Cowgirl, Unexpectedly

by Vicki Tharp

  “Seriously?” I pinned the end of the table with an arched brow.

  Alby and Santos had the good sense to look away. Quinn, being Quinn, was a little clueless and sported a grin. Surely, there was something more to the kid, but so far, I was blind to what Jenna saw in him. Maybe Hank’s opinion of him wasn’t so far off the mark after all.

  What little appetite I’d had vamoosed without so much as a by your leave, so I slugged back a mouthful of coffee, stifled a sputter, and somehow managed to swallow before scalding every last taste bud I possessed. Sonofabitch.

  Skidding my chair back, I rounded the table and hit the door without a backward glance, headed to the barn to start morning chores. Only there weren’t any stalls to muck, or horses to let out. Much less a barn to do it in. I stopped and stood at the edge of the burned-out area that used to be the barn, and I toed a pile of the ash with my boot. Most of the flames had died out except in small pockets here and there, where multiple beams had collapsed on each other or at the corners where the walls had fallen in. In those areas, coals burned an almost fluorescent red and waves of heat rose into the air, making everything behind it all warped and wavy like I was peeking through a fun house mirror.

  Along one side, the metal grills of the stall fronts lay on the ground, bent and twisted. Even in all the destruction, in all the mountains of white ash and flame-blackened beams, three distinct, horse-sized lumps were staggered approximately a stall width apart from each other.

  Arson, then.

  I muttered a string of oaths that would make my Marine buddies proud and scrubbed a hand through my hair and down my face feeling every nanosecond of my twenty-nine years. I’d seen enough pain and perversion, death and destruction to last me a lifetime.

  At least in a war zone, it was expected. The brutal, senseless death of three horses hit me hard, and I locked my knees to keep me upright. It wasn’t as if no one knew the horses were in there when the fire started or didn’t bother to let them out. The horses had been grazing in the field and someone had deliberately brought them in, locked them in the stalls, and left them to die a horrific death. Why? What purpose did their deaths serve except to expose the pure evil of the perpetrators? Dale and Lottie didn’t deserve this. Certainly, the horses hadn’t.

  At that moment, the road called to me as loud and clear as a banshee scream on a cold night, tingling my nerve endings—an itch to scratch. Today was payday. I could leave. I could hop on my bike and be hundreds of miles from here by the time the sun went down.

  “Mac?”

  I turned. Jenna stood behind me, her hands tucked loosely into her back pockets, her hair tied back into a sleek ponytail with blue bailing twine this time. She glanced at the ground then back at my face before she stepped toward me, hesitant, as if I were a bomb waiting to go off and she didn’t want to rattle me. Geez. Was I really that bad? I cursed. It did nothing to make her feel any more secure. I tried to wipe the scowl off my face. She stepped closer, so I must have been somewhat successful. “What’s up?”

  “I have an appointment to take Dink to the vet and get his cast redone. Considering what happened with the barn, Hank doesn’t want me on the road by myself and insisted I take someone with me.”

  “Quinn can’t take you?” Not that I particularly minded going with her. In fact, a lighter workday sounded almost luxurious at this point.

  “Hank wanted you to go with me. Said I couldn’t be in better hands.”

  That Hank counted me as an asset and not a liability made my chest tighten in the vicinity of my heart. I almost smiled.

  “Besides,” she added, “I’m a little mad at Quinn right now.”

  I’d been more sensitive at breakfast than the situation had called for, so I gave Quinn the benefit of the doubt. “I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Jenna studied the tip of her boot as it flattened a pile of ash and shrugged her shoulders. “Still…”

  She seemed so young then. Vulnerable. I could see the stress of the past week weighing on her strong shoulders. There was no doubt in my mind how much she loved the ranch. Maybe even more than Dale and Lottie if that were possible. Yet, she handled everything with more aplomb and grace than I did.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’d be happy to go with you.” A little time away from Hank wouldn’t hurt anything either.

  And if the road kept calling, I could always leave tonight.

  Chapter 9

  When we dropped off Dink, we were told we could pick him up in a couple hours. Not enough time to go back to the ranch and accomplish anything, so Jenna and I found ourselves with unexpected time on our hands. I thumped my thumbs on the steering wheel of Hank’s new truck to the beat of a country song playing on the radio. The vehicle still had that new-car smell for the most part—all plush dark leather and carbon fiber accents—with only a hint of eau de hay undertones. “So what do you want to do now?”

  “Diner?”

  “You just ate,” I reminded her. Then my stomach folded in on itself and growled like a caged jaguar.

  Jenna giggled. “Yeah, but you didn’t.”

  By the time we made it to the diner, fifteen minutes of our allotted time had passed since the vet used the bottom level of his ranch house for his office and it was way out of town. Luckily for us, the breakfast crowd had already departed and we commandeered a table by the window. The same table Dale and Hank had chosen when I’d first seen them at the beginning of the week. Seriously? Had that only been five days ago?

  Each day had gone by in a flash of hard work, little sleep, and too much adrenaline. In a way, it felt like I’d been on the ranch for months. That Dale and Lottie, Jenna and Hank, and all the rest of the hands were my friends. Well, not Link. I was starting to think he wasn’t anyone’s friend, but even his reticence didn’t feel so foreign.

  The waitress snagged a full pot of coffee off the burner and filled our mugs with the liquid gold as we settled into our seats. She rubbed at a sticky spot on the table with a damp towel and smiled at me in recognition, her rose lipstick seeping into the tiny fissures surrounding her lips. “Mornin’ Jenna-girl, what can I get you ladies this mornin’?”

  If Olive Oyl had a mother, this lady would be her. Tall and thin, her body arched in a way that reminded me of the letter C. Her shoulders stooped from either old age or a lifetime of hard work. Maybe both.

  Jenna stuck with her coffee. Since I’d had enough time to get over Hank’s rejection and Quinn’s smart-ass quip, and after about thirty seconds of sniffing in the enticing aromas of bacon, maple syrup, and sausage, my appetite came roaring back, so I opted for the full rancher breakfast, which included one of every breakfast item the diner served. Remembering my financial dilemma from Monday, I patted the breast pocket of my jacket and the envelope Jenna had given me before we’d left containing my first week’s pay. The envelope crinkled and I sighed with relief. It wasn’t much money, but it was more than enough for now.

  Even though there were two men at the counter mid-meal, Pearl called out to us from behind her station. “So how is life at the Lazy S treating you?”

  “Um…uh…fine,” I said, a little taken aback that she knew I’d been hired on at the ranch. Then again, I was sitting here with the ranch owner’s granddaughter so I shouldn’t have been so surprised.

  “Interesting news travels fast,” Jenna said from behind her coffee mug.

  “I’m not that interesting.”

  Jenna shrugged one shoulder and sent me an apologetic smile. “It’s a small town.” She sipped her coffee then added, “You’ll get used to it.”

  I won’t be here long enough for that, I almost said, but she’d said it like it was a given that I was staying, that I was now somehow a part of this town, of her life, after five days. I didn’t want to deny it and burst her bubble. Or would it be bursting mine? That thought jabbed my heart as if one of the millions of its sh
attered pieces snapped back into place, like a magnet slurping up an errant metal filing.

  “Sorry to hear about your trouble.” Pearl laid a platter in front of me and three small plates with fixings and extras. My mouth pooled with saliva even as I wondered how I was going to eat it all.

  “No trouble,” Jenna said. Did she mean finishing the meal was no trouble? No, wait. That wasn’t it. Then I snapped back to the conversation at hand. There was still a smile on Jenna’s face, but her eyes had lost luster and a muscle jumped in her jaw. So much like her daddy.

  “That’s not what I heard, honey.”

  Hmmm. Oh, yeah?

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” Jenna added with all the sweetness she could muster with maybe a tiny helping of none-of-your-business thrown in.

  Pearl patted Jenna’s hand sympathetically and turned to go. With little for the sheriff to go on, maybe this was the perfect place for a little recon. “What, exactly, have you heard?”

  The men at the counter stood to go, one of them tossing bills on the table to cover their breakfast. “You boys have a good day,” Pearl called out as she hooked an arm through a nearby chair and pulled it up to the end of our table to join us. Even though we were the only customers, Pearl leaned forward and whispered as if afraid someone would hear what she had to say.

  “I hear a lot of things,” Pearl started. “This place is smaller than a barn stall and as full of shit most of the time, but the voices tend to carry. Plus, frankly, people say almost anything around me on account of folks being so used to seeing me around, I’m kinda overlooked, like parsley on a plate sometimes.”

  Pearl was a tad wilted with age, but she definitely had more life and vitality than the flat sprig of leaf wilted on the corner of my plate, but I got where she was coming from. And as an elder local, she was in prime position to know people’s back history to enhance her information.

  “And?” Jenna prompted, her face scrunched at the edges with the effort she exerted staving off an eye roll. It was obvious all she wanted was for Pearl to get to the point.

  “Two of the Talbot brothers was in here, all early like.” When Pearl pronounced her S’s, she drew them out until they buzzed like a Z. Her eyes opened wide and she nodded her chin at the end of the statement like that meant something. I raised my brows at Jenna in a what-is-she-getting-at? way.

  Jenna shrugged. Pearl caught our not-so-subtle exchange. “C’mon,, Jenna. You know those boys are as lazy as a coon dog on a sun porch. Ain’t ever seen them boys rolling through town before noon unless they’s up to no good.”

  Not exactly prosecutable evidence but my interest piqued nonetheless. “Did they say anything?”

  “Nah. Nothing really. They talked about the fire like the rest of the folks this mornin’. But they didn’t seem none too upset ’bout it neither.”

  “I think one of the Talbots worked for my grandfather when I was younger,” Jenna chimed in. “Do you remember which ones were here?”

  Pearl pursed her lips and scrunched up her face and considered her answer. “Travis and Trevor? Or maybe it was Travis and Trent. No, wait. Trent and Tanner…” Then she shook her head, and ran her hand over her head and tugged at her black ponytail streaked heavily with gray and sighed. “Sorry, girls. I ain’t never been good at tellin’ those bastards apart.”

  “S’okay,” Jenna said.

  I swallowed down my eggs with a side dish of frustration.

  “You finished with that?” Pearl stood and held out a hand toward my plate. The food had barely been put in front of me, and I was embarrassed to say I’d hoovered it all up and all but licked the plates clean. I nodded, stacking my silverware on top. “Sorry about the horses,” she added.

  “Thank you,” Jenna replied.

  “Wait,” I held up a hand.

  “Need more coffee?”

  “No. I mean yes, but that’s not what I meant.” I glanced at Jenna. “What did you hear about the horses?”

  “Just that three of them burned up in the fire. It’s a dang shame if you ask me.”

  “Who told you that?”

  She set the plates back down, put her hands on her hips, and contemplated her answer. “Now that you ask, I don’t rightly know. Coulda been anyone.”

  “Do you have credit card receipts?”

  “What for?”

  That’s when Jenna clued in. Only those of us from the ranch knew three horses had died. The flames had been so bad the night before, we hadn’t known for certain how many. The arson investigators wouldn’t be out until later in the day. “To get a list of who was in this morning.”

  “Aw, sugar,” Pearl said, as she swooped up my plates and dumped them in a plastic tub behind the counter, “don’t need no receipts for that.”

  She started rattling off names of customers, where they sat, and what they ate until my eyes started to cross.

  I raised a hand to stop her. “Could you write it all down? The names,” I added as her eyes went wide.

  Pearl dropped a carafe of coffee on the table for us to self-serve. “Happy to. Let me take the dishes to the kitchen and I’ll jot it all down.”

  Across from me, Jenna buzzed with excitement and hope burned in my gut. Maybe it was all the coffee and caffeine. It had only been a few days but I was more than ready for the trouble to end. This was not the quiet, little back mountain job I’d thought I was signing up for.

  Unfortunately, the more I was getting to know the people at the ranch, the more difficulty I was having minding my own business. It wasn’t fair that three horses died for no reason; it wasn’t fair that Dink has suffered; it wasn’t fair that someone had stolen from the Cunningham family and had set their barn on fire.

  It needed to stop.

  For all those reasons and because—despite the trouble they were having—I wasn’t unhappy here. I didn’t wake up with the itch in my spine propelling me forward, driving me down the road. I also didn’t wake up with an aversion to contact with others.

  I didn’t wake to wonder why I’d survived and my friends had not.

  Would it last? I had no freaking idea. But I’d enjoy it while it did.

  I glanced over at the counter where Pearl now sat, pen in hand as she recalled the customers of that morning. Someone clanked pots and pans together in the back, the cook I ventured. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jenna sit back, as she contemplated the contents of her coffee cup, slowly turning it on the table in her hands.

  Before I could ask her what was on her mind, she said, “So…”

  “So…what?”

  She chewed her bottom lip, sneaked a glance at my face then stared at her almost empty cup again.

  “Spit it out, sister.”

  She smiled to herself at that. Then she straightened her spine and met my gaze head on. “So did he?”

  “E-excuse me?” She’d lost me. Her voice had been tentative, but she didn’t seem like she’d look away before she knew the truth of it. Whatever it was she wanted to know.

  “My dad,” she clarified. “Did he ‘get ’im some’?” Her impression of Quinn nothing short of masterful. She’d even nailed his cocky little sneer.

  Ummm. Huh. That was so not what I expected to come out of that pretty little mouth of hers. Also, so not the conversation I wanted to have with the daughter—the seventeen-year-old daughter—of the guy I was what? Seeing? Interested in? Skinny-dipping with? Lusting after and rubbing naked body parts with? “Would it be a problem if he had?”

  She nodded once as if accepting the question to ponder. Then said, “No. Not for me.”

  The relief that rushed through me came as a surprise. Not that I usually based my love interests on the opinions of teenagers, but I knew how much this particular teenager meant to Hank, and the two of them didn’t need anything getting in the way of repairing their relationship. Despite my growing att
raction and interest in him, I would bow out before I let that happen. I couldn’t help but smile. “Good.” When she still didn’t look away, a flush crept up my neck. “What?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Here you go, girls,” Pearl said as she strolled over and handed me the list she’d made. “Hopefully, this will help.”

  I almost jumped up and kissed her smack on the lips for her perfect timing. I pulled out enough money to cover our tab and a healthy tip and thanked her as we headed out the door, but I should have known Jenna wouldn’t allow me to evade the question.

  As we settled into the cab of the truck, she said, “Spill it.”

  I blew out an exasperated breath. “No. He didn’t.” I didn’t add that it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

  She laughed as if incredulous, a mischievous glint in her blue eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  I raised a brow and she stopped laughing but the smile still lit up her face.

  “Wait, you’re serious.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Oh my God!” She giggled. “The infamous Hank Nash must be losing his touch.”

  Hardly. When I recalled the events of last night, and the feel of his hand in mine, his fingers in my hair, his erection pressed tightly against me, the flush I’d been holding back in the diner ran up my face. Seriously? Was I really having this conversation with Hank’s daughter? I powered down my window to let in cool air. “I’m not quite sure I know how to respond to that.”

  “Go that way”—she pointed— “and take the first road on the right.” Then she picked the conversation back up. “If you think this town is small, the rodeo scene is even smaller. Everybody knows everything about everybody. Not that my dad wasn’t discreet, it’s just that when you’re as successful of a bull rider as he was, everyone is watching and the buckle bunnies are quick to bounce on a warm body. Especially one that wins. Word gets around is all.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  She shrugged as I turned where she’d indicated. “I got teased when I was younger maybe. It’s a little embarrassing to hear the tales knowing they’re talking about your father, but mostly I ignored them. I know how things get blown out of proportion on the circuit so I take everything with a grain of salt.”