Cowboy Undone

by Mary Leo

  On this exceptionally beautiful morning, once mounted, Avery headed down the same path she’d been taking every morning, but this time instead of staying on Circle Starr property, she decided to take a little detour to the Cooper Ranch that bordered it.

  It was just that kind of morning.

  AT FIRST, REESE didn’t believe his own eyes when he spotted Avery on the trail, cowgirl hat low on her head, riding hard off in the distance, herding his stray calves as if she’d moved more cattle than he had. The vision of her working his ranch left him truly awestruck. The combination of Avery’s beautiful red hair, and the long white mane of her horse as they worked the cattle made for a breathtaking sight.

  “What’s she doing here? You invite her?” Hunter asked once he rode up next to Reese. “Wow. Look at her ride!”

  “I have no idea why she’s here,” Reese answered, keeping his eyes trained on Avery. She certainly rode like a pro, handling her horse with expert ease as she guided a few stray calves back with the rest of the herd.

  “You think Chuck sent her to make sure all his cattle gets on his property this morning?”

  “Might be,” Reese said, but he wasn’t really focused on his brother’s words.

  Instead, he kept falling back into a memory of a girl with red hair. Thing was, he couldn’t clearly remember any details, just that what he was watching right now he was sure he’d seen before, only she had been much younger.

  But how could that be? Avery had never been on the Cooper Ranch before. His thoughts were all jumbled up this morning. The whole thing with Chuck was beginning to wear on his emotions and seeing Avery riding that perfect specimen of a magnificent animal just amplified the angst he’d woken up with. It was as though her beauty was mysteriously juxtaposed against his own pain.

  After Avery brought the strays back in, she rode up to meet Reese. Hunter tipped his hat, grinned and quickly rode off to trail the back of the young herd.

  “Where’d you learn to ride and herd like that? I thought you worked in an office all day?” Reese asked as she slowed up in front of him.

  “I do, but I learned when I was a kid. My mom taught me initially, and after that, I took some lessons and over the years I picked up a few pointers from Chuck.”

  “Seems like you picked up more than a few pointers. You ride like you’re part of that horse.”

  A wide grin glowed on her face. “Been awhile since anyone’s told me that. Thanks. I’ve been riding every morning since I arrived. Seems like the more I ride, the better I get. Hope you didn’t mind my picking up your strays. It felt good to ride like that. Haven’t done that in a very long time.”

  “Seems I saw you riding like this before. Did your mom or dad ever bring you over to this ranch?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and instead he could see she was trying to remember if she had, as though she too was searching for a faded memory.

  “Not that I can recall. I’m pretty sure we just stayed on the Circle Starr property. Chuck was adamant about that, but who knows. Kids don’t always listen to adults. Maybe I strayed, just like the strays in your herd.”

  Reese felt even more certain he’d seen her riding before, herding calves exactly like she’d just done.

  “I swear I saw you ride like this when you were a kid.”

  “Maybe you dreamt it,” she said and a spark ran up Reese’s spine.

  “Why would you say that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but sometimes my dreams are so vivid that I later get them confused with reality.”

  He had to know. “Did you ever dream about me?”

  She laughed. “As exciting as you are, Reese Cooper, you haven’t entered my dreams . . . yet. But give it time. You may still get there.”

  “You’re going to think this is crazy, but I saw you before. I saw you riding exactly the way you just rode . . . in a dream. At least I think it was a dream. Or maybe I saw you ride when you were a kid. I don’t know how it happened, but I swear I saw you ride before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before today, before we met at my dad’s memorial. You rode on our land.”

  She grinned. “Whether I did or I didn’t, I’m still the girl of your dreams, Reese Harrington Cooper. Only this time, I’m real.”

  Then she took off on her horse in a thunder of heavy hooves pounding the ground, causing Reese’s horse to pull back and whinny his anger at the audacious woman from Reese’s dreams . . . or was she?

  ONCE THE CATTLE were delivered and put to pasture on Chuck’s land, Reese took off on his own for the County Recorder’s Office in town. Wild Cross might be a small town, but because of its central location, it not only had a County Recorder’s Office and a County Clerk’s Office, but it also maintained a Bureau of Land Management Office in the same building. They were the three government agencies that benefited Chuck Starr’s ability to not only acquire everything on the surrounding ranches, but he had leased most of the mineral rights on public land as well.

  Reese had a difficult time accepting the fact that his dad had taken the time to fill out all the paperwork, then registered the documents, and secretly paid for the expensive studies, exhausting their funds, but neglected to mention any of it to his namesake who struggled each and every day to run the family ranch. Did his mom know about any of this? And if she did, why had she never mentioned it?

  The whole idea of it angered Reese to no end. He’d naively thought he knew everything about his family, thought he knew his parents better than anybody, but as it turned out, he didn’t know shit about anything.

  Secrets. He hated secrets, and he hated lies even more.

  As he parked his truck curbside, and got out to head up the sidewalk to the Clerk’s office, he passed The Morning Starr Hash House, one of the first businesses the Starr Corporation had opened years ago in town, taking over the space where Harmony’s Diner had once been. It was still a favorite of most folks, as apparent by the bustling lunch crowd outside the front glass doors still waiting to be seated.

  It was where Chuck had given up his table to Reese and his mom when Reese was a kid. Now it made sense, but at the time, he remembered how fascinated he’d been by Chuck. How he’d envied his status in town, his wealth, his status and how he would sometimes match up his dad to Chuck, and his dad would fail miserably.

  All the while Reese’s parents knew the truth but decided to hide it. Maybe Reese would have liked to have known the truth, would have liked to have spent some time with Chuck and gotten to know him. Gotten to know how he’d gotten so rich, while the Cooper family headed for poverty.

  Maybe Avery was right. Maybe Chuck wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Maybe the hostility had grown over hiding the truth.

  Reese attempted a smile as he greeted Mr. and Mrs. Lando, who passed him on the sidewalk. “Nice day,” Mrs. Lando said.

  Age didn’t seem to register on the Landos. They stopped somewhere in their early sixties, and never seemed to change. They both wore their white hair short, wore the same type of square glasses, and the same yellow T-shirts and tan slacks. They were the Frick and Frack of the hardware business.

  “Sure is,” Reese told her, tipping his hat. They’d lived in the town for as long as Reese could remember, and ran the hardware store at the end of the street. Every day at noon, they’d close the store for an hour to eat lunch together at Morning Starr’s. It was their way of staying connected and everyone in town simply adjusted to their schedule.

  They’d been at the memorial, along with everyone else in town, with most everyone closing their shops that afternoon for his dad. Reese appreciated that kind of loyalty, that kind of friendship, and wondered if they’d all known the truth from the beginning.

  Wild Cross was the typical small town where everyone seemed to know everyone else along with most of each other’s private business. A lot of the residents were related in some way or another. Even the Native Americans who had moved into town were related to each other or ha
d some connection. Now as he passed people that he’d known all his life, he wondered if any of them had always known about Chuck Starr being his biological dad, but kept it to themselves. The townsfolk here were like that. They hated rumors, and only shared the truth. And even that was sometimes hard to come by.

  He mentally tried on the Starr last name to see if it would fit: Reese Starr, Reese Harrington Starr, Reese Harrington Cooper Starr.

  “No friggin’ way,” he said out loud as he pulled open the door to the County Clerk’s Office only to run into Avery Templeton who was on her way out.

  To say that she looked like a cool drink of water was an understatement. Her gorgeous red hair flowed like silk down her shoulders, and her lovely face beamed with a fresh glow. She wore a white T-shirt that pulled across her full breasts and accentuated her small waist. Those tight jeans of hers showed off every curve and edge she owned, making him instantly crazy with desire for her. No matter when he saw her, or what mood he was in, she seemed to soothe his very soul without saying one word. He didn’t know if she was the girl of his dreams or if she was even someone he should get involved with. He only knew that every time he was anywhere near her, nothing else seemed to matter.

  “They say once you start talking to yourself, the game is over,” she chided, a warm smile playing with that beautiful face of hers. A gentle breeze blew in through the door, and tossed a strand of her hair across her lips as she spoke. He reached up and pulled it away before he could stop himself. His fingers grazed her lips, causing a chain reaction inside his body that threatened to explode.

  “Excuse me,” Jesse Smith, a seventy-something cowboy, said while standing behind her. They moved out of his way, breaking Reese’s sensual moment.

  “Oh, sorry,” Avery said.

  “Nice to see you out and about, Reese,” Jesse said, his voice like gravel from years of smoking cigarillos.

  “Thanks. Nice to see you as well, Jesse,” Reese told him, nodding. “Hope you’re doing good.”

  “Any day I can get out of bed is a good day,” Jesse quipped.

  “That’s for sure,” Reese told him as Jesse walked out the front door, leaving Avery still standing inside in front of Reese.

  Reese cleared his throat and answered Avery’s observation with a question. “And just who might they be?”

  “The experts on any given subject,” she said, a sinfully cute tease to her voice.

  “Have you met any of these so-called experts?”

  “No, but their expertise precedes them.”

  “So, it’s all over for me then? They have the last word on the subject.”

  She leaned in closer. “Actually, they told me if you buy me a beer at the tavern I passed up the street, you might still have a chance.”

  “I thought you didn’t drink?”

  “I don’t,” she said with that sly little grin of hers that Reese now expected. He liked this mysterious woman . . . maybe a little too much.

  “You’re my kind of woman.” He’d never meant anything more. She had an edge to her that captured his imagination. Each time he saw her, he longed to spend more time with her. She was getting under his skin, knowing he’d barely scratched the surface of what made Avery Templeton tick.

  “You’re my kind of man.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  Reese’s urgency at the Recorder’s Office suddenly took a back seat. When Avery took his arm, he decided the studies could wait . . . at least for now.

  SIX

  “Haven’t seen you in here in way too long,” Machala Livingston said as she came up along the inside of the long polished bar. Reese and Avery sat on two cushioned barstools at the curved end of the dark wood bar, nearest the front door.

  Around The Bend, a tavern that dated back to early nineteen-hundreds, came into being soon after Wild Cross was first settled by rough ‘n’ tumble cowboys a few years after Babbitt Ranch was established with twelve hundred head of cattle right outside of Flagstaff by David and Billy Babbitt.

  Around The Bend had gone through several owners, and much renovation, but the original bar was still intact, and most of the original paintings still hung on the dark wooden walls, along with Machala’s bungee jumping exploits off of some of the more higher bridges of Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.

  Country music that dated after 2005 wasn’t allowed to spin in the jukebox, a date Machala believed when country music changed into a fusion of rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and “lousy country crap.” Not that she thought all of the new music sucked, but enough of it did so she wouldn’t allow her refined country ears to be “bombarded with nastiness.”

  “Been working,” Reese told her, hoping she wouldn’t mention the passing of his dad.

  “We all have, so that don’t cut it with me. You need to get out more,” she told him in no uncertain terms. “Play as hard as you work. Didn’t your daddy always say that?”

  Machala was in her mid to late fifties, had raised two girls who left Wild Cross once they turned eighteen, had buried two husbands who had died while working farm equipment, and had taken over this tavern when her mother finally gave up trying to run it when she turned eighty. That was five years ago.

  Machala wore her deep-brown hair up in a bun, wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress, and had a face that was sun-ravaged into a perfect mix of rugged beauty.

  “He did,” Reese told her, hoping that would be the end of her thoughts on his dad.

  “He was a smart man . . . a damn stubborn man, but also smarter than most anyone I ever met. What can I get you two?”

  “Two beers,” Reese said, relieved that her discussion of his dad was brief.

  “Does the lady want any kind of beer in particular? We may be a small local establishment, but I stock a lot of handcrafted beers from around the country.” Machala directed her question to Avery.

  “Anything dark is fine with me,” Avery told her, one arm resting on the bar.

  Reese realized he hadn’t introduced the two women. “Machala Livingston, this is Avery Templeton. She’s a friend of Chuck Starr’s.”

  “You’ve been staying out on the Starr ranch, right?” Machala asked, obviously knowing more than Reese thought she would.

  “I have, yes. Chuck’s an old family friend.”

  “Seems to me I remember you from when you were a kid. Used to come in here with Chuck and your dad. My mother would serve you a Shirley Temple with extra cherries.”

  Avery hesitated for a moment, as if she was searching through memories trying to find the right ones. Then suddenly her face lit up. “That’s right. She did. I’d forgotten all about that. Her name was Sarah or Sally? She was always kind to me and to my mom. I think my mom was the first person to bring me here and your mom was so gracious to us.”

  “She loved people. Everybody called her Sweet Sally. She ran this place for over fifty years.”

  Avery leaned forward, appearing to be excited over the conversation. “She had the best smile I’d ever seen, and always called me Hot Tamale because of the color of my hair. I don’t suppose your mom still works here?”

  “No she retired a few years back, but she stops by a lot. Maybe you’ll run into her one of these days. I’m sure she’d like to see you.”

  “Please say hello to her for me,” Avery said, her smile infectious, causing a normally dour Machala to show some teeth.

  “Will do,” Machala said.

  “I couldn’t help notice some of the pictures of you bungee jumping off of various bridges. I can’t even imagine how anyone could do that.”

  “It’s a hoot and a half, I’ll tell ya. But you gotta have the stomach for it. That drop sends your insides rolling and your heart racing.”

  “I have a terrible fear of heights. People who are mountain climbers or bungee jumpers always amaze me. I could never do either of them.”

  Machala shifted her weight to one hip. Reese knew some of the wild stories Machala had told about her exploits with a bungee cord. Some o
f it was downright stupid, but she somehow managed to survive it all. He admired her courage, as did most people around town. Made her that much more self-confident . . . not that Machala had ever lacked in that area. Still, everyone for miles knew not to mess with her. If she was bold enough to jump off a bridge, she could bring down any man or woman who tried to mess with her. And nobody ever did.

  “I didn’t think I could do it either, but when my second husband passed and I found myself wallowing in my own sour mash, I decided to do something a little wild to get my blood flowing again. Best thing I coulda’ ever done for myself. Gave me my life back. I don’t get to do it much anymore, probably because I don’t need it. But I know it’s out there anytime I want a rush. Now, let me get them beers for you two before my other customers start getting impatient.”

  She took off to the far end of the bar while Reese stewed on the fact that he thought Avery had only been in Wild Cross once, when she was ten.

  “Wow, that’s one tough lady,” Avery said while fiddling with the white napkin Machala had put down in front of them.

  “They don’t make ’em much tougher. So tell me, Ms. Hot Tamale, you were in Wild Cross more than once?” Reese asked, confused over her visits.

  Avery smirked over the sound of her nickname. “Several times. How do you think I learned how to ride so well? Chuck taught me. But we stayed on the Circle Starr for the most part. And that was only a nickname inside this bar. No one ever used it anyplace else.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Hot T,” he said, chuckling.

  “Oh, no you don’t. You will not call me that.”

  “Why? It’s cute. Besides, it fits you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s silly.”

  “It’s adorable,” he said, gazing into her big doe eyes, thinking about what she’d said to Machala about Chuck and her dad bringing her to this bar. “Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been in Wild Cross more than once? That wasn’t the impression I had from our conversation this afternoon.”