Was that what bothered her? Did she care what his people thought?
“No, I do not. I am Jodie Cahill. I ride bulls and am a rancher. People’s opinions don’t mean jack squat to me.” She said the words aloud and with conviction. Her heart didn’t believe them.
Her stomach growled. It had been a while since they had stopped at a convenience store and bought fruit and crackers for lunch. The apple, banana, and package of cheese crackers were gone. She didn’t want to see Jimmy but going out for food without asking him if he wanted something didn’t make sense. He was probably hungry too.
Sure, her conscience chided, you’ve grown accustomed to having him close by and you don’t like it when he’s not within speaking distance.
“Shut up. I’m hungry, not infatuated or even interested.”
She didn’t convince herself or that niggling little voice.
Jimmy unpacked everything in his suitcases and flipped open his laptop. His story was in so he would use the time to work on the novel. The final details were sliding into place and, like Jodie said, the knowledge he’d already acquired fattened the plot and made it more believable.
He’d attended the Red Meat Club dinner as Jodie’s guest, had seen enough cattle that he knew the difference in Charolais, Angus, Holstein, and Herefords, and even allowed himself to attend a llama show. Thank goodness Jodie wasn’t interested in raising them on her dream ranch.
She’d been quiet on the seven hour drive from Denver to Lincoln, alternately reading and listening to country-western music. The last three days he’d looked forward to a couple of days of separation—time to work on the novel, to think. But now that he had it, his mind was blank and his fingers rested on the keys without knowing what to type.
The phone startled him when it rang at his elbow.
“Hello?” he said cautiously.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Paul asked.
“How did you know my room number?”
“I called Cathy. She knows everything.”
Jimmy frowned. Not everything. Thank goodness.
“So how did the time go in Denver? We didn’t get to talk because the trailer was so small. Did you find a million little things that irk you about her? I bet she talks while she eats and has that high-pitched giggle that you hate in women.”
“No.”
“Talk to me then. Surely in two weeks you’re over this five-year-old little-boy infatuation.”
“No.”
“Is she in the room?”
“No.”
“Okay, what is happening?”
“Nothing so far. She gets cranky when she’s hungry. She enjoys life to the fullest. In some ways she’s even more remarkable than I ever hoped she would be. I think we are becoming friends.”
“That’s not good, Jimmy. You took on this assignment to get over her, not befriend her. You can’t get on with your life without it,” Paul said.
“I’m aware of that.”
“Don’t take that tone with me. I’m your best friend.”
“Yes, you are, but if I can’t explain it to myself, how am I going to tell you what’s going on? I’m grouchy because I’m tired and have writer’s block.”
“Grouchy I can understand. Things are certainly not going the way you hoped. Writer’s block? You? Come on, you could work on that novel with the San Antonio band marching through your living room and a team of scantily clad dancers all around you. I’m worried.”
“Me, too. Someone is knocking on the door. I’ll be home in three or four days, and we’ll make time for a long visit. Get the old therapist’s hat out and shine it up,” Jimmy said.
“It will be ready.”
He opened the door to find Jodie leaning against the jamb. She’d changed into the pink jogging suit under the black leather coat she’d bought from the vendor in Denver. Her hair flowed naturally down past her shoulders and she didn’t have on a bit of makeup. He was reminded of the times in the middle of the night when he slipped through her room in the RV on his way to the bathroom and stopped long enough to drink in the sight of her sleeping. No makeup. Brown hair everywhere on the pillow. He’d fought the desire to brush it back away from her face then. The same feeling tried to get the upper hand again now.
“I’m going to walk over to that KFC place and get some takeout for supper. You want some?” she asked.
He grabbed his own coat from a hanger. “I’ll go with you. I could use the exercise.”
“All of half a block. I can bring it back,” she said.
He followed her into the hallway. “I’ve got writer’s block.”
She pushed the button for the elevator to take them to the ground floor. “Does it happen often?”
“Never has before.”
“What caused it?”
“Probably all the stories I’ve been submitting. My characters are taking a back seat to real live bull riders and . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t push it. “I don’t want to eat in the restaurant. I’d like to sit on the floor and pig out in front of the television.”
“Then we’ll do it in your room,” he said.
“Of course. We couldn’t eat in your room. Mr. Prim and Proper couldn’t have food crumbs on his floor. His feet might rot off if he stepped on a bread crumb in the middle of the night.”
“Are you picking a fight?”
“I’m stating a fact,” she smarted off.
“Good, then it’s decided. We’ll eat in your room.”
They ordered a meal deal so there would be extra for snacks after the rodeo that night and carried it back to the hotel.
There was something on her mind, he was sure, but he didn’t want to push the point.
There was something on his mind, she was sure, but she figured he’d speak up if he wanted to share.
He flipped through channels. “Looks like there’s a ‘Golden Girls’ marathon on television.”
She carried the cardboard container to the spot in front of the television. With a flourish she opened up several napkins and spread them out on the floor. She set the food boxes in the middle and handed Jimmy a plastic fork. “We can share. Didn’t think to ask for a couple of paper plates.”
He opened lids to mashed potatoes, gravy, and baked beans. “So is it Blanche and Rose or do we watch something else just as mind-numbing?”
“You don’t like them?”
“Yes, they are fine. I don’t watch much television. Don’t usually have the time.”
“Oh, so you are too intellectual and your mind works on a higher plane than us mere mortals who like the ‘Golden Girls’?”
“Did I say that? And you are definitely picking a fight,” he said.
“Not exactly. Don’t eat all the potatoes. You’re working on my half.”
He pushed the container toward her. “Well, excuuuse me.”
She didn’t know why she was so grouchy or why he couldn’t do one thing to suit her but it was relieving the turmoil. She smiled.
“So KFC mashed potatoes make you smile. I should have let you have the whole order.”
“Now you are picking a fight,” she said.
“Want to start all over?” he asked.
“No, I’m ready to fight some more.”
“Who’s the referee? How do we know who wins?”
“I win. I always win.”
He reached over and stole a fork full of potatoes. “Maybe not this time.”
She attempted to stab him with her plastic fork but missed and stuck the chicken leg he held. “You aren’t playing fair.”
“So?”
“If you can cheat, I can too,” she said.
He grinned.
Her heart melted and she didn’t care about fighting anymore.
“So which one is your grandmother?” he asked.
“What?” She frowned, then realized his mind had gone back to the television show. “Oh, that would be Dorothy for sure,” she said without hesitation, glad to be o
n familiar footing. Was that just flirting they’d done? Or was it really a fight? She’d have to think about it later.
“Why?”
“Granny Etta is tall and kind of rawboned. She’s got short gray hair and even though she doesn’t dress like Dorothy she’s got that practical attitude. Which one is yours?”
“Blanche,” he said.
Jodie almost choked on a bite of chicken. “She’s a hussy?”
“Afraid so. She’s not so promiscuous but she could put Blanche to shame for southern attitude and flashy dress. Rich as Midas and just as sassy.”
“Your father’s mother?”
“No, Mom’s.”
“What’s her name?”
“Amelia Fleming. Ever heard of her?”
“No. Why’d you ask? Is she into the rodeo scene?”
He spewed sweet tea all over the front of his white shirt. “Good Lord, no!”
“Evidently that was the wrong question to ask.”
“Not the wrong question, but the visual of her in boots and jeans is crazy. She’s the CEO of a holding corporation my grandfather built before he died a few years ago. My mother works in the company with her. She’s an only child so the company will be hers someday.”
“And yours?” Jodie asked.
“Not mine. I don’t want an office job with nothing but a view of downtown San Antonio. Cathy can have it if she wants it,” Jimmy said.
“Cathy?”
“It’s a long story.”
Using the remote she turned off the television. “I’ve got time.”
“Okay. Cathy is my stepsister. She’s five years older than me. I was six and she was eleven when our parents married.”
“That’s all?” she asked when he stopped and didn’t start again.
He nodded.
She wanted to slap more out of him. For the first time he was opening up and then the door slammed. In that moment she wanted to know more about him. What was it that drove him? What had he been like as a child? Where was his father? But she couldn’t pry, not when it was evident he’d told her more than he intended to in the first place.
“Cathy has mothered me even more than my mother ever since she came into our family. When my mother and her father divorced she was eighteen and in college. By the time she finished her education there was a place for her in the corporation. She’s smart and . . .”
She waited.
“Cathy is . . . I don’t know how to explain it.”
Jodie’s ears perked right up. What was it about Cathy? Was he in love with her even though she was so much older than him?
Jodie’s heart plummeted toward the hotel basement. “You don’t have to.”
Better to not know than know and suffer the pain.
“Now that I’ve gotten started, maybe I’d better,” he said. “You’ll meet Cathy and you’ll love her because you’ll see past the problem.”
Now Jodie was definitely all ears. “Thank you for that vote of confidence.”
“Cathy was in a car wreck and is confined to a wheelchair. She’s very opinionated and defensive because of the chair, I think. She wasn’t so much that way when I was young.”
“That’s all? Good grief, I was expecting you to tell me she was spawned by aliens and looks like E.T.,” Jodie said.
He smiled and his dimples deepened.
“So is she going to have a problem with me being six feet tall and not in a wheelchair?”
“No one would have a problem with you except when you are hungry or cranky,” he said.
“Then I’ll do my best to be full and on my best behavior when I meet these people. Your grandmother might intimidate me, though.”
“Bulls don’t intimidate you so I don’t think my grandmother will,” he chuckled.
Chapter Six
Jodie opened the drapes and looked out over the estate. If riches impressed her, she’d have blinking stars in her eyes. She appreciated the lovely bedroom suite, the home, even the fact that a paid staff member had carried her luggage up the winding staircase. But, and there always seemed to be a but these days, although she’d known Jimmy came from wealthy people, she’d never expected that he was in the Forbes set.
They’d left Nebraska early that morning and had driven thirteen hours, stopping only for gas and food to make it to San Antonio in time for him to have dinner with his family that night. Dinner, as in the evening meal which would be served at eight o’clock and they dressed for it; not supper, as in the evening meal served at six o’clock and everyone showed up with clean hands and hopefully no bull manure on their boots.
A four-poster king-sized bed barely took a dent out of the room. A matching chest of drawers and three-mirrored dresser held empty drawers so she could unpack. A seating group upholstered in burgundy and ecru tapestry matched the duvet cover and pillows tossed every which way on the bed. Amongst all the finery, she felt like the only chicken at a coyote convention.
“Bluff,” she mumbled. Suddenly she knew how her sister Roseanna felt amongst the rich and shameless when she first met Trey.
She ran water in an oversized tub in a bathroom bigger than her bedroom on Cahill Ranch, but she was too nervous to enjoy it. She’d allowed half an hour to laze in the tub with her cast hanging out the side, but after ten minutes she was pacing the floor wearing a towel and a frown.
She’d dressed by seven o’clock and flipped through the channels on the television, stopping at an old rerun of ‘The Golden Girls.’ She studied Blanche’s movements and southern accent. Surely his grandmother didn’t really act like that. At seven-thirty he rapped gently on her door.
“I’m ready,” she said when she opened it.
She was used to seeing him in dress slacks and silk shirts, but that night he wore a three-piece black suit with a deep green shirt and matching tie. In that get-up she could see where other women might think he really was handsome.
He raised an eyebrow. “Wow! Where have you been hiding that?”
“In the bottom of my boot bag,” she said but his expression renewed her flagging confidence.
She looked like she’d just stepped off a Paris runway in the simple, ankle-length black dress with a slit up the side. High-heeled shoes set her at eye level with him but with her natural cool self-assurance he didn’t doubt that if she’d been six inches taller than his six feet, three inches that it would have bothered her. A diamond sparkled on the end of a silver chain ending right in the middle of her bosom. Her hair was slicked back with a silver clasp at the nape of her long, slender neck. Jimmy’s mouth went as dry as if he’d just walked across the Sahara without a drop of water.
“I hope I didn’t overdo it and I sure hope this is the last time we have to do this dress-for-dinner thing because this is the only fancy dress I brought with me,” she said.
He looped her arm through his and led her down the hallway to the top of the stairs. “San Antonio has shops.”
Three women waited at the bottom, eyeing them the whole way down. She read amusement in the older woman’s eyes, amazement in the middle-aged woman’s face and pure anger in the brunet in the wheelchair. Tomorrow, bright and early, she was making Jimmy take her to a hotel. A good cheap one where she could eat KFC for supper in her pink jogging suit.
Jimmy made introductions. “I want to introduce you all to Jodie Cahill, my partner in the rodeo circuit. Jodie, this is my grandmother, Amelia Fleming.”
She removed her hand from his arm and offered it. “It’s a pleasure.”
The woman wore a multicolored sequined top over a flowing black skirt. Her gray hair was feathered back from her face in a stylish cut. The light from the chandelier caught the gleam of rubies at her neck and earlobes. She had a firm no-nonsense handshake, and Jodie could envision her in a black power suit ordering people around.
“Welcome to our home. I hope you enjoy your time here. Jimmy will have to show you the stables. Do you ride?”
Jimmy laughed. “Yes, Grandmother, she rides.”
> “I mean, other than bulls?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, and I’d love to ride while I’m here. Maybe tomorrow I could help exercise the horses.”
“Feel free to do so.”
Jimmy took a step. “And my mother, Lorraine Dexter.”
She followed the same protocol. “I’m so glad to meet you.”
Lorraine was dressed in a navy blue dress with billowing sleeves that matched her deep blue eyes. Her blond hair was done up in a french twist. She looked more like his older sister than his mother, and there was something vaguely familiar about the woman. Maybe she’d seen her face on the front of a magazine at some time, but she would swear that she’d met her before.
“As am I,” Lorraine said.
One more step.
“And this is my sister, Cathy Dexter,” Jimmy said.
Jodie reached out her hand and looked down into brown eyes that tried to cut her in half. “I’ve heard so much about you, Cathy, and it’s all been good.”
She wore a black jacket with velvet lapels over a lemon-colored silk blouse cut into a deep V at the neckline. It was plain to see that she hadn’t been a tall woman before the accident but a confident, lovely one who would not like to be confined to a wheelchair.
“Of course it’s all been good. I’m his right arm,” she said.
She avoided Jodie’s eyes and looked up into Jimmy’s instead. Softness replaced anger as Jimmy bent to kiss her on the forehead.
“Deanna and her father as well as Ernest will be joining us,” Amelia said.
Jodie looked at Jimmy who shrugged.
“Oh, stop it,” Cathy said. “You know Deanna has been in love with you for more than a year.”
“Stop what?”
“Acting as if you don’t care,” Cathy said.
“Children,” Amelia smiled. “We have a guest so there won’t be any bickering.”
The staff member who’d carried Jodie’s bags to her room appeared at the door with three people in tow. A gray-haired man in a suit, another fellow with dark hair dressed almost identically. And a beautiful, petite blond dressed in powder blue velvet, her freshly styled hair flowing down her back and her eyes on no one except Jimmy.
“James, darlin’, I hoped you’d be back from the wilds tonight. This is lovely.” She grabbed his hands and tiptoed for a kiss on the cheek, which he dutifully delivered.
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