by Anna Jeffrey
“Shh. It was David. And it was Florence.”
“That guy is the real deal, you know? Cowboy through and through.”
“Humph. That means he’s broke or in debt up to his ears.”
“Gretchen said he’s rich.”
“Then he’s probably a drunk with two or three illegitimate kids somewhere.”
“What the hell? I don’t want to keep him. I just want to—”
“Piggy. Stop it.”
He cast them a glance. Piggy waved. A few minutes later, the hostess, long-faced and sullen, came to them and pointed back toward him. “Mr. McRae over at that table wants to know if you want to eat with him.”
“Certainly,” Piggy said, rising and picking up her drink before Dahlia could get a word out of her mouth.
Dahlia sprang from her chair to protest. Thunk!. Her knee struck the table leg. A full glass of water tipped over, the condiments in the middle of the table clattered. Dahlia felt her face flame. “Oh, my God,” she muttered under her breath.
Under the glowers of the two other dining couples, she quickly scooted jars and silverware to the corner of the table. The waitress hurried over with a towel and began to sop up water. “I am so sorry,” Dahlia gushed, dabbing with her napkin. “My knee bumped and…I’m just so sorry.”
The waitress shot her a malicious glare. “Just get out of the way.” She gathered the four corners of the wet tablecloth, making a bundle of the condiment jars and silverware, then stamped away, dripping a trail of water.
Dahlia smiled at the two staring couples and lifted her shoulders in an apologetic shrug. For lack of an alternative, she followed in Piggy’s footsteps.
Her tipsy pal was already seated and the cowboy was standing when Dahlia reached his table.
“Luke McRae.” He offered his hand, his glacier blue eyes freezing her in place. “That’s not the first time something got spilled in this joint. Don’t be embarrassed.”
Words failed her. Nodding, she shook hands woodenly, her slim hand lost in his large one. She barely mumbled her name.
“It was real rude of me not to introduce myself this morning. Sometimes talks with the Forest Service make me forget my manners.”
He spoke in a deep, soft drawl with an unfamiliar cadence. Neither Texan nor Southern—just slow and easy. And seductive. She hadn’t noticed the sexiness of his voice in the Forest Service reception room. “Oh, that’s okay.” She hooked a clump of fly-away, crinkled hair behind her ear. Her mind stumbled for a clever remark, but all save idiot conversation eluded her. “You don’t like the Forest Service?”
“They’ve got their rules. Sometimes they get a little heavy-handed is all.” He grinned. “Say, it’s good to see you moving around. I’ve been worried about running you down ever since it happened. Least I can do is buy you dinner.”
For some insane reason, Dahlia believed he had, in fact, worried about her. With his wide shoulders at eye level, for an instant, she felt so safe. If a fire-breathing dragon leapt from the kitchen, she was positive Luke McRae would slay it. “Oh, that isn’t necessary. Really.”
He pulled out a chair. “Yes, it is. Here, sit down.” He spoke with so much authority, she sank to the chair seat without further contention.
The hostess brought menus again, a blessed diversion, though after Dahlia read it, she didn’t know why one was needed. The fare was steak. Period. French-fried or baked potatoes. Lettuce and tomato salad with French or ranch dressing.
While they waited for their meal, Luke ordered another margarita for Piggy and a double shot of Jack Daniel’s, neat, for himself. Dahlia asked for a Coke and found herself wondering how much he had already drunk.
The conversation revolved around Texas and Dahlia was glad. With a nerve jumping in her stomach and keeping an eye on a friend who must be on her fifth margarita, Dahlia was too distracted to concentrate on anything that required much thought.
When their food arrived, as if she had not been tormented by hunger for two days, she picked at it. Her appetite had fled.
Luke gave her a questioning look, his knife and fork poised above his plate. “You don’t like steak?”
“Yes, uh, yes, I do.” The meat could have been cardboard for all she knew. Her attention was devoted to his hair— mussed by hat, slightly wavy, but cut to control it,. Not quite red as Gretchen had said, but not brown either, but somewhere in between. Cinnamon, she decided. Even in the amber-lit room, she could see a tan line across his forehead where his hat fit.
“My friend Dahlia loves steak. She’s a meat expert.” Piggy’s voice had become a slur. “She’s a butcher. She can turn a whole cow into hamburger in three minutes.” Piggy held up two fingers.
Dahlia cringed.
Luke gave her a look. “The hell. A real butcher?”
Dahlia opened her mouth to talk, but Piggy spoke first. “As we say in Texas, there ain’t no such thing as a pretend butcher. It’s like a calling. Something you either is or you ain’t.”
“Hunh,” Luke said. “You look so—well, so lady-like.”
Before Dahlia could reply, Piggy reared back, her glass balanced between thumb and forefinger. “What, you think ladies can't be butchers? It's not a gender-restrictive occupation, you know.”
Butchers and restrictive came out mushy. Dahlia planted her elbow on the table edge and covered her mouth with her palm. Any minute now, she would strangle the person who had led her into this humiliation.
Luke sliced off another bite of well-done steak. “Well, there you go. Looks like we’re all sort of in the beef business. Where’d a pretty little gal like you learn butchering?”
Oh dear God. Could he get any cornier? “Well, I—”
“She learned it at her daddy’s knee. They’re a family of butchers.” Piggy broke into a booming laugh.
I’ll kill you, Piggy. I’ll just kill you.
****
With the end of dinner came another round of drinks. It appeared that Luke fulfilled at least one of Dahlia’s expectations of cowboys. Piggy began to tell bawdy jokes and throw out suggestive remarks. Uninhibited sober, drunk, she was downright raucous and tonight, not amusing. Dahlia wanted to slide under the table.
Luke chewed on his toothpick, sipped at his whiskey and made a few naughty comments of his own and he and Piggy laughed at their own jokes.
Dahlia began to fidget. What had they gotten into? She felt out of place. She could see him and her friend winding up in bed somewhere. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t disappointed, but then, men often overlooked her. She had always suspected she didn’t give off the right vibes.
She couldn’t debate it now. Now, she had to save Piggy from Piggy. She mentioned they had groceries in the Blazer, suggested they drink up and go home. Neither Piggy nor Luke heard her.
A lighted Budweiser clock hung on the wall across the room. Its hour hand crept past ten. They were the only customers left in the restaurant.
At eleven, Piggy launched Lucille Ball’s Vitameatavegamin routine. She had spent years cultivating an impressive repertoire of Lucy’s antics. It came from when they were younger, when Dahlia followed her into so many ill-fated adventures, Piggy’s mom dubbed them “Lucy & Ethel.” Piggy had taken the nickname to heart, even to the point of lightening her auburn hair to a carrot color. The cook came out of the kitchen to watch and listen and he and Luke roared with laughter.
Thirty more minutes. Luke ordered another double shot and another margarita. Piggy looked as if she would tip off her chair any minute. She let the margarita sit and took up ice water, a sure signal to someone who knew her as well as Dahlia did, that she’d had way too much to drink.
Dahlia had drunk so much Coke, she felt as if she might slosh when she walked, despite making three trips to the ladies’ room. She’d had enough of this fun-filled evening. The rented cottage, their frosty home away from home, took on appeal. She rose, lifted her jacket from her chair back and pulled it on.
Luke looked up. “Where you going?”
“Home. She’s had more than enough alcohol. Thank you for dinner.” Dahlia moved to her friend’s side and put an arm around her waist. “Come on, Lucy. You’ve been on stage long enough.”
Piggy teetered up, her body rubbery as cooked spaghetti. Dahlia struggled to stuff her into her jacket.
Luke stood, too, dragging his vest off the back of his chair. “Lucy? I thought her name was Peggy.”
“Her name is Piggy. With an I. It’s short for Pegeen. It’s Irish.” Dahlia had made that explanation so often it flowed from her mouth automatically.
Luke dug a money clip from his pocket, peeled off some bills and dropped them beside his plate. “She looks pretty limber. You need some help?”
“No, thanks. I can manage if I can just get her to the car.”
“I can handle that.” He picked up his hat from the neighboring table and set it on his head, then came around and scooped Piggy off her chair. Dahlia stared up at him, dumbfounded.
The hostess zoomed to where they were, her eyes large with question. Luke gave her a wink and a devilish grin. “Guess this little gal’s had one too many.” He headed toward the door.
Dahlia grabbed up their purses and followed.
Luke carried Piggy through the front room, ignoring the chorus of wolf whistles and rank suggestions from the crowd seated at the bar. Dahlia, needing to feel useful, edged ahead of him and held the front door open. Piggy’s head lolled backward as she sang with the jukebox all the way outside.
“Where you parked?” Luke asked as Carlton’s door swung shut behind them.
The temperature had dropped. Dahlia zipped up her jacket and pointed at the Blazer parallel-parked across the street from Fielder’s. Until they arrived at the passenger door, she didn’t remember the keys were in Piggy’s purse. Luke stood by shivering with Piggy in his arms while Dahlia dug into an unfamiliar handbag. She gave him a thin smile. “Sorry. Poor planning.”
Door open at last, Luke positioned the life of the party on the Blazer’s passenger seat. Piggy mumbled something about being cold and sleepy.
He re-settled his hat and looked at Piggy. “I wouldn’t want her head tomorrow.
What about your own, Dahlia wondered.
“Where’d you say you’re staying? Tom Baker’s old house?”
No. No way. “Well, yes, I think that’s it, but you don’t need to—”
“If you couldn’t get her in the car, how will you get her out? I’ll just follow you.”
Absolutely not. No drunk cowboy is coming to our house. “No, really. You don’t have—”
But he was already crossing the street, striding toward a lone, white pickup.
Chapter 4
Dahlia parked the Blazer in the carport attached to the cottage. Luke’s pickup pulled to a stop behind it. The little white rental with its windows unlit, loomed ghost-like in the chilled black night. Their headlights and the relentless screech from the sawmill not far away were the only signs of life.
Piggy was out. With the temperature so cold, leaving her to sleep in the Blazer wasn’t an option. Acutely aware she didn’t know another conscious human being within two thousand miles, Dahlia had never felt more isolated. The man she had thought to be a dragon slayer before he consumed so much Jack Daniel’s now seemed more like the dragon himself. She had to keep him outside. She killed the engine and went back to intercept him. “Really, you don’t have to—”
“You already said that.” He slid out, gripped her shoulders with strong hands and set her aside, out of his way.
He opened the Blazer’s passenger door, lifted Piggy out and started toward the front stoop.
By the time Dahlia grabbed their two purses and the four plastic sacks of groceries and reached the stoop, he was waiting, a scowl on his face.
“Your door locked?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“We can’t get in if you don’t unlock it.”
She shifted the sacks and purses and groped in Piggy’s purse for the key.
The porch was roughly four feet square, barely large enough for the three of them. The air seemed charged by his nearness. He was just too damn close. She stepped around him and stabbed the key at the old door lock.
“Sugar,” he said from behind her, “this little gal didn’t weigh much when we started out, but she’s getting heavier by the minute. And it’s awful cold.”
Dahlia hated having men talk down to her, but even more, she hated having one, who was a stranger, call her phony epithets. Uneasiness blossomed into annoyance.
She fumbled with the old lock in the dark, her fingers cold and stiff. Finally opening the door, she reached inside and flipped every switch on the wall. Light flooded the porch and living room. Thank God the lights worked better than the furnace.
“Thanks again for your help. If you’ll just put her down, I can get her inside.”
As if he hadn’t heard, he carried his load through the doorway, shooting a derisive look from the corner of his eye.
“Don’t worry, sugar. I haven’t hurt any pretty girls in a week.”
Okay, so he knew she didn’t trust him. What was wrong with that? “I usually don’t let strange men into my house in the middle of the night,” she said to his back.
“Most folks don’t think I’m strange. Where’s her bed?”
The temperature inside the house felt even colder than outside. She could hear a shiver in his voice and she could see their breath when they talked. How she and Piggy were going to survive the night she didn’t know.
Luke was just about as cold as he had ever been and this woman was testing his patience. He followed her up a short hall leading from the living room to a bedroom. She switched on the light and fussed with arranging a sleeping bag on an army cot.
“This is her bed?” He surveyed the small bedroom. Besides the cot, all he saw was a cardboard box and a couple of suitcases. He laid his burden on the sleeping bag and straightened. “Why’re you keeping it so cold in here?”
The black-haired woman looked up and he nearly drowned in the green depths of her eyes. The thing that had been twisting inside him all evening gave a hard yank.
“Our heater doesn’t work,” she said.
Uh-oh. He sure didn’t need to get roped into a furnace repair job at midnight. Thumbing his hat back, he planted his hands on his hips. “You mean you’re staying here with no heat?”
She shrugged and played with her coat zipper. “Well, it’s temporary. We haven’t gotten around to it yet.”
“You just camping out or what?”
She blinked at him. “I suppose you could say that. Sort of.”
Lord, these two women were kooks. He looked at the floor and shook his head. “In cold country, sugar, one thing you don’t want to be without is heat. It’s freezing out there now and it’ll be real cold before morning.”
His tone must have sounded harsh because those soft-looking lips that had been teasing him for hours clamped into a pout. She lifted her straight little nose and sniffed at him. “It really isn’t your concern, is it?”
He guessed he had pissed her off. Women. They were always ungrateful and nothing you did was ever good enough. “Nope. Just neighborly advice. Your friend there”—he tilted his head toward the drunk one, wishing he had just left them at Carlton’s and gone home—“you oughtta throw another blanket on her. Hypothermia can come on quick when somebody’s dead drunk.”
She frowned and looked down at her friend. Hell, he was wasting his breath. These two probably didn’t know sic ’em about hypothermia. He wondered how long they had been staying here without heat. “What’s wrong with your furnace?”
He could kick himself for asking. He didn’t have time to concern himself with it. The meeting in Boise had gone on longer than expected and he had stayed in Carlton’s too late. If he hit the road right now, it would be two o’clock before he got home.
“Well, I don’t know much about it, but I think it takes oil and the tank might be em
pty.”
She was shaking a little. He couldn’t tell if she was nervous or cold. Those berry-colored lips turned down at the corners and dark crescents showed under her eyes. She looked tired and lost, but her elevated chin told him she was too proud to beg for help. He felt that yank in his chest again and blew out a long breath. Shit. She might look like she had just lost her last friend, but he guessed she had found herself a furnace repairman. “The tank out back?”
She made a little sigh and nodded, grateful after all. He saw that in her eyes, too.
Passing through the living room, he noticed the fireplace and stopped. “Guess you don’t have any firewood, huh?”
“Firewood?”
“It’d be a little warmer if you’d build a fire.”
Her eyes widened as if a light bulb had clicked on. “Oh. Well, actually… ” She lifted her arms and let them fall. “No, we don’t have any wood.”
He strode to the back door, clenched his jaw and charged into the freezing dark. Christ, he would be lucky if he didn’t have pneumonia by the time he got away from here.
The porch light came on, lighting a path to a rusty storage tank. Grateful she had enough thought to turn on a light, he hoisted himself up on a ladder rung on one side of the stand and knocked on the tank’s steel wall with his knuckles. A hollow ping echoed with each rap. “Yep. It’s empty,” he called back to her.
He spotted ricked firewood haphazardly covered by a black plastic sheet under the kitchen window. He backed down the ladder, strode to it and yanked back one corner. “Here’s a cord of wood, all split. Didn’t you know this was here?”
“N-n-no,” she said from the porch in a shivery voice. “We d-d-didn’t look.”
“Looks like you got some kindling, too.” He picked several logs from the top of the pile, cradling them in the crook of his elbow, then bent over for some kindling sticks. He passed by her, his eyes watering from the cold, carrying the firewood back through the doorway.