That’s what he’d been doing for the past week. In between watching Josh mooning over Holly and listening to Eustess and Lurline arguing over everything, the only peace and quiet Mason had found was out in the pasture. Branding calves, rounding up strays or riding fence.
But Josh had declared his love and he was now at Holly’s place working out the details of their future together. And probably working out, period.
Which meant it was just Eustess and Lurline standing between Mason and a good night’s sleep.
He walked down the hallway toward the kitchen and the voices.
“Really, Eustess.” His aunt Lurline was a tiny woman with curly white hair and glasses. She wore the same type of flower print dress she’d worn when Mason and his brothers had begged for chocolate chunk cookies and milk every Sunday after supper. This particular one was orange with black daisy shapes. “You’re acting like a child.”
“I’m actin’ like a man who’s wife refuses to do what she’s told.” Eustess was a foot taller than his wife, but thanks to his arthritis, he stooped so much that they almost seemed the same height. He wore overalls over a long-sleeved yellow shirt that buttoned up to his neck. His bald head glittered in the kitchen light.
“Nice night.” Mason walked over to the stove and picked up a piece of his great-aunt’s fried chicken.
“Good evening, dear,” Lurline said, pausing to smile at Mason before she turned a murderous stare on her husband of sixty-something years. “First off, Eustess Luther Eugene Ketchum, you don’t tell me a cotton pickin’ thing.” She wagged a finger at him. “You ask. And then, if I’m feeling my usual generous nature, I’ll do it. If I’m not, you can darned tootin’ go to the store and get your own overpriced cereal.” Her attention shifted back to Mason and her smile returned. “There’s gravy to go with that, dear.”
“Mighty good gravy, too,” Eustess added, clapping Mason on the shoulder before he eyeballed his wife. “That’s the trouble with you. You’re too damned tight with a penny, just like your mother.”
“My mother was frugal. There’s a big difference. And if you want to point fingers, you need to point one at your own mother. Why, that woman was the most bossy female I’ve ever met.”
“Your mother was a gossiping busybody,” Eustess countered.
“This chicken is out of this world,” Mason said, eager to distract Lurline. But the dig at her mother had obviously pushed her over the edge.
“Well,” she huffed, “your mother was a know-it-all. Too bad somebody drop-kicked the apple when it fell from the tree.”
Eustess’ gaze narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you ain’t got the sense God gave a goose. Why, there are regular folks the world over who would give their right eye for that there box of bran cereal.”
“No need. They’re more than welcome to mine ’cause it ain’t gonna do me a lick of good. I swear you’re trying to kill me.”
“If I was, believe you me, I would think of something a heck of a lot more painful.”
“Ain’t nothing more painful than stopped up plumbing. ’Cept maybe seeing you in that there orange dress.”
“Why, you old geezer…”
“I think I’ll just finish this upstairs,” Mason said as he headed for the hallway. The arguing continued as if Mason hadn’t said a word. The voices followed him clear across the house to the large bedroom he’d occupied as a kid.
He’d played high school football and he’d been good at it, but he hadn’t loved it. Not like his baby brother, Rance, who’d gone on to play pro ball for the Dallas Cowboys until a knee injury had knocked his career out from under him.
Mason’s passion had been rodeo.
Trophies for everything from calf-roping to bronc busting lined the walls. Dozens of buckles lined another shelf. His favorite lasso hung from one of the bedposts. His first saddle draped over the back of a chair.
It had been during his rodeo days right after high school that he’d realized the real ingredient to a lasting marriage.
Tucker Pierce had been the best bull rider on the circuit back then and a good ten years older than Mason. He’d been a country boy from the Texas Hill Country with a sharp Southern twang and a degree from the school of hard knocks. He’d been married to Linda, a Harvard-educated lawyer who’d come from old money. They’d been about as opposite as black and white, and yet they’d been the happiest couple he’d ever seen. Linda never missed a rodeo. Every Friday she would leave her fancy practice in Houston where they’d bought a house, and drive to whatever hole-in-the-wall town was hosting that week’s ride. And after the rodeo, they would disappear into Tucker’s RV and not come up for air until the next morning.
Mason had gone to the Pro Bull Riding Finals in Las Vegas a few years back and he’d run into them. They’d still been all smiles. Still happy. And going on twenty years of marriage.
Mason had once asked Tucker their secret and his friend had simply smiled and said, “It’s called good, old-fashioned lust, buddy. We just can’t keep our hands off each other.”
Physical attraction.
That’s what drew two people together. What kept them together. Mason’s parents had had similar personalities and a shitload of things in common, but they hadn’t had even the tiniest bit of physical attraction. And so their marriage had been a failure from the start. A farce.
It made sense, and it also made him that much more determined to do things differently in his own life.
Mason hung his hat on a peg near the door, sat down on the edge of the twin bed and pulled off his boots. While the room seemed smaller than he remembered, the house itself actually seemed bigger.
Then again, the last time he had been home had been for his grandfather’s funeral.
There had been people everywhere then, filling up every nook and cranny. The same way they’d done when Mason’s father had passed away after wrapping his GTO around an telephone pole. Mason had been thirteen and his father’s death had come less than twenty-four hours after his mother had died in the hospital from an infection associated with a miscarriage.
His father had been running from his grief in that car, trying to outrun his pain.
But Mason had lived with his pain. He’d lived with the loneliness and the longing for a real home and a real family.
No more.
He was through dreaming about home. He was here now and he was staying. As for a real family…He intended to do something about that soon, starting with finding a woman. The woman. The one who turned him on and fired his blood, one who filled him with a lust so intense that he wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off of her, just like Tucker had said.
“…I’d never married you in the first place. My momma warned me…” Lurline’s voice carried through the open doorway.
Mason kicked the door closed and emptied his pockets out onto the dresser. His fingers paused on the crinkled business card and an idea struck.
He smiled.
While he, personally, didn’t need any relationship therapy—he knew from seeing his parents’ dysfunctional marriage that it took an intense physical attraction to make a relationship really work—he knew a couple who could definitely use Charlene’s help. He was going to have a hell of a time getting any sleep with Eustess and Lurline at each other’s throats.
They needed Charlene.
And Mason needed a good excuse to see her again because he had a hunch, and a hard-on, that told him she just might be the woman he was looking for.
“IT’S ABOUT TIME you showed up.” Marge Winchell met Charlene at the door early the next morning.
Marge had been her father’s secretary over at Romeo Savings & Loan since its grand opening in 1962, right up until he’d packed his bags, left his wife and job, to everyone’s shock, and moved to Pennsylvania.She’d stayed on at the savings & loan as secretary to the man who’d replaced her father, up until her favorite boss’ daughter had graduated college and opened up her own practice. She�
��d been with Charlene ever since.
Marge’s frosted hair was teased in the same beehive hairdo she’d sported at the bank’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, a picture of which still sat on the corner of her desk. Bright pink lipstick matched the nail polish on her two-inch acrylic nails. Silver-framed cat’s eye glasses perched low on her nose. She wore a white button-up blouse and a full pink skirt belted with a three inch black leather belt. Several pink plastic bracelets dangled from one bony wrist. She smelled of Aqua Net and Emeraude and the three Camels she allotted herself per day.
“Here’s your coffee.” Marge handed Charlene a steaming mug. “And your messages.” The old woman shoved a stack into Charlene’s other hand. “And the lecture notes that you wanted me to type up.” The woman handed over a manilla folder which Charlene cradled in her arms. “And the chart for the nine o’clock patient.”
“But we don’t have a nine o’clock.”
“We do now. The Patricks were waiting when I pulled into the parking lot. They said they needed to speak with you right away. They’re in your office. Now, here’s the morning mail, including a flyer for that seminar you wanted to register for last year, Getting in Touch With Your Inner Self.” She set the colorful brochure on the growing stack. “The latest issue of Psychology Today, another advertisement for another seminar, Getting in Touch With Your Spouse’s Inner Self, a few pieces of junk including coupons for the new bakery opening up over by the courthouse, the new Science Digest, a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue.”
“But I don’t—”
“Wait a second.” Marge snatched the catalogue back. “That’s mine.” She rifled through her stack. “Mine.” She pulled out the Venus Swimwear Summer Sales Bonanza. “Mine.” The latest issue of Cosmo. “And mine.” She also took another catalogue for the new Xandria collection of sex toys. Then she made a face. “Definitely yours.” She handed over the Abercrombie & Fitch. “You’d better hurry.” She rounded Charlene and gave her a little push toward her office door. “The Patricks have been waiting for twenty minutes and it’s been quiet the entire time.”
“Really?” Charlene smiled. “The therapy must be working.”
“That or they’ve bludgeoned each other to death.” Marge deposited the leftovers on the corner of her desk. “I knew that coffee table book Stewart gave you for Christmas, How to Can Your Own Vegetables, would come in handy some day.”
Charlene frowned. “It’s signed by the author and it was thoughtful. You know how much I love how-to books.”
“How to Ride ’Em Like a Rodeo Queen. Now that’s thoughtful, and darned useful. Forget decorating the coffee table. There’s no man in his right mind who wouldn’t want his woman to wear down the pages memorizing every cotton pickin’ word of that.”
Charlene eyeballed her secretary. “There’s no such book.”
“There sure enough is, and if Stewart had half a brain he would have bought it for you. Something’s wrong with that boy, I’m telling you. No man in his right mind buys a woman a book about canning.”
“He does if they’re friends, which we are.” For now.
“That’s my point. No healthy, red-blooded American man, at least the ones I know, would be happy being friends with a woman unless he butters his bread on the wrong side. Are you sure he’s not gay?”
“Yes.” Sort of. She’d actually wondered the same thing for a while. But then she’d personally witnessed him salivate a time or two while watching a particularly attractive female contestant on Jeopardy, so she’d dismissed the notion. “He wants to talk about us when he gets back from his convention.” There. Let Marge digest that tidbit of information.
“Is that so?”
“It most definitely is.” Charlene smiled. “I think he’s going to step things up and ask me to be his girlfriend.”
“It’s about time. Good friends.” Marge snorted. “Why, that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. You wouldn’t catch me wasting my time with a man who just wanted to be my friend.”
“He wants more. He just hasn’t had time. He’s a very busy man.”
“Too busy to jump your bones? Sounds like he’s afraid of commitment if you ask me.”
She wanted to inform Marge that she wouldn’t be contemplating a serious relationship with Stewart in the first place if he was the bone-jumping sort. She liked mutual respect and romance, with all of the lights out.
In her reality, that is.
She’d envisioned a few detailed bone-jumping scenarios in her fantasies, however. But Stewart had been nowhere around. Just a certain dark, delicious, hunky cowboy who smelled even better in person than she’d ever imagined.
Charlene forced her thoughts into taking a quick detour. “Stewart isn’t afraid of commitment,” she went on. “He’s just careful about making major decisions.”
“And too damned slow, if you ask me. Who needs a man like that?”
“I do. He’s my soul mate.”
Marge gave her an are-you-serious? look before she reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and retrieved a massive black leather purse. “Just tape the session and I’ll transcribe it when I come back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a nail appointment. They couldn’t see me at lunch on account of all the secretaries over at the courthouse scheduled during that time.” She held up a hand and wiggled her fingers. “I’m trading in the gel and going acrylic this time.”
“Sounds like a major life choice.” Charlene turned back to the doorway.
“Don’t get your Hanes in a wad. I’ll be back before the next hour’s appointment.” Before Charlene could open her mouth, Marge rushed on. “It’s Sheriff Miller. He’s angsting about what to get the missus for their anniversary on account of he bought her a toaster last time and she pulled a gun and shot it clear to smithereens.” As if Marge read the questions racing through Charlene’s mind, she added, “She’s going through The Change. Anyhow, he doesn’t want to screw it up this time, so he thought you could help him out.”
“I’m surprised he doesn’t just order an Ultimate Milk Chocolate Orgasm from Sweet & Sinful and be done with it.”
Okay, Charlene knew she sounded catty but it had been a stressful night. One spent tossing and turning, her thoughts alternating between Mason McGraw and Ultimate Orgasms and the possibility that maybe, just maybe, she was dead wrong when it came to relationships.
Sure, Stewart was coming around, but it had taken him long enough.
Because they lacked that intense physical attraction she’d felt for Mason McGraw?
Yes.
No.
She didn’t know anymore.
“The sheriff actually mentioned Sweet & Sinful,” Marge continued. “Said he’d thought of it, but his wife’s on a diet and he doesn’t want her to think he’s insensitive.”
“That’s smart.”
“That’s what I told him. I also said to buy her some slinky panties, but he said he wanted to hear it from the expert.”
Charlene smiled, juggled her armload of books and files and stepped inside her office. At least there was one person in town who still thought of her as the expert.
“Good afternoon,” she said to the couple who sat on the small loveseat opposite a large, leather captain’s chair.
Charlene set her burden on the desk before walking around and sinking down into the soft, brown leather opposite her longest-running clients.
The Patricks had come to her three years ago. After twenty-two years of marriage, they’d feared that they were drifting apart. They wanted to recapture the closeness they’d shared early in their relationship. The deep level of intimacy they’d felt when they’d witnessed the birth of each of their children, when they’d bought their first house and planted their first tomato garden.
They wanted to get to know each other again and stop their constant bickering.
Charlene had separated the two and administered in-depth personality tests which had determined that they were well-su
ited for each other and, therefore, ideal candidates for therapy.
They shared the same interests, the same core values and beliefs, and they both dotted their i’s with circles rather than dots. They both validated one another on every level. Talk about fuel for intimacy.
Charlene had prescribed one hour of conversation per day with a specific topic for each session. According to Charlene’s notes, they’d just finished a month of “I like (blank) because…” The goal was to verbalize one’s feelings, as well as to learn to see things through the other person’s eyes. Day one had been flowers. Day two meatloaf, and so on until they’d hit the end of the month and the pièce de résistance “I like you because…”
Judging by the way that they sat on the sofa, thigh to thigh, hands clasped, fingers entwined, the “discovery” therapy had finally worked.
“So.” Charlene smiled. “I see things are going well.”
“They couldn’t be better.” Tina Patrick smiled at her husband. “Why, it’s just like when we first met.”
Tom Patrick winked. “Except I creak a lot more because of my arthritis and we don’t have a curfew.”
“And we use a sugar substitute because of my diabetes.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“For the Ultimate Orgasm. We did that last night, but we’re going to try the Chocolate Fudge Body Bon Bons next time. I’m going to mix it up wearing nothing but my high heels and some red lipstick.”
“I really love red,” Tom said.
Ultimate Orgasm. The words echoed in Charlene’s head as the truth settled in.
“But I thought you wanted to reconnect?”
“We reconnected plenty last night,” Tom said.
“I meant an emotional reconnection.”
“We haven’t had sex in over a year,” Tina said. “Trust me, it was emotional.”
“What about talking?”
“We talked a little, too,” Tina told her. “About how good the dessert tasted, and then about how good I looked and then about how we wanted to, you know, have sex.”
“And then we stopped talking,” Tom added.
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