Marrying the Cowboy

by Trish Milburn

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’m more tired than I thought.” She stopped dancing and gradually extricated herself, trying not to be obvious about it. “Honestly, I think I just hit the wall.”

  Pete nodded toward the door. “I don’t have a lot of pep tonight, either. What do you say we cut out?”

  What she really wanted was some time alone to get her head screwed on right, but she couldn’t say that. She had to ride out the rest of this odd trip on the crazy train until life, and her feelings toward Pete, got back to normal.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re calling it a night already?” India asked when Elissa told them she was leaving.

  “Wow, outdone by the pregnant ladies,” Skyler said.

  “Some of us have to rebuild our lives,” Elissa snapped. “Literally.”

  Elissa caught the wide-eyed surprise on Skyler’s face and immediately felt like a bitch. “I’m sorry.”

  Skyler grabbed her hand. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so hard on you, not now anyway.” She pulled Elissa to her for a hug. “Go get some rest.”

  All the way back to her house, Elissa couldn’t stop thinking about how edgy and out of character she’d been acting over the past few days. It had to be stress. Nothing else could explain her mood and actions, the hyperawareness she was suffering around Pete.

  Maybe she’d simply lived too long without a guy in the house. She hadn’t lived with her parents for more than a couple weeks at a time since she’d left them to their globe-trotting professions and moved in with Verona at the beginning of her freshman year of high school. So it had been only her and her aunt living in a testosterone-free zone for more than a decade.

  “You know we’re back, right?”

  She glanced at Pete in the passenger seat. “Huh?”

  He pointed out the windshield at the interior of the garage. “You planning on falling asleep in your car again?”

  She mentally shook herself and reached for the door handle. “I swear, I feel as if I’ve been losing my mind the past couple of days.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  Elissa shot a look at Pete, trying to figure out if there was more meaning in his words than what there appeared on the surface, but he was already getting out of the car. Loony. She was completely and utterly loony.

  Pete reached the door into the house first and held it open for her. Verona had evidently already gone to bed, because the house was quiet, and only a single lamp was burning in the living room.

  “You know what I think will make you feel better?”

  Her nerves doing an ill-advised dance, Elissa tried her best to appear normal. “Winning the lottery?”

  “Something even better.” He moved into the kitchen and retrieved a lemon meringue pie and two forks.

  Elissa glanced toward the hallway before returning her attention to Pete. “Put that back. She made it to take to her poker game tomorrow. She’ll kill us if we touch it.”

  Pete gave her a devilish grin she didn’t see very often. “When was the last time we got into trouble?”

  She thought about it a moment. “Probably when we filled the entire front yard with Oklahoma Sooners decorations.” Elissa would dare anyone to find a bigger Texas Longhorns fan than her aunt, and the mere mention of the Sooners was enough to make her growl. Having her entire yard “defiled” had made Elissa worry for the one and only time that her aunt might kick her out of the house.

  “So what’s a little pie filching compared to the Great Sooner Attack?”

  Elissa shook her head. “I’m going to tell her that you ate every bite.”

  Pete walked past her, tipping the front of his hat up as he headed for the front door. “Then maybe I will.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said as she followed him onto the porch. “You can’t tease me with pie and then not share.”

  He offered her a fork. “Partners in crime?”

  She huffed and grabbed the fork.

  Pete sat at the edge of the porch at the top of the front steps, and Elissa plopped down beside him. Even with the electricity back on, she could still see the vast array of stars when she looked up at the sky.

  “Pretty night,” Pete said as if he were reading her mind. “Hard to believe we all about blew away a few nights ago.” He glanced to the left, toward where his house used to stand.

  “Are you going to rebuild?”

  “Honestly, I haven’t had much time to think about it.” He stuck his fork in the pie then took the first bite.

  Elissa cut a bite for herself and mmmed at the tart taste. Verona Charles never met a type of pie she couldn’t master.

  “I’ve got to find somewhere to live, though,” Pete said as he cut another bite of pie. “Or your aunt is going to make me fat. Every time I step in the house, she tries to feed me. I think she believes I can’t feed myself.”

  “Sometimes I think she wishes she had a family of her own. She would have been a good mom and wife. Maybe that’s why she’s always trying to take care of everyone in town.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it, everything both of you have done for me.”

  “We haven’t done anything. It’s not like anyone was using your room anyway.”

  “I don’t mean just after the storm.” He took another bite and took his time swallowing it. “All the time Mom was sick, Verona was bringing over casseroles and cakes. And don’t think I don’t know you’re the one who set up the mowing and gardening brigade.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He bumped her shoulder with his. “Deny it all you want, but you’ll never know how much it helped Mom to see her garden doing so well last spring.”

  A lump formed in Elissa’s throat at the memory, at how the garden had bloomed with more life each day as Pete’s mom’s had slipped away. Elissa didn’t spend that much time with her own mother anymore, but her heart still squeezed with a horrible pain at the idea of losing her. And Pete had lost not one but both parents before he should have. At the thought of how alone he was, how much more alone he’d be without friends, she found herself reaching over and squeezing his hand.

  A sizzle of new awareness raced up her arm, but she didn’t allow herself to show it. What Pete needed now was a friend, and that’s exactly what she was and would always be to him.

  Pete gave her hand a brief squeeze back then held the pie up toward her. She realized they’d eaten half of it already.

  “If we both wake up with stomachaches, it will serve us right,” she said.

  “You want to stop?”

  “Are you kidding?” She grabbed the pie and took a big bite.

  Pete laughed. “Yeah, I guess we need to get rid of the evidence.”

  “Exactly. And then plead ignorance in the morning.”

  “Or make sure we’re gone before Verona notices.”

  Elissa stopped with a bite halfway to her mouth, then met Pete’s gaze. They gave each other a knowing look.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Plead ignorance.”

  They slipped into silence as they devoured the rest of the pie. When Elissa sat with the empty pie pan in her hand, she moaned.

  “Ugh, I can’t believe we ate that entire pie.”

  Pete leaned his elbows back against the porch. “Felt good, though, didn’t it?”

  “For now. Not sure how I’ll feel in a few minutes.”

  Elissa looked up at the sky again in time to see a shooting star. She didn’t point it out to Pete. Instead, she used her wish for him, that all the bad things were finally over for him. To her way of thinking, he’d already gotten his life’s quota of bad taken care of and was due a great future.

  The sound of a truck engine and the rattle of a trailer drifted up the street from Main.

&n
bsp; Elissa jerked her gaze to Pete. “God, I just realized I haven’t asked you about Frankie. Is he okay? The stables?”

  “All safe.”

  She heard the relief in his voice. At least he hadn’t been dealt that blow, as well. That was too horrible to think about. He’d had Frankie almost as long as she’d known Pete. Even though Pete didn’t use Frankie to rodeo anymore, he still went riding whenever he got the chance.

  “Thank goodness.”

  “That reminds me,” he said. “I hate to ask another favor, but do you have time to run me out to Walter Stone’s place in the morning?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse, pointing out that she still had an incredible amount of work to do at the nursery. But she shoved that thought away. Hadn’t she just been thinking that Pete deserved to have things go his way?

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Greg said that Walter has a truck for sale that I can probably afford.”

  You won’t have to drive him places if he gets his own truck. The little voice in her head taunted her, knowing that something weird was going on with Elissa’s feelings toward Pete, that part of her wanted to keep distance between them. She mentally smacked the owner of the voice. The odd feelings would go away if she just ignored them. Wasn’t the fact that they were sitting out here eating pie like the good friends they always had been proof of that?

  After a couple more minutes of enjoying the quiet of the evening, Elissa lifted the empty pie tin. “What am I going to do with this?”

  “I have an idea.” Pete took the tin from her and stood. When he headed inside, Elissa followed him.

  He went straight to the kitchen, grabbing a sheet of the smiley-face notepaper off the pad hanging on the front of the fridge. She watched as he first washed and dried the tin plate then placed it on the countertop. He grabbed a pen and started writing on the notepaper.

  “What are you writing?”

  He didn’t answer, but when he finished he tapped the paper and moved away toward the hallway.

  Curious, she checked out what he’d written.

  Elissa ate your pie. I tried to stop her, but she was determined.

  “Why, you...” Elissa crumpled the note in her hand, turned and ran for Pete.

  With a wide smile, he ran down the hallway and into the guest room. She wasn’t fast enough to catch him before he closed and locked the door. “You’re a rat.”

  Verona’s door opened. “What the devil are you two doing?”

  Elissa heard the sound of Pete’s muffled laughter on the other side of the door. Keeping the crumpled note hidden in her hand, she said, “Pete ate the entire pie you made for the poker game. I tried to stop him, but he seemed mighty determined to eat the whole thing.”

  The laughter ceased on the other side of the door. Elissa had a difficult time hiding her smile as she started for her room.

  “I hope you know you’re going to buy me a new pie in the morning, young man,” Verona said as Elissa bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  Pete opened his door just as Elissa slipped into her room. The last thing she heard before closing her door was Pete’s “Yes, ma’am.”

  With the door closed behind her, she leaned against it and let the smile form. She felt better than she had since before the storm.

  * * *

  ARMED WITH A new-to-him pickup truck and a day off from work, Pete pulled into his driveway ready to clean up the mess the storm had left behind. But when he cut the engine, he didn’t get out immediately. Instead, he sat staring out the windshield, trying not to be overwhelmed. Part of him just wanted to drive away and not look back, but that wasn’t going to solve his problems. He needed a new place to live, and while he decided where that would be he might as well dispose of what Mother Nature had left of his previous home.

  But first things first. He reached over and grabbed the pies he’d just bought at the Mehlerhaus Bakery. If there was one person in town who was a better baker than Verona, it was Keri Mehler Teague. The woman was a magician with everything from cakes to cookies to bread. She’d been teased on more than one occasion that she added a little something extra into her confections to cause all of Blue Falls to become addicted to them.

  He slipped out of the truck and headed across the yard to Verona’s. He went in through the open garage and knocked on the kitchen door before stepping inside.

  Verona looked up from where she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. “I see you didn’t forget your promise.”

  “No, ma’am.” He held up the boxes. “And I brought a little extra insurance so you wouldn’t kick me to the curb.”

  Verona crossed to him to see that he’d not only replaced her lemon pie but added a strawberry one, as well. “I guess this will do.”

  He saw the smile tugging at the edge of her lips and couldn’t help his own smile.

  Verona took the pies and placed them on the kitchen counter. “I was just teasing you. I know it was probably Elissa who instigated the pie-napping.”

  Pete leaned one hip against the counter. “No, actually it really was me.”

  Verona raised an eyebrow at that. “Well, I’d lay money down that you didn’t eat the entire thing yourself.”

  “No, I had a little help.”

  “Good. That seems like her, and she’s not been herself lately.”

  “No surprise why. That nursery means everything to her. She’s holding up pretty well considering.” She seemed tired and distracted, but how could she be anything less?

  Verona shook her head. “No, something else is up with her. Maybe you could take her out for dinner tonight, try to figure out what it is.”

  Speaking of odd, something was off about Verona’s request, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Verona gave a little snort. “Hon, I helped raise that girl. She’s as likely to tell me if something is bothering her as she would her mother.”

  “What makes you think she’ll tell me?”

  “Well, you’re already stealing pies together. I figure that points to a certain level of trust.”

  Pete shook his head. “I’ll ask if the topic comes up, but you know Elissa. Most things just roll off her back. And if they don’t, she’s not inclined to spill the beans about it.”

  Verona patted him on the arm. “Just try. She’s always considered you a very good friend, and sometimes it’s easier to talk to a guy than it is another woman.”

  Before he could examine Verona’s expression too closely, she gave him another quick pat on the arm and headed out of the kitchen. He guessed the aftermath of the storm had everyone out of sorts. With a mental shrug, he headed back outside, stopping at the truck to get his new pair of heavy work gloves.

  As he began loading the truck with splintered timbers, broken bricks and the shattered remains of his home’s contents, he couldn’t stop thinking about Verona’s request. Now that he thought about it, Elissa had been acting a little weird. At first he’d thought she’d just been getting used to having a houseguest, but was something else going on? Maybe it was just the shock of the storm damage to the nursery and she was beginning to adjust to the new reality. After all, she’d seemed like her old self last night.

  He stopped to wipe the sweat from his forehead and glanced over at Verona’s front porch. Their pie raid had been fun, maybe what they both needed to try to get back to some semblance of normal. Now that he stepped back and really thought about it, he realized that he’d felt more at peace eating that pie with her beneath the stars than he had in a long time. The sudden hope that she’d felt the same way surprised him, making him wonder if maybe they were both a bit out of whack. Or maybe he’d been out in the sun too long.

  It took all day and four trips to the refuse center, but by the time night began to fall, Pete had his lot
cleared down to the foundation of his former home. As he trudged his way into Verona’s house, he met her heading out to her poker game, pies in hand.

  “I just baked a fresh batch of cookies. You and Elissa have been working so hard I figured you both deserved a treat. One you don’t have to steal.”

  Pete inhaled the wonderful scent of fresh-baked cookies. “Are those snickerdoodles?”

  “Yes, I made your favorite. Tell me how wonderful I am.”

  He leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek. “You’re wonderful.”

  “I made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, too.” Elissa’s favorite.

  “We should steal your pies more often if we get cookies as a reward.”

  Verona swatted him on the shoulder. “Don’t get sassy.” She gestured toward the hallway. “You better hop in the shower. We may not be the big city here, but I’m still pretty sure none of the restaurants in town are going to let you in smelling like you do.”

  “Ouch,” he said, feigning hurt.

  “Well, you are a little ripe, definitely too stinky for a date.”

  A date? What was she talking about? Surely she didn’t mean...

  Verona headed for the door. “Well, I better get going. I plan to win myself a pile of money off those old ladies tonight.” She smiled and winked at him. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  Even after Verona disappeared into the garage, Pete continued to stare at the door she’d closed behind her. Oh, hell, it wasn’t Elissa or him who’d been knocked in the head. It was Verona, because damned if she wasn’t in full-on matchmaking mode and had finally set her sights on her niece. The only problem was the guy Verona had in mind was him.

  Chapter Five

  When Elissa got home from a long, frustrating day of work, she arrived to find an empty house. Verona was off at her poker game, and Pete was absent, as well. Part of her was glad for the peace and quiet, but it also meant she was going to have to scrounge up her own dinner. And she didn’t know if she had the energy.

  Her stomach grumbled when she stepped into the kitchen and inhaled the scent of freshly baked cookies. Maybe she’d just have cookies for dinner. That didn’t sound half-bad, not to mention blessedly easy. She found enough energy to pour herself a cold glass of milk and grab a handful of cookies before she headed for the living room. She sank onto one end of the cushy couch, kicked off her sneakers and propped her aching feet on the ottoman.