Lone Star Woman

by CALLAHAN, SADIE

  He didn’t say anything right away, just turned his eyes back to the road. “Okay, here it is. Simple story. We always needed money. I was always big for my age, so I did physical jobs. When I turned eighteen, I answered an ad in the Fort Worth paper. I got hired onto a roustabout crew out of Houston. Eventually, I moved up to roughnecking.”

  Before she could ask who “we” was, he turned into the parking lot of a low-slung yellow stucco building. A red neon sign on the windowless wall said LUPE’S CANTINA. The building looked like something right out of the seamier parts of Fort Worth—not that she had been to those places, but she had seen pictures. Uncertainty swelled within her, but she tried to dismiss it. For some reason, she felt safe in Brady’s company.

  “Believe it or not,” he said, as if he had read her mind, “this place cooks good steaks. A lot of the old-time locals come here to eat. But the surroundings probably aren’t what you’re used to.” He pulled into a parking spot near the front door,

  “I’m not used to anything in particular. Since I left college, I mostly eat at home.”

  The heavy door opened onto a long, narrow room with dim lighting. It was packed with people. From somewhere country music played. It could barely be heard above the din, but she could make out George Strait singing “How ’Bout Them Cowgirls.”

  Jude had been in any number of noisy, jam-packed bars and bistros in Bryan and Austin, but the crowds had been made up of college students. This crowd, mostly men of varying ages, was different. Instead of taking her elbow, Brady slid his large, warm hand under her hair and cupped her nape in a firm but gentle clasp as he kept her close to his side and guided her through the throng. The possessiveness of it made her feel small and protected.

  Many of the bar customers seemed to know him and spoke to him as they passed. Jude had the impression all were staring at her, no doubt wondering if she had replaced the woman named Ginger. To her annoyance, she felt a smug delight at being seen in that role.

  At the back of the barroom was a small dance floor, and there she spotted the source of the music. A jukebox stood like a neon-lit kaleidoscope in one corner, splaying an array of soft, varicolored light onto a small wooden dance floor. A few more steps and they were inside a dining room. A hostess met them with a big grin and hearty greeting. As she led them to a booth, over her shoulder she chattered to Brady about his sisters.

  Jude and Brady took seats opposite each other. As they ordered drinks—a margarita for her and whiskey and water for him—the hostess continued to talk local gossip. Soon a waitress joined the hostess and they had a jovial conversation with Brady about his family. In the middle of it, Brady ordered two strip steaks cooked medium, baked potatoes, salads and iced tea.

  After the hostess and waitress left, he said, “Steak okay with you?”

  Jude smiled. “You bet. My family’s in the beef business.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be rude by not asking you what you wanted, but those girls are talkative. I figured if I didn’t get a word in edgewise and tell them what we want to eat, we could be here all night. They were in the same grade in school as one of my sisters.”

  Jude had no idea how it would feel to have several sisters and brothers to chat about. Even her childhood relationship with her cousins wasn’t the same as having siblings. “It’s okay. Do your sisters all live here?”

  “None of my family lives here anymore. We’re all scattered in four directions now.”

  Jude wanted to ask why he had returned if he had no family here, but for once she managed to keep her mouth shut. They sat in awkward silence, her with her hands tucked between her knees, Brady looking around the room. He nodded at a couple who sat a few tables away, and the man returned the greeting.

  “A lot of people seem to know you,” Jude said. “Are you here a lot?”

  “Since I can’t cook worth a damn, I’m everywhere a lot if there’s food. Stephenville’s a small town. Once you get away from the college, there aren’t that many places to get a good meal.”

  “Ah.” Jude nodded. A few more seconds of silence, then their drinks came. The cold margarita tasted good, but strong. After the events of the day, Jude needed something strong.

  “I want you to know I appreciate your helping me,” he said and sipped his whiskey, swallowing on a grimace. “Clearing out the trailer took longer than I thought it would. If you hadn’t come along, I’d still be packing boxes.”

  She had wondered if he would acknowledge that she had been of help. She didn’t care so much about being thanked, but she wanted him to say she had been useful. She couldn’t keep from smiling. “I offered because I wanted to. Can I ask you something?”

  One corner of his mouth tipped into a sort-of grin. “Have I been able to stop you so far?”

  “Where did you learn to do that trick, mounting Sal like that?”

  “It’s not a trick. I just refuse to let an animal that’s supposed to be dumber than I am get the best of me. It’s bad enough she’s spoiled rotten.”

  “But you did it perfectly. You must have practiced it.”

  “Darlin’, I’ve been working on ranches, fooling with horses and cows, my whole life. I’m not afraid of them.”

  She suspected he wasn’t afraid of much. What little she had learned of him in a short time said he had no fear of stepping out of the ordinary. “I’m not afraid of them, either, but I can’t jump on the back of a loping horse.”

  He ducked his chin and rubbed his brow. End of discussion.

  “Can I ask you something else? I’m not being nosy, but—”

  “I know you’re not. What is it you want to know?”

  “Why did that woman have those pictures? Where did she get them?”

  He gave a rueful sigh. “She bought ’em online. The Cowboys’ PR company sells ’em.”

  “But you look so young in them and—”

  “Darlin’, the people who sell ’em don’t tell their customers they’re buying old pictures. And I guess people who want pictures of half-naked men wouldn’t care anyway.”

  “But what if you don’t want them sold?”

  “I don’t own ’em. I get a little bit of royalty money when they sell ’em, but it’s very little. These days, believe me, us old guys have been replaced by young bucks wearing even less.”

  Recalling the thong, Jude laughed. “How could they be wearing less? You mean they’re clear naked?”

  He looked at her with a crooked grin. “Yep.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” Her hands flew to cover her nose and mouth as she laughed. A new image of him without the thong replaced the more modest one.

  “You’re not shocked, are you?” he asked. “Lord, look at the stuff out there nowadays.”

  “I’m a high school teacher, remember? Almost nothing shocks me anymore. But once in a while, something does surprise me.”

  “Why don’t we stop talking about me, and you tell me why a rich, good-looking woman—”

  “Hey, Brady.” A tall, lean cowboy wearing a black hat and the typical garb sauntered toward them, carrying a beer bottle. “You been out to the place?” His pointed gaze came at Jude, and she saw devilment in his eyes.

  “Hey, Ace.” Brady put out his hand and they shook. “Listen, I picked up the horses. I left a message on your voice mail. Figure out how much I still owe you and we’ll settle up.”

  “No hurry.” Ace’s quizzical look came at Jude again.

  “This is a friend of mine,” Brady said, tilting his chin toward Jude. “Jude Str—Judy Strong. She’s doing me a favor and helping me clear out the trailer.”

  Jude shot a questioning look across the table at Brady, then quickly recovered and decided to go along. She said hello and offered Ace her right hand.

  Ace took it and held it a few extra seconds in more than a handshake of greeting. “Where you from?”

  “Abilene,” Brady said before Jude could reply. She removed her hand from Ace’s.

  “Abilene, huh? I roped in that little rodeo o
ver there a few times years back. Even won a little money.”

  “I see,” Jude said.

  Ace returned his attention to Brady. “You all moved out?”

  “Soon will be.”

  “I’m gonna miss that ornery mare,” Ace said on a laugh, stealing glances at Jude. She could tell he was as curious about her as she was about Brady. “I picked up some calves from Jack a couple days ago,” Ace said. “Man, he hates seeing you leave, buddy. He was ready to bawl. Says he doesn’t know how he’s gonna replace you.”

  “Yeah?” Brady said. He appeared to be embarrassed by the compliment. “So where you headed, Ace? Wanna sit down and eat with us?”

  “Nah. I’m going back to the bar to drink tequila with Billy Torrence. I think there’s a poker game coming together and I got paid today.” He swigged a drink from the bottle, then looked down intently at Brady. “Ginger came to see me a little earlier.”

  Brady’s brow arched as he looked up at Ace.

  “She says you’ve moved up a rung from the rest of us, Brady. Looks like you’re cutting all your old ties. Gonna start over with a clean slate, huh?”

  “That’s the definition of starting over, Ace.”

  “Cutting ties with your boy, too?”

  Brady fixed him with a hard glare that said “back off,” and Jude sensed his edginess again. “No,” he snapped.

  Ace didn’t reply for a few moments. Then, “Yeah, well, Ginger’s pretty upset. She was drunk and on a crying jag. I took her home and put her to bed.”

  Jude wondered what that meant and watched Brady’s reaction. He nodded but didn’t reply. His expression remained neutral. After a few seconds, Ace backed away. “Well, see you around.”

  Brady put out his right hand again. “If you’re ever in West Texas, Ace.”

  “Sure thing.” They shook hands, but it was nothing more than one of those ceremonial things. Jude sensed a low-grade tension between them. She suspected Brady and his friend might never meet face-to-face again.

  She waited until Ace passed through the doorway to the bar. “You and Ginger were serious?”

  “No. I’ve known her for years. She gets drunk and goes crazy.”

  Jude nodded and waited for more. When he said nothing else, she said, “Have you known Ace long?”

  “Most of my life.”

  “Has he always been envious of you?”

  Brady snorted. “Of me? Darlin’, I don’t have much for anybody to envy. Nah, Ace is just being Ace. He’s a ladies’ man. It’s you he’s interested in. Couldn’t you tell?”

  That had been obvious. But she wondered if Ace’s attitude toward Brady came from something deeper. “He’s jealous over something. Maybe it’s your inheritance.”

  Brady’s gaze moved to the doorway. “Huh,” he said, as if he’d just had a sudden revelation.

  “Why didn’t you want him to know my name?”

  “Because I don’t feel like explaining to anybody what J. D. Strayhorn’s daughter is doing in Lupe’s Cantina in Stephenville, Texas. It’s nobody’s damn business.”

  11

  Brady was having trouble with his eyes. They kept straying to the lacy edge of Jude’s black bra that occasionally peeked from behind the V-neck of her tight little green top. Or they landed on the black bra strap that sometimes sneaked out at her shoulder. If she was aware of it, she showed no indication. After being around her for two days, he wondered if she would care even if she were aware of it. She didn’t strike him as being an empty head who cared about her own looks and comfort above all else.

  He was surprised by how she had sized up Ace in a matter of minutes. With that ability to read people, she probably made a good teacher.

  He had no doubt Ace envied him inheriting a ranch, even a small one. Brady still remembered how his old friend had been awed and even intimidated by Brady’s success at developing subdivisions and building upscale homes in Fort Worth. Ace had always made a living as a ranch hand and had never aspired to do much else. Still, almost every ranch hand had a dream, even if far-fetched, of owning his own place.

  Knowing Ace too well, Brady was still annoyed by his blatant attention to Jude. The guy always had his eye out for a good-looking woman, even one who was taken.

  Whoa! Just back up, he told himself. Jude wasn’t “taken.” At least not by Brady. Sure, he was turned on by looking at her and felt a strong need to protect her until he got her back to Lockett safe and sound, but Jude was nothing more than an acquaintance to him, right?

  Right.

  She did look sexy, though, in that top that hugged her everywhere and highlighted nearly perfect tits with plenty of enticing cleavage. Cool it, he warned himself. The last thing he should be looking at was Jude Strayhorn’s cleavage.

  The waitress appeared and he was relieved to sideline nonsensical thoughts. She set a large wooden bowl of salad, a white crockery pitcher of salad dressing and an array of fixin’s in the middle of the table. She added a pair of tongs and two salad plates, then sailed away.

  Jude interrupted his thoughts. “Ace mentioned your son. How old is he?”

  Brady watched as she used the tongs to pile greens onto a plate. “Nine.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Fort Worth.”

  “With his mother?” She handed the heaped-up plate across the table to him.

  He took it, leveling a long, querulous look at the pile of salad. Being a meat-and-potatoes man, he typically didn’t eat this much green stuff in a whole week. “Yeah,” he said.

  She was already loading up the other plate. “How’re you going to see him if you live in Lockett?”

  Dammit, he didn’t need to be reminded by someone who had no idea about his life or his contentious history with his ex-wife and father-in-law that he hadn’t quite found an answer to that question. “I’m gonna work it out as soon as I get settled.”

  Holding the pitcher of salad dressing above her plate, Jude gave him a solemn, probing look. “I just wondered. A lot of the time, ex-wives don’t like the kids being carted off to a location miles away.”

  Inwardly, he winced under her scrupulous gaze. Why did her eyes always seem to be probing, looking for something inside him? “You know this from experience? You’ve got kids?”

  “I’ve never been married. But I know plenty of divorced parents who have kids.” She drenched her salad with dressing, then dipped her finger in it and tasted. “Hmm. This is good dressing. Try some.” She passed the pitcher across the table to him. The movement of her arm pressed against her breast, raising a soft-looking pillow of flesh above the edge of the black lace that was already spinning fantasies in his mind and groin.

  Willing his eyes back to his plate, he dripped a small amount of the dressing onto his salad. “I told you it’s a good place to eat,” he said defensively.

  “More than half my students come from single-parent homes,” she said, digging into her salad. Her full lips moved with agility as she munched like a rabbit. His eyes fixed on her mouth. She swallowed with a frown, wiped her mouth with her napkin and tilted her head. “It’s a challenging dilemma. The kids with only one parent don’t seem to do as well in school.”

  Brady hated hearing that, though he knew it instinctively. He worried every day about how Marvalee and her new husband were raising—or not raising—Andy. Having grown up without a father himself, he hated not being a part of his son’s daily life. “You had only one parent. You seem to have turned out okay.”

  She looked at him with a smile that made him dizzy. “Oh, wow. I forgot you would know that about me.” She returned to her salad. “Actually, I had more supervision than most kids ever have. Besides Daddy, I had Grandpa. And a dozen housekeepers. For that matter, Daddy and Grandpa still want to supervise me. And for a long time I had Grandpa’s mother. Do you remember her? Everyone called her Penny Ann, but when I was a little girl she told me to call her Grammy Pen, so I still do when I talk about her.” She picked up her glass of tea and swallowed a long d
rink.

  Jude’s great-grandmother must have been ancient when Jude was born. As a boy, Brady might have seen an elderly woman around the Circle C, but after twenty years, he couldn’t recall.

  He barely remembered the people with whom he had interacted often back then—people closer to his age, like Jake and Cable, and even Judith Ann. “I don’t think I do,” he answered, picking chunks of tomato out of his salad and placing them on the edge of his plate.

  “You should eat those.” She pointed her fork at the tomato chunks. “Tomatoes are good for you. They’re high in antioxidants. They have lycopene. Everyone should eat either the raw fruit itself—tomatoes are really a fruit, you know—or some kind of tomato product every day.”

  Somehow Brady didn’t think he would win this debate. He jabbed a tomato chunk with his fork and popped it into his mouth. “Is that what you do?”

  “I try to. And I nag Daddy and Grandpa about it, too. It isn’t pop science. It’s real. You know that old saying about eating an apple a day? I happen to think it should be revised. I believe a tomato should be added to it.”

  “I see,” he said, and ate some more salad and bites of tomato.

  “Grammy Pen passed away just a few years ago,” she said. “She was ninety-five. I really miss her. She’s the person in the family I want to be like. I’m named after her. Well, not after her only. I’m also named after a cousin who died as a little kid.”

  Following her chatter took some effort, Brady was beginning to realize. He leaped at the chance to ask a question of his own for a change. “Who died?”

  “Judith Ellen Campbell. She drowned in the Red in 1861, when the Campbells first came to Texas. She was the first Judith. I’m the third one.”

  “The Red.”

  “The Red River. You know, that long body of water between Texas and Oklahoma?”

  “I know where the Red River is,” Brady grumbled.

  Jude giggled. “I’m kidding you. I’m trying to make you smile. But there is more than one Red River, you know.”

  To please her, Brady forced himself to smile. “But the others don’t count.”