“Thanks a bunch, Irene. We’ll check it before we leave in the morning. Anyone doesn’t want to play by the new rules, threaten them.” She laughed, asked about Irene’s children and grandchildren and snapped the phone shut.
“What did that have to do with us being a team or friendship?” he asked.
She started for the door. “I was afraid you’d go all macho and declare your part of the deal was to pay expenses.”
“You got a way to make a deal for gasoline?” he asked.
She grinned. “No, but I’m taking every mile off my taxes next year.”
Though small, the rodeo wasn’t any less exciting. The announcer introduced her as a past winner of the National Professional Bull Riding competition. She stood up and her belt buckle glittered under the lights. The crowd went crazy; applause and catcalls filled the arena. Jimmy wondered if the buckle was insured. Folks had been shot in the back for a lot less. He filed the thought in the back of his mind to ask about later.
The bull riders were in fine form and twice they had to call on the chute judge to break a tie. One rider was sent off to the hospital in the ambulance but before the evening ended the announcer let everyone know the young rider had only fractured his wrist. Jodie sympathized with him. His career for this year was most likely over and until he’d gotten hung up he had a really good score.
Jimmy packed his camera and notebook into the canvas tote bag he carried and went to the judges’ stand after the last ride was finished. She greeted him with a smile and declared she was hungry enough to eat a rear haunch off a bucking bull.
“And honey, that part of the expense account is still on you,” she said.
That had to be three or four times she’d called him by that endearment that day. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or if he wanted her to stop.
“Well, they’ve already put the bulls away for the evening so what else could you eat?”
She kept pace beside him, her long legs matching his stride, step for step. They were a team, friends like she said. But suddenly, as he walked beside her in her pink cowgirl get-up, he wanted more than that. He didn’t want to get over her as Paul told him to do; he didn’t care what anyone else thought of her, including Cathy.
“I’ve thought about it. I saw a Captain D’s on the way to the motel. I could go for some fish and chips. But I’d like to take it back to the room. I’d cry if I got grease all over this jacket. I just got it out of the cleaners a couple of months ago,” she said.
“Then Captain D’s it is. Is that fast food?”
A grin stretched her full mouth out to the fullest. “You bet it is. Fried fish, fried potatoes, corn on the cob, hush puppies. Aren’t your little fat cells just wiggling in anticipation?”
“They’re wearing black in preparation for a cholesterol funeral,” he said.
At the drive-by window they ordered the dinner for four with her swearing the whole time that they should get the one for six. They took it back to the motel and she hurriedly flipped through a topsy-turvy suitcase, grabbed a couple of items, and disappeared into the bathroom. He heard the shower running and a single swear word when she bumped her elbow on the door as she got dressed. He put on a pair of pale blue cotton pajamas and a white tank top. Then he set about putting the food on a little round table with two chairs pushed up in the corner beside the heating unit.
He bit back a smile when she came out dressed in a nightshirt with the Tasmanian Devil on the front and a pair of faded boxer shorts. An hour ago she was the queen of Pasco County. Now she looked like the queen of a double wide.
“What are you grinning about?” she asked.
“Taz. He fits you,” he said.
She sat down at the table and started eating. “Probably so. I can be a real devil when I’m hungry. You’d better sit down and lay claim to part of this if you don’t want to starve to death. If your stomach wakes me up growlin’ in the night, I’m going to kick you out in the yard.”
He grabbed a piece of fish. Actually he’d planned on having yogurt and fruit. Heavy food at eleven o’clock at night wasn’t healthy but he wasn’t going to argue with her. He didn’t doubt for one minute she’d try to kick him out. There’d be a brawl and he’d probably lose half the money his father left him paying the court costs and remodeling a motel built in the late 60’s, but he’d give her a run for her money if push came to shove. The image of the two of them wrestling around, tearing up the motel room, and then spending time in court was enough to make him grin.
Hey, there’s a new idea for a book. Husband and new wife get into a scrap in a cheap motel. The next day she’s found dead in a bar ditch. Who killed her?
“What are you thinking about?” she asked between bites.
“Why?”
“You got this look on your face I’ve never seen before,” she told him.
He opened his canvas bag and took out a small spiral notebook. “I was thinking about a new book idea. I need to write it down before I forget it.”
“Just like that? Was it about fish and chips?” she asked.
He wrote a few lines and put the book back. “No. You really want to know?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You said you’d kick me out in the yard if my stomach growled and woke you up.” He went on to tell her the whole thing.
“Good Lord, you got an idea like that from a single sentence. You really are a writer. Can you produce a book from that?”
“Sure. I’ll research a few weeks and then start writing. I won’t even need to go on a three-month tour of bull riding to do it,” he said.
“I’m impressed, but you better eat more than one piece of fish. I really will start kicking if you wake me up. Come to think of it, why don’t I just go ahead and do it? Then you’ll have firsthand experience to write about. I bet we could destroy this room in an hour if we really got into it.”
“No thank you. Push those hush puppies over here. I don’t want to lose a dime of my inheritance. I’ve got it dog-eared for something else,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Part of it to remodel that house I just inherited. God, that sofa in the living room is ugly and the springs are popping up in two of the cushions. And the whole place needs painting. And those ducks have got to go. They give me the hives. I’m going to make an office out of my old room and take Grandpa’s for my bedroom. It’s big enough to put a queen-sized bed in,” he said.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. To have him that close would mean she could pursue him on a higher level than friendship, but if he wasn’t interested, it would be a heartbreaker.
“Why queen-sized?” she asked.
“Full size is too short for tall folks like me. You should know that as tall as you are. Someday I plan to have a wife, Jodie. And I don’t want a king-sized bed. Queen sized is long enough so my feet don’t hang off the end but narrow enough to allow cuddling.”
She almost choked on a sip of Dr. Pepper. She could see herself wrapped up in his arms, her head laid on that broad expanse of chest with soft blond curly hair tickling her cheek.
“Your turn.”
She swallowed hard. He’d told her the truth and she’d be honor-bound to do the same, yet the idea of voicing aloud the thoughts she’d just had made her blush. “My turn?” She tried to buy a little time.
He pushed the paper container of fish across the table. “Yeah, your turn. I’ve had two slabs of fish while you were sitting there daydreaming.”
She picked up a piece and shoved half of it in her mouth.
“Jodie, do you really really think I’d be happy in Sulphur just living out there on my grandpa’s ranch and writing?”
She swallowed, grateful that he hadn’t asked what she was daydreaming about. “It’s your ranch, not your grandpa’s. And only you can answer that. Nothing says you can’t try it. If you hate the place after a few months, sell it and go back to the city. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
“Sounds like good
advice. Now on to the next big item. It’s a five-hour drive from here to Davie. Checkout is eleven so we shouldn’t be pressed too much for time. I’m wired and need to write. You want to sleep and take the first shift at driving tomorrow?”
“Sure thing. Let me clean off this table. You set up your computer and see if there’s an email yet so we’ll know where we’re stayin’ tomorrow night.”
She was brushing her teeth when he yelled across the room and over the sound of the running water to tell her they’d be staying at the LaQuinta Inn and there was a shuttle from the hotel to the rodeo grounds.
“That sounds just fine,” she said around a mouth full of toothpaste.
She threw back the covers on the bed she’d chosen and stretched out. He was right. Unless she drew her knees up the bed was way too short. He had his back to her, the width of his shoulders stretching the gauzy fabric of the tank top. Didn’t the man have a flaw? She finally flipped over and shut her eyes but the mental picture stayed with her a long time before she finally drifted off to sleep to dream of riding the bull again—the one that caused her death.
She awoke in a sweat, unfamiliar with her surroundings and terrified. For a brief moment she thought she’d really died. The room was so dark, then something crawled across her cheek and brought her back into reality with a start. She felt her face and the creepy critter crawled right onto her hand. She slung it at the wall and screamed, shivering from her head to her toes, suddenly standing in the middle of the bed doing something akin to break dancing as she fought with other imaginary bugs.
Jimmy came out of a deep sleep with a start and jumped out of bed, stubbed his toe on one of her pink boots and fell across her bed, his eyes wide as he tried to put things in focus. “What in the hell is going on?” he asked.
“Bug,” she yelled.
“Where?” He squinted in the darkness.
“Over there. It’s big and hairy and it was on my face,” she said.
He fumbled from the bed to the light switch and bathed the room in light.
She went into more spasms, jerking around in a haze before him. “Oh, my God, it’s a cockroach and it touched me.”
“Just a minute, Jodie. I can’t see a thing. Give me a minute to put my contacts in, and I’ll take care of it.” He made his way to the vanity and his stomach growled. Was that what set this fit off? Was she getting geared up to try to kick him outside?
She picked up a boot and chased the roach around the baseboards, finally cornering it not a foot from where he stood. A brown residue was all that was left on the wall when she stopped beating it to death. “They can repaint the place and use a little bug spray while they’re at it,” she said. “I hate roaches. For a minute, I thought the dang thing was a spider and I hate them even worse.”
“Well, we are good and awake now,” he said grumpily. “I’ve had all of,” he looked at the clock, “good grief, it’s fifteen minutes until eleven. The alarm didn’t work. I set it for ten.”
“And you pinned the drapes together too, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. I didn’t want daylight waking us up.”
“Well, I guess we’d better bless the roach and get our things together.”
So he was blind as a bat without contacts. That could be a flaw but then in another avenue of thought, it could be a blessing. It might be nice knowing he couldn’t focus on her the first thing in the morning when she was wrinkled and gray-haired.
Chapter Sixteen
March came in like a roaring lion. Jodie and Jimmy were on an forty-mile stretch of Texas 288 South when the storm hit, blowing rain in sheets so thick and dark that visibility was scarcely two yellow lines on the highway. Jimmy’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel as he crept along, cars in front of him, semis passing on the left, a van behind him. He could see little and hear even less with the force of the storm showing no signs of letting up.
They’d just finished two days in Davie, Florida, drove almost twelve hundred miles to Houston where they worked the Rodeo Houston for three nights, and were on their way to Bay City for three nights. Weariness was setting into Jimmy’s bones. True, he was getting the feel of what real rodeo followers endured, but he was ready to go home and right that minute he didn’t even care where home was.
Jodie was so restless she had trouble sitting still in the passenger’s seat and it had nothing to do with the storm. Jimmy was a capable driver, and she trusted him not only with her vehicle but her life. It was the latter that caused the agitation. Sure, she believed he’d take care of her in an emergency, but could she or rather would she trust him with her heart? Not that he’d made any kind of overtures in the past week. They’d settled into a comfortable routine. Judge a rodeo. Either eat with friends or take food back to the room afterwards. Jimmy wrote half the night and they both slept late. Old friends or roommates sharing a journey and a hotel room, but nothing more.
“What’s the next exit and how far?” he asked.
She brushed his arm when she leaned across him to get a better view of the odometer. The sensation it caused wasn’t a surprise but it always made her gasp. “Five miles and it’s a right hand exit onto Texas Highway 35. From there it’s about thirty-six miles into Bay City. They’ve got us a room at the Econolodge, which is less than three miles from the arena. Maybe this will blow through by then.”
“Don’t imagine they have valet parking, do they?” he asked wistfully.
“No, but they usually have a carport and there’s an umbrella back there,” she said.
“Are you being snippy with me? I can pull this thing off to the side and you can drive if you’re going to be hateful.”
“I’m not being snippy or hateful. Don’t take it out on me because you’re on edge.”
“I don’t like it when you act like that, Jodie.”
“Like what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Tassels on my shoes. Big cities. It’s like you’re talking down to me because I’m different than you are.”
She chewed on that for several minutes. He was different but then so was she. Perhaps that was the gulf between them, preventing the physical attraction from becoming something more. At least he didn’t call her a country hick or a redneck so what right did she have to tease him about his preferences? She couldn’t find an answer to come back with so she meditated a little longer.
“I’m fighting against my heart,” she said finally. “If I keep finding things wrong with you then I can tell it that I really don’t like you.”
It was his turn to digest what she’d just admitted and it scared the bejesus out of him. Her honesty had stunned him from the beginning and in the seven weeks they’d shared lives it still amazed him that a woman could just say what was on her mind. Most of the females in his world were cloying at the very least. Not Jodie Cahill. She spoke her mind and if Jimmy wanted an answer or the truth, all he had to do was ask the question.
“You going to say anything?” she asked.
“I think I might. Give me a minute to get my ducks in a row,” he answered.
“Take all the time you need, but there’s the exit. You’re already in the right lane so just slow down and ease off on the ramp,” she said.
“I don’t need you to tell me how to drive,” he quipped.
Lightning joined the rain and streaked across the darkness in zig-zags that brought on rolling thunder. It was so loud that Jodie covered her ears with her hands like a child.
“You think we should pull over at that service station until this passes?” she asked.
“No, we’ll keep on. Maybe we’ll outrun it,” he said. He caught Texas 35 and started the southwest drive into Bay City.
“You got them ducks in a row yet?” she asked.
“Okay, but don’t get mad,” he said.
Her heart turned to stone and dropped out the floorboard of the truck onto the wet pavement. The pain was such that she figured he’d already crushed it with the back wheels.
&nbs
p; “I knew you before I asked if you’d accompany me on the rounds. I was in your kindergarten class and I was there on that rodeo day your folks had for the class,” he said.
Her heart leaped back into her chest. She’d expected him to say that he could never be interested in a rancher for anything but a friend or, worse yet, the old cliché about feeling like she was his sister. She would have cried right there in front of him if he’d said that.
“Do you remember what happened that day?” he asked.
“No, that was a long time ago. I guess we had some sheep for the kids to ride and maybe a pony. Why?”
“It wouldn’t have been a big deal to you but it was to me,” he said.
“Because?” She waited.
“Because it was the second day of school. Because I wore these thick eyeglasses and was a skinny little kid with no friends since we moved all the time. Anyway, the first day of school you were the only one who said hello to me or offered to let me play with your group. That would be Stella, Rosy, and Dee. The next day was the rodeo at your folks’ ranch. My dad and mom fought that morning. He said he’d gone into town and bought me the jeans and shirt so I’d look like the other kids. She said her child wasn’t wearing that kind of clothes because we weren’t staying on the ranch. Finally, she let him win, and I wore the jeans. Do you remember anything about the day?”
“No, Jimmy, I don’t. I know that your dad was dying by the time you got back home but that’s only because you told me.”
“There was a big kid. I can’t even remember his name but he was the biggest boy in class and he was a bully deluxe.”
“Joel Curtis,” she remembered out of the rainy sky.
“That’s right. I’d forgotten his name. I was sitting all by myself on a bale of hay, just watching the other kids participate in a race. Anyway, he yelled at me and called me Four Eyes and then told me I was a sissy because I played with girls. Then he drew back and popped me right in the face. Bloodied my nose. I lost my glasses and couldn’t see him so there I was holding my nose, blind and scared to death plus mortified.”
“He’s still egotistical. And I’m beginning to remember that day. I didn’t know it was you he’d been mean to that day. We were enemies from then on. He tried to put a wedge between me and Stella. Dated her in high school. I told her he was bad news.”
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