Denial only lasts a little while. It’s impossible to deny to the heart what the eyes have seen firsthand, but guilt can hold denial’s hand. Then give anger a BFF called guilt and one fuels the other.
By the time she reached the actual guilt stage of the divorce, it had taken on a whole new size. Guilt for not giving him a chance to explain. Guilt for not returning any of his hundred calls. Guilt for not staying with him so Nona would have both parents. Guilt for not snatching Dina bald-headed. Guilt for tucking her tail and running like a scared puppy. Like the old hound dog, she’d hung on to the guilt for so long it had taken up residence in her heart and soul.
Guilt took a backseat to anger. Why in the hell hadn’t he walked right into the real estate office when he came to Mustang? Why hadn’t he put up a fight? She wondered.
Maybe he’s been living under a cloud of guilt too, her inner voice said.
“Shit!” she mumbled. “Do I have to go on to the next two steps before I’m truly over this divorce crap?”
“Whoa!” Nona called out from the back of the truck and slapped the top of the cab.
Loretta applied the brakes and stopped long enough to let Waylon and Travis throw the rectangular bales onto the back of the flatbed truck. Nona and another cowboy stacked them. When they were ready, Nona slapped the truck again and Loretta moved ahead slowly until she got another sign to stop.
In her wildest dreams, she’d never thought she’d be sitting in a hay truck again, definitely not with her gorgeous daughter stacking hay on the back of it. While they were sitting still, she pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her shirt and hit the speed dial for the real estate agency.
“Loretta? Is that you? Are you on your way home? I’ll call and make reservations for your sisters to come over to Mustang and we’ll celebrate at your favorite restaurant tonight,” her mother said.
“I’m not on my way home. I just called to see how things were going. Have all my houses been sold?”
“Of course not, but we’re closing on another one today. You know you belong here or you wouldn’t be worrying about the business. And we need you. Your dad isn’t getting any younger and I’m retired, remember. I tried to call Nona twice but it went to voice mail. When I get through talking to my granddaughter, she’ll be glad to get her butt back home and in college this fall,” Katy said.
“Mama, you aren’t retired. You still come in to the office when you want to. Besides, you’d go crazy staying home all day. And Nona is my daughter and my responsibility. Leave her alone or she’ll sure enough set her heels and refuse to do what she needs to.”
“Why did you call then, if you aren’t coming home today? It just gives me false hope,” Katy said.
“To tell you that I love you and to talk when we aren’t both angry. I miss you, Mama. Do you want me to stop calling?” Loretta asked.
“Of course not. I want to talk to you every day just like I do your sisters. Which reminds me, we’ve decided that you should have had some therapy all those years ago. You never did tell us why you left Jackson and you need to talk about it so you can get over it. So I’ve been asking around about a good therapist for you to go to when you get home.”
“I’m not seeing a shrink,” Loretta said. So much for making the first step toward peace with her mother.
“Yes, you are. That is the first stipulation for coming back to work,” Katy said.
“And the second?” Loretta asked.
“If you don’t come back when your six weeks are up, I’ll give your job to someone else. We run a family-owned business here, and either you work or you don’t have a job. I don’t like having set hours and getting up early every morning,” Katy said.
“Go on,” Nona yelled from the back of the truck.
“Who just yelled?” Katy asked.
“I’m driving a flatbed hay truck today. Nona is on the back, stacking the bales. One of the cowboys throwing hay is her boyfriend, Travis.” Loretta moved on until she heard Nona yell to stop.
“Why are you driving a hay truck? I thought you were going to the canyon to show Nona the difference in fancy living and hard ranchin’,” Katy said.
“Room and board. Jackson says I have to pay my way. Starting Sunday morning I have to take over Rosie’s job in the house while she goes on a family cruise. I had a choice, though. I could have had sex with him three times a week instead of working in the field or doing Rosie’s job,” Loretta said.
“My God! What is going on in that damned canyon? I’m calling your sisters right now. Have you gone crazy or are has Jackson Bailey seduced you again?” Katy asked.
“Maybe a little of both,” Loretta answered.
Chapter Nine
THE ONLY BOOTS LORETTA HAD were the ones she’d left in the closet as a statement when she left the canyon. Leaving them behind meant that she’d never, ever need them to work on a dusty old ranch. She had taken her dress boots with her, but they’d long since been relegated to the attic.
She’d only packed one pair of jeans, the old, faded work pants that she washed and dried every night. She swung open her closet doors and there were more than a dozen pairs of designer jeans hanging there. Not what she’d wear to the hayfield or to plow, but any one of them would do just fine for dancing at the Sugar Shack.
She pushed them all aside and pulled out a strapless sundress. She pulled it off the hanger and held it up to her body. It was soft chiffon in a wild splash of bright colors over a lime-green underskirt of pure silk. The hem stopped at her knees in the front but tapered off to her heels in the back. She swept her curly red hair to an off-center ponytail that flowed over one shoulder, fasted big lime-green hoop earrings in her ears, and added a clunky necklace with brilliant stones in the colors of the overskirt. She’d bought lime-green spike heels to go with the outfit but she shoved them aside and stomped her feet down into the old weathered boots.
“Maybe I should polish them,” she muttered and then shook her head. “No. Hell, no! It’s been years since I’ve been to an old honky-tonk, but I do remember that a woman needs good comfortable boots to two-step. I really do need a new pair for special occasions, maybe red ones with pointed toes.”
Applying a final bit of blush and lipstick, she heard Jackson’s door open and close and the sound of his boots on the hardwood as he headed downstairs. One more check at her reflection and second thoughts flooded over her. She couldn’t go, especially not in that getup. With her height and red hair, she’d stand out like an overgrown watermelon in a field of strawberries.
The door swung open and Nona gasped. “Mama, you are gorgeous. I love your hair and the boots with that dress are so in style. Besides, they’ll be comfortable when you dance with Daddy.”
“Who says I’m dancing with him? Maybe I’m using him to check out the rest of the cowboys.” Loretta was grateful for the little bit of self-confidence that Nona gave her.
“The boots don’t really go with it, do they?” Loretta whispered.
“You are going to turn every head in the club tonight.” Nona reached up, laid her hands on Loretta’s shoulders, and turned her away from the mirror. “Go right now and don’t look back, and if that Dina bitch is there, slap her once for me.”
“Club? Honey, the Sugar Shack barely classifies as a beer joint. It certainly wouldn’t be in the yellow pages under clubs,” Loretta laughed.
“I’ve been there. I know what it’s like,” Nona protested.
Loretta shook her finger at Nona. “You aren’t old enough to drink or go to the Sugar Shack.”
Nona crossed the room and hugged her mother. “Mommy dearest, I’m twenty-one years old, which means I can buy a drink anywhere in the state of Texas or Oklahoma.”
Loretta wasn’t about to admit that she and Jackson had tried to get into the Sugar Shack when they were sixteen and had gotten turned away. Or that he’d had beer in a cooler in t
he back of his truck and they’d gone back to the creek to drink it. She sure wasn’t going to tell her daughter that she and Jackson had had sex in the back of his truck that same night and that it hadn’t been the first time, either.
“No answer, huh?” Nona laughed. “Daddy is waiting. You’d best get on down stairs before Dina comes around trying to beat your time. After all, she does want white roses tonight. Maybe she’s going to pick all the petals off and string them from the door of the hotel room to the big king-sized bed.”
Loretta shot a dirty look across the room. “And what are you and Travis doing tonight?”
“Skinny-dippin’, but I did tell him that Rosie and Daddy got real upset over the hickey and he promised to put them where y’all can’t see them from now on,” Nona said.
“Wynona Katherine Bailey!” Loretta’s voice got higher and shriller with each syllable.
Nona opened the door and stood to one side. “Go while you’ve still got that attitude.”
Loretta breezed out of the room with an over-the-shoulder glance back at her daughter. Nona was dressed in fancy jeans, boots, and a tight-fitting, lacy sleeveless shirt. Surely to God she’d been teasing about skinny-dipping.
Jackson sat down in a wing-back chair at the foot of the stairs. He could hear the changing tones of Nona and Loretta’s voices but he couldn’t make out the words. Having them both back home together under any circumstances was more than he deserved. If he hadn’t been letting his eyes wander all those years ago, if he hadn’t flirted, however slightly, after church that Sunday morning with Dina, then she wouldn’t have come on to him so brazenly. It was his fault that Loretta left; it was hers that she hadn’t fought for their marriage. But this was a second chance, the only one he might ever get, and he damn sure wasn’t going to blow it.
Like always, he felt her presence as well as heard her footfalls on the hardwood floor. Did he hear boots or were his ears playing tricks on him? His heart tossed in an extra beat when he caught sight of her floating down the stairs. His mouth went dry as he slowly rose to his feet and hoped that his shaky knees didn’t forsake him.
“My God, you are beautiful,” he whispered.
“My God, that line is old as the hills,” she laughed.
Jackson’s face broke into a grin. “Darlin’, that is not a line. It’s an honest opinion from an awestruck cowboy who now wants to stay home, sit across the room from you, and stare at you all evening.”
Loretta blushed. “Now that is a beautiful line. But I’m all dressed up and we’re going dancing, Jackson Bailey.”
“Promise me the last dance right now.” He crooked his arm.
She laced hers into it and asked, “Why?”
“Rules haven’t changed in the canyon. You go home with the cowboy that you dance the last dance with and I’m terrified that you’ll go home with someone else. I don’t have a brand on you anymore, Loretta,” he said.
“I’ll pencil you into my dance card for the last dance. You look pretty damn fine yourself,” she said.
“Thank you, darlin’.”
Loretta’s insides fluttered as she stole glances at Jackson’s chiseled square jaw, which had been sexy when he was a young man but was even more so on a grown, mature cowboy. His shoulders were wide; his biceps filled out every inch of the sleeves in the light blue shirt that matched his eyes perfectly. Her eyes followed the perfect vee from his shoulders to a laced belt with a big silver buckle and then on down to his boots. He’d worn his old ones too, but he had taken time to dust them off more than she had done hers.
Her breath caught in her chest when she caught a whiff of his shaving lotion, tightening it up while her pulse raced. He opened the truck door for her, settled her into the seat and then reached across her lap, his shoulder grazing hers as he buckled her seat belt. On his way back out, he dropped a lingering kiss across her lips—enough to say that he wasn’t trying to seduce her, but more than enough to leave her nerves in a tight, tingling ball.
“So,” he said as he crawled in the driver’s side of the big black truck and started the engine, “what do you think, Loretta? Has the canyon changed much?”
“I’ve only seen the church and Lonesome Canyon Ranch since I got there. I don’t know if it’s changed or not,” she said. “But I don’t expect that it has. There’s still red dirt roads, heat, and bawling cows.”
And one damn fine sexy cowboy who still has a big part of my heart in his shirt pocket.
She looked out the side window, trying to calm her nerves, but even shutting her eyes tightly didn’t help because his image was burned onto the backs of her eyelids.
Finally, she asked, “Has the Sugar Shack changed any? How about Tiny Lee? Is he still running it or did he move away?”
“Tiny Lee won’t ever sell the Sugar Shack. They’ll take him out in a hearse one of these days, but he’ll work there until he drops. He’s just a little grayer in the temples and about twenty pounds heavier,” Jackson said.
She jerked her head around so quickly that it made her dizzy. “You are kidding me.”
“No, he’s up near three hundred pounds. Still has three chins, a handlebar mustache, and a double-barreled shotgun up under the bar. No one knows if it’s loaded, but there ain’t a canyon cowboy who’s takin’ chances, believe me. Sometimes he lets his nephew tend bar and I heard that he doesn’t card the kids as much as Tiny Lee did us when we were young. Guess with all these fake IDs nowadays, it’s useless anyway.” Jackson smiled.
“Still got the old jukebox?”
“Oh, yeah. Price is higher. You have to feed it two quarters for three songs now,” he answered. “And yes, the beer is ice-cold and the dance floor still has sawdust on it. And line or not, you are beautiful, Loretta.”
He turned right onto the highway leading through the canyon and drove several miles in silence before he made a right-hand turn down an old red dirt road.
“If it don’t rain soon, we’re going to be in deep trouble. This drought is killing the ranchers and don’t even get me started on the poor old farmers. More than one has sold out since you’ve been gone,” he said.
“My God!” she said. “Tiny Lee painted it.”
“No, he had it covered in vinyl siding,” Jackson said.
“That is the ugliest shit I’ve ever seen. It looks like he sprayed the whole place down with Pepto-Bismol. Please tell me the inside is still the same.” Her nose curled up and her perfectly arched eyebrows drew into a solid line above her green eyes.
Jackson’s laughter bounced around the cab of the truck like marbles in a tin can. “He said that it’s that color because cotton candy is spun out of melted sugar.”
“I don’t care if it’s spun out of bullshit. I liked it better as an old weathered shack with a real screen door, not those double metal doors. He ought to bulldoze the damn thing and start all over.”
Jackson hiccupped twice before he got control of the laughter. “Are we going in or going straight to the creek to skinny-dip? I’ve got a cooler in the back with a six-pack of Coors on ice.”
“I expect we’d best go inside and dance, since your daughter is going skinny-dippin’ and we wouldn’t want to run into her and Travis,” Loretta said smoothly.
“I’m going to kill that kid,” Jackson said through gritted teeth.
“Want my gun?”
“Hell, no! I’m going to do it with my bare hands.”
“We are talking about Travis and not Nona?” she asked.
“You know we are. My precious angel of a daughter wouldn’t be doing those things if that wild cowboy hadn’t talked her into it. It’s all his fault. Let’s go get a shot of whiskey to get that out of my head and dance until I’m too tired to be mad at him anymore,” Jackson said.
She unfastened her seat belt and swung open the door. “It’s tough being a parent.”
He quickly j
ogged around the back of the truck and held out a hand to help her out. “At our age we should have a bunch of little kids, not a grown woman for a daughter.”
“But we do.” She put her hand in his and stepped out of the truck. But it didn’t take her long to grab both her ears with her hands. It was downright amazing that the vinyl siding on the building didn’t swell out and fly off into the hot night breezes with the loud music coming from the small bar.
“Holy shit! That is loud. Was it that loud when we used to come here?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah, it was. We were too busy making out to realize it.”
“Go in there and get two beers. We can dance out here on the porch,” she said.
“Oh, no, you are going in on my arm and I’m going to have trouble keeping the buttons from bustin’ right off my shirt because I’ve got the prettiest girl in the whole canyon with me tonight,” Jackson said.
“Jackson, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. We can’t take up where we left off even if we were both wrong,” she said.
“I don’t want to take up where we left off. I want to get to know this new, more gorgeous Loretta. Let’s start with tonight and going dancing and proceed from this point.”
She set her heels at the door. “Is this a ploy to get me to change my mind about Nona?”
“This is about us. Nona is past eighteen. Hell, she could go to the courthouse tonight and get married and there wouldn’t be a damn thing we could do about it. She’s legally an adult. She’ll make her own decisions.” He opened the door.
She walked inside the world she knew when she was a teenager. Nothing had changed. The jukebox still sat in the far left corner and the walls were covered with old car tags dating back fifty years and more. The bar ran from one end of the joint to the other and the stools were mismatched. Tiny Lee waved when he saw her.
“Be still my heart. Folks, Loretta Bailey is in the house and she’s more beautiful than ever.” His big voice boomed above the loud music and he blew kisses her way.
Long, Hot Texas Summer Page 9