Love Me Some Cowboy

by Lisa Mondello

  "Did he tell you to tell me this?" Ray demanded.

  "No. He doesn't know I'm here."

  He narrowed his eyes. "You sure do want to get hold of that property, don't you?"

  Cassie lifted her chin. "Yes. It's what I was sent here to do."

  "And you'll do anything, say anything, to get it!"

  "No! I'm telling you the truth, Mr. Taylor. As I said, think back."

  He continued to look at her, his eyes tiny slits. "It's still not going to make any difference."

  Cassie frowned. "Do you hate your brother and his family that much?"

  She startled him by being so direct. "No!" he denied, shocked.

  "Then why are you doing this?"

  Ray, Jr. came up on them at that moment. "Dad? Cassie? What's going on?" He looked from one to the other, his round face concerned.

  Cassie knew Jimmy wouldn't approve of the way she'd handled herself in this instance. She'd pushed too hard when, no matter what, she was supposed to stay calm. She took a breath, released it. "Please, Mr. Taylor, think about what I said. I'm telling you the truth."

  Ray Taylor pivoted and walked away, straight into the store.

  Ray, Jr. stared after him. Then shaking his head, murmured, "Whatever you said sure got under his skin. I've never seen my dad be so rude to a woman before."

  "I certainly hope so," Cassie replied, and got into her car to head back to the ranch.

  ~~~~

  WILL FINISHED TIGHTENING sagging wire between two fence posts, stowed the gear in his saddlebag and swung back up onto the gelding. Jimmy danced around, protesting being moved. They were in a pretty spot where wild grasses were lush and the sun, peeping through tree leaves, dappled the hard, rocky ground.

  "I know…I know," Will said in sympathy. "I'm not much happier about it than you are. Been a rough day all around. And I'd like to stay here longer, just like you, but we can't do it. Not today."

  The horse settled down and Will urged him forward, continuing along the line of fence. He checked for spots that needed work and also kept an eye on the cows and calves in this far pasture. The job didn't take a lot of concentration, so his mind soon wandered to where it seemed to wander a lot these days—to Cassie. His mom hadn't said a word, but he knew she had a good idea what she would have interrupted if she'd been a few minutes later coming into the kitchen earlier in the day. He hadn't meant for it to happen. Hell, he hadn't meant for any of it to happen! Yet, it had…and it kept on happening. There was something about Cassie he just couldn't resist. He was drawn to her like a bee to clover. All she had to do was look at him.

  It didn't seem to matter that this wasn't the right time. That he wasn't ready. That, from the look of it, she wasn't ready either. Something was going on between them. And it would not be ignored.

  He'd waited all his adult life, hoping that one day he'd meet the right woman—a woman he could love as his father had loved his mother. A woman who would love him back in the same way. Anything less wouldn't be enough. Was Cassie the right woman?

  He came upon some wire pulled loose from a post, slipped out of the saddle, reattached it, then hopped back up and moved on.

  He wanted to get to know her better, but he wasn't sure she would let him. She held herself so tightly contained. For self-protection? Returning to Love couldn't have been a picnic for her. He hadn't realized quite how difficult it had been until she'd lost control after they'd visited her mother.

  He'd held her then, offering what comfort he could, and she'd let him. Then last night, on the front porch— He whistled under his breath. That had been good for an almost sleepless night afterward...when she was just down the hall.

  He didn't care who her mother was. Bonnie Edwards was…Bonnie Edwards. The strange lady around town. How she acted, how she talked was her business. Her behavior didn't hurt anyone. Except, it seemed, Cassie.

  He directed Jimmy away from the fence to check a drinking tub, to make sure there weren't any leaks and that the water pipe was flowing smoothly from the windmill beside it. While there, a couple of cows lumbered up to drink, their calves trailing behind.

  Will spoke softly to them before he and Jimmy headed back to continue riding fence.

  His unexpected feelings for Cassie placed him in a quandary about the future. Even though it seemed a betrayal to the past to sell the strip of land the Taylors had long considered the Home Place, it would do them all kinds of good to sell it. But once the sale was completed—if it completed—Cassie would go back to Houston. And even if it wasn't completed, the outcome would be the same: Cassie would go back to Houston.

  To a boyfriend? To a "significant other"? And when that happened—even if there wasn't a boyfriend or an "other"—how would he press his case? He couldn't take time away from the ranch. Not enough for something like that.

  "You know, Jimmy," he said dejectedly to the horse, "sometimes I envy you. High point of your day is a good brushin', some fresh water, and a nice bunch of oats."

  Then he started to laugh, because he didn't much think he'd enjoy going through life as a gelding.

  ~~~~

  AT THE RANCH, Cassie found Sylvia in the kitchen going through a box of photographs. Numerous prints were spread out on the table. The woman held one in her hand as she sat back, smiling.

  "Oh, I haven't done this in years. Look, Cassie. This is Will. He's nine months old and see where he is?" She showed Cassie the photo of a cowboy mounted on a horse with a baby tucked in front of him on the saddle. "That's my Johnny, Will's dad. By the time I took this, he'd already had Will up and ridin' around the horse pasture with him for a couple of months." She showed her another photo. "And this is Will at four." A very young towheaded boy sat alone in the saddle atop a full-sized horse. "He was goin' out in the pastures with his daddy and granddad by this time. The boy teethed on a saddle. I come from a farm family, not a ranch one. We didn't have any horses. So I was always a little worried, but I didn't need to be. Johnny and Dad looked after him."

  Drawn to the snapshots, Cassie slipped into a chair. "This is Robbie," she said, pointing to one near at hand. The man she was looking at was much younger and stood much straighter, with a shock of brown hair instead of white, but it was unmistakably him.

  "And here's Ray," Sylvia said. "These must have been taken before their daddy died. So they'd be in their—" she calculated "—mid-twenties." Ray was markedly slimmer than now and had a full head of brown hair worn slicked down close to his head. And though he was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved western shirt, he didn't look nearly as comfortable in them as Robbie did.

  "And this is Johnny when he was a boy. And this was him about the time we met." She held onto the last photo for a moment, touched a finger to his suspended-in-time face then sighed and passed it on. "I miss him to this day. He was the love of my life."

  Cassie vaguely remembered Will's father. At a greater age, of course. He could barely be twenty here, if that. She could see some of his father in Will, but more of his mother.

  "He was only forty-two when he died," Sylvia murmured.

  "How did he die?" Cassie asked softly.

  "He was clearin' some brush, hit a bad spot, and the tractor rolled over on him. It was gettin' late, right at dark, but he needed to finish the job, so he kept goin', and—" She looked away, remembering.

  Cassie fingered through more snapshots, some older, many newer. A younger Sylvia with her Johnny, Will in a football uniform, Will graduating from high school, one or two Will must have taken at college and sent home. Photographs to mark the life of a family.

  Bonnie hadn't taken any photos of her as a baby. Or if she had, they were destroyed along with those of her father. There were none from her growing years either, since Bonnie had refused to buy any of her school photos.

  She touched one or two more of Sylvia's pictures as a sense of melancholy settled over her.

  "I brought these out," Sylvia said, breaking into Cassie's abstraction, "because I thought I remembered having s
omethin' you'll be interested in. Here—" she pushed a photograph she'd been holding back over to Cassie "—take a look at this."

  Cassie lifted it. It was an official type of photograph taken at some kind of groundbreaking ceremony in town. A crowd of people huddled around a man—Ray Taylor—who stood, smiling widely and at the ready with a pair of scissors to cut a ribbon draped across the opening to a park play area. Brand-new children's swings and slides, a roundabout and an intricate wood climbing structure were in the background. "It's the park in town," Cassie murmured.

  "See the man two down from Ray on his left?" Sylvia asked.

  Cassie followed the direction…and her body became very still as unconscious memory surged forward to whisper who he was. "Is this—?" she breathed.

  "That's your daddy, Patrick Edwards. He built the fort, as well as put the rest of the play equipment together."

  Cassie eyes were riveted on the man. He had long dark hair, as Sylvia had said, and was handsome in an eternally boyish way, with a smile that invited everyone else to drop what they were dong and join him in some fun. She remembered the "fort" too, dubbed that name by all the children who played in and on it.

  "He built the fort?" she echoed. Her mother had never taken her there. Cassie had gone on her own, of course, when few others were about, never knowing that her father—

  She touched his face with a wondrous finger, unconsciously mimicking Sylvia's earlier action. She'd been so young when she'd lost him. She had snatches of memory—the two of them playing together, him making her laugh. Up to now, though, she'd not had a fully realized face. Her father…

  Anger and resentment against her mother bubbled up and over, catching Cassie unawares. "Why would Bonnie throw all his pictures away? Why?" she demanded. "What harm could it possibly do for me to remember him? She stole him from me! She—" Tears welled up and slid over her cheeks. Embarrassed, she wiped them away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

  "You don't need to apologize, Cassie," Sylvia inserted softly. "I'm the one who should apologize for springing this on you. I should have warned you better."

  Cassie sniffed. She'd teared up more in the last couple of days than she had in…well, since she was a teenager. "I just don't understand," she murmured. "Why Bonnie would—" She couldn't finish.

  "People have a lot of reasons for doin' what they do. Have you ever asked her?"

  "Sane people, yes."

  "Have you ever asked her?" Sylvia repeated.

  Cassie lifted her eyes from her father's face. "No, but she's not—"

  "Ask her," Sylvia urged. "Your mother's not crazy, Cassie. She does some odd things and has some odd beliefs, but I've watched her for years, talked to her a number of times over those years, too, and she's just as sane as I am."

  Cassie gave Sylvia a searching look of her own. "There are so many things—"

  "Ask her about them, too," Sylvia encouraged. "At the very least, you'll have tried. But I think you'll be surprised." She covered Cassie's hand. "It's not good to go through life being angry and upset with someone. Look at Robbie and Ray. Look at the mess they've gotten themselves into. And us." Sylvia gathered the photo that had fallen free of Cassie's hand and passed it to her again. "Here, you take it. It's yours."

  Cassie's gaze was again drawn to her father as she accepted the photo. What would her life have been like if he hadn't died so young? Likewise, what would Will's and Sylvia's and Robbie's lives be like if Johnny Taylor hadn't died early? Then she realized she was leaving someone out—her mother. What would Bonnie's life have been like if she'd had her husband to share her life with? She'd never remarried. Cassie had always dismissed the idea, considering her mother too weird to attract another man. Yet that was a child's view, not an adult's. An adult would wonder, and then would try to find the answer.

  She met Sylvia's gaze and said quietly, "Thank you."

  ~~~~

  CASSIE SPENT THE afternoon helping Sylvia with the flowerbeds, weeding and mulching and snipping old blooms. Sylvia had resisted her assistance at first, but relented upon Cassie's insistence.

  Cassie told her about the plants she had in her apartment, their dilapidated state, while Sylvia either praised or lamented the progress of her roses and zinnias, marigolds and petunias and lantana. The hours passed pleasantly, deep thoughts shunned by both women. The Duchess watched from the porch for a time, then joined them to inspect their work and get in the way.

  Echoes of a time when she had worked in another garden, her tiny hands doing what they could to help but mostly getting in the way as the Duchess was doing, reverberated in Cassie's mind. A woman—Bonnie, young and pretty, laughing in delight as a man—Cassie's father, swooped Cassie's small self up into his arms and, turning with her in rhythmic circles, danced his way over to Bonnie's side, where, despite the mud smeared on Cassie's cheeks, both parents kissed first her and then each other.

  That memory had never come to her before. It was a time when she had a real family. They'd been happy! And she'd felt safe and protected.

  She hadn't realized that she'd stopped work until Sylvia nudged her and teased, "Penny for 'em."

  "Oh…no…it was nothing," she murmured and snipped off another withered bloom. But it was very much more than nothing. It was a memory she would hold close in her heart for the rest of her life.

  ~~~~

  SUPPER WAS MOSTLY leftovers from the days before when Sylvia had cooked for the ravenous Warrens. But even they had reached their limits and the family, including Cassie, tucked into what remained.

  Robbie, though quiet, did justice to his meal. It was Will who seemed distracted and ate only a portion of what was on his plate.

  Cassie had been highly aware of him ever since he'd come into the house shortly after six.

  "What's wrong, son?" Robbie asked as Sylvia poured their after-dinner coffee.

  "Traveler's limpin'."

  "Limpin'. Limpin' bad?" Sylvia asked, the carafe suspended over Cassie's cup.

  "Bad enough. I've put a call in to Frank."

  Both Sylvia and Robbie frowned. Then Sylvia, glancing at Cassie, said, "Traveler's a bull. Our best bull, matter of fact. We paid a lotta money for him about six or seven years ago. Frank Wilkins is the new vet. He's taken over old Doc Jones' practice." Her attention returned to her son. "What do you think it might be?"

  Will shrugged.

  "Back leg? Front leg?" Robbie asked.

  "Right rear. I can't see or feel anything that might be causin' it."

  "When's Frank gonna get here?"

  "He says he'll stop by after he finishes at the Maynards. It could be late."

  Sylvia, back in place, spooned sugar into her cup. "Well, let's hope it's nothin' bad."

  "Yeah, could be him just gettin' too frisky with the ladies," Robbie agreed.

  Will fiddled with his cup handle, swept Cassie with a glance, then stood. "I better get back out there. I hauled him up to the pens, so I best see how he's doin'."

  "Hold on," Robbie called as Will pushed open the screen door. "I'll come with ya."

  Sylvia and Cassie sat in silence. Then Sylvia, seemingly disinclined to drink more than a sip of coffee after the news, took her cup to the sink and poured it out. Afterward, she started clearing the table.

  "What would happen if it's not caused by him...being frisky?" Cassie asked.

  "I don't even want to think about it," Sylvia replied. "Vets cost money. So does having your best bull out of commission. So does buyin' a new bull, particularly one like Traveler. That's why I don't want to think about it."

  "Then let's don't," Cassie said and forced a smile.

  ~~~~

  CASSIE WENT TO her room early that evening. A lot had happened that day and she was tired, but she wasn't sleepy. She stretched out on the quilt, thinking to read, but she never opened the cover on her e-reader.

  Sylvia was downstairs, trying to stay busy with one project or another; Robbie and Will had yet to come back inside. All were concerned with what
might possibly become their latest misfortune.

  Cassie knew next to nothing about the actual ins and outs of raising cattle, but she had absorbed enough while growing up in Love to know that a prize bull was a great asset, and its loss—as Sylvia had intimated—could be devastating. Particularly to a ranch already in financial difficulties. Hopefully, that wouldn't be the case. But the family was worried, and Cassie found herself worried right along with them. She shouldn't be, but she was.

  Without her being fully aware of it, something inside of her had changed. She now wanted the sale to go through more for their sake than for her own and Jimmy's. Was it possible to fall in love with a man's family as well as the man himself?

  Just as soon as the thought formed, she rejected it and made herself concentrate on Ray. Earlier, she'd thought she'd found the rationale behind his refusal—anger and resentment from old hurts. But he'd made it more than obvious that she hadn't. There was still something else that held him back.

  Anger and resentment—the words reveberated in her mind along with Sylvia's admonition that she not live her life harboring such destructive emotions.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and withdrew the photograph she'd put away in the top drawer of the bedside table.

  Her father…Patrick Edwards…so young. He looked barely into his twenties. From what Sylvia had said, he and Bonnie had come to Love when she was an infant. And she knew he'd died when she was three. How old had he been then? When and where had he and Bonnie met? Where had they lived before moving to Love? Bonnie had always said they were alone in the world. Were they really? Could she possibly have an extended family that she'd never met?

  Questions tumbled through her mind, questions that she'd never let herself contemplate before. And there was only one person who could answer them—Bonnie.

  She touched the likeness of her father's face. When she got back to Houston she'd scan the photo and make some prints of her father alone.

  Her father.

  Instead of tucking the photo back in the drawer, Cassie propped it against the base of the lamp where it could be seen.