Trouble in Dixie

by Becky McGraw

  If he had his druthers, her sister would be the one to teach Dixie those things, he’d feel safer. Katie was his kind of woman, responsible, sedate and down to earth, where her sister was wild as a mustang, and as free-spirited as his daughter, which is why Dixie thought Katie was boring. Beggars couldn’t be choosers though, and he was going to take Karlie up on her offer, because he needed a break…and Dixie probably did too.

  Tommy couldn’t wait for school to start again, almost as much as Dixie didn’t want it to start. He kept the hope, like had every year since she started school, that this year would be better than last, and he’d only have to make fifty trips to meet with her teacher, instead of the typical one hundred. Every time Tommy was called there, he knew he was going to hear the same thing. Dixie is beyond smart, picks up on things quickly, but her attention span and classroom behavior needed improvement, along with her social skills with her classmates on the playground. How the hell he was supposed to fix that while she was at school, and he was working the ranch was beyond him. The teacher would just have to deal with it at school, because him trying to deal with it after the fact at home, wasn’t working.

  Tommy was out in the field exercising a pregnant mare and checking fences, when his phone rang in his pocket. He quickly fished it out, then glanced at the caller ID and answered it, “Did you find Katie?”

  “Yeah, she drove all night, she’s in Dallas at an RV park,” Karlie told him.

  He huffed out a relieved breath, then anger surged up inside of him, because she should never have driven all that way without stopping, as tired as she’d been when she left the ranch. That was just asking for an accident from falling asleep behind the wheel.

  “What the hell was she thinking driving all that way, without stopping?” he grated and accidentally squeezed the mare with his legs and she bolted a little, then settled when he pulled back on the reins gently.

  “I asked her the same thing…it wasn’t smart for sure, but she’s there now, and taking a break, because she can’t get back on the circuit this year.”

  “Why can’t she go back?” Tommy asked, worried now about how she was going to support herself if she couldn’t go back.

  “Her partner is with someone else, and she’s too far behind in points…she works too hard anyway, she needs to take a break. She hasn’t ever done that,” Karlie told him with concern in her tone.

  “Yeah, she’s wound pretty tight, isn’t she?” he said thinking of the way the gorgeous cowgirl had taken it upon herself to organize everything at the ranch, including the ranch hands, even though that wasn’t part of her job responsibilities. He also thought about Katie telling him at the barbecue he was a tight ass, who only liked vanilla sex. Tommy wanted to laugh, because she had no idea how close she was to the truth. He wouldn’t know vanilla from Rocky Road, because he’d been that damned inexperienced when he got married, and Maggie had been a virgin when they met.

  Jud had told him that they were all a little afraid of her, so they did exactly what she told them to do. He had to admit his tack room had never looked better, and his ranch hands had never been more inclined to be on time for their meetings. She’d even reorganized the office and he could actually find stuff now. On top of all that, she was one helluva horsewoman, and had two of the cutter prospects she’d been working with coming along well. The other one, just wasn’t suited for it. Tommy was gonna miss her at the Rockin’ D, for more reasons than her work ethic, though.

  “You can say that again…she’s always so serious, she needs to loosen up and have some fun. She’s like that, because she’s always had to keep up with me, and worry about what I was gonna get into next,” Karlie told him with a chuckle, then sobered and added, “I’m not that woman anymore, things are a lot better…so she needs to figure out what to do with all that spare energy she wasted on me before.”

  Tommy could come up with a few uses for that spare energy, he thought, then reminded himself that he didn’t want a relationship…but if he did want that, Katie Upton would be the one to tempt him into it.

  “I think I’m going to take you up on the offer to keep Dixie for two weeks…she misses you a lot,” he told her, and it was true. Dixie talked about Karlie all the time, and this time with her would probably do her a lot of good.

  Karlie let out a whoop so loud he had to hold the phone away from his ear. He grinned then told her, “I guess you’re as excited as I know she will be when I tell her.”

  “Hell yeah, I am…she’s a baby doll. The spittin’ image of me when I was her age…that’s why we get along so well,” she admitted.

  “You’re scaring the hell out of me, you know that right?” he asked her with a chuckle.

  “Be afraid, be very afraid,” she laughed, then added, “But in the meantime, take comfort in the fact that I’m a settled woman now, and successful. She will be too, but it might take some doing to get her there.”

  “And a lot of gray hair and whiskey?” he teased her.

  “My Uncle Jerry’s hair was white by the time he was forty, so that should tell you something…and I think he owned stock in Jack Daniels.”

  ***

  Katie felt like the hairdresser who was doing her hair, was actually trying to help her receive messages from Mars, because her head was stacked with tin foil packets from top to bottom. She’d never had highlights before, but she was up for a lot of firsts, so when the woman suggested them, Katie was on board. She was going to straighten it too and remove the loose curls that had turned to frizz on rainy days all her life.

  “We’ll give you thirty minutes to process, sugar, while we do your manicure. Your toes look fabulous, what color is that?” the beautician asked her in a high-pitched cutesy voice leaning a little closer to inspect her pedicure.

  “I’m Not Really A Waitress red,” Katie told her with a grin. Some of names on the nail polish the pedicurist had shown her made her laugh.

  “Good choice, that’s one of my favorites too. Wanna do your fingernails the same color?”

  “Yep, that’d be great,” she agreed, then put her hand in the bowl of warm soapy water on the table in front of her. Maybe the calluses she’d accumulated over the last three months would go away with the deluxe manicure she was getting.

  That color would match her new red motorcycle too, she thought with a wider grin. She’d bought the sport bike yesterday, and had the guy she bought it from drive her pick-up back to the RV Park for her. She’d been at the park for three days now, but she found a nice stable nearby to board Laramie, so he’d be more comfortable, and she wouldn’t have to worry about him. He was having a vacation too, his just didn’t include the hour long massage, she’d had earlier. Katie was so relaxed, her tongue wanted to hang out the side of her mouth, and her words were slurred.

  After all the shopping she’d done yesterday, she needed it. Katie hadn’t realized how much fun she’d been missing with her sole focus being on her career and watching out for her sister. She felt like a balloon off its tether, and she was just floating around going exactly where the wind carried her. It was liberating, freeing, and she liked it, a lot.

  She looked down at the totally un-Katie like outfit she had on and grinned. Black leather jacket, super tight and short ripped up jean shorts with fishnets and high-heeled black boots, redefined her as a biker chick. Tomorrow, she’d be a rodeo queen again, but today, she was enjoying her new persona. She also had an appointment for her new tattoo later this afternoon…a she-devil on her hip…she might even get a set of lips on her ass. Katie wasn’t going to be part of a matched set anymore, she was going to be unique, an individual, she was tired of living in her sister’s shadow.

  When Katie walked out of the salon two hours later, she was grinning and her step was light, as she walked to her new bike and pulled on the helmet, then straddled it to head to the tattoo parlor. She almost didn’t want to put the helmet over her gorgeous new straight blondish hair. She’d had it cut right above her shoulder blades in a wispy, laye
red cut that framed her face. The make-up artist had shown her how to create a sexy, but subdued smoky-eyed look that had her looking pretty damned good, if she said so herself. Katie wasn’t much on the red lipstick the woman had used, but it went with her nail and toe polish, so she went along with it.

  Taking her shorts and panties off for the tattoo was a little disconcerting, but she had a drape that only exposed one hip, so the artist could work. He did a great job, even put red hair on the little she-devil, and a whip tail that curled toward her navel above the waistband of her shorts to tease. It had been a little more painful than she expected, so she didn’t get the lip prints just yet. She’d come back to get that one.

  Katie made it back to the RV Park and whizzed her bike onto the gravel drive, and fishtailed a little, because she’d cornered it a little too fast. She giggled then straightened it out and gunned it toward the back of the park where her trailer and truck were parked. After she parked, she pulled off the helmet, then turned her head upside down and shook out her hair, running her fingers through it, then tossed it back.

  Tommy didn’t know who the hell just pulled up in front of Katie’s trailer. The blond biker chick bore no resemblance to the beautiful redheaded cowgirl that left his ranch a few days ago, and he was stunned. He slid out of his truck then walked across the narrow gravel road, and stopped waiting for her to stand back up again. When she did, and his eyes met hers, he felt all the blood in his body sink down to his toes.

  It was Katie, but not. Her beautiful red hair was almost blond now and was a lot shorter. She also had enough makeup on to work as a clown at the rodeo. Although the outfit she had on made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, because she was sex on a stick, he didn’t like it. His sweet Katie had transformed herself into a vixen, a man-eater, someone who was hard and savvy. Tommy felt sick at his stomach, and his mouth worked, but no words came out.

  “You feeling okay?” Katie asked him with a smirk, then unzipped her leather jacket and slid it off her shoulders, revealing a red halter top underneath that barely covered her beautiful breasts.

  His voice was little more than a breathless squeak, as he asked, “What the hell did you do to yourself, Katie?”

  “Not so boring anymore, huh? And a better question is what the hell are you doing here?” she asked him, putting a hand on her hip, which was barely covered by the miniscule shorts she had on.

  “I came to apologize,” he said then lifted his hand, and shoved the bouquet of yellow roses he’d brought at her.

  Katie looked at them then back into his eyes and snorted, “Even the flowers have to send the ‘right’ message, huh?”

  His eyebrows slammed together, and he looked down at the flowers in confusion, then back up into her eyes. “Huh? You don’t like roses?”

  “Yellow roses are for friends…thanks but no thanks, Tommy,” she told him then turned her back on him and walked toward the trailer. “I don’t want to be your friend, and I still haven’t heard your apology…” she said over her shoulder.

  She hadn’t heard it, because she hadn’t given him a chance to voice it. He was still stunned over her transformation. He swallowed then told her shortly, “I’m sorry, Katie.”

  “Okay, you’ve apologized, now you can go…I have things to do,” she told him coldly, then walked up the steps to the door of her trailer.

  Panic surged up inside of Tommy, because if he didn’t get her to forgive him now, most likely he’d never see her again. It was obvious to him, she was far from forgiving him. He hadn’t gotten it right yet, even with the flowers, evidently.

  “Katie wait, I want to talk to you…please,” he said and took a few steps to stand beside the trailer steps.

  “We said all that needed saying in Amarillo, Tommy. I’m sorry you’ve driven all this way, but we really have nothing to talk about…you don’t have room for anyone else in your life, and I’m not into playing second fiddle…or being friends with you.”

  Well she’d made her position pretty plain to him, Tommy thought, and this was the moment of truth. Either he made things right, and moved forward as more than friends with her, or he walked away, and kept his peaceful life with his daughter. Fear and guilt warred inside of him as he considered what he wanted, fear that he would lose Katie in his life, and not have the opportunity to find out what could be between them, and guilt that he was even considering starting a relationship with her.

  “If you have to think about it, you have your answer…and I have mine. Goodbye, Tommy,” she said and sadness flickered in eyes, then anger, before she walked into the trailer and shut the door, leaving him standing outside, holding the rapidly wilting yellow roses, that went perfectly with his wilting heart.

  Emotion clogged his throat and Tommy huffed out a breath trying to clear it away, then he turned and walked back across the street where he’d parked his truck to wait for her to get home. Sadness filled him because he’d failed, but resignation too. This was for the best, Katie deserved better than someone who couldn’t commit to her, someone with as much baggage as he toted around. He got back in his truck and just sat there for a second trying to get some control over the sense of loss that threatened to overwhelm him.

  ***

  Katie was on her second row of Oreos in the new bag, along with her second box of Kleenex, and still didn’t feel any better. She’d taken a break from her pity party a few minutes ago, and washed off all the makeup she’d paid to be applied earlier. That had been an ordeal of monumental proportions. It had almost taken a full bottle of her new face cleaner, because the mascara had been everywhere…and all because of Tommy Tucker.

  It was all his fault. Yellow roses, that said it all, she thought with a snort, then tears welled up in her eyes again.

  Her cell phone rang, and she sniffed, wiped her nose, then answered it in a nasally voice, “Hullo?”

  “Katie? What’s wrong with you?” Karlie questioned in a concerned voice.

  “Nuffin…” she said then bit her fist, so her sister didn’t hear the telltale sob she was fighting back. Jesus, she needed to get a grip. Crying over a damned man was just plain stupid.

  “Don’t give me that shit—what the hell is wrong?” her sister demanded and Katie held the phone away from her ear, because her sister was loud.

  “I’m fine…what’s up?” Katie dodged. She didn’t want to go into it with anyone, especially her sister…she was going to cry this out, and then be done with it.

  “You’re not fine, that’s obvious. What hell are you crying about?”

  “Why are you calling, Karlie? I need to go out in a few minutes, I’m getting ready,” she lied trying to make her sister get to the point.

  “I wanted to tell you that we’re on for the rodeo, I got our registration done today. I entered the tie-down too, and entered you in barrels. That okay?”

  Her lip trembled and she put an Oreo-crumbed finger to it to stop it. “That’s perfect, thanks, sis.”

  “Now tell me why the hell you’re crying,” Karlie said flatly.

  Damn. It looked like she wasn’t going to get by without spilling her guts. Her lip trembled again and her eyes filled then she admitted, “Yellow roses.”

  “What?” Karlie asked in confusion.

  “Tommy came by here and brought me yellow roses, trying to apologize,” she told her sister in a trembling voice.

  “Why the heck would that make you cry?”

  “His apology sucked, and I can’t just be his friend. I’ve tried it for three months now, and it’s not going to work…” Katie told her and a few tears overflowed her eyes and she cursed then yanked another Kleenex out of the box to wipe her face. “I don’t want to talk about it, seriously.”

  “Fine…we’ll have a bottle of wine when you get here and you can tell me all about it.”

  “When I get there?” Katie asked in confusion.