“You will not!” Cathy said.
“Of course I will, but you’d let them use it for a wedding anyway. It’s a perfect place. Lots of parking. Bar for drinks. Bathrooms and lots of room for dancing. I love it,” Larissa said.
“Thanks. We’ll pay for it. Momma will have it decorated with acres of tulle and roses,” Angel said.
“You are welcome, but it’ll have to be morning or afternoon. Can’t see a wedding with this kind of crowd and you won’t pay for the use of the Tonk. It’ll be a wonderful excuse to get Daisy and Jarod to come and visit,” Cathy said.
Angel laughed and pulled Garrett back to the dance floor for another slow dance.
Larissa threw her arm around Cathy’s shoulder. “Feelin’ it, ain’t you?”
“Yes, I am,” Cathy said.
“Go after him.”
“I can’t. It hurts but I can’t clip his wings. I don’t want him to change and I can’t be anything other than what I am. I’ll get over it,” Cathy said.
“I don’t think so, darlin’, but who am I to give advice? I’m just now finding myself.”
Chapter 21
Cathy threw her coat on the table, took a deep breath, and went straight for his room. The brown comforter that had made him look like Big Foot during the ice storm was gone. There were no boots on the floor, no book on the nightstand; nothing but the lingering aroma of Stetson to prove that Travis Henry had ever made love to Cathy in that room. She stopped in the bathroom on her way back to the office and found an empty bottle of Stetson sitting on the vanity. She carried it with her to the kitchen and slipped it into her coat pocket. Four containers of strawberry yogurt were all that was left in the refrigerator. Cathy hoped Tessa liked that flavor. She’d never be able to eat it again without crying. She sat down at the computer and vowed that she wouldn’t leave the place until it was completely ready for Tessa to take over Monday. When she locked the door at quitting time that day, she would never come back to it. She couldn’t bear facing the emptiness echoing the feeling in her heart.
Angel was surprised to see her when she breezed through the office at nine o’clock. “It’s not noon,” she glanced at the clock.
“I wanted to get completely caught up. She doesn’t need to come in to a mess,” Cathy said.
“Travis made it home all right. He called this morning and left a message on my phone,” Angel said.
“That’s good,” Cathy said.
“I thought you two would end up together. I’d never seen him so taken with anyone.”
“There’s a lot of distance between Alaska and the Honky Tonk.”
“So that’s it. I’ll miss having you here. They say Tessa is good, but you are like family.”
“Thanks,” Cathy said. She wanted to ask Angel what she meant by the comment about that was it but was afraid the answer would make her weepy again. She’d had to use cold compresses on her eyes that morning to get the swelling down after a two-box tissue night.
“Well, I’m off to make Amos and Jezzy lots of money. We’re ready now to buy some mineral leases to other properties. Want us to drill on the Honky Tonk parking lot? Might be a cute little conversation piece to have a black pumper right out there.”
“No thanks. My insurance would be out the roof trying to cover drunk cowboys riding the walking beam like a bull,” Cathy said.
* * *
Travis awoke in his old room in his parent’s house with a start. He reached for Cathy but she was hundreds of miles away, probably still asleep. He picked up his cell phone from the nightstand but there were no missed calls. He dug around in his duffle bag for clean socks and underwear and brought out a package with two pair of cotton panties. He held them to his chest and remembered the way she’d clung to him in that Jefferson hotel, fear still hanging to her even though she’d washed the stench of the cabin from her beautiful body. Carrying around ladies panties was perverse so he tossed them into the trash can beside his bed, got dressed, and went to the kitchen.
“Easy over or omelets?” Myrna asked.
“Easy over. Is that pancake batter?”
“Yes, it is. Why didn’t you bring that pretty Cathy woman with you? I liked her better than any of the ones you’ve drug in here before. And she’s an Arkansas born and raised girl. You can’t go wrong there.”
Travis poured water over a tea bag. “She runs a beer joint, Myrna.”
“So? There’s beer joints all over the world. Way I hear it is if two people get together and want to build them a town, first thing they do is put up a church and right after they get a place to get saved, sanctified, and dehorned, they build a beer joint. That way they have a reason for the saving and dehornin’. She could run a beer joint anywhere your oil business takes you. That ain’t no big deal.”
“It is to her. She loves the Honky Tonk.”
“Looked to me like she loved you when she looked at you with them funny lookin’ blue eyes.”
“Sometimes love ain’t enough,” Travis said.
“Hmpphh,” Myrna snorted.
* * *
On Saturday morning Cathy checked her cell phone a dozen times for messages as she cleaned the beer joint; she even picked up the phone in the Honky Tonk to make sure the phone was working in case he tried to call that number. When she had the place in order she cleaned her apartment and then paced back and forth, across the dance floor, behind the bar, back through the living room and bedroom, making the circle a dozen times before she threw herself on the sofa and opened another box of tissues.
Finally she went out to the garage, fired up the Harley, put her helmet on, and headed east. The air was chilly but the sun was out and the roads were dry. She pushed the cycle above the speed limits trying to outrun the pain but it didn’t work. When she reached Gordon she made a U-turn in the middle of the road and started back home.
She made it as far as the turn off to Jezzy’s place but couldn’t slow down in time to make the sharp right turn. A half a mile down the road she stopped, did another turnaround, and went back. She’d go look at the oil well and see for herself what could be so exciting that it could lead Travis around by the nose.
When she reached the house, Jezzy and Merle were on the porch. They waved at her to stop and motioned her inside the house. She pulled up outside the yard fence, hung her helmet on the handlebars, and followed them inside.
“I came out for a mid afternoon snack. Jezzy made a pan of cinnamon rolls and hot rolls stuffed with cream cheese and ham,” Merle said.
Jezzy led the way into the kitchen where Leroy and Sally were already eating. “Come on in and eat with us. We’ve been dying to know about the kidnapping. You can tell us all about it.”
The food had better be as good as the smell of cinnamon and yeast promised because she’d been out on the Harley trying to outrun memories, not relive them again with the kidnapping story. “What do you want to know?”
“All of it. How in the hell did anyone get you tied up? Damn, I would have expected you to fight them tooth, nail, hair, and eyeball,” Jezzy said.
Cathy picked up two warm rolls and put them on her plate. “I put up a fight but one of them popped me with horse tranquilizer while I was trying to choke the other one.”
“So when did you wake up?” Leroy asked.
“First time was in the van. They’d cuffed my ankles and my feet then chained them together behind my back,” she said and went on to tell them the story. All except the part about sleeping with Travis.
Sally made her retell the part about the curse twice and laughed so hard she cried both times. Leroy wanted a repeat of the rat and the telephone story. Jezzy and Merle agreed that if they hadn’t shackled her leg to a chunk of concrete that she would have killed them with the chains.
It was late afternoon when she crawled back on the Harley. When she got back to the Honky Tonk she realized she had forgotten to drive down to the rig site. While she told the tale, Travis had been there beside her, his blue eyes sparkling behind w
ire-rimmed glasses. She parked the Harley and went back to her empty apartment where the only thing left of Travis was the lingering aroma of Stetson in her coat pocket.
* * *
Travis exercised horses all day on Saturday. The whole family would be in for supper that night so they could be together again before he flew to Alaska. Chances were it would be summer before he had time to come home and then everything would be fizzed up with Angel and Garrett’s wedding.
The day had produced entirely too many hours to think about Cathy. He’d gone over every detail from the time he kissed her the first time to the last kiss, right after the dance. What would he have done different? If he could go back and redo any moment, what would it be?
“Not one thing other than begging her to leave the Honky Tonk and go with me. She said in the hotel that night that I’d be happy for a couple of weeks and then I’d resent her. Well, that’s why I didn’t ask her to leave her life. I’m afraid she’d resent me and I’d rather hurt now than later. I called her once and it was so awkward and hurt so bad I can’t do it again. If I hear her voice next time the first words out of my mouth will be ‘I love you’ and she doesn’t need to hear that,” he whispered to the horse.
“Hey, you going to talk to yourself all day or come in and visit?” Emma asked from the stall door. “And where’s Cathy? I liked her, Travis. Is she going to join you there?”
“I don’t think so and I was unselfish. I couldn’t ask her to leave her beer joint. She might have done it but she’d hate me later on. Is everyone else here?” He hung up the brush and threw a blanket over the horse’s back.
“You are changing the subject and everyone isn’t here. Travis, unless you tell her how you feel, she won’t know. She can’t read your mind, but as your youngest and of course favorite sister, I can sure read your eyes. You are in love and you are miserable.”
“Let’s talk about something else. Talking about Cathy hurts too bad.” He slung an arm over her shoulder and led her out of the stables toward the house.
* * *
Cathy put in the movie Lucky Seven and set a big bowl of popcorn between her and Daisy on Sunday night. Daisy and Jarod had flown down earlier that evening. Jarod was out at the ranch where he and Garrett were talking cattle and Daisy had come into Mingus to spend the evening with Cathy.
“I want to hear the whole story, beginning to end,” Daisy said. “Start with the time he kissed you on New Year’s.”
“But you already know that.”
“Tell it again. I want to hear it while I look at you.”
“But I can’t tell it and watch the movie both.”
Daisy picked up the remote and turned the movie off. “We can watch that another time. This has to do with your life and your heart. Talk, cousin.”
Surely telling the whole thing time and time again would eventually exorcise it from her heart but it didn’t. When she got to the part about the boat and seeing Travis the dam let loose and she told the rest through tears. She didn’t even leave out the part about him being the best damn lover in the world or how the vibes between them almost set two motels and the bedroom out in the trailer on fire.
“You love him,” Daisy said.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to say it. It’s written in your misery.”
“Well, I’ll have to learn not to love him. Maybe that’s what happened to Ruby Lee. She fell in love with the wrong man and the Honky Tonk became her love to replace him.” Cathy let the tears flow freely.
Daisy handed her a tissue. “She never said but it makes sense. But you are not Ruby Lee. You are Cathy O’Dell, and you can do something about this. Pick up the phone and call him.”
“I can’t. Remember that old saying about if you love something you have to let it go. If it comes back then… I can’t remember the rest,” she said.
Daisy hugged her as she tried to dissolve the pain with tears.
* * *
Cathy and Daisy stood in front of the nursery window with Jim Bob and stared at the eight pound red-haired baby girl in the bassinet. The baby had been born on Sunday morning and the old Honky Tonk crew gave the Walkers time to enjoy her for a day before descending upon the hospital on Monday like a swarm of bees.
“You want one of them kind?” Cathy asked Daisy.
“I do but I won’t complain if it’s a boy,” Daisy said.
Jim Bob threw a loose arm around both of them. “Ain’t she beautiful? Wasn’t for that red hair, she’d look just like her gorgeous momma. I’m already in love with her and I can hold her in one hand almost. Can you imagine how much I’ll love her in a year or how much it’s goin’ to hurt when she leaves home?”
Cathy could well imagine. In the days that Travis had been gone she’d paced the floor, listened to old country music, and cried to the lyrics until her eyes were swollen and lost five pounds because food gagged her. He’d called once but the conversation was stilted and neither of them could say the words that lay between them like a barbed wire fence.
“Just enjoy her every day,” Daisy said.
Cathy thought about enjoying the days with Travis. She’d enjoyed the banter, the flirting, working together, all of it up to and including that last dance. Most of all she’d enjoyed snuggling in his arms after making love and the soft, warm glow that wrapped them up together like a cocoon and telling him all about her day then listening to him talk about his. Sharing not only bodies, but emotions and feelings. She missed him as a lover but she also missed him as her best friend.
“Hey, hey, where is she? I heard she had red hair,” Merle called out as she and Angel came down the hallway to the nursery.
“Is it going to be curly?” Angel asked when they peered through the window at the chubby little girl baby swaddled in a pink blanket.
“Looks like it could be,” Merle said. “Ain’t she cute? When are you and Garrett going to make one of them for me to spoil?”
“Nine months after the wedding vows if I have anything to say about it,” Angel said.
Daisy threw an arm around Cathy’s waist. Looking at them from a distance no one would believe they were cousins. Daisy was shorter and had long dark hair and her Indian mother had given her a face with high cheekbones and angles. Cathy’s mother had been a tall blonde and she’d dipped into that gene pool. Up close it wasn’t difficult to believe they were kin folks because they shared blue-gray eyes inherited from their fathers who had been brothers.
“You ready? Honky Tonk opens in an hour,” Daisy said.
“I am. She’s beautiful, Jim Bob,” Cathy said.
The sun was bright and birds were singing when they walked out of the hospital. Spring was definitely on the way. Larissa had brought seed catalogs to the Honky Tonk and had been poring over them after hours.
Daisy fastened the seat belt in the red Caddy. “I remember the first time I saw this car. I was sitting in the parking lot at the Smokestack with a busted radiator. Ruby Lee drove up in this and bought my dinner. She offered me a job and I kept it seven years before Jarod walked into my life.”
“More like collided into your life,” Cathy reminded her.
“You got that right. One minute I was takin’ a tray back to the bar and the next I was flat out on the floor with him on top of me. I understand you got into trouble taking a tray back to the bar too. Maybe that’s the curse or the omen?” Daisy said.
“Could be.” Cathy swallowed hard. “He’ll do for a romp every so often when he comes to town. Remember that Mark Chestnutt song about when a cowboy called old country came to town? Remember it says that she’d never been loved at all until old country came to town.”
Daisy nodded. “You satisfied with that?”
“He’s still flying and I’ve put down roots.”
“You ever been to a tree nursery?” Daisy asked.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“They transplant those big old trees and they don’t die. I thought I’d die
without my security blanket which was the Honky Tonk. Sometimes I still get the itch to bartend. When I do, Jarod takes me to this little dive up there in Payne County and I get a taste of loud country music and dancing. It’s been two months now since the last time. The urges are coming around less and less.”
Cathy started the engine and drove north toward Mingus. “I can’t do it, and besides, Jarod asked you to marry him. Travis danced with me and walked out the door without looking back.”
“Did you call out to him? God, girl, I went out to the ranch in the worst getup in the world. My house shoes didn’t even match and I told Jarod exactly how I felt.”
“Travis knows.”
“Does he?” Daisy asked. “Or does he think you’ll never leave the Honky Tonk?”
* * *
Travis flew to Dallas and boarded the two thirty flight to Portland, Oregon, where he’d have a two-hour layover and then an eight-hour flight to Anchorage.
An elderly gentleman with gray hair and a thin mustache sat down next to him. He wore a three-piece suit and a red and white striped tie. “What’s your name, son? Did you just come from a funeral?”
“I’m Travis Henry. On my way to Anchorage, Alaska. Been wanting to live there my whole life and no, I didn’t come from a funeral.”
“I’m Mason Albertson. I’m on my way home to Houston. Been visitin’ with the grandchildren. Had a wedding today and didn’t have time to change from this monkey suit into my jeans before the flight. I see you’re a cowboy by them jeans and boots. What in the hell you going to do in Alaska, son? Look on your face says you want to stay right here.”
“I’m a petroleum engineer. I sniff out places to drill for oil.”
“Ain’t your nose any good in warmer country?” Mason asked.
“It could be.”
“Guess it takes all kinds to make up the world. Some of us stay where there’s hurricanes and take our chances. Some of us live in tornado alley and wouldn’t move if there was a class five whirlwind comin’ right at us. Then there’s those like you out huntin’ an adventure,” Mason said.
Hell, Yeah Page 28