“Molly! Yoo-hoo, Molly.” Esther Mae Wilcox, her red hair flaring out from the sides, came hustling down the walk toward her. Recently Lacy had given Esther a new style that had been gorgeous. Sadly though, most days it looked as if it’d been sent through the fluff cycle in the clothes dryer—with Esther Mae attached.
Today was no different. It fanned out on both sides in uneven wings, making her look as if she was moments away from taking flight.
“What’s up, Esther Mae?”
“I never did get to talk to you about getting attacked by Bob’s bull.”
Molly closed the computer screen. “I’m fine, Esther Mae. Don’t worry about me.”
Esther Mae sat down at the green picnic table and faced Molly.
“Bob rescued you.” Esther paused dramatically, her hair-wings fluttering at the sides. “Jumped right out in the center of that raging bull’s path and rescued you. Whip cracking. It’s straight out of the movies romantic. Don’t you think it’s Indiana Jones romantic?”
So she wasn’t the only one who put Bob and Indy in the same category. The word romantic, however, brought Molly away from daydreaming like a shot with a crooked needle. “Not romantic, Esther Mae. Heroic, yes.” Indiana Jones heroic!
“It’s the same thing. Why, the way Bob charged in there and rescued you from that bloodthirsty bull just makes my heart go thumpety-thump, thump.”
“Now, hold on, Esther Mae. Don’t get carried away. Remember, it was his bull in the first place. What was he supposed to do, let me get creamed right there in front of his house? There’s nothing romantic about self-preservation.”
Esther Mae harrumphed. “Now come on, Molly. You know you like the man. Why, you write the most dazzling things about him all the time. A person can’t write that way and not like someone in a special way.”
“Dazzling. Where did that come from? I write the facts. And the fact is that Bob is a nice guy who will make some woman a really great husband one day.”
“You. How about you?”
“Me.” Molly tried to play it cool—after all she’d felt this coming. Being cool was the best way. “Now Esther Mae, you need to go back over there to Heavenly Inspirations and tell Norma Sue and Lacy and Sheri…and Adela and whomever else is watching through the front glass that they can put their matchmaking caps back in the washing machine. Because if they think I’m going to be joining in the fray to make Bob mine, then obviously there’s something in their hats that needs a good cleaning out.”
Esther Mae frowned. “Well, I’ll be. If I hadn’t read the articles myself I would say some other woman wrote them.” She paused, her lips dropping into a deeper frown. The line of freckles across her cheeks seemed to mimic her frown, making her disappointment doubly pronounced.
Molly watched nervously, her fears heightening as Esther’s lips slowly started shifting upward and turned quickly into the smile of a crazed person. “You know he’s been having visitors. Lady visitors. Bearing food.”
She’d been on deadline for the Countryside article and also her weekly column, so she hadn’t allowed herself out of her apartment until this morning. It was no surprise that everyone knew about the day-care lady and Motorcycle Tammy. “Yes, I knew about the two of them. And I feel terrible—”
“Two. Honey, where have you been? Maybe two a day.”
“What?” A sense of dread snared Molly. She ran a hand down her face and groaned. Two a day. Poor Bob, he must be furious. It was going to take more than a meal of her sorry cooking to fix this. Why hadn’t he complained to her again? As upset as he’d been about day-care and motorcycle lady, why had he not come barging back to her apartment to vent at her again?
“I have to go, Esther Mae. See you later.” She fumbled with stuffing her computer into her backpack, knowing she was being watched like a hawk by Esther Mae, who would report her weird behavior to her cohorts. But this was no time to worry about what anyone thought of her. This was about Bob and the trouble she’d brought into his life.
All she could think of was finding him and apologizing. She was halfway across the road when Esther Mae called after her through her chuckles.
“If you think the visitors are something, you should see his mail delivery!”
Chapter Seven
Letting out a long whistle, Clint stared at Bob’s dining-room table. Bob was staring, too, as he’d been doing off and on for the past four hours, ever since the mail had arrived. It just wasn’t right.
When he’d confessed he was ready for the Lord to send him a wife, he’d never envisioned his eight-foot-long dining-room table piled high with envelopes! There were purple envelopes, pink envelopes, envelopes with little sparkly doodads all over them, envelopes with squiggles and envelopes with flowers. And he could see a few mixed in there with kisses all over them—real or fake, he didn’t plan to get close enough to find out.
And that was just what he could see from a distance.
Sad but true. The sight of all that fluff and flounce was enough to make a man queasy. And if looking at the rainbow mountain of unabashed calls for attention didn’t choke a cowboy down, the smell was enough to get the job done and then some. Bob figured all the flowery aromas emanating from the stack could knock a cowboy out of the saddle from a good twenty yards away.
And here he and Clint were standing in the same house with it!
“Oh boy Hoss, you weren’t kidding,” Clint said, fanning the air with his hat. “Have you read any of them?” Getting brave, he ventured forward and, with two fingers, plucked up a green one by the corner. It was embellished with a strand of yellow flowers running across the top. Slowly he lifted it up to the light, back to his nose and sniffed. “Whoa!”
Bob watched his friend’s eyes tear up.
“You’re braver than me,” he said, taking two steps back when Clint waved it toward him. “No way! If I’d known the mailman was hauling that across my cattle guard, I’d have made certain Sylvester was out front to run him off.”
It was true. He’d been stupefied when he opened his front door to a frowning mailman who had informed him he wasn’t a city mail carrier, he was rural carrier, and that meant he didn’t care to make house calls but they didn’t have room for the letters down at the office. And then the skinny man had dropped the backbreaking bag at his feet. Reeling, Bob had watched him stalk to his vehicle and drive away.
Suffering from shock and unable to think of anything else to say or do, Bob had picked up the heavy tote and carried it to his table.
Clint snapped the envelope at him, bringing his wandering mind back to the present. “Come on, Bob. You gotta read at least a few. Who knows? Your one true love might be waiting in that pile. Could be this pea-green one right here.”
Bob didn’t smile. “Knock yourself out. Go for it. My thoughts are that they’re all kooks.”
Clint’s grin exploded and he started ripping. The sound of an approaching truck—and John Boy’s yaps—gave Bob the excuse to leave Clint to read alone. As he walked to the back door to see who else had arrived for the party, Clint’s chuckles followed him.
“Give me patience, Lord, and don’t let this be another surprise.” Or a truckload of cowhands come to gloat.
“Hey Brady,” he called, seeing his friend. The tall lawman walked up the pebbled path, looking as disgruntled as Bob felt.
“You’d better not be bringing me any more bad news,” he called, stepping out onto the porch for some much-needed fresh air. John Boy scurried to him and immediately sat on his boot and leaned against his leg, growling at Brady. Bob bent down to run a reassuring hand along the puppy’s back. “If you are bringing bad news, I’ll give you five seconds to turn around and head on back to town before I set my dog on you.” He grinned up at Brady before straightening and offering him his hand in greeting.
Brady shook his hand but didn’t smile. “I hate to say it’s not the best of news. I thought I’d give your place another drive-by before heading home. I’m sorry to tell you, but Motorcy
cle Tammy is out there sitting at your cattle guard again. This is spooky, Bob. That’s four days she’s been hanging around here. She’d set up a tent out there if I didn’t run her off. My official advice is if she doesn’t heed my warning and disappear, then you ought to obtain a restraining order. These days this isn’t something to fool around with.”
Bob braced a hand on the porch post and studied the setting sun, trying to tamp down the turmoil inside his chest. He hated to feel anger at Molly building again, but it was there. Sure, she hadn’t meant any of this to happen, but it had. And he was the one paying for her lack of responsible reporting.
“I’m not scared of a woman,” he said. “Tammy is one short of a full deck, but I won’t believe she’s dangerous. Not yet anyway.”
“Don’t be so sure. It’s not about what you believe and don’t believe. We’re talking facts here, and in my days on the force in Houston I’ve seen tragedy happen under circumstances far less suspect.”
Bob realized he might be in denial but he refused to give in to this. “We’ll take it a step at a time. How’s that?”
“It’s your call.”
Chuckles from inside the house penetrated the evening air. Bob cocked his head and slanted a glance at Brady. “That’s Clint. He’s reading my mail.”
“Oh yeah, I heard about that. Seems you’re more popular than Santa Claus. Norma Sue saw Jarvis at the diner and he pointed it out to her and the others before coming your way with it. You know what that means.”
“Yeah, I know. I can hear the laughter already.” Bob hung his head, realizing everyone knew what was on his table. “You go take a look and tell me if it’s funny. But hold your nose.”
Reluctantly he trailed behind Brady, who strode inside, as anxious as Bob was certain all of Mule Hollow was, to see the dog-and-pony show his life had turned into. Thanks to the one and only Miss Molly Popp.
“I didn’t mean this to happen,” Molly said, looking around the salon full of women. Heavenly Inspirations was packed. Literally. Norma Sue and Esther Mae were in the styling chairs. Sheri and Adela were at the manicure table while Sheri gave Adela her weekly manicure. Lacy was leaning against the wall listening to Molly with the intensity of a master chess player. And Molly was sitting uncomfortably in the shampoo chair wishing she could crawl down the drain and drown herself. Bob had refused her calls and, though she’d been watching for him, he hadn’t come to town so she had no way of apologizing. It was abundantly clear that he held her responsible.
“This isn’t your fault, Molly,” Norma Sue said, but her trademark smile, the one that seemed to stretch from the top of Texas to the bottom, was missing.
“Norma Sue, you know it is. If I hadn’t written that article, Bob wouldn’t be holed up at his ranch like a prisoner. I never thought I would say this, but thank goodness Sylvester is there to deter trespassers. Applegate and Stanley have even started calling them Bob-hunters! How horrible is that?”
It was true. The day after she and Bob had dined together at her apartment the women began showing up, one or two a day, and some hadn’t gone away. Specifically Motorcycle Tammy. Why, at this very moment she was down the street at Sam’s, eating. And it was killing Applegate and Stanley, since they weren’t inside getting the scoop. Because of their mysterious ongoing feud with Sam, the two old-timers had left their checkers on the picnic table in front of Pete’s and could be seen hovering at the window of the diner, watching from outside. They refused to go inside even though it was obvious their curiosity was eating them alive. It was pathetic.
“Molly, don’t fret,” Esther Mae said, breaking into her morose thoughts. Molly glanced at her in time to see her patting her hair. Though Lacy had long since cut off Esther Mae’s beehive that had jiggled and swayed with her every movement, the habit of patting it to make sure it was still hitched tight to her head was ingrained in Esther’s DNA. “Bob said he wanted a wife. The boy is just going to have to get used to the idea that there is obviously an overwhelming bunch of females who would love the position. It’s like that movie with Tom Hanks where the son calls into the radio station trying to get his dad a new wife. Oh, I just loved that movie. Saw it again just last night. Of course it would be nice if some of these gals were normal. You think in your next article you could specifically state those without a brain need not apply.”
“It’s not that they don’t have brains, Esther Mae,” Norma Sue snapped. “It’s simply that God gave ants much more common sense than He chose to give these poor gals.”
Esther Mae looked at Norma Sue as if she’d come from another planet. “Norma Sue. Normal women don’t tape signs on the sides of their cars with the slogan Marry Me, Bob. And what about yesterday when that woman had that trunk full of speakers and she plum started a stampede out at his ranch while she played love songs to the poor guy. That ain’t a lack of common sense. That’s dingier than a dingbat right there.”
Norma Sue shook her head. “So says you. It might take spunky personalities like that to round out Bob’s calm, quiet personality.”
Molly figured she’d demolished that sweet part of Bob’s personality.
“Ladies,” Adela said in her soft voice of reason. “Getting yourselves in a dither isn’t going to solve anything.”
Molly listened to the two friends debate and she had to agree with Esther Mae on this one, which was unusual. She would have believed that Norma Sue would think the women were crazy and that Esther Mae would have found their behavior normal. The fact that the debate was completely upside down was just par for the course of this entire trip into loopyland. But, either way, normal women didn’t do the crazy things Bob’s suitors had done. They didn’t take a vanload of preschoolers on a field trip to see a bachelor. After all, Bob wasn’t a puppy in a window or a monkey in a cage. Although, because of her, he was probably feeling like one.
Esther Mae frowned. “Adela, I’m not in a dither. And to be fair to Norma, I have to agree that the woman in the wedding dress might need a little professional guidance.”
“Esther Mae, hush,” Norma Sue snapped, glancing at Molly.
The knot in the pit of Molly’s stomach tightened. “What woman in a wedding dress?” She hadn’t heard about this one. She scanned the room, which had suddenly gone quite as a courtroom hearing a verdict. Sheri was suddenly concentrating a little too hard on the manicure she was giving Adela and even Adela looked as if she was in prayer. Which meant she was seeking guidance from the Lord or praying for intervention. Molly’s inquiring eyes settled on Lacy.
The blond dynamo suddenly looked like she’d swallowed bad milk. “Now Molly, don’t get worked up over this.”
Those words confirmed Molly’s suspicion that something more had happened, something she wasn’t going to like. The fact that Lacy’s pink fingernails were tapping double time on her hipbone proved it further.
Lacy ran a hand through her hair, glanced around the room then met Molly’s gaze. “Okay, I’ll tell you, but please don’t freak out. Everything is fine. It really is. God is in control of everything that’s happening. Yes, it might be a little weird. Yes, it might not be the straightest path to finding the right woman for Bob, but the Lord is still in control.”
Molly stood up. “Lacy, tell me what has happened that I don’t know about. Please.”
“Applegate and Stanley saw a woman wearing a wedding dress come into town yesterday afternoon. You know how they are suffering because they aren’t in the big thick of things down at Sam’s. So as we’ve all seen, even though they aren’t down at the diner, they can see plenty from the picnic table in front of the feed store. They can at least watch who comes and goes at the diner. And well, Sam confirmed what they’ve been telling everyone—that a woman wearing a satin wedding dress and a tiara came into the diner yesterday.”
How had she missed this?
There was a collective sigh that skipped around the room. If this was true then Molly had single-handedly turned Bob Jacobs’s life into a fiasco.
&nb
sp; And this was on top of the already scary reality that Bob may literally have a stalker on his hands. Sheriff Brady had had to make several trips to Bob’s to tell Motorcycle Tammy she couldn’t stake a claim on Bob’s property. Or Bob. The woman had tried three nights in a row to actually pitch a tent in the ditch beside Bob’s cattle guard!
She scared Molly. She was too intense…a normal woman didn’t throw herself at a man the first time she saw him. And Bob had said he’d had to do more fancy footwork to avoid being captured by her than he’d done in any arena at a bullfighting competition. That was scary.
Then there were the cakes. The mailman was in a tizzy. He’d delivered more perishables to Bob’s in a week than he’d delivered in his entire twenty years on the job. Not to mention the hefty bags of cards and letters still coming. Esther Mae was right in some comparisons to the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Both Tom Hanks and Bob had received loads of mail, but this wasn’t a movie. This was real life—Bob’s life—and Molly may have put it in jeopardy.
It didn’t matter that she hadn’t meant to, that her intentions had been honorable. In the movie, the response had been a flood of marriage proposals by sympathetic women, and Tom’s character had eventually found the perfect woman. But again, this was no movie. This was real life, and if Bob’s Miss Right did happen to respond to anything she’d written in her articles, it wouldn’t matter. She would be lost in the circus that Molly had created!
It was all too stupid to be real, but sadly, being stupid didn’t make it go away. It was very much reality and she had to find a way to make it right. She had to.
“Molly, come with me.” Lacy grabbed her by the hand and pulled her from her chair. “I think you need de-stressing. And that means a ride in my pink Cadillac.”
Molly thought about resisting. But Lacy loved to ride in her pink 1958 Cadillac convertible. And though Molly was touched by her efforts to cheer her, she hated to tell Lacy that even a ride in her precious car couldn’t fix the mess she’d created. But she couldn’t find an excuse not to go, especially with Lacy dragging her and everyone else practically pushing her out the door to where the Caddy sat like a big pink life raft.
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