“You can have one pair and one shirt on the ranch ticket because Colton promised that much to you, unless you want to take the money out of your next Friday’s paycheck. I’m going to that bookstore on the corner down there while you two shop. I’ll come back in one hour with the ranch credit card to pay for what y’all buy. If you get finished before that, call my cell phone.”
Roxie flipped through a rack of jeans at the front of the store. “They don’t have as much shiny stuff on them as the pair did at Tressa’s.”
“Would all that shine make you a better person?” Laura asked.
“No, but they’d make Rosalee Roche stop lookin’ at me like I’m trash,” she said. “Oh, look at that dress. You’d look great in it. They’re showing those in all the magazines for the spring.”
Rosalee Roche.
Dee Darnell.
Dee had been the thorn in Laura’s side during her high school years. Maybe being a bitch had to do with double initials.
Laura snagged a cart and draped the bright blue floral dress over the side. “We are allowed eight garments at a time in the dressing room. Choose your eight while I get mine and then we’ll try on. If nothing works, we’ll start again.”
“Aunt Maudie says I can only have two things, a shirt and a pair of jeans.”
“That don’t mean you can’t try on lots of things. Woman has to see which one looks best before she chooses, right?”
***
Maudie picked out four romance books, three new mysteries, and a cookbook. She’d barely gotten through the checkout line and was looking forward to half an hour of perusing the cookbook in one of the store’s comfortable chairs when her phone rang. She dug it out of her purse and looked at the ID. Roxie could beg until the sun fell out of the sky; she was not getting more than one pair of jeans and one shirt that day.
“The answer is no before you even ask,” Maudie said.
“No, that you won’t come get us or no that I can’t even have an ice cream on the way home because it will ruin my supper?”
“You can’t be finished. Am I really going to have to take Laura to the Goodwill store? Colton is going to have a fit.”
“We’re finished and you don’t have to take us to the Goodwill, but Laura says she wants to go by the greenhouse she saw on the way here. There’s a Braum’s store right next to it where I can get an ice cream cone. She promises she won’t take up too much time because she already knows what she wants. We are standing beside the truck.”
When Maudie stepped out into the warm sunny day, sure enough there was Roxie in her bright yellow shirt, blond hair tied back with a ribbon, denim shorts, long dangling hoop earrings, looking very much like a little gypsy child leaning on the back fender of the truck. And Laura right beside her in worn boots, tight jeans, bright blue tank top, and a chambray work shirt tied around her waist.
Neither of them had a single sack in their hands, which meant that she’d be wasting another afternoon that week. Laura had to be ready for the weekend. She couldn’t begin to know how important it was that she look good for Colton, and there was no way she’d found anything in that store in that length of time. In the past, Maudie had seen Roxie run around dress racks for two hours and agonize over which shirt would look best with jeans. In Maudie’s opinion, anything went with jeans so it didn’t matter which one the child bought.
She opened the truck door from across the parking lot with the remote. Roxie and Laura were inside when she tossed her books through the door on the driver’s side. “So y’all didn’t find a thing in there?”
“Oh, yes we did,” Roxie said cheerfully. “See.” She waved a hand over several bags resting beside her in the backseat of the truck.
“But…” Maudie looked at Laura.
“Oh, I guess you didn’t see the bags. We had them stacked up on the other side,” Roxie said. “When you unlocked the car we shoved them all inside.”
“But…” Maudie started again.
“But I pay for my own clothing,” Laura said.
Maudie looked into the rearview at Roxie. “And you?”
Laura laid a hand on Maudie’s shoulder. “I bought her a pair of jeans and a shirt for the party, and a new pair of shorts and a shirt for school. And she is going to pay me.”
Maudie started up the truck. “How?”
“I’m a bought woman.” Roxie giggled.
The sound was music to Laura’s ears. She would have bought twice that much just to see Roxie happy and acting like a sassy teenager.
Roxie went on. “I have agreed to do Laura’s nails and toenails and iron her outfits for the Dallas weekend. It’s my second job and I won’t let it interfere with my first job, which is doing whatever you say on the ranch. I’ll iron her jeans and outfits on Thursday night and we’re out of school on Friday, so I can do her mani-pedi in the afternoon.”
“It looks like you two have things all worked out then, so we are ready to go to the greenhouse?” Maudie asked.
Laura put her hand back in her lap and said softly, “Thank you.”
***
Flats of green plants and brightly colored flowers along with buckets of bigger plants were lined up beside the back door when Colton came in from the fields that evening. He kicked off his dirty boots, hung his hat on a nail, and caught the tail end of something Roxie was saying.
“You should’ve seen Maudie’s face, Sally. I don’t think she believed us until we got home.”
“Well, Miz Roxie, I can’t say as I blame her. Laura, you sure got that shopping business down to get it all done that quick. You must do a lot of it,” Sally said.
“Not me. I hate to shop so I’ve got a system and it works. It was a whole lot harder to leave the garden shop. It was three times the size of the one where I used to work and the plants were all so pretty.”
Colton leaned against the cabinet. “So Tressa fixed y’all up, did she?”
Maudie shook her head. “Afraid not. Laura says her prices are too high.”
“But we are both fixed up and she’s got a pretty dress for the big party and it don’t even look like it came from a cheap store,” Roxie said quickly.
Colton tucked his chin and rolled his eyes up at Maudie. “You want to explain.”
Laura took a step toward him. “Look at me, not at her. I’m right here. I can talk for myself. I got everything I need for a tenth of the price of what Tressa charges, and FYI, darlin’, I paid for it with my money.”
“And she paid for my stuff too, and I’m going to work for her to pay off the debt,” Roxie said.
“I told you…” Colton looked from her to Maudie.
Laura took another step forward. “I said to look at me. Even if we are dating you don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m ready for your party and Chester is putting the final touches on supper. Afterwards I’m planting all those flowers in the yard. You can help or go play in your gym. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me.”
“You get bitchy every time you get hungry?” Colton asked.
“Yes, I do, and if you don’t like it, keep me fed.”
“The ranch paid for the flowers,” Maudie said.
“Looks like she ain’t after your money like folks is sayin’,” Sally said seriously.
Laura whipped around. “Is that what they say?”
Sally tilted her chin down in half a bob. “Wouldn’t matter who you are, that’s what the people would say, so either prove ’em wrong some more or else live with it.”
A smile turned the corners of Laura’s mouth up in an impish grin. “How do you know what people say, Sally?”
“I got ears, don’t I?”
Rusty came in from the foyer and dramatically swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Is this the first fight in paradise?”
“I believe it might be, so we’ll have to make up lat
er, won’t we?” Colton put his hands on Laura’s waist and picked her up like a bag of chicken feed. When he’d set her down a foot to his right, he stepped around her and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to clean up a little bit for supper. I’ll only be a few minutes. Don’t start without me.”
He’d never wanted to kiss a woman so much in his entire life. Her blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight flowing in from the kitchen windows. Her upturned chin dared him to say another word. If fighting with her created this much sexual energy, he couldn’t imagine what would happen if they ever had sex.
His hands trembled when he filled them with water to wash his face. The pressure behind his zipper testified that she’d just flat turned him on with her sassiness. He straightened up and looked into the mirror above the sink. Drops of water hung to his dark eyebrows and Roxie was right. He had a moony-eyed look about him.
***
Laura held the shovel with both hands and stomped it into the ground. It sunk easier than she’d hoped, seeing as how the yard didn’t look like it had seen a good tilling in years. She turned over the dirt, chopped it up with the shovel’s sharp edge, and repeated the motions until she had loosened all the soil in the four-by-sixteen-foot flower bed. From the looks of the place, someone had once thought about making a mini-maze in the yard with landscaping timbers defining flower beds. It was downright sinful the way it had been neglected. There were even stepping-stones down under the grass between the flower beds and cute little wrought-iron benches placed in just the right places to watch the sunrise. One evening with a Weed eater would uncover the stones and a good washing would make the benches shine.
Colton dug up the flower bed right beside hers and got finished ten minutes quicker than she did. He leaned on the shovel and eyed the other eight. “We could use the garden tiller. I think it would fit in between the timbers.”
“Lazy, are you?” she teased. “Digging takes a while longer but the tiller would chew up the timbers if you got too close to them. We can take a breather and plant flowers in these two and then work on the next ones.”
“Well, thank you, boss lady,” Colton said.
“Don’t be catty to me. When did you last work on this area, anyway?”
“I bought the ranch two years ago. This has been in a live or die situation ever since I’ve owned it,” he said.
“How’s that?”
“It can live or it can die. It’s up to the rain and how tough whatever comes up in the beds is,” he said.
“That’s horrible. This could be a lovely garden by fall with just a little bit of maintenance. And next spring it would reseed and all you’d have to do is water it.”
“Write down the instructions. It can be Roxie’s job if you leave.”
If!
If?
He’d best be learning how to pronounce when. There was no if to it. She’d signed to work until she got her debt paid. After that she was going to put in her resume at every greenhouse in Texas until she found another job. Hell’s tinkling little bells! She couldn’t stay on the ranch, not with the physical attraction she had for Colton.
“You could be a gardener. I’d hire you to take care of the yard if Andy gets to the place where he doesn’t need an assistant anymore,” he said.
“Then Andy can hire one.” Using a tiny spade, she dug a hole in the loose dirt, tapped a lantana from a black plastic container, and planted it.
For several minutes neither Laura nor Colton said a word. She thought about her comment about Andy hiring a gardener and remembered when he’d said that he would hire her.
It had all happened when she called him after she and Janet had gone to lunch at the diner. She remembered every single word that was said that day when she met with Janet. She’d been so stupid that she had thought for the first time in years that Janet had called her for something other than money.
She’d gotten to the little café early and ordered two bacon cheeseburgers, onion rings, and a couple of glasses of sweet tea. The waitress had just set the food on the table when Janet slid into the seat across the booth from Laura. Her face was pale gray and her blond hair hung in limp strands. Her eyes were sunken and bloodshot.
“You are in trouble again. What is it this time?” Laura had almost wept.
Janet had immediately taken a defensive stand. “What makes you say that? Can’t I call and ask you to meet me for lunch without you thinkin’ I’m in trouble?”
“Not when you look like hell.”
“Well, you don’t look so hot yourself. Have you gained five more pounds?” Janet had said coldly.
“I will never be as skinny as you, but I’m a long way from being obese,” Laura snapped back. “Now what is going on?”
Janet had put her head in her hands. “I’ve stepped off in a real shit storm, sister. I need help and I don’t know where else to go.”
“How much?” Laura didn’t have five hundred dollars in her bank account and found herself hoping that Janet didn’t need all of that.
“Ten grand and if I don’t have it by tomorrow there will be a funeral.”
“Ten thousand dollars!”
Janet had nodded emphatically.
“Holy shit! How did that happen?”
“I won a couple of times at the blackjack tables.” Janet had shrugged.
“I don’t have that kind of money. My truck isn’t valued at half that and I don’t have anything to pawn that would bring in that much. And I got laid off. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry and I’ve had to use what I had saved to keep afloat. I’ve been putting in applications, but nothing so far.”
“Well, your name is better than mine. You’d best come up with it by this time tomorrow or else have your black suit dry cleaned. You’ve got my number. I’m living out of my car. I haven’t even got five dollars for a hamburger. I’ll just take this one with me. I wouldn’t blame you if you threw me to the wolves, but I give you my word, if you get me out of this one, I won’t even play bingo again. And that’s a promise.”
Laura shook the memory from her head and looked across the flower bed at Colton. “Tell me about what it was like before you got rich.”
“I was a ranch hand on a spread down near Ravenna. I bought one lottery ticket a week when I went into town to put my paycheck in the bank. Just one dollar a week. I’m not a gambling man, but I figured a beer cost more than that and it was fun to think about what I’d do if I ever won. And one day I hit pay dirt. Won a million-dollar lottery. The first thing I did was hire Andy Joe. The second was to buy this ranch. A year later he’d made some investments and I had ten times that much so I bought the three ranches surrounding me. Last year he worked his magic and made me a billionaire.”
“And now?” she asked.
“I’m still the same old ranch hand, only now I have money. I still make a tractor work until bubble gum and bailing wire won’t keep it together anymore, and I squeeze a penny until Abe groans. Guess I’ll always be that poor boy who grew up over in Bells and whose granny was a cook in the lunchroom.” Colton went back to the task of getting the soil prepared in the next flower bed.
Laura sunk her little shovel into the ground again and set another lantana plant in the hole.
He talked as he worked. “My folks left me with Granny one night and were killed in a car wreck on the way to dinner. Drunk driver in a semi broadsided them. They said that death was instant and that they didn’t suffer. Granny finished raisin’ me. I was ten that summer. She made me mow the lawn once a week for an allowance.” He chuckled. “I like that you are making Roxie work for you to pay back whatever you spent on clothes today. She’ll appreciate them more.”
“It’s nice to get paid for your efforts, and Roxie is coming out of her shell a little bit,” Laura said.
“I noticed and it’s great,” he said.
She had never gotten
paid for all the work she did at Aunt Dotty’s ranch. It just came with the territory. Dotty handed her five hundred dollars the morning that she left and said it was to help her get started. Janet had gotten her the job at the greenhouse and had moved from the garage apartment into a bigger one with her boyfriend of the month. So she’d moved into Janet’s old place and walked to work until she could save enough money to buy a used truck.
He finished spading up two more flower beds while she planted the first two. Then he leaned on the shovel and asked, “You goin’ to water those?”
“Of course,” she answered.
“I’ll get a couple of hoses. If I help, we might still have time for a swim. Don’t reckon we’ll need a workout in the gym after this,” he said.
He snaked two green hoses out across the yard from the back of the house. He handed one to her and started watering one of the long flower beds. She turned the spraying attachment to “mist” and began to soak down the flower bed closest to her.
In a month the flowers would spread out. By the end of the summer there would be an amazing garden to walk through early in the morning or late in the evening. She could imagine what it would all look like and almost feel the cool stones covered with morning dew under her bare feet.
She shut her eyes to get a clearer picture of the garden in full bloom and then boom! Cold water hit her square between the shoulders. She spun around and the water got her at neck level.
She instinctively turned her hose to shoot right back at Colton, but the mist setting wouldn’t reach that far. However, the jet one would so she quickly readjusted and the powerful blast had no trouble reaching his chest.
“Ouch! Turn it to spray. You aren’t playing fair,” he yelled.
“Fair. I’ll show you fair.” She flipped the dial to spray and ran to the nearest pecan trees for cover. “I can beat your sorry old ass on any setting. I’m a pro at garden hose war.”
He took off toward the hedges at the other end of the yard. “I’m a bigger pro.”
Colton defended the south end of the yard and Laura protected the north end. Using two big pecan trees to hide behind and a couple of yew plants as cover, she made her way inch by inch to his fortress, the big box hedge up against the south corner of the house. When he peeked out she hit him at the waist and quickly soaked his jeans all the way to his boots. But the win was costly because he took up the chase as she headed back to her pecan tree fort and there wasn’t a dry stitch on her when he ran out of hose.
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