Cowgirl Come Home

by Debra Salonen - Big Sky Mavericks 03 - Cowgirl Come Home

  “Really?”

  Taylor dashed to the community bulletin board near the library’s main door. She returned a second later waving a flier. “I spotted this a few days ago. She should call the woman in charge.”

  The flier read: Calling all Crafters. First meeting Tuesday night. Basement St. James.” Louise didn’t recognize either of the contact names.

  “Thank you, Taylor. I can’t wait to show Bailey.”

  Louise knew the best way to keep Bailey in Marietta was by getting her invested in the town, its hopes and dreams and by building a foundation for her new business.

  Bailey didn’t know it yet, but Louise had no intention of letting her daughter return to California. Ever. She needed Bailey here to watch over Oscar if this lump of hers turned out to be something serious.

  And she’d find out soon just how serious a health problem it posed. Now that Bailey was home, Louise could make the call she’d been putting off…as soon as she found a way of breaking the news to Oscar.

  Chapter 6

  Paul had his index finger on the doorbell but changed his mind at the last minute.

  He hadn’t seen or talked to Bailey in three days.

  The first day felt right…natural. Like she probably needed some time to adjust and help her father get settled in his new reality. Just because he knew what he wanted didn’t mean she was anywhere near the same page, let alone on it.

  The second, he found himself thinking about her often…every five minutes or so. But he told himself not to push it. She was still healing, both physically and emotionally. Only a complete moron would show up with flowers and ask her to dinner.

  Besides, he didn’t give his secretary flowers often enough. She was thrilled…if a little suspicious of some new work he might have in mind for her to do.

  But Day Three arrived and nothing from Bailey. Not even a text. So, when the perfect excuse to call her fell into his lap—or kicked down a stall, as luck would have it—he decided to act.

  He listened for any kind of movement—or OC’s bellowing voice, but the Jenkins’s house felt too quiet to disturb. OC was either napping or not there.

  On a hunch, he dashed down the steps and walked to the window he knew to be the guest bedroom. He’d been inside the house when Louise hired him to build the ramp. For a brief moment, she’d considered moving OC to the front bedroom to put him closer to the kitchen. Paul had talked her out of it.

  “I guarantee he’ll be more comfortable in his own bedroom. When my grandpa got sick, Mom tried moving him to our house. Between depression and Gramp’s stubbornness, the man nearly wasted away before she took him back home.”

  From what Bailey told him, Louise had taken his advice.

  With hands bracketing his eyes, he pressed his face to the screen and peered inside.

  Sure enough, Bailey was stretched out on the bed, but she wasn’t practicing for the role of Sleeping Beauty. She’d rigged a lighted magnifying glass to the sort of table Jen had used to deliver breakfast in bed—back when she’d aspired to be homemaker of the decade.

  Clear plastic tubs filled with beads outlined the work surface. Bailey appeared to be wrapping a larger bead in fine silver wire.

  He held his breath a moment, caught by the way she lifted her chin to get her focus, the tip of her tongue barely poking between her lips. His male anatomy reacted as if he were seventeen again.

  “Cripes,” he muttered.

  Bailey looked straight at him. She froze as if he’d caught her doing something wrong then let out a sigh.

  “A peeping Paul,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you do windows or should I call 911?”

  Her hair was piled in a clip on top of her head. Escaped tendrils of light brown framed her face. No make-up today. Not even lipstick. But she looked as beautiful as the day she was crowned Fair Queen.

  He tugged on the inseam of his jeans to adjust for his sex-deprived body then stepped sideways where the window was open. “I tried calling. Twice.”

  She reached across the pillow to the bedside table and picked up her hot pink phone.

  “Dead,” she muttered. “I’ve got to change my service provider. It’s always roaming here. Sucks down my battery like that.” She snapped her fingers then moved her tray to a flat spot on the bed.

  “You could have called the house,” she said, reaching for the charger cord.

  “I didn’t know if OC was picking up or not.”

  She plugged in the phone and turned to look at him. “Good point, but so far he ignores the phone completely. Claims he doesn’t know anybody he wants to talk to.”

  She chuckled dryly. “As you can see a debilitating illness hasn’t made him any more sociable than he was in the past.”

  He appreciated the fact she didn’t make excuses for her dad. The man was a jerk when he was sober and an ass when he was drunk. Knowing that had been the one consolation he’d clung to back in high school whenever Bailey talked about moving away. He didn’t blame her wanting to leave, but he’d always hoped something would make her change her mind at the last minute.

  Something happened, but even something as significant as a pregnancy didn’t change the outcome.

  “I didn’t ring the bell in case he was asleep.”

  “He is. Physical therapy wipes him out. I don’t expect him to wake up until Mom gets home from work.”

  She cocked her head in a way that made her topknot tumble in a sexy, just-had-sex sort of way. She brushed it back carelessly. “So, what’s up? Why are you here?”

  “I have a horse problem. I need someone to talk me out of selling the stupid beast before my daughter comes home. I’m all out of patience, even though I know it’s probably my fault Skipper’s getting into trouble in the first place.”

  She asked him a few questions about Skipper’s age, disposition, training to date, then said, “Daz went through a rough patch, too. A juvenile delinquent horse has nothing on a seventeen-year-old kid hell-bent on self-destruction.”

  He nodded. “That’s exactly what it feels like. I remember when Austen went crazy the summer after his first year of college. Could have gone to jail but the judge gave him community service.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “You never heard? Well, he is four years older than me. He and some friends got charged with vandalism. Drove their trucks somewhere they shouldn’t and messed up the road.”

  “What did your parents do?”

  “Tightened the strings, I guess. Set curfews all summer. Made him quit hanging around with kids they deemed ‘bad influences’.”

  He lifted his hand, remembering one other thing. “They also made him work at Big Z’s until he earned every penny of tuition for the following year.

  “Dad told him, if he was going to piss away their gift, he could darn well pay for it himself.”

  “Well, that’s probably what you’re going to need to do with your horse…except for the going to college part. Work him.”

  She looked at the beside clock radio and exclaimed, “Wow. Later than I thought. I lose track of time when I’m working on a new piece.”

  She angled her body sideways on the mattress to spread a cotton dishcloth over the table. “Mom should be home any minute. I can’t promise I’ll be any help…my horse training days are over. But I wouldn’t mind getting out of the house and stretching my legs.”

  “Great.” He wanted to ask why she felt she couldn’t train horses anymore—her most fervent passion in high school—but decided now wasn’t the time. “What’s happening on the B.Dazzled front?” He nodded toward her work. “Did you decide against asking OC to use his back room?”

  She leaned down to take off her laced jogging shoes. “I asked. Mom thought it was a great idea. Dad said he wasn’t kicking Jack to the curb. Period.”

  “Does he know Jack is leaving soon?”

  She glanced up. “Uh-huh.”

  Her cutoff shorts gave him a clear look at her damaged ankle. A second scar at a forty-five d
egree angle intersected a deep purple scar about the width of a pencil.

  A knifelike sensation arced through his belly. He’d felt the same cut and jab the time Chloe fell off the trampoline in the back yard and landed a few inches from a metal pole the gardener had set up to keep the hose from crushing Jen’s flowerbed.

  “Mom says I need to give OC time to process.” She stuck out her tongue.

  She tossed the shoes toward the closet and stood. “I should probably change.”

  Her long bare legs looked great to him. They brought back memories of their last summer together. She’d always led the way hiking. He never minded even when they got lost because he was happy following her trim butt and lean, tanned legs. How had he managed to block such joy and passion from his memories?

  Anger, he guessed. Hurt feelings, disappointment. He refused to trivialize his feelings at the time, but life and experience helped put them in perspective.

  The sound of a car pulling into the driveway made him spin around. Louise waved from the open window of her Subaru wagon. “Oh, look. Peeping Paul is back.”

  He blushed, feeling seventeen again.

  “Dang. You people have long memories,” he said, walking toward the car. “A kid with a crush on a girl gets caught looking in her window once and he’s branded for life.”

  “How about all those times he wasn’t caught?”

  She had a point.

  He opened the door for her. “Need help?”

  She handed him a heavy cloth book bag that had seen better days. “Some new murder mysteries. I’m trying to get Oscar interested in reading again.”

  Again? Paul had no idea OC even knew how to read.

  He held up the tattered bag sporting a faded image of Marietta’s historic library. “Here’s what the Friends of the Library need to sell to raise money. Maybe with a little B. Dazzled bling on them.”

  Louise paused, her hand on the key. “That’s a very good idea, Paul. Taylor Harris and I were talking about doing a Readathon at the fair. We could give participants a book bag and sell the leftovers.”

  He didn’t know what a Readathon entailed but he could picture Bailey coming up with something ladies would be fighting over. “Chloe would love to be involved. She reads all the time now. Thanks to you.”

  Louise appeared pleased by his acknowledgement of her help. And Paul smiled when she chose the ramp over the stairs.

  Bailey met them at the door. She’d kept the shorts but changed into boots. The charms and brightly colored stones dangling from the silver anklet…bootlet?…made a jingling sound when she walked.

  “Dad’s resting.” She took her mother’s purse and set it on a chair inside the door. “He had a pain pill at two. I made notes in the binder. Also, I put a pork roast in the crock-pot. There’s fresh coleslaw, too. Dad always loved pulled pork sandwiches, right?”

  Her mother didn’t reply right away.

  Was it the light or did Louise look ill? Paul couldn’t decide.

  “Are you two going some place?”

  Paul set the library bag on the floor inside the doorway. “One of my geldings thinks he’s a stud. He jumped the neighbor’s fence and is causing all kinds of trouble.” No use detailing the fact my neighbor is my brother. “I asked Bailey to help me organize an intervention.”

  Would Louise accept his excuse at face value or read something more into it? Would she guess Bailey had remained under his skin all these years and suddenly blossomed back to life like some dormant illness triggered by proximity?

  The woman was the plague. His plague. And if there were a cure, he hoped it involved hot sex and a lifetime of research.

  Louise looked at him a moment or two longer than necessary, and then said, “Well, good luck with that. Getting anybody—person or horse—to do what’s best for them is usually a waste of effort.”

  Bailey touched her mother’s arm. “Whoa, rough day, Mom?”

  Louise shrugged and turned away. “They’re all rough, dear. That’s life.”

  Bailey looked at Paul, her eyes wide. He offered her his arm.

  Once they were away from the house, Paul said, “Maybe Louise is tired. She’s got a lot on her plate.”

  “Maybe.”

  Bailey climbed into Paul’s SUV with considerably more grace than she managed with his big truck.

  As she buckled her seatbelt she asked herself the question she’d been avoiding. What am I doing here?

  Granted, seeing his face up against her window had set her pulse racing. But nothing about that was a good thing.

  She might want a romantic relationship at some point in the future, but certainly not now. Only a ridiculously needy and immature person would introduce a new variable into her life when she didn’t have the slightest idea who she was or what she was going to do now that she couldn’t be Bailey Jenkins – Cowgirl, anymore.

  “Stay focused on the present, Bailey,” Maureen had advised that morning when Bailey called to say she was going back to Montana. “The future can look daunting if all you see is hurdles, but each one can be mounted and overcome. I promise you that, my friend.”

  Maybe she’d agree to come with Paul because she was lonely and she needed to get out of the house. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

  She let Paul do the talking as he drove the familiar route to her childhood home. He seemed determined to be happy, and she hoped a little of his ebullience would rub off on her.

  I used to be happy, wasn’t I?

  She looked at Paul. So handsome. Would she have been aware of his sexy maleness if they’d been together all these years or had their separation added a mystique familiarity wouldn’t have held? She couldn’t know. But she did take him for granted back then. Maybe because she’d been a year ahead of him in school. Like that made any difference in the real world. But in high school she’d taken a lot of flack from her classmates for dating a junior.

  “When was the last time you were out here?” he asked, turning his chin to look at her. She blushed, knowing he’d caught her staring.

  “To the ranch? Fifteen years ago. Dad sold the place about a month after I left. I knew he and Mom had been talking about it, still…knowing my home was in someone else’s hands was a bit of a shock.”

  At the time, it had felt like a slap in the face. Payback for nearly screwing up her life. “How’d you wind up with it up?”

  When Mom first told her Paul Zabrinski bought their old ranch, Bailey had been shocked and a little…she didn’t have a name for the feeling. Hurt? Sad? Wistful? If things had been different, they might have bought it together and made a life there.

  “The guy who bought if from OC was from California. Thought he wanted a summer home, but as I understand it, the economy went south and he couldn’t unload either one of his places. He rented the land and abandoned the house. He didn’t winterize the place so there were broken pipes, soggy sheetrock. Cosmetic stuff, which is right up my alley. I got it for a good price from the bank.”

  “Why this place?” she asked, hating her lack of self-control.

  He appeared to think a moment then said, “Because I could.”

  He had the grace to look sheepish. “I have to admit there was a little sense of pay-back. Very little,” he stressed. “Mostly, it was a great deal and my dad had been encouraging all of us to invest in dirt. Jen is a city girl and she flat out refused to move into the house, so I rented it to Marla and Jack. The only thing I changed were some of the corrals. I wanted a safe place for the kids to ride.”

  She sat forward, anxious now that they were getting close.

  She couldn’t see the house yet, but the large pasture to the left of the road was outlined in enough pipe and wire to hold a rhino. Someone must have added sprinklers or irrigation because the grass was a deep, vital shade of green.

  Four horses were scattered in groups of two—a bay mare and her yearling foal and two healthy-looking pintos with glossy coats and long, thick manes.

  He put on his blinker when h
e drew up even with the high-end green powder-coated metal mailbox.

  The one her family had used for as long as she lived there was a rusty but serviceable tin can that gave her the long white scar on the side of her baby finger.

  When he slowed to turn into the driveway, she let out a breathless cry. “Oh, my gosh, you paved the driveway.”

  The Jenkins Ranch driveway had been bumpy enough to shake loose a filling or two.

  “All the way to the house? Did you win the lottery and nobody told me?”

  OC had complained about the state of the road for as long as Bailey could remember, but he blamed the oil sheiks in the Middle East for its condition because he couldn’t afford to pave it.

  Paul grinned sheepishly. “I got tired of washing my truck. It’s black, you know.”

  As was this Escalade. He’d obviously done very well for himself. Not that she was surprised.

  “You could do worse than Paul Zabrinski,” her mother had said the night before Bailey’s appointment. A half-hearted attempt to talk Bailey into going against her father’s wishes?

  Bailey hadn’t replied. But in her heart of hearts, Bailey had agreed.

  In a way, she’d fulfilled her mother’s prediction when she married Ross. She’d done worse. Much worse.

  Chapter 7

  Paul pulled the SUV to a shady spot beneath the ancient cottonwood her father had threatened to cut down every year. As much as OC hated the mess that turned their yard white for a few weeks every summer, Mom loved the cheery green canopy when the heat got intense.

  “The place looks great, Paul,” Bailey said, getting out with an eagerness that surprised her. “I love what you did with the barn.”

  The huge, classically designed structure, now painted a pristine red with white trim, should have been featured in some kind of Montana promotion. She especially liked the huge, stylized Z superimposed over the closed haymow doors. “Your logo reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of old barns with advertising on them.”

  He walked around the car, his gaze on her not the classic red structure. “I made this barn one of my construction crew’s first jobs after I bought the lumber yard. Had a reporter from the Courier out to do a story on saving our county’s heritage or some such drivel. Then we held a big Open House-slash-Barn Dance, with free hot dogs and pony rides for the kids. Got a couple of other barn jobs from the publicity.”