A Cowboy's Plan

by Mary Sullivan

  Janey felt him watching her. “They came to see me, didn’t they?” she asked, her voice low.

  “Yeah. Word that you were in the diner with me yesterday probably spread after we left.”

  “Did you know they’d do that?”

  “I figured they might come to gawk at the Goth woman I hired.”

  “Why?” She couldn’t help the defensiveness in her tone.

  “You stand out here.”

  “Don’t you people get TV? Don’t you know that that—” she poked a finger in the direction of his chest “—isn’t the way normal people dress? You all need to move into the twenty-first century.”

  C.J.’s jaw tightened. “Get real. If you don’t want people to stare, then dress normal.”

  She picked up a towel that lay on the end of the counter and stomped to the back room. Trying to control her temper, she took her time hanging the towel just so on the rod in the bathroom.

  In the city, her clothes hadn’t mattered, but here? In this dinky little town? They mattered too much. They didn’t see enough oddballs. She guessed that Kurt was about as odd as they got.

  She gripped the towel rod for a minute. What if she dressed like a normal person? Who would she be then? How would she protect herself?

  C.J. appeared in the doorway. She straightened and stared at him, forcing her chin up.

  “It won’t last,” he said. “They’ll get used to you and stop staring. In a day or two, you’ll be one of us.”

  She glanced around the back room at the gray cinderblock walls and the high ceilings and the big steel machines that spun sugar and water into children’s dreams and swallowed hard.

  “What do you think they thought of me?”

  “You fishing for compliments?”

  She stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you want me to tell you they all probably thought you were pretty?”

  She shook her head, confused. “They weren’t coming in to criticize me?”

  “You think they were here to condemn you? Man, you have a low opinion of humanity. They were just curious, that’s all.”

  She wanted to be here. Liked the work.

  “It’s better than what I’d been afraid of,” C.J. said. “That they’d stop shopping here. We made a tidy little sum for only forty-five minutes’ worth of work.”

  Janey knew C.J. was trying to make her feel better and she appreciated it.

  He leaned against the doorjamb and gestured toward her with his chin. “So why do you dress like that?”

  How could she explain it to him? “Life isn’t always kind to people. I’ve been through a lot. I put these clothes on to keep people away from me. So I won’t get hurt.”

  Why was she confessing so much to this guy?

  “It’s your shell?”

  “Yeah. It keeps people away.”

  “That might work in the city, but it won’t work here. The townspeople are just too friendly.”

  This time he gestured toward the store with his chin. “No one said anything bad, did they?”

  She shook her head no.

  “They didn’t look like they thought anything bad, did they?”

  “No.”

  “Same thing happened a couple of months ago when a rock singer came sniffing around looking to buy a ranch. Everyone went a little nuts over him for a while until they got used to him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. This will calm down in a day or two.”

  He turned toward the pantry. “I need to check something with the supplies.”

  The door chime rang.

  “I’ll get that,” she said, already feeling better after C.J.’s pep talk.

  She walked to the front of the building.

  Just inside the store, she stopped. Two people stood in front of the counter, an older man, in his seventies maybe, and a young boy, about three at a guess.

  They had to be relatives of C.J. The boy looked an awful lot like C.J. His son, maybe? Did he have other kids? Was he married?

  She hoped the kid didn’t come into the store very often.

  The old man, a toughened, sun-dried version of C.J. in maybe forty years, had a smile as pretty as C.J.’s, wide and white.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “Sure.” The older man stepped forward. The child grabbed his hand and followed. “Is C.J. around?”

  Janey called for him.

  C.J. smiled when he saw them and walked around to the front of the counter.

  Janey must have made a noise because three generations of men with brown eyes flickering with hazel highlights, and deep clefts in their chins, stared at her. She had the dizzying sensation that in some strange fateful way she was looking at her future. Holy moly. The skittering of spider feet up her neck creeped her out.

  This was too weird. Why would she think she’d ever be part of C.J.’s family? No way was she ever having a conventional life with a husband and kids. No freaking way.

  REVEREND WRIGHT STEPPED into the church and stopped.

  Gladys stood by the altar arranging flowers in an oversize vase.He started down the aisle toward the front of the church, studying her.

  A small trim woman, her effect on him was anything but small. He liked her slim waist and her soft hips.

  Gladys. Look at me. See me for who I really am and care for me anyway.

  He stepped up to the altar, the three marble stairs muted by a gold runner.

  She smelled like tangerines, like a crisp fall day.

  “Gladys,” he whispered.

  Gladys turned and smiled. So. She’d forgiven him. Thank you, dear God.

  “Gladys,” he said. Sometimes that was enough, just to say her name, to know that she was near, to acknowledge to himself how much he cared for her.

  Perhaps it was time to do something about that. His hands felt too big. He was clumsy. Awkward.

  “Would you care to join me in the rectory for tea?” he asked. The voice that rolled to the rafters every Sunday sounded thin.

  What if she said no?

  Her eyebrows lifted in mild surprise and she smiled, her white teeth framed by soft pink lips.

  He adored her smile. “Thank you, Walter. I’d like that.”

  As he led her through the side door to the rectory, she walked beside him silently.

  “You are always calm,” he blurted.

  “I’m happy these days, Walter.” Her flowered skirt swirled around her legs when she stepped into the rectory ahead of him, then moved aside to allow him to lead her to the kitchen. “I live with my daughter and her wonderful husband, and I’m surrounded by children most days.”

  “So life with Hank and Amy agrees with you?”

  He filled the kettle.

  “Yes, life on the Sheltering Arms is more than I had hoped to have at this stage in my life.”

  Gladys sat in a captain’s chair at the round oak table a parishioner had donated years ago.

  Reverend Wright sat opposite her, his slightly unsteady hands folded in his lap.

  “And you, Walter?” Gladys asked. “Are you happy?”

  His name sounded good in her gentle voice.

  “Not as happy as I’d like.” He leaned forward. “Gladys, may I speak openly?”

  “Of course. What’s troubling you?” Walter had the eerie feeling that their roles were reversed, that Gladys was the minister and he the penitent.

  “It’s C.J.” He rested his knobby elbows on the table and covered his mouth with his hands. “I’m worried about him.”

  She leaned forward, too, ready to do battle, this woman with soft eyes and a soft heart and a backbone of steel. “Yes, I know. About Janey.”

  “No. About the rodeo.”

  “Hank’s rodeo?” Gladys asked.

  “Yes. C.J.’s involvement worries me. Four years ago, his best friend was gored by a bull in the ring. C.J. was there and saw the whole thing. He’d been rebellious since his mother’s death in a car crash, but after Davey’
s death he went really wild.”

  He hesitated. “I didn’t know how to comfort him. All of these years I’ve offered comfort to everyone in town, but I didn’t have a clue how to make this all right for my son. He left for the city and plowed his way through alcohol and women.”

  Could he tell her the rest? When the kettle whistled, he stood, absurdly relieved. He filled the teapot and set it on a trivet on the table.

  While she waited patiently for him to finish, he sat again. He needed to get things off his chest. “I was—” He coughed and began again. “To my shame, I was glad that it hadn’t been C.J. who was killed that day.”

  “Of course you were.”

  His gaze flew to hers. “It wasn’t wrong of me to secretly rejoice that the young man killed wasn’t my son?” The bitterness in his voice shocked him.

  “It was a very human response.” She laid her hand on his on the tabletop and he was humbled by her generosity. Who was the better person here? Certainly not him, although he was a man of God.

  He poured their tea and gave thanks for this lovely woman.

  A quiet half hour later, during which time they spoke of nothing and everything, he escorted her out of the rectory. She climbed into her car and opened her window.

  “Gladys,” he said, leaning his forearms on the window well of the driver’s door. “I haven’t dated a woman since my wife died six years ago.”

  He stared at his long fingers, gangly like the rest of him. He was no prize. “I don’t know how to date.”

  “Of course you do, Walter. We just had a very lovely date, didn’t we?”

  “Did we?” he asked quietly, praying it was true, hoping he had finally started something with Gladys.

  When she put the car into gear and pulled away slowly, her Mona Lisa smile spoke of things he hadn’t dared to wish for.

  He’d only ever lain with one woman. How odd to think that, at this late stage in his life, he might have another chance at love.

  At the sound of the phone ringing inside, he ran to answer it. “Walter, how are you?”

  “Max, I’m okay.” Max Golden was his closest friend.

  “Listen, I heard C.J. hired that girl from Hank’s place. You okay with that?”

  Max knew him so well. “No. I’m worried. I really wish he wouldn’t have anything to do with her.”

  “I thought so. I’ll put on my thinking cap and see if I can come up with some ideas to help you out.”

  “Thanks, Max. You’re a good friend.”

  “You coming to the powwow on Saturday?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Between Gladys and Max, he might be okay.

  “JANEY, THIS IS my grandfather and my son, Liam,” C.J. said, confirming her guesses about their connections.

  After nodding to her, the older man turned to C.J. “Hospital called. Some poor old bugger died the day before his knee-replacement surgery. They’re taking me in his place. I’m heading over now. Operation’s tomorrow morning at ten.”“Gramps, that’s great. I’ll drive you over.”

  “Naw, don’t worry. You stay here with Liam.”

  “Right. Yeah. He’ll have to stay here with me.” C.J. approached the boy. “What do you think? Want to watch me teach Janey how to make candies?”

  “Every day?” Janey asked and, at the urgent tone underlying the question, C.J. raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah,” he answered, “for a month or so.”

  Janey’s stomach lurched. Every day for a month. No, she didn’t want that. Hadn’t she gone out of her way to escape the children on the ranch?

  Don’t worry about it. You can survive one month.

  Surely one kid without cancer would be easier to handle than a ranch full of cancer survivors. This kid had a full head of hair and a healthy glow. She could do it. Really, she could. Too bad not a lot of conviction bolstered the thought.

  C.J. escorted his grandfather to the door.

  “Gramps, I’m so happy for you. Liam and I will come visit in the hospital tomorrow night. See how the operation went.”

  “Looking forward to it.” With that last remark, the old man left and Janey stood alone in the store with C.J. and his son, wondering whether she could go home sick. It would be the truth. She sure felt sick, emotionally, mentally.

  And then what? Call in sick every day for the next month? She needed this job and she needed this store and she couldn’t avoid this little boy.

  Suck it up, Janey.

  She’d been doing that all of her life and was so damned tired of always having to pretend to be strong.

  The child didn’t answer his father’s question about helping to make candies. Nor did he take his eyes off Janey. He walked over to her and pointed to her face. Janey didn’t know what he wanted. She looked at C.J. From his puzzled frown, she gathered that he didn’t know either.

  Liam still stretched his hand toward her face. He wanted to touch her. No. She didn’t want to do this, but she did, because the child was…a child. Kids deserved what they needed.

  She bent forward and the boy put one finger on her mascara-coated eyelashes. He touched her eyebrow ring and nodded, and Janey jerked away from him. Being touched by a child hurt, even one who wasn’t recovering from cancer, or fighting it, or dying from it.

  He touched the tattoo on the inside of her left elbow with one finger and left it there, staring. His hand, his incredibly tiny soft finger, sent a dagger shooting through her. Oh, yes, any child’s touch could hurt her these days.

  “What’s this?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

  The shock on C.J.’s face quickly turned to anger. She hadn’t done anything wrong, so she knew it wasn’t about her. So what was he angry about?

  She returned her attention to Liam. “It says joy.” She’d gotten it a week after Cheryl was born when Janey realized what a blessing in disguise her baby was.

  “Spell it like that?” He scratched it lightly with his nail.

  Janey shivered and nodded. “In Japanese.”

  “Japanese?” Janey nodded to the boy. “’Kay.”

  He curled his small fingers into the palm of her hand and she grasped them, couldn’t help herself, but it hurt. They were even smaller than Cheryl’s had been when she’d died.

  Resting his head on her arm, he leaned against her and put the middle fingers of his other hand into his mouth.

  MAN, LIFE WAS UNFAIR.

  C.J. had learned that lesson the day his mother had died and he’d been left with only the harder parent, the prickly and uptight and severe one, the less adored one who had not one sliver of Mom’s zest for life. But why did life have to continually kick C.J. in the teeth with its unfairness?A swollen, unreasonable anger flooded his chest, but darn, Janey had done in six minutes what he hadn’t been able to do in close to a year—crack the crust of Liam’s outer shell.

  It wasn’t fair.

  Liam hadn’t looked content, or stable, or trustful since C.J. had rescued him from Vicki.

  All it had taken from Janey was a shovel load of mascara, piercings and a tattoo—shades of Vicki that Liam no doubt recognized on another woman.

  Had C.J. done the right thing taking Liam away from his mother? He remembered the dirt in the apartment, and Liam in a filthy diaper and hungry and crying. Yes, he’d been right to do it, but it seemed that Liam missed his mother nonetheless. Or a reasonable facsimile. What a mother represented.

  Janey tried to wriggle her hand out of his son’s tiny fist, but he wouldn’t let go. She turned and headed into the candy-making room and he followed like a little lamb.

  A look of such pain crossed Janey’s face that C.J. wondered about its source.

  He phoned his dad and told him about Gramps going to the hospital.

  “Can you come out with Liam and me to the hospital tomorrow night and drive Gramps’s car home for him? I don’t want it to sit in the parking lot for the next week.”

  “Of course. Glad to hear Randal’s having the opera
tion. I’d like to visit with him for a while. Has he read the latest John Grisham?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll pick it up for him.”

  “Great. Liam and I will have an early dinner, then I’ll pick you up. Is seven okay?”

  “See you then.”

  C.J. dropped the receiver back into the cradle. About time Gramps got his knees fixed.

  He followed Liam and Janey into the back room to check on what they were doing. They had the back door open and sat on the one concrete step that led outside.

  BizzyBelle lay in a patch of sun, her big mouth chewing her cud slowly and lazily.

  “BizzyBelle is my friend,” Liam told Janey. The words about broke C.J.’s heart. Was there anyone on this earth with whom Liam wasn’t friendly besides his own father?

  “She’s big, isn’t she?” Janey asked.

  Liam leaned his head on her arm. “Yeah.”

  Janey looked down at the top of his head. Even in profile, her face couldn’t disguise her pain. What was that about?

  Then he remembered that she’d had a daughter who’d visited the Sheltering Arms for a few weeks and then had died later. It knocked the wind out of him.

  Oh, God. No wonder it was hard for her to touch Liam, or have him touch her.

  What a mess they were all stuck in.

  He craved Liam’s attention and love. Liam deserved a good mother and latched onto a woman who reminded him of his own. Janey probably wanted her own child back rather than having to deal with someone else’s.

  C.J. needed an employee. Janey had to have a job. Gramps was having long overdue surgery. His recovery would take a month, at least.

  So, the three of them would be here with each other for that month. The only person he could think of to take care of Liam for that time was his dad. C.J.’s pride wouldn’t let him ask, though. Dad had disapproved of his having had a baby out of wedlock. He’d disapproved of his hiring of Janey and Janey was the problem here right now.

  What a mess.

  The store’s doorbell chimed.

  “Be with you in a minute,” he called.

  “Don’t take too long,” a female voice said. “I’m on a tight schedule.”