“Deanna is different. Grandmother has her picked out to be my wife. Mother thinks it’s a wonderful idea, and Cathy would be happy with the arrangement because it would merge two big companies together.”
“And you?”
“Me? I don’t love her and I’ve got this old-fashioned notion that people marry each other for love, not for business. Now what would you like for breakfast?”
“Bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, and hot coffee.”
“That’s what I figured. I already told the chef. It’ll be ready in five minutes. Want to glance at the morning paper? Your name is in it as one of the judges for the rodeo’s bull riding. You figure you’ll ever get back on a bull?”
“Probably.” He’d just said he didn’t love Deanna so was he leading her on by whispering through dinner with her and then kissing her? It was on the tip of her tongue to ask in a not-so-nice tone when she realized she didn’t want the answer.
“How about you, Jodie? Why aren’t you married?”
“Because I haven’t found someone I can live with,” she said honestly.
“You mean someone you can’t live without?”
“No, I meant what I said. Living without means falling madly in love and that’s all right but it’s not the be-all, end-all. If you can’t live with a person, it doesn’t matter if you love them or not. Reckon that chef has my breakfast ready?”
“He’ll send it out when he does,” Jimmy said. So she had ideas of her own about what a relationship should entail and she’d put it so well. He’d been in love with her or the image he’d created of her since he was five years old. However, living and loving were indeed two different things. He was pretty dang sure he could never live with a bull riding, ranching woman.
A staff member brought her breakfast on a tray and set it before her.
“Thank you so much. This looks delicious,” she said.
He nodded and went back to the kitchen.
“What would you like to do today? The Alamo, River-walk, shopping?”
“Shop,” she said.
“That was easy. Anything in particular you want to look for?”
“Just take me to a mall and you can even sit outside and read a book or take notes for your novel. I just need a few things,” she said. She wasn’t going to wear her one black dress again that night.
“Then I will go shower and get ready for an afternoon in a mall. Oh, tonight’s dinner is informal. Paul is barbecuing in his backyard since we’ve got a couple of days of decent weather. We’ll be eating buffet style in his dining room with two other couples.”
“Jeans?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Should be fine. I’ll go on up and get a shower,” he said.
No, it wouldn’t. She wouldn’t overdress but she wasn’t going to underplay the casual idea either. She’d already felt like a country bumpkin in the White House and it had not been pleasant.
The waiter brought a telephone to the table and handed it to her. “For you, Miss Jodie.”
“Thank you,” she smiled. “Hello,” she said expecting to hear her Granny Etta’s voice on the other end.
“Oh, you’re still there,” Cathy said smoothly. “I hope your room was satisfactory and you slept well.”
“Very well,” Jodie answered.
“I suppose you are wondering why I’m calling?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I am arranging a room at the Ramada for you. I think you will be comfortable there for the rest of the week. A taxi will arrive in an hour. That should be enough time to get your things ready.”
“Why?”
“Because you aren’t going to live in the same house with James for a whole week.”
“Why? We lived together in an RV that wasn’t nearly as big as my bedroom here. And you set up the arrangements so you already know that. We are colleagues, not lovers, Cathy.”
“Don’t give me that line. I figured you were some big, overweight woman who didn’t know she was a female but I was wrong. I can see the way he looks at you and it would never work. I’ve done my homework. You are just a rancher’s daughter. James has been groomed for something bigger and better than that. His mother took him out of that scenario when he was five years old and she’d die if he went back to it. Your taxi will be there shortly. You need to be packing.”
Jodie sucked in a lung full of air. “Sorry, doll. I’m here at Jimmy’s invitation. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way, believe me, but you’re not running me off. If Jimmy wants me gone, he’ll tell me. Now you have a nice day, honey, and don’t you be worrying your little head about me stealing away the family jewel.”
“Don’t you get snippy with me. You aren’t wanted. Go away. He has to work with you because he needs you for the articles. Don’t be thinking you’ll worm your way into his heart and fortune. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen no matter what it takes,” Cathy said icily.
“Money has never impressed me and if I wanted Jimmy’s love, nobody would keep me from having it. I’m not easily scared, Cathy. Good-bye, now.” Jodie carefully pushed the button. Whew! No wonder poor old Jimmy was still single. Bless his poor baby heart.
She finished the last dregs of cold coffee and went to her room feeling much better. Maybe she just needed a healthy cat fight to clear the air. She hummed as she got dressed.
Jimmy had no idea where to take Jodie shopping. His clothing was all tailored and he never frequented malls. He started to call Cathy to ask her advice but after the way she’d baited Jodie at dinner the night before, he hesitated. Finally he dialed Paul’s home number and asked Sara. She suggested North Star Mall on San Pedro since they had Saks, Macy’s, and Dillards, in addition to the biggest cowboy boots in the world. Standing forty-feet high and twenty-feet long, that alone was a tourist attraction. Besides, Jodie was a rodeo girl and she’d appreciate the sight.
She opened the door to her room at the same time he started out of his at the end of the hallway. She wore jeans, boots, a blouse with flowing sleeves to accommodate the cast, and her big black leather overcoat. She’d left her hair down, and he had the strangest desire to run his fingers through it to see if it was really as soft as it looked.
She tossed him the keys to the truck. “I’m ready.”
He promptly threw them back. “My turf. My car. I’ll drive.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Yes, sir!”
He smiled. His dimples deepened. She reined in her racing heart.
She half expected him to tell her to fold her long, lanky legs up in the vintage Corvette sitting in the six car garage but he bypassed that one and opened the door to a 1958 Ford Thunderbird: red with white leather interior. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from grinning like a sophomore out on her first date. Now, this was a car she might drool on; no doubt Greta would be speechless.
“Nice car,” she said.
“I like it. It was my grandfather’s car. He bought it brand spanking new right off the showroom floor in 1958. He passed it on to me when I turned sixteen.”
“Along with the ’vette and the Mustang?” she asked.
“No, those two I bought myself,” he answered. “But my grandfather loved old cars and we talked about them often before he died.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thank you.”
He parked at the shopping mall entrance beside the tall boots. Jodie was amazed with them.
“You’ve got to take a picture of me with these. Here, use my cell phone and I’ll send it over the ’net to my sister. I can’t wait for her husband to see this picture. He wears a size fourteen and we tease him all the time about having a very good understanding,” she said.
“That would be Trey?”
“No, Trey wouldn’t be caught dead in cowboy boots. It’s Matt, Vicky’s husband. Trey is the black sheep. He doesn’t rodeo or ranch, either. I wondered what on earth Rosy saw in him, but she must love him. She’s married him twice.”
He snapped three pictu
res, hoping the light was good enough that he’d get one good one. He would’ve bought the boots for her if they’d been for sale. Suddenly, he drew himself up short. This whole excursion was to get her out of his system. It was certainly not to write her name there in indelible ink.
He handed the phone back. “So why did Roseanna marry Trey twice?”
“They fell in love, got married in Vegas the first time, and both of them were miserable. He comes from the same kind of folks you do. Rich enough to buy Fort Knox out of petty cash and flamboyant with it.”
He held up a hand. “Hey, wait a minute. We are very, very comfortable but we couldn’t buy Fort Knox and we are not flamboyant.”
She cut her eyes around at him. “You better open your eyes, James Moses. What would you call that dinner last night if not flamboyant?”
“It’s a simple dinner party among friends. Grandmother does one about once a week and attends two or three each week at other friends’ homes. She is very social.”
“Honey, if that was simple, I don’t want to see anything extravagant,” she said. “And while I’m thinking about it, what did Cathy mean when she said your mother got you out of a scenario like ranching when you were five years old?”
Jimmy’s mind went into overdrive. What to say? What not to say without giving the whole thing away? “My father is . . . he was . . .” Jimmy stammered.
“Alive or dead?” She sat down on a bench.
“Dead,” he said.
“Then it’s ‘my father was’ and I’m sorry about that too. If you don’t want to tell me, it’s all right. I was prying and that’s not fair,” she said.
“My father was a ne’er-do-well. He was my grandfather’s driver and mechanic. Mother was going through what Grandmother calls a rebellious time in her life. Eighteen. Out of high school. About to go to college. They fell in love and eloped. Grandfather offered him money to go away. He turned him down, and they went to California where he tried to get into acting. Then it was Las Vegas where he was a blackjack dealer and that’s where I was born. Then Texas where he worked on an oil rig and, well, we moved an awful lot. Anyway, one day he died in a horse accident. From what I can understand he was riding a horse down into a gully to round up some cattle at a ranch where he worked. The horse slipped, reared, and rolled. My father couldn’t get out of the saddle and the horse crushed him. Mother called Grandfather. He brought me and Mother home. We had lived on that ranch about six weeks. Mother hated it worse than the Texas oil rig town and Las Vegas. I guess that’s what Cathy was referring to.”
“Okay, let’s go shopping. I want a new outfit to wear tonight, and you have to help me,” she changed the subject even though her curiosity was not satisfied.
“Oh, no. You said I could sit on the bench and read a book,” he protested.
“I lied,” she said.
“But . . .”
“If you can lie, I can too.”
He threw up his hands. “I didn’t lie.”
“No, you just sugarcoated the truth and didn’t tell the whole story. I just lied but I can sugarcoat it now. You’ve sat on the bench and you can read the tags on whatever I try on and tell me how much it costs.”
“What makes you say I sugarcoated the truth, and why is it okay for you to do it and not me?” His dimples weren’t showing. His voice had the same edge she’d heard when they argued over taking his fancy little Mustang on a road trip.
“I talked you into going shopping, didn’t I?”
“I will get even,” he declared.
“I’ll look forward to seeing you try,” she said.
“I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll go into Dillards, and if you don’t find anything then you’re on your own,” he said.
She stuck out her hand. “Deal.”
He thought he was getting off easy until he took her hand. The shock about blew him out of his shoes. He wanted to drag her closer, push her hair back from that vulnerable place on her neck and begin kissing her there, move up to her eyelids and then down to those full lips. If only a handshake could cause that reaction, he wondered how he was ever going to get her out of his mind.
The heat from his touch warmed her heart and melted her soul. A simple contact with his fingers had set her to thinking about a long kiss that would not be boring. It was time to go home and forget about modeling clothing for this man but she couldn’t think of a single way to get out of it gracefully. She’d conned the fiddler into playing and now it was time to pay, but oh my, the price was so high.
She chose three outfits from a rack and took them to the dressing room. Her hands shook as she tried on a dress with a spliced, overlapping bodice and a full skirt. The sleeves flowed down from the elbow so the cast wasn’t a problem but the top exposed more cleavage than she wanted him to see. However, if he had to sit outside then she was obligated to model. She tugged at the dark green challis in an attempt to cover more of her chest and raised her chin. He would not know how much he’d affected her by merely grasping her hand.
Jimmy sat on one of three chairs just outside and waited. Actually the chair was more comfortable than the benches in the mall’s center court and he was proving a point. No woman could find an outfit by shopping in a single store. After this she’d be on her own for the rest of the day, and he’d send someone to pick her up. He didn’t care if she did think he and his family were flamboyant.
When she walked out of the dressing room, his mouth literally went dry. In an effort at lightheartedness she twirled around. Through a photographer’s eye he caught at least a dozen pictures for a model’s portfolio.
“So? Will this do for Paul’s party?”
“Very well,” he said. “Buy it and let’s go.”
“Oh, you don’t get off that easy. There are two more in there,” she said with a giggle a notch too high-pitched.
She tried on a long denim skirt with a side zipper and a bulky ecru-colored fisherman’s sweater.
He would have loved to have a camera and her wearing that outfit on a pier with dark clouds rolling across the sky in the background. He could see the picture done in black and white: matted and framed in something antique, maybe oval.
The third outfit was a bright red wool straight skirt and black silk blouse with wide cuffs fastened with red buttons.
He envisioned her propped up on a stool in front of a black background. Touch her lips with a hint of red lipstick and it would be a breathtaking modern photo.
“Now what do you think?” she asked.
“For the barbecue, the white sweater and denim skirt. But you should buy all of it, Jodie. They are all very becoming and you can use the other two for church.”
“And that, darlin’, would be flamboyant! I’ll respect your judgment and buy the denim outfit because you know your friends and what they’ll be wearing.” She reached out and tweaked the dimple on his left cheek. When she got back to the dressing room, her fingers were still warm.
Chapter Eight
One of the other women patted the empty barstool when Sara led Jodie into the oversized country kitchen. “Come over here and sit by me. I saw you ride five years ago. It was on television and I have to admit I wasn’t a bit interested but my husband was watching it. When you got on that bull I was glued to the TV. Honey, I think I held my breath for the full eight seconds and I cheered when you got the buckle.”
“Thank you,” Jodie said.
“That would be Marsha and the other one is Kerstin,” Sara said. She arranged pre-cut vegetables on a big blue plastic divided tray that already had a white dip in the center.
“We don’t stand much on formality around here,” Kerstin said. “Our husbands have all been friends for years. Went to the same school together. So did Sara. Marsha and I are the outsiders but we’re learning to fit in with them.”
“So, is your husband a writer also?” Jodie asked.
“No, he’s a teacher, and Marsha’s is still in med school.”
“And I’m a nurse until he
finishes and we can begin having a family,” Marsha said.
“What about you, Kerstin?”
“I’m a CPA,” she answered.
Sara set a glass of sweet tea in front of Jodie. “And I am finally a stay-at-home mother with two kids: Garrett, two years old, and Abigail, six months. Love staying home with them but I’m glad Mother was available to keep them tonight so we can have some adult time.”
“Thanks,” Jodie said and listened to them talk about their lives. It was like an audio soap opera and she knew none of the characters.
“Forgive us. We are so used to doing this once a month that we forget you don’t know a thing we’re talking about,” Sara said.
“It’s fine. If you were in Sulphur and my sister and our friends got together, it would be the same thing. Go on, please. Don’t let me put a damper on the evening.”
“Well, thank you. Did you hear that Deanna made the comment that if Jimmy doesn’t wake up and make some kind of commitment, she’s off to Italy with Bobby Jack?”
Jodie’s ears perked right up.
“Her father will stroke out. Bobby Jack might be husband material for me, but not for the almighty Deanna,” Sara said.
“Oh, are you still interested in Bobby Jack? I must tell Paul,” Marsha smiled. One eye tooth overlapped the one beside it and freckles covered her face. The twinkle in her eye gave her an impish look that Jodie warmed right up to.
“Paul doesn’t know that I ever dated that man and it was only one time. Mercy, all Bobby Jack is interested in is getting the next leg up on the corporate ladder. Come to think of it, he might be just the ticket for Deanna,” Sara said. Her short red hair was styled in a spiky ’do that went well with faded jeans and a tie-dyed top.
“I heard Deanna was at Amelia’s dinner party last night. Got anything to report?” Kerstin asked Jodie.
Jodie shook her head. “She seemed pretty charmed with Jimmy. Maybe Bobby Jack is just a jealous card.”
“Could be,” Sara said.
And they went on to other gossip which didn’t interest Jodie at all. She listened with one ear and stole glances out the picture window at the men around the grill and wooden picnic table on the patio. Which one went with which woman?
To Hope Page 9