“You are wicked, Red. I believed you just like I did when you said your name was Minnie Pearl.”
Pearl giggled and all the tension left her body. “Why don’t you call me Minnie instead of Red all evening?”
“Because Red suits you better.”
***
Tess met them at the door and ushered them through the foyer into the living room of the long, low ranch house that looked like it sprawled on forever from the outside. The foyer with its gold gilt mirrors and Victorian settee and tables was the exact opposite of the living room done up in buttery soft leather sofas, a stone fireplace, and hardwood floors.
“They’ve arrived,” Tess told everyone in the living room. “Pearl, darlin’, introduce us, please.”
“This is Wil Marshall. He’s a rancher over in Henrietta and y’all know how we met. Wil, this is my mother, Tess; my father, John Richland; my granny, Miz Audry Landry; and her sister, Kate Fornell. Now that’s done, Daddy, do you have Coors on ice?”
John nodded toward the bar.
“We are very pleased to meet you.” Granny held out a blue veined hand. Her hair was still the same color as Tess’s and her eyes as blue. Age had taken its toll on her face but her smile was breathtaking even at well past eighty. “We’ve heard so much about you and I do believe you are a Texan just like John. He stole my daughter away from Savannah and brought her down here to this hot country. I only visit in the winter because I’d suffocate and die in the summertime.”
Wil brought Granny’s hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across her fingertips. “It’s all my pleasure, Miz Landry.”
“You can call me Granny like Pearl does.”
“Thank you,” Wil said.
“And I’m Kate. I’m not as fragile as my sister.” Kate held out a hand. Her hair was a shade darker than Audry’s and there was a faint gray cast toward the roots. She was shorter and her sparkling eyes said that Pearl had told the truth when she said Kate had been the wild one. “I never had children so Pearl is my surrogate child. Thank you for taking care of her. She can be a handful, and she got that from me.”
Wil kissed her fingertips. “Did she get her beauty from you as well?”
“He’s too slick,” Tess whispered to Pearl, but she held her hand out and smiled her brightest.
Wil kissed her fingertips. “I’m so pleased to meet you, but you all have to know that it was just precautionary that I stay up all night with her, and besides, she saved me before that.”
John stuck out his hand. “I’m her father and I understand you run some cattle over in Henrietta. You any kin to Jesse Marshall from Bowie?” He was almost as tall as Wil but twenty pounds thinner. His face was angular and his eyes the same color as Pearl’s. His dark hair had a heavy sprinkling of gray in the temples, and his skin looked like old leather from so many hours in the sun. He was slightly bowlegged from sitting a horse every evening and weekends, but he wore his Western cut dress slacks and shirt with style.
Wil shook John’s hand firmly. “Jesse is my father. He taught me everything I know about ranching, sir. And I’m very glad to meet you. I understand you raise Angus?”
“That’s right. What can I get you to drink?”
“Jack Daniel’s. Two fingers. Neat.”
“A man’s drink. I like a shot of Jack before supper too. Gets a man ready to enjoy a good meal. Come on in the library and let me show you a picture of my prize Angus bull. He’s throwin’ big old calves that’s got a jump on weight from birth. ’Course you got to have Angus heifers to breed him with or else the calves are too big for them to deliver.”
“Cows, bulls, and ranchin’. God Almighty, John!” Tess said with a southern twang.
“Y’all can visit with Pearl. You been whinin’ all week about how you never get an hour with her alone. Me and Wil don’t need to hear about women things. Holler when supper is ready.” John poured whiskey into two glasses, handed one to Wil, and then led the way through a door into the library.
“We’ll keep him,” Aunt Kate said the minute the door closed behind the men. “He’s yummy. If I was thirty years younger I’d take him away from you.”
“If you were thirty years younger, you’d still be old enough to be his mother,” Granny huffed. “But he’s a charmer, that one is, Pearl. And I like that in a man. That last one you had was a stuffed shirt. I didn’t like him.”
Pearl looked at her mother.
Tess picked up her margarita and downed half of it. “Don’t expect me to open up both my arms because he kissed my fingers. He’s another John Richland. You’d be getting your father in a younger form.”
Pearl went to the bar and popped the lid off a bottle of Coors, tilted it back, and let the icy cold beer slide down her throat. “I’m not marrying the man tomorrow. I’ve only known him a few weeks. I just wanted you all to meet him so you would stop pestering me about him. Now you know he’s a respectable man.”
Aunt Kate laughed so hard that mint julep shot out her nose.
Granny shook a finger under Pearl’s nose. “I swear you didn’t get a bit of your mother’s southern grace.”
Tess did that thing with her chin that let Pearl know she’d been disgraced. “You might have done it, but you don’t have to talk about it.”
“Momma, it happened. We had a shot contest and I gave him a solid alibi and had a helluva hangover. He thought he could out-drink me on Jack and I proved him wrong.”
Kate swallowed the mint julep quickly. “How many?”
“I think it was ten but it might have been eleven shots, but we were both still standing so I guess it was a tie.”
“And he could still do it?” Kate asked.
“Kate!” Granny slapped her on the arm and then looked at Pearl. “Well, could he?”
Pearl held up three fingers.
“Holy shit! Don’t you dare let him get away,” Kate said.
Audry smoothed the front of her black velvet dress. “You should have stayed in Savannah, Tess. If you had, your daughter would not be running around like a hoyden sleeping with men she gets drunk with. You sound like Kate. She would’ve done something like that when she was thirty. Only difference is she wouldn’t have owned up to it.”
Kate shook her finger at Audry. “Tess married a man who adores her. She shouldn’t have stayed in Savannah, Audry. She’s right where she belongs. And Pearl, darlin’, you be glad you live in an era when you can talk about whatever you want to. We fought long and hard for our women’s rights.”
Tess sighed. “I’m in the middle. Got a daughter who is more Texan than southern belle. A husband who is Texan, and then there’s you two.” She looked at her mother and aunt. “I think I’d rather join forces with Pearl.”
Pearl jerked her head around to look at her mother. “What did you say?”
“Well, it’s the truth. You’re goin’ to end up with that man in there and your father is going to be tickled to death with him. He’s a rancher and they can talk cows and bulls and drink whiskey together. He’ll be the son John never had. I’m glad you slept with him.”
Pearl shook her head but the words didn’t fly out her ears. “I can’t believe you are saying that.”
“I’m not an old fossil, darlin’. I know that today’s woman is different than we were and I’m glad for it. But don’t tell your father that you got drunk and slept with Wil. Let him think that you both passed out and slept in different beds. It’s better that way.” Tess patted Pearl on the arm. “Now, I’m going to tell the cook to put the food on the table and we’re going to make those two ranchers come out and be nice to us. We are four beautiful women who deserve their attention.”
“Momma, I might not end up with Wil.”
“Bullshit!” Tess said.
“Double that,” Kate said.
“Triple it,” Granny said.
“You are all crazy as…” Pearl hesitated.
“We’ll see.” Tess smiled her brightest. “Maybe that bit of Indian in him will thin down Great
-grandma’s red hair and I’ll get some dark-haired grandkids.”
“Or maybe it’ll be a throwback and I’ll get a blond-haired great-granddaughter who’ll be the next Miss Texas,” Granny said.
“Y’all had better get on in to the supper table because you are on the verge of getting drunk,” Pearl said.
“If we get drunk do we get to sleep with a Texas cowboy?” Kate whispered.
***
The cook brought out hot yeast rolls and potato soup to start supper. It was one of Pearl’s favorite soups, but she was so busy stealing glances at Wil that she hardly tasted it. He ate two rolls and every bit of his soup while telling the story of how Red had crawled right up on those tractors and sweet-talked Farris into a steal of a deal.
John smiled brightly and nodded at his daughter.
The next course was salad with homemade honey mustard dressing and croutons made from day old garlic bread, toasted in the oven, and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.
“This is really good,” Wil said.
“Thank you,” Tess said. “Mother taught me to make the croutons. They’re the secret to a good salad.”
“Tell me, how big is this property that you’ve got your eye on up there in Henrietta?” John asked.
“It’ll double my ranch and I’ll have to build a bunkhouse for extra help to run that many more cattle, but I think it would pay for itself in a few years.”
John smiled and nodded. “Got a house on the property?”
“Just a small two-bedroom frame that needs repairs. Probably have to rewire it and run new plumbing lines. It’s been there at least fifty years.”
“Might be cheaper than building a bunkhouse and you could bring in help a lot quicker. That’s all sayin’ that it comes up for sale in the next year or two. Until then do you reckon you’ve got enough tractors to keep my daughter out of trouble?”
“I’m not sure there’s enough John Deere tractors in north Texas to do that job,” Wil said. He shifted in his chair until his thigh was tight against Pearl’s. He didn’t look at her but from her body language he was fully aware of the effect he had on her.
She finished her salad and dropped her hands into her lap, then very gently reached over and ran her fingertips up his thigh. When his muscles tightened, she squeezed. Two could play the game, and Wil Marshall had met his match in the dining room as well as in the whiskey contest.
The main course arrived: prime rib, mashed potatoes, and asparagus spears.
Wil took a bite and reached over to touch Pearl on the wrist. “Can you make this?”
“Of course she can. She was taught by experts,” Granny said. “Tess has a cook but she can run that Rachael Ray on television some competition. And she taught Pearl. The girl knows her way around the kitchen as well as she does around a tractor.”
“She didn’t make supper for you yet?” Kate asked in mock horror.
“She made me cook,” Wil said.
She squeezed his thigh a little higher up. “Tell them the rest of the story.”
“What?” he asked.
“He does not allow women in his kitchen. Not to cook or to clean up. Want to tell them why?”
“Because the last woman who made a meal in my kitchen thought she could move into my house and tell me what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. She was ready to call in a decorator and take out all my furniture and put in black stuff from Japan,” he explained.
“Man can’t have that kind of heifer takin’ over,” John said with a grin.
Pearl gave Wil’s leg another squeeze and he jumped.
“I never have liked that oriental stuff. Can’t abide sitting on the floor in front of a little coffee table thing to eat my dinner. And I don’t like sushi, either. In my world we call it bait,” Wil went on.
“Amen!” John said with a booming voice.
“But I got to admit something. Red made lasagna and hot bread sticks that was absolutely wonderful the other night,” he said.
“You men are horrid. Little sushi never hurt no one. Why, me and Audry learned to really like it when we went on that Alaskan cruise last spring. It was real tasty so don’t be putting something down until you’ve tried it,” Kate said.
“You ready to eat a bait of calf fries?” John asked.
“I’ve never been hungry enough to eat bull balls,” Kate said flatly.
“And I’ve never been hungry enough to eat raw fish. So I rest my case,” John said.
“How about you? You eat calf fries?” Wil whispered to Pearl while Kate and John argued about sushi and calf fries.
“Love ’em. There’s a place right across the river bridge in Terral called Doug’s Peach Orchard that serves them. That’s some good eatin’ let me tell you. Austin and I meet over there once a month for a gab fest.”
“I love that place. Want to run over there tomorrow night?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Why do you get to call her Red? She fought her cousins about that when she was little,” Granny said.
Kate whispered in Granny’s ear and she nodded. “Now I understand.”
When the conversation went back to people he had no knowledge of, Wil leaned toward Pearl and whispered, “Understand what?”
“Aunt Kate said ‘three times’ in Granny’s ear,” she said softly.
“Three times. What’s that got to do with… you told?”
“They were giving me fits about getting drunk and Aunt Kate asked if you could still do it after that many shots. She’s very impressed.”
It was the first time she’d ever seen Wil blush!
Chapter 23
Monday morning dawned with gray skies that looked like they could spit out a blizzard any minute. The wind barely stirred the bare tree limbs and the temperature hovered around the thirty-degree mark. Lucy and Pearl scurried from one warm room to the next, cleaning the twelve rooms that had had visitors the night before.
They’d have had one room each if the Wichita Falls shelter hadn’t called at three in the afternoon and asked for ten rooms for a busload of women and children on their way to relocation south of Dallas. Pearl and Lucy had gone together to the grocery store a mile up the road and put together a food bag for each room. Luke signed a voucher and Pearl gave them the rooms for half price again.
After the women were settled in their rooms, Lucy offered Luke coffee and he told her that he’d be in Henrietta the next Wednesday.
“Reckon you could get away to go to a movie with me? Maybe we’d get some dinner beforehand?” he asked. She’d been walking on air all day and singing as she worked.
“There’s a woman right here in Henrietta who should’ve been on that bus,” Lucy said when she found Pearl in the laundry room.
“Oh?” Pearl raised an eyebrow.
“I see her at the library pretty often. I know the signs.”
“What’s her name?”
“Betsy Walton. She’s beat down like I was and last week she had a nasty bruise on her cheek. I asked her about it and she said she fell down the porch steps. I’ve used that excuse lots of times. That and I walked into a cabinet door or else bumped my arm on the chicken coop.”
“Lucy, next time you see her you tell her up-front that if she ever needs a place to hide to call you and you’ll come get her. We’ll put her up right here in the motel until she can get to a shelter.”
“You’d do that? Run an underground for abused women?”
“Sure. But it’s not just me who’d do it. You would help with it too.”
“You are a good woman, Pearl.”
“That’s debatable, but you tell her. It might give her the courage to get out of that mess.”
“I will and thank you.”
Pearl’s cell phone rang. She backed out the door, pulling a cart with one hand and answering the phone with the other.
“What’s going on with you this morning?” Wil asked.
“I’m cleaning rooms. We had another busload of women who needed relocation l
ast night. They’re all gone and Lucy and I are working on rooms. You?”
“Just finished all my chores. Jack and I are about to get into the new tractors and do some plowing. Want to come run your little girl tractor over the ground this afternoon?”
“It’ll take all afternoon to set things in order here.”
“Then I’ll see you this evening. Pick you up six thirty?”
“I’ll be ready.”
At six fifteen he called to tell her that Digger had been poisoned and he was at the vet’s with him. “I’m sorry, Red. I’m taking him home but I have to give him medicine all night.”
“Want me to come help out?” she asked.
“I’d love for you to, but there’s no need in both of us losing sleep,” he said.
“Who would have done such a thing?”
“Can’t lay the blame on anyone. I caught him with a dead rat this morning. I never use poison to get rid of them but someone around here does. Digger goes out huntin’ on his own. He might have run across it half dead from the poison and chased it down like a squirrel. Vet says he’ll be fine but I’ll have to watch him close tonight.”
“Call me every hour with an update. I’d be worried sick if it was Delilah,” she said.
“I will and I really, really am sorry.”
“Me too,” she admitted honestly.
***
On Tuesday he called at noon to tell her that Digger was begging for something other than water and the vet had said he could have dry food but no table scraps. “Poor old Digger thinks he’s being punished. I told him to leave the rats alone from now on and he wouldn’t be taken off his scraps.”
“I’m glad to hear he’s all right but you sound exhausted.”
“I am. Jack is doing chores. I’m going to take a nap. Want to get some supper later this evening?”
“Can’t. Lucy has a book thing at the library this evening. She’s all excited about it and I wouldn’t disappoint her for the moon. It’s the first social thing she’s done since she moved in a month ago.”
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