lace was a botanist and married to former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Pierce Hollister. “Since Jean-­Claude is neither a boy, nor much of a friend. That is unless he wasn’t your lover, Mel.”

  “I was living with him,” Melody confirmed sheepishly. “But only for two weeks.”

  “That’s not how I raised you.” Her mother sniffed. “To live in sin.”

  “Chill out, Carol Ann.” Great-­Aunt Delia smacked her cane against the floor. “The girl is almost thirty. She’s entitled to have sex. What did you expect her to do? Hang on to her virginity forever?”

  “Natalie did,” her mother replied. “She waited for Mr. Right.”

  “Natalie’s different. Can’t compare apples to oranges.” Great-­Aunt Delia leaned forward, her gaze locked on Melody’s. “So what happened with the French fella?”

  “He left my things with the doorman of our building and locked me out of the apartment.”

  “What an ass,” declared Natalie McCleary Vega as she bounced her five-­month-­old son, Nathan, on her knee. Natalie was the oldest of Millie Greenwood’s great-­granddaughters and the cousin closest in age to Melody. “You’re better off without him.”

  Melody concurred. In retrospect, she wasn’t proud of her choices.

  “You poor thing. Locked out of your own apartment. How humiliating that must have been for you,” Junie Mae Prufrock soothed, and reached over to pat Melody’s hand. Junie Mae was a dead ringer for Dolly Parton, bouffant hair, Southern twang, and all. She owned the LaDeDa Day Spa and Hair Salon right next door to Natalie’s B&B, Cupid’s Rest. Junie Mae was also on the board of directors of the Cupid Chamber of Commerce. Slapping a palm over her heart, Junie Mae exclaimed, “I would have been devastated.”

  “Oh,” Melody said. “The breakup with Jean-­Claude was a nonentity compared to—­”

  “Ahem.” Mouth twitching, her mother scowled at Melody, shook her head sharply. She smoothed nonexistent wrinkles out of her crisply ironed size-­four skirt and then waved a hand at the stack of letters in the middle of the table that everyone was gathered around. “We should be getting down to business. These letters won’t answer themselves.”

  “What is your mother trying to prevent us from finding out?” Natalie asked, gently pulling her car keys away from her son, who was using them as a teething ring. “Shoo, honey, those are nasty.”

  “I got fired from Tribalgate,” Melody confessed.

  Defeated, her mother sank down in the vacant chair catty-­cornered from where Melody was sitting and flapped a hand. “Fine, go ahead. Spill all your secrets. I was just trying to save you some shame and embarrassment.”

  “I appreciate that. But you and Daddy taught me that honesty was the best policy.”

  “Unless it’s something you should keep your mouth shut about,” her mother muttered, and reached for a letter. “Let’s see here—­”

  “Why did you get fired?” Lace asked.

  “Coincidentally enough, for being too honest.”

  “See there.” Her mother sliced open the envelope with a letter opener. “Sometimes it is better to play your cards close to the vest.”

  “Keeping secrets leads to trouble. As long as you are on the up-­and-­up, you don’t have anything to worry about, but when you start slipping around doing things you’re not supposed to do …” Great-­Aunt Delia was staring right at her.

  A moment of stark panic flashed through her. She knows I slept with Luke!

  But that was ridiculous. How could Great-­Aunt Delia know about that? Unless Luke blabbed. But why would he?

  “To continue with Mother’s card-­playing analogy, that’s why I’m laying my cards on the table even when she wants me to pretend I quit New York and not the other way around. I’m not doing anything clandestine.”

  “You sure? ’Cause the guilty dog usually barks first.”

  Oh Lord, she’d forgotten what a handful Great-­Aunt Delia could be. “Nothing to bark about, Auntie.”

  “You don’t wan
t to tell us how Luke Nielson managed to coax you back here?” Great-­Aunt Delia’s eyes were sharp as a whetted blade.

  Melody lifted one shoulder, did her best to look nonchalant. “He offered me a job when I had none.”

  “That’s it?” Great-­Aunt Delia sounded disappointed.

  “What were you expecting? That I came back to Cupid because of Luke?”

  “You’re young, he’s hot, things happen.”

  “Aunt Delia!” her mother exclaimed. “He’s a Nielson. Melody would never be involved with him.”

  “I wouldn’t say never,” Great-­Aunt Delia muttered. “She made out with him once.”

  “Long ago,” her mother rushed to say, but she threw Melody a worried frown. “When she was fifteen, and an impulsive child acting out. She’s a grown woman now and she knows better. “She’s not stupid enough to sleep with a Nielson. Not after what happened.”

  Just call me Stupid.

  “Would it be the worst thing in the world if she did?” Great-­Aunt Delia raised her chin. “Might mend a few fences.”

  Her mother gasped. “Do you want a repeat of fifteen years ago?”

  “I’m not sleeping with Luke,” Melody said. Not currently anyway. That was truthful enough. No one need know about their indiscretion. It was never going to happen again.

  “Well, I for one don’t care what brought you back.” Peacemaking Natalie came to her rescue. “I’m just happy that you’re home. We’ve missed you something fierce.”

  “Amen.” Junie Mae nodded. “We heard about the cornbread contest. You are a creative genius.”

  “And she managed to get three top-­tier Food Network judges to put in an appearance,” her mother bragged. “Don’t forget that. Melody has important connections.”

  “We shouldn’t be countin’ those chickens.” Great-­Aunt Delia rapped her knuckles on the table. “I’ve raised chickens all my life and ninety-­nine percent of the time, there’s a few that don’t hatch. And even of the ones that do, usually a chick or two will die right off the bat.”