by Dixie Cash
“Nuh-unh. I was planning on picking you up at your house like a gentleman should when he’s got a date with a nice lady.”
What? What did this mean? Was he attracted to her in that way? Even after all that had happened between them? The part of her that didn’t dislike him certainly found him physically attractive enough, she had to admit. Her heartbeat picked up a pace and she couldn’t stop the stupid grin that spread across her face. “This is a date?”
“’Course it is. Dinner and wine? Sounds like a date to me, even if I’m the one doing the cooking. Or maybe it’s a negotiation. I’ve already got the wine, by the way.”
He has the wine? Hah. Cowboys didn’t drink wine. They guzzled beer. And what was left to negotiate? He had already whipped her legally and soundly.
“I’ve got your address,” he said. “How do I get to it?”
She paused for a few seconds, vacillating as she thought about dates from hell. It wasn’t like they weren’t acquainted, was it? After all, they had seen each other at their worst. Things could only be better going forward. An invitation to dinner was a friendly gesture, right? Should she give good will a chance?
After all of her emotional yo-yoing, her biggest concern was being caught at his house miles out of town without her own transportation. What if she wanted to leave in a hurry? “Listen, I do want to visit Waffle and a steak dinner sounds good, but I think I should just drive out to your place in my own car. That’s a lot more convenient for both of us.”
A pause, then a sigh. “Okay. Suit yourself.”
His tone had changed. He was almost snappish, but she stood firm.
“You need to show up before dark so we can take a tour in my Jeep,” he said sharply.
Holy cow, was he mad because she had rejected his picking her up at her house?
“Wear jeans and boots,” he continued. “You never know when a rattlesnake might be hanging around.”
She owned a pair of cowboy boots—what native West Texas female didn’t?—but she hadn’t worn them in months. “I assure you, rattlers aren’t the kind of snakes that worry me. Besides, it’s October. Aren’t snakes hibernating by now?”
“There might be one that that doesn’t have a calendar. You never know.”
She gave a little grunt at his attempt at humor. “The directions?”
As he had done before, he quickly rattled off exactly how to reach his house. Scribbling to keep up, she cursed the great state of Texas for having such confusing roads and highways with numbers instead of names. After they disconnected, Sandi noticed her heartbeat had become a tattoo that made her giddy.
She turned to Betty Ann and Jessica who had been standing by eavesdropping and waiting for her to share. “Okay, girls. One of you is going to have to mind the store on Saturday afternoon. I will be leaving early. I have an invitation for a steak dinner.”
Betty Ann pumped a fist. “Yes!”
“Yum,” Jessica said. “I’m talking about the guy, not the steak.”
“You don’t have to worry about Sunday,” Betty Ann said enthusiastically. “I’ll open the store.”
Sandi gave her a look. She rarely asked her girls to work on a Sunday. “Why would I need you to do that? I always work on Sundays.”
“In case you decide on a sleepover.”
“Oh, my Lord, Betty Ann. Where is your head, girl? I barely know this guy. I’m not even sure I like him.”
“That doesn’t make any difference,” twenty-one-year-old college student Jessica said. “He’s a hot body. He’s got that look. You know, like he’d be a great fu—I mean I’ll bet he’s a super good lover. You don’t have to like him to do it with him.”
These two were her employees! Sandi tried to maintain separation between them and her personal life, but the three of them worked in such close quarters, these two girls felt more like pals than employees. She gaped and gasped. “Girls!”
They might not be so much younger than she, but their attitudes about men and sex made her feel out of touch. “Listen, all of my meetings with him have been so bizarre I don’t think there’s a danger I’ll be spending the night with him.”
***
On Saturday, Betty Ann and Jessica pushed Sandi out the door of her store mid-afternoon and she headed home. She still hadn’t shaken off the fear that she smelled like a skunk, so she showered and shampooed her hair again and doused herself with Juicy Couture. The temperature was forecast to drop after dark, so with her best pair of jeans, she put on a beige turtleneck sweater. She dug the cowboy boots out of her closet, wondering all the while what, other than a dog, she had in common with a man who had chosen “cowboy” as a career.
After feeding everybody, she drove toward Kroger, the grocery store that she knew had a good selection of wines. He might have said he had wine, but probably, it was packaged in a cardboard box. She didn’t want to drink rotgut alcohol with choice steaks.
Again, why am I doing this? she asked herself as she drove. Do I really need to have dinner with a man who makes me uncomfortable just so I can visit Waffle?
At the grocery store, she bought the best bottle of Merlot on the shelf, certain it would taste better than what he would supply.
To her surprise, she didn’t get lost. She reached a neatly kept older house surrounded and shaded by live oak trees. The trees were huge, which meant they could be a hundred years old. And so could the house from the looks of it. It had a wide gray-painted porch wrapping around two sides.
Nick, Waffle and Randy came out the front door as she parked in the driveway. Randy strained at the end of a leash. Nick was wearing his signature Wranglers and boots, a long-sleeve blue button-down, a bright blue puffy vest and a gimme cap with the Purina red-and-white checkerboard logo. He looked all luscious and coordinated.
She opened her car door and had put only a foot out before Waffle leaped forward, placed his front paws on her shoulders and began to lick her face. “Oh, Waffle, I miss you so much. Everyone misses you.”
His weight pushed her back into the car and he continued licking her face and making that keening noise in his throat that he always made when he was happy. She hugged him and rubbed his back and head.
“Buster, get back here.” Nick gripped his collar and pulled him back.
Sandi dug into her purse for the Barkies she always kept there and offered them. Waffle wolfed them down, then danced in a circle and wagged his tail furiously. Randy, too, gobbled up a couple of the cookies.
“Looks like he’s glad to see you,” Nick said. “Randy, too.”
She looked up and Nick was smiling down at her, his hand resting on the top of her SUV’s door. For the first time she noticed that the ends of his hair touched his collar. And his jaws looked freshly shaved. Close up, he was even better-looking than that day in court.
Crap. Why can’t he be ugly?
Though her stomach had flipped and her brain had temporarily disconnected, she managed a smile. “Wish I could have brought the rest of the gang with me. Waffle’s like their family. He was their leader.”
“He’s an alpha dog all right.” Nick the Beautiful bent down and scruffed Waffle’s ears, a clean-smelling scent of his cologne drifting her way. Waffle leaned into his hand and gently nipped it. Nick rubbed his head. “Good dog, good dog.”
He straightened. The two dogs stood there looking up at them as if awaiting the next compliment or order. Or in reality, they were probably waiting for another treat.
Nick looked past her into her car. “Where’s your jacket?”
“This sweater will be warm enough.”
“You need a jacket. Be right back. Hold this.” He handed her the end of Randy’s leash, turned and strode back into his house.
“Well, Mr. Randy. Isn’t he bossy?” she said to the puppy.
Randy wagged his tail and barked.
Nick soon returned with a red fleece jacket bearing a black Texas Tech logo, bringing back their conversation months back in Hogg’s: ...Went to Texas Tech on a foot
ball scholarship. Got a degree in biology. Been through A&M’s range management program. Studied grasslands enhancement with Dow Chemical. I’ve got a Masters in animal nutrition....
She pinched herself mentally. Nick might look and talk like a dumb cowboy, but appearances could be deceiving.
While she shrugged into the jacket that swallowed her, he opened the back gate of an old Jeep Wrangler. Waffle jumped inside, but Randy was still too small to make the leap. Nick picked him up and placed him on the Jeep’s deck beside Waffle. “Here ya go, Little Bit. Going for a nice ride. That sound good?”
She was touched by the gentleness with which Nick treated the puppy that obviously would grow up to be smaller than Waffle.
He came around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. “This is my chariot. Climb in.”
She did, he scooted behind the wheel and they trundled off toward the pasture behind his house.
“Thanks for the jacket,” she said. “But I feel like a traitor wearing it. I went to college at UT Permian in Odessa.”
He grinned and winked. “Thirty minutes from now, you won’t care. It’ll feel good.”
He drove over the rough terrain with confidence and competence. Crap. She hated seeing him display that masculine self-assurance that appealed to her. She hadn’t often seen it. At the bank where she had worked for years, most of her male co-workers were milquetoasts who worked at clerical-type jobs and had no muscles. Richard was the same way.
“Nice day,” he said as they bumped and lurched along.
Discussing the weather? Ugh. But then, what had she expected? He was probably like most of the rural people she knew who worried every day about the weather. “Yes, it is.”
A river of silence flowed between them as they inched along. Finally, she said, “What are you going to show me?”
“I’m gonna let you see how much fun Buster has working with the cattle.”
Waffle sat on the deck behind them, his head and front paws almost between them. Once, he craned his head forward and licked her cheek. She turned around and rubbed his head.
“So did you study some kind of animal science?” Nick asked.
“I majored in business with emphasis on marketing. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering how you got to be an expert on what animals oughtta eat.”
“Research. I’m very good at research. I don’t call myself an expert, but I’m friends with a couple of vets who advise me.”
“How many animals do you take care of?”
“At the moment, fifteen. Four dogs, six cats, four chickens and a gerbil.”
“Chickens?”
“A little old lady’s relatives took her to a nursing home and they called the SPCA to pick up her chickens. They all ended up at We Love Animals and almost as soon as they got there, they started dying. Juanita, my friend who runs the place, talked me into taking the four that were left. Three hens and a rooster.”
Nick chuckled. “Chickens, eh. She must be persuasive.”
“She is, but truthfully, she didn’t have to try very hard. I felt sorry for them. At first, I just took two of them. Sophie, one of the white Leghorn hens, had a broken wing and she was losing her feathers because the other three pecked at her all the time. Juanita said they would finally kill her or she would just die, but I wanted to try to save her. I scoured books and the Internet for information about chicken ailments. My favorite vet and I gave her extra special care and she gradually got better. Then Juanita talked me into taking the other two.”
They had started following a barbed-wire fence. “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to drive you along this fence line so you can look across the pasture and see the place.”
What’s to see? Flat land, mostly beige grass and sage brush.
“That’s quite a story about those chickens. I doubt if many people can say they saved a chicken’s life. Or who would even want to. It must have taken a lot of patience.”
“Taking care of wounded animals has made me find patience I didn’t know I had. They’re so grateful.”
“What’s going on with Sophie now?
“She’s snow-white and pretty, as chickens go, but her wing healed funny and it droops. She’s odd-looking to her peers. They still mistreat her if I don’t pay attention.” She sighed. “That’s the way chickens are, you know. The stronger ones pick on the weaker ones.”
“That’s the way it is in most of the animal kingdom. Some will actually kill off their own that are too weak to survive. I saw it happen in the wild horses when I worked over in New Mexico. In some ways, people behave the same.”
“You sound like a cynic. You don’t like people?”
“Haven’t met too many that deserve liking. I get along better with animals.”
Had she heard him right? He was an animal lover? She couldn’t pass up the opening he had given her. “You wouldn’t like to have some chickens, would you? They need a permanent home. My backyard is small and you’ve got lots of room.”
“They wouldn’t make it out here. Too many predators. I’ve got coyotes and foxes both. Even weasels and coons and hogs. All of the above would love a chicken dinner. I couldn’t build a pen stout enough that a weasel or a coon couldn’t figure out how to get in.”
“Too bad. I’ve always thought chickens should live in the country. My neighbors think so, too. One even complains regularly to the City Council. So far, I’ve been able to convince them that my home is only a temporary stopover. That’s a little white lie, of course. My animals are castoffs that have something wrong with them. No one wants them, so they’ll be with me forever.”
“You’ve got a business to run. Why would you take on the care of damaged animals?”
Unexpectedly, tears rushed to her eyes. Thinking about the condition her animals had been in when she acquired them often made her cry. She wiped the corner of her eye with a pinky fingertip. “Without me, they’d have no one. They’d be killed or left to die. I could never abandon them. I remind you, if I hadn’t taken in Waffle, you probably wouldn’t have him today.”
“I get that. And I’m grateful you were the one who found him. So these chickens, do they lay eggs?”
Hah. He doesn’t want to discuss my claim to Waffle.
“They sure do and the eggs are really good. I let them forage and I feed them healthy food. I get at least one egg a day. I’d get more if I didn’t have a rooster.”
He laughed. “You’re really down on us males, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “What can I say? I have to throw away quite a few eggs. I guess males are males whether human or chicken.”
“Speaking of men, have you heard from that toolbox that was supposed to be your boyfriend?”
She had never heard anyone say such a negative thing about Richard. “I assume you’re talking about Richard. No, and I don’t expect to.”
“Good. If we’re gonna be sharing custody of Buster, we’ll be seeing more of each other. I don’t want to run into him anymore.”
And what does that mean? “Richard is a good guy, really. Just not for me. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him. I gave up on men after my second divorce. I should’ve stuck with that plan.”
He looked across his shoulder, his brow arched. “You’ve been divorced twice?”
She didn’t miss the emphasis on two times. Her defenses rose. “So?”
“I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that you seem kinda young to have gotten married and divorced two times.”
“I’m thirty-two. What difference does my age make?”
He made no reply, didn’t continue the conversation, didn’t give her an opportunity to explain. The river of silence widened. Soon, she could stand it no longer. “My mother has always said I have lousy judgement in men.”
“Is she right? Do you?”
She heaved a great sigh. “She has that opinion because both of my exes cheated on me.”
“That’s not good.”
“It gets worse. My
last husband took up with our neighbor’s daughter. She was nineteen. They fooled around for a long time. Hell. For all I know, she was under eighteen when he first started... seeing her.”
“How old was he?”
“At the time, thirty-four.”
His head shook, one, two, three times. “That’s unbelievable.”
Not to mention illegal, Sandi thought bitterly.
You’re a beautiful woman,” he went on. “He should’ve appreciated what he had.”
Beautiful? She hadn’t heard a man say he thought her beautiful or even pretty in a long time. She angled her head and looked at him. “Boy, you’re really racking up points. What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying you’ve got a lot going on. You’re smart and you seem like you’d be good company if you liked somebody.”
“I don’t know how smart I am. When I told my mom about his girlfriend, she said I should’ve seen it coming.”
“Is that true? Should you have known he was a low-life?”
“You want to know the truth? I didn’t see it because I wasn’t looking. I was too busy building a career at the bank that laid me off even after I had been there over five years. Mom says Ken was immature from the start. And maybe he was. He needed a lot of attention.”
Crap. She was rambling worse than Jake, but she couldn’t seem to shut up. “I don’t know why I’m giving you so much personal information.”
“I’m easy to talk to. I don’t judge.”
“You probably don’t know what it’s like, but when someone who’s supposed to be loyal to you abandons you for someone else, it does something to your self-esteem. And when it happens twice, well...”
He turned toward her and gave her a smile she could only call tender. “I do know.”
Holy cow. Had someone cheated on him, too? How was that possible? He was a scholarship athlete, a football hero. And he looked like Chris Hemsworth. In college, he must have had his own harem. Sylvia Armbruster flew into her mind and she became extremely interested in his history with women.