Luck Of The Draw

by Candace Schuler

  “Down there.” She tugged her hands out of his and pressed them to her stomach. “My stomach hurts and I think I started my period and I don’t know what to do,” she said, running the words together so fast they were almost one word.

  Travis just stared at her, open-mouthed, looking as stunned and helpless as if he’d been hit in the head with a two-by-four. From the sudden flush crawling up the back of his neck, Eve could tell he was as embarrassed as the child.

  She stood and crossed the room, brushing by Travis where he still knelt on the floor like a dumbstruck ox, and gently touched the young girl’s shoulder. “Did your mother tell you anything about menstruation, Amanda?”

  “Uh-huh. She gave me a book to read, too.”

  “So you know it’s perfectly natural and normal. Nothing to be scared of. Or ashamed or embarrassed about, either,” she said with a sharp censoring glance at Amanda’s uncle. “It just means you’re becoming a woman.”

  Amanda nodded. “I know,” she said, “but I don’t have anything to use.”

  “That’s all right. I do,” Eve said, and offered her hand to the child. “Shall we go out to the van and get it?”

  Amanda nodded again and reached out, slipping her hand into Eve’s.

  “If you’ll watch Timothy for me for a few minutes,” Eve said to Travis, “I’ll be right back.”

  When she returned, fifteen minutes later, the rest of the Holt family was in the kitchen. Gracie and Laura were at the table with their uncle, chattering like magpies, eating lumpy oatmeal and toast smeared with grape jelly, and tickling Timothy’s toes with careful fingertips. A wiry, bow-legged old cowboy with thick, snowy white hair—the infamous Gus, Eve presumed—stood at the kitchen counter, his back to the room as he scraped encrusted oatmeal out of the bottom of the iron kettle it had been cooked in. A black potbellied pig wearing a jaunty red harness stood attentively at the old man’s heels, obviously hoping for handouts. The dog, Bear, lay with his nose on his front paws, his massive body stretched out over the thresh old between the kitchen and the screened-in back porch.

  Travis looked up as Eve approached the table. “Is she all right?” he asked, standing just as she reached him.

  “She’s fine. I gave her half a Midol and left her cuddling a hot water bottle and her Raggedy Ann doll.” She turned slightly, moving away from Travis’s overwhelming physical presence, reaching out to smooth Timothy’s little striped T-shirt down over his belly. “Somebody’s going to have to take her to a drugstore later, though,” she said, her gaze on the baby. “She’ll need some things.”

  Travis flushed and nodded, then reached out and captured Eve’s hands in his. Automatically, she started, pulling away, but he held tight, turning her to face him, then waiting until she lifted her gaze to his.

  “I’ve decided to trust the luck of the draw,” he said.

  Eve went very still. “The luck of the draw?” she echoed.

  At the kitchen counter, Gus turned around to watch the proceedings. The two girls, sensing something important was about to happen, stopped chattering and looked up. Even Bear lifted his head. Only the pig and the baby seemed unaware that something momentous was about to occur.

  ‘I’m asking you to marry me,” Travis said. “The sooner, the better.”

  5

  THEY WERE MARRIED late the next afternoon in the judge’s chambers at city hall, with only the children, Gus Walker and the judge’s secretary to witness their union. Eve had expected—wanted—the wedding to be a simple legal transaction, without sentiment or ceremony. In exchanging wedding vows, she and Travis were merely formalizing a business arrangement; she didn’t want a misty veil of emotion and romance to cloud the issue for either of them.

  The girls decked themselves out in their prettiest party dresses, though, and were aglow with wedding excitement. Gus traded in his red bandanna and dusty work clothes for a bolo tie with a silver concha slide, a Western-cut sport coat and freshly pressed jeans. Travis wore a conservative navy blue suit—the only suit he owned—with a crisp white shirt, a neatly knotted, extremely conservative tie and a mirror shine on his best Tony Lama dress boots. And Eve’s tailored, yellow silk coatdress—a relic of the days when she’d had a discretionary income—suddenly became bridal when her groom presented her with a bouquet of dewy white roses and baby’s breath tied up with trailing yellow satin ribbons.

  “I had the ribbons added after I saw your dress,” he said, as he handed her the flowers in the judge’s outer chamber. “I hope it’s all right.”

  “It’s lovely,” Eve murmured and bent down over Timothy’s stroller, fussing over him to hide the sudden sheen of unexplainable tears in her eyes.

  She had herself under control again when they en tered the judge’s chamber. She said her vows in a soft, steady voice, promising to love, honor and cherish the tall, broad-shouldered stranger standing beside her. When the judge asked for a token of her pledge, she shook her head firmly, silently indicating there wasn’t one, but Gus nudged her and held out a ring. Eve looked over her shoulder at the old man, wide-eyed, as startled by the ring’s appearance as she had been by the unexpected bridal bouquet.

  “Go on an’ take it,” Gus urged in a hoarse whisper that could be heard halfway across the room. “You’re both gettin’ married here. I reckon he’ll need somethin’ to remind him of it, same as you.” He put the ring into her palm and took her bouquet, handing it to one of the girls standing at his side. “Amanda here’ll hold your flowers whilst you get it done.”

  Eve’s hands shook as she pushed the plain gold band onto the third finger of Travis’s left hand. His hands, when he’d slipped a matching ring on her finger just a moment before, had been as steady as a rock.

  “You gots to kiss her, Uncle Travis,” Gracie prompted when they just stood there, solemnly staring down at their rings after the judge pronounced them husband and wife.

  “Yeah, kiss her, Uncle Travis. Kiss her,” the two older girls chimed in, giggling, their eyes round with the wonder of romance.

  Timothy gurgled and cooed, happily shaking his rattle at the sound of the girls’ excited voices.

  “The younguns is right,” Gus said. “It takes a kiss to seal those ‘I dos’ up right and proper.”

  Obediently, the newlyweds turned toward each other, then hesitated, neither of them making a move to initiate the kiss. They stared at each other instead, as if wondering what in God’s name they had done. Wondering if it was too late to undo it.

  “Go ahead and plant one on her, boy,” Gus said, reaching out to slap the bridegroom on the back. “It ain’t really legal till you do.”

  That was all the incentive Eve needed. She swallowed and closed her eyes, offering her lips to Travis to seal the bargain they’d just made. Given the heated looks he’d bestowed on her since the moment they’d met and his avowed interest in getting her naked, she fully expected to be branded with his first kiss, to have him stake his claim in no uncertain terms. Mentally she braced herself for it, determined to show him, right from the start, that she would gracefully accept the consequences of what she had done.

  Travis put one finger under her chin, gently tilting it up, and lightly touched his mouth to hers. His lips were surprisingly soft. Incredibly warm. And impossibly thorough, considering the brief time he held the kiss. Eve might not have been sure, afterward, that he had kissed her at all except for the warm tingle he left behind—and the sheen of moistness left by the soft, se ductive brush of his tongue just before he lifted his mouth from hers.

  She opened her eyes slowly, feeling a bit dazed, and looked into her new husband’s face. She saw the sharp gleam of anticipation and amusement in his brown eyes and the sexy half smile on his lips. Her stomach tightened almost painfully.

  “Not as awful as you thought it would be, was it?” he murmured.

  Eve blushed.

  He grinned knowingly and let her go. “Now, who wants to kiss the groom?” he said, turning to open his arms to his nieces.


  The girls threw themselves at him in an excited flurry of high-pitched giggles, ruffled skirts and flying blond hair.

  Gus beamed like a proud papa, pleased with the success of his matchmaking efforts.

  The judge’s secretary lingered barely long enough to offer the newly wedded pair her hasty congratulations before hurrying out of chambers to spread the red-hot news that the heartthrob of Selina, Texas, had just married an unknown woman with a brown-eyed baby boy.

  THE WEDDING was followed by an early dinner at the Double M Café, located just half a block down from the city offices on Main Street. It was the nicest restaurant in town, next to the Cattlemen’s Club above the bank, of course, which was private and frowned on women in the main dining room except on Friday and Saturday nights. And except for Polly’s Pantry, which specialized in shrimp salad, pastel petits fours and little finger sandwiches. The Double M Cafe had a simple, down-home menu, a nice view of the bandstand in the town square across the street and blue-and-white gingham linens on the tables. The waitress, a fortysomething woman in a uniform that matched the checkered tablecloths, looked up from the paperback she was reading as the little bell over the front door announced their entrance. She turned the book facedown when she saw who had come in.

  “Well, land sake’s, will you look what the cat dragged in? Mel, come see who’s here,” she hollered toward the back of the restaurant as she got up to greet her customers. “Travis Holt, you good-lookin’ heartbreaker, you.” She put her hands on either side of his face. “Where you been keepin’ yourself, sugar?” she asked, pulling him down to plant a noisy kiss on his lips. “I haven’t seen you around town in a month of Sundays. You, neither, you old coot,” she said, advancing on Gus. “How you been doin’?”

  “Doin’ fine, Miz Margo,” he said, managing to sidestep her exuberant embrace. “Doin’ just fine.”

  “Well, you sure look mighty fine.” She flicked the end of Gus’s bolo tie. “Just like a couple of fancy Philadelphia lawyers. The last time I saw you boys so gussied up was—” She broke off suddenly. The last time she’d seen either of them dressed so formally had been at Josh and Carolyn Holt’s funeral. “And, my, don’t you girls look fine, too,” she said a trifle breathlessly, hurrying to cover her near slip. “All three of you just as pretty as blue ribbon heifers at the county fair.” Her gaze slid over Eve, then took in the baby in the stroller, and the bouquet Eve still carried. “What are y’all doing in town, looking so fine?”

  “We just got married!” Gracie said importantly, before anyone else could answer.

  Margo’s eyes widened at the news. “Married?” she echoed in amazement, quickly shifting her gaze to Travis’s face for confirmation.

  He nodded.

  “Well, land sake’s! Married! Did you hear that, Mel?” she said to her husband as he came out of the kitchen. His Western-cut shirt matched her uniform and he wore his jeans shotgunned, showing off a pair of deep blue buckaroo boots with the flag of Texas stitched into the leather. He had a plain white apron around his waist “Travis went and got himself married.”

  “Well, if that don’t beat all!” Mel said, reaching to shake Travis’s hand. “Never thought I’d see the day when this slippery old son of a bi—”

  “Mel,” his wife interrupted, nodding at the girls.

  “Gun,” he amended, “would get himself lassoed and branded. What happened? Somebody’s daddy finally come after you with a shotgun for trifling with his daugh…” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Timothy. His already ruddy skin flushed deep red. “Meanin’ no disrespect, ma’am,” he mumbled.

  “Oh, Timothy isn’t—” Eve began, but Travis wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed, stopping her.

  “Mel, Margo, I’d like you both to meet my wife Eve. Eve, darlin’, these two are a couple of my oldest friends. We used to rodeo together before they got tired of living out of the back of a horse trailer and opened the Double M. Mel was one of the best damn ropers on the circuit before he retired.”

  Mel smiled and tipped an imaginary hat. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”

  “And Margo, here, was a champion barrel racer.”

  “That was years and pounds ago, sugar.” Louder and more effusive than her husband, she reached out to pump Eve’s hand. “How’d a nice, respectable-lookin’ lady like you come to be married to this no-account cowboy?”

  “Well, I, uh…”

  “Eve’s a nurse,” Travis said, as if that explained everything. Which, apparently, it did. To everyone ex cept Eve.

  She glanced up at her husband, her lips parted to ask him what her profession had to do with anything.

  “Sure proves the truth of that ol’ sayin’, don’t it?” Gus said jovially before Eve had a chance to get the ques tion out. “The main reason cowboys really ride bulls is to meet nurses.”

  Mel chuckled. “Well, you sure met yourself a looker,” he said, giving Travis a congratulatory punch on the arm. “You really lucked out this go ‘round, didn’t you, you old son of a gun?”

  “Sure did,” Travis agreed, and dropped a quick kiss on Eve’s temple. Then he let her go and bent down, scooping Timothy up out of his stroller. “This handsome little guy is Timothy,” he said, deliberately not defining his relationship to the infant. “And we’re all hungry as hogs at feeding time,” he added before anyone could ask for clarification. “Getting married works up a real appetite in a man.” He aimed a sly, sexy, intimate smile at Eve.

  Margo took the hint that further questions would be unwelcome. “Well, then, y’all come sit right over here,” she said, leading them toward a table near the wide plate-glass window with its view of the town square. “The special today is chicken-fried steak, greens beans cooked in fat back, black-eyed peas and mashed potatoes with country gravy,” she told them, watching, eagle-eyed, as the new Mrs. Holt reached to take the baby out of her husband’s arms. “With Mel’s blackberry cobbler for dessert. That okay, or do you need to look at a menu?”

  Travis glanced around the table for a consensus, his eyes lingering on Eve as she resettled Timothy in his stroller. “Is the special okay?” He waited a second but she didn’t respond. “Eve?” he said.

  She looked up at the sound of her name. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “Is the special okay with you, darlin’, or would you like something else?”

  “Ah, yes,” Eve said, as disconcerted by the tender, solicitous look in his eyes as by what had gone before it. She had no idea what the special was, and was even less interested in eating it. Nothing was going to get past the lump of apprehension in her throat, anyway. “Yes, the special is fine.”

  “Six specials, Margo,” Travis said, conveying their order with one of his heart-stopping smiles. “With ice tea all around, please.”

  “Why did you do that?” Eve asked when the waitress was out of earshot.

  “You don’t want ice tea?” he asked, all innocence.

  “You know what I mean. Why did you introduce me and Timothy that way? You know what they’re going to think.”

  “News’ll be all over town by nightfall,” Gus said approvingly. “Mel’s probably on the phone back in the kitchen right now, calling ol’ Pete Donnelly over to the hardware store. The two of them is worse than any woman when it comes to gossipin’. Between them and Nanette over to the courthouse, there won’t be a soul in town doesn’t know Travis got hisself hitched today.”

  “But why?” Eve asked, baffled by what her new husband had done. And just a little upset by it, too. She hadn’t asked him to claim paternity. Didn’t want him to, if it came to that. Timothy was hers alone. “If that was some misguided effort to legitimize my son in the eyes of your friends, I—”

  “What’s lit-a-mized?” asked Gracie.

  “To make legal,” Travis said. He leaned back in his chair, balancing it on two legs, pushed back his jacket and dug into the pocket of his trim navy slacks. “Here.” He slipped a couple of dollar bills out
of a horseshoeshaped money clip and handed them to his oldest niece. “Why don’t you and your sisters go see if there’s anything that might pass for wedding music on the juke box?”

  “Come on,” Amanda said, rolling her eyes as she rounded up her sisters and led them away from the table. “They want to have another grown-up talk.”

  Eve sat silently, waiting until the girls stood clus tered around the jukebox, arguing about what constituted appropriate wedding music, then looked back across the table at Travis. “It wasn’t necessary to make your friends think you’re Timothy’s father,” she said. “I’m not ashamed of the truth.” She lifted her chin. “There’s nothing for me to be ashamed of.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting there was. I was simply looking after what’s mine by—”

  “Mine? “Eve said indignantly.

  “A man’s got a right to look after his wife’s good name.” Gus said. “He ain’t much of a man if he don’t.”

  Travis shot the old man a look that told him to keep the hell out of it. Without another word Gus pushed back his chair and went to help the girls pick out some music.

  Travis looked back at his new wife. “We both know we didn’t get married for any of the usual reasons. And we know that neither of us would’ve picked the other if we’d been able to take our time about getting married. But we didn’t get to take our time over it, and we are married, so the reasons don’t matter anymore. You’re my wife now, Eve,” he said, holding her gaze across the width of the gingham-covered table. The expression in his eyes was steely and steady and dead serious. “And as far as I’m concerned that makes you-and your son—my responsibility.”

  Eve bristled at that. “I’m no one’s responsi—”

  “My responsibility,” he said, cutting her off. “And part of that responsibility is to make things as easy for you as I can. Letting people in this town think Timothy is mine will make things easier. For both of us,” he added, flashing a quick, self-deprecating grin that in no way compromised the seriousness of what he was saying or lightened the intense look in his eyes. “I vowed to love, honor and cherish you till death do us part,” he said. “We both know I’m not in love with you—no more than you are with me—but I intend to honor you, Eve. It’s the least a man owes his wife.” The expression in his eyes softened, becoming less steely but no less intense. “I intend to cherish you, too, if you’ll let me.”