by Anna Jeffrey
“Wow.”
He picked up her hand, his thumbs rubbing her knuckles. “I’ve been out of range, Amanda. I haven’t called.”
She nodded.
“I know you left the ranch mad. I thought maybe you’d call.”
She thought about telling him she had tried, but been unable to reach him, but at this point, why lie? Her brow arched, in spite of herself. “It didn’t seem like my turn.”
He nodded, his beautiful blue eyes homed in on hers like lasers. “Are you really leaving me, Mandy?” he asked softly.
Instantly, her mind reverted to the job at Odessa High School. Silence. The loudest silence she had ever heard. Was her relationship with Pic Lockhart on the verge of ending? For the second time? You can do this, Amanda, the voice in her head told her.
She looked down, stared at his big hand holding hers. “I—I’ve waited for you a long time, Pic. I kind of put my career and my life on hold to stay in Drinkwell, first for my dad, then to be with you. I kept thinking you cared as much as I did, although I suppose I had no right to think that. You never told me you did.”
She wished he would grab her and cling to her, beg her to stay with him, profess undying love. But that wasn’t Pic. She heaved a great sigh and looked up. “Anyway, I have a good job offer. For me, it’s a dream job. The best opportunity I’ve ever had. It’s something I almost can’t refuse.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. He looked down and nodded. “Odessa, huh? Long way from here.”
How had he learned Odessa was her destination? “Mike told you? Gail wasn’t supposed to tell him about it.”
A few beats passed. He sighed. “I thought we had more going for us than this, Mandy.”
A bitter chuff left her throat. “To be honest, Pic, for a while now, I’ve been having a hard time seeing what we’ve got going.”
His head raised and he looked into her eyes. “Nothing happened between her and me, Mandy.”
Amanda winced inside, feeling guilty for her thoughts. “I didn’t say—”
“I’m not saying the opportunity wasn’t there. But nothing happened.”
Amanda looked at him, trying to picture what “the opportunity” might have been—the bed at the old homeplace, the bed in the ranch house, the sofa in the office? Thinking about him in bed with another women the way he had been with her was as painful as a razor slash. But she pushed those thoughts away. This was about more than his sleeping with some other woman.
She intended to be rational. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “At this point, I think the least we can do is be honest with each other, Pic. If the opportunity was there, then something happened. I saw how she looked at you.”
“Mandy, listen. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t. I couldn’t help thinking how things are between you and me. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You always were. I was just too dumb to see it when I was twenty-one.”
“She isn’t the issue, Pic. Not really. I’m not convinced I mean enough to you to—Look, I don’t kid myself. I know about the years after your divorce and the parade of women that passed through your life. Lord, at one time or other, everyone in Drinkwell has told me about you your girlfriends.”
She had wondered a thousand times if he had been with them the way he was with her. “You’re a good-looking, highly desirable guy and the world is full of attractive women. There’ll always be someone like her hanging around you. And I realize you can’t help that. I think I just don’t have enough confidence in myself to be your girlfriend.”
“But you’re not just my girlfriend, Mandy. You’re the only woman I care about.”
But not enough to do anything about it. Not even enough to say you love me. “Pic, I told myself I wasn’t going to do this, but I have to say what I’m feeling. We have a fundamental problem that can only get worse. And that problem is I’m not an important part of your life. Not really.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, even before this past week. We go dining and dancing, we go to the movies, we spend half the time we’re together in bed. You give me great presents. But I’ve always been less important to you than the ranch. And our relationship has always been less important than the one with your brother. You don’t need me, Pic.”
“The ranch is not just my living, Mandy. It’s the whole family’s. Somebody has to see to it. I’ve waited my whole life to be given the chance to be that somebody.”
“I understand that.”
“As for Drake, we’ve been tight since we were kids. With Dad drunk half the time and him and Mom yelling and brawling and tearing up the house all the time, Drake and I depended on each other. And we had to protect Kate and Troy.”
“I understand that, too. I’ve already gotten past your spending your free time going off on trips with him instead of spending time with me and—”
“That’s not fair, Mandy. That hasn’t happened in months. Nearly a year.”
True. But only because Drake had met and married Shannon. Frustrated, she raised her palms and splayed her fingers. “I’m not arguing. All I’m saying is you have to understand I’m not willing to spend the rest of my life waiting until the cows are all fed, the fields are all harvested or whatever until you get horny enough to pay attention to me. Did you think I would do that forever?”
“But there’s more to it than that, Pic. I have to think about my future. This job in this school system is a going-nowhere job and the pay is really poor. I can’t stay here for some untold period while I wait for you to decide if you want to take this…this whatever we have between us any further.
“You know I want a family. Kids before I’m too old to enjoy them. But if I can’t have that with you, I have to find it somewhere else. Or if I never find it at all, I have to choose the next best thing and that’s a decent retirement. What we’ve had together is wonderful. I love you more than I can ever say. I believe you love me a little, but I’ve neither seen nor heard anything that says you’re in love with me.”
She paused, but he said nothing. Perhaps her diatribe had been cruel, but it had been honest. Seconds, then a minute passed. Her heart broke. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “In any event, I just can’t keep doing this. So I have to go.”
He got to his feet. “Don’t move, Amanda. Stay right there. I’ll be right back.” He walked out.
Only minutes later, he returned carrying something that appeared to be a rolled up poster and took his seat again. He pushed the roses to the side, spread the roll over the tabletop and anchored it with a stuffed black ape the size of a football. It held a heart that said, I’M APE OVER YOU. A diamond ring, obviously a wedding ring encircled one paw.
She stared at the ring. Bigger than a pencil eraser, smaller than a dime. As what was happening sank in, a sob burst from her throat and tears gushed. She tried unsuccessfully to bat them away.
“Hey, come on, now. I’m trying to show you how I feel. I’m trying to do a good thing here.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her closer.
Through a veil of tears, she stared at the document spread over her table. It was a blueprint of something. “This is a…a—What is this?”
“It’s a swimming pool.”
She drew a deep sniff. “A swimming pool?”
“It’s a wedding present, Mandy. I want to build it behind the garage in that big space where the sun shines all day.”
She looked up at him, blinking at him. She never knew what to expect from him.
“We could get married today if you want to. We could take the plane. Go up to Vegas. Find one of those chapels.”
“Las Vegas? But—but—”
“Then we can do anything you want to. Go anywhere you want to go. That plane can fly anywhere. There’s a lot of places neither one of us has seen. I was thinking about going up north where it’s cool. Somewhere in Montana maybe. Or Canada. I already told Dad I won’t be back for at least a week.”
The Lockhart family plane, the one Drake used for business travel. Amanda had never been on it. Pic, himself, had rarely used it.
“But—but, we haven’t made any plans. We haven’t—”
“Haven’t what? What is it we need to do. You want one of those fancy weddings?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“You don’t have any family to speak of and what you’ve got doesn’t stay in touch with you. As for mine, except for Dad, I don’t even know where all of them are at the moment.”
True. She doubted if her few family members would travel from Lubbock for her wedding.
He leaned forward and took her hand again. “If it means anything, I was thinking about this last summer, Amanda. That’s why I had a swimming pool designed. If you look at the drawing, you can see I’m not fibbing. It’s got last year’s date.”
“But you never said anything.”
“I got cold feet. And then the family turned the ranch over to me. I put everything else on the back burner, even me and you. I was wrong to do that.”
Overwhelmed, she said nothing.
He reached behind himself and came up with a blue folded document. He placed it on the table and pushed it toward her. She didn’t have to be told what it was. She stared at it.
“Aren’t you gonna look at it?” He picked it up and unfolded it and scooted it back to her. “This is everything I own, Mandy. I’m offering you a part of it. I want you to be a part of my life. Every day from now on. Not just a few days here and there.”
Her heart threatened to leap from her chest. Her rib cage ached with the love that filled it. “What you own isn’t what’s important to me, Pic. You surely must know that.”
“I’m trying to show you how much I believe in us as a team. How much I want you for my partner. The ranch will always be important to me. So will my family. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be equally important. You’re my best friend, Mandy. My pal. My lover. My sweet beautiful lady.”
She picked up the document with shaking hands, attempted to read it through tears.
Her personal worth was listed first—her car, the un-mortgaged house she had inherited from her parents, the pension she had earned as a teacher. For an instant, she wondered where his lawyer had gotten that information. She had thought it was private. In terms of assets, it wasn’t a bad picture for a thirty-one-year-old woman.
His personal worth was a different story—his trust fund and investment funds, his interest in the Double Bar L Cattle Company. Totaled, it was a staggering sum. But it was small fraction of the ranch’s inventory and its blinding value. Tens of thousands of acres of pastureland and farmland and thousands of cattle, oil and gas wells and mineral rights, thousands of acres of cotton farms in West Texas and long-term leases of West Texas land for wind farming. Added to that, a list of interests in real estate projects all over Texas, the fruits of Drake’s efforts.
She glanced at Pic’s wrist where he wore a forty-dollar watch he had bought at Walmart at a discount price, then at his custom-made boots that he had probably bought at Leddy’s and paid thousands for. If she lived with him for a lifetime, she would never sort out all of the contradictions that existed in his makeup.
The next paragraph was his pledge of half of everything he earned from the moment they got married, plus separate funds for any children they might have. The minute she said, “I do,” she would be rich beyond her wildest dreams and so would her children if she ever had any. She looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “All of this isn’t…isn’t necessary, Pic.”
“Look, I know you’re cautious. Signing a document like this makes you nervous. All it says, Amanda, is that no matter what happens, if we get married and don’t make it, the Double Bar L Cattle Company stays intact. That’s the only part of it that’s non-negotiable. You can take it to a lawyer and have him look it over.”
She felt guilty for her lack of faith in him. “Is this what you’ve been doing the last few days?”
“Partly. I didn’t want to show it to you until I had it all ironed out. Those damn lawyers are slower than Christmas.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “This is hardly a fair deal for you. I don’t bring much to the table.”
“You have no idea what you bring to me, Mandy. All I want from you is for you to care about me and be loyal to me and my family. And to keep being your smart, cheerful, upbeat self. I want to wake up every morning and hear your laugh. I want to hear you scolding me when I do something dumb. God knows, I need somebody to drag me out of the deep end when I step into it.”
He reached for the stuffed ape, the one he’d had to go into some retail store and shop for. He pulled the ring off its paw and picked up her left hand. “It’s a size seven. That jeweler said that’s the most common size.” He slid the ring onto her left ring finger. “How does it feel?”
She shook her head, almost breathless. “Heavy.”
“Look at me, Mandy.” She looked up, into his eyes. She had never seen them more serious. “I don’t believe you just suddenly stopped loving me. If this isn’t enough, what do you want?”
What was wrong with her? Everything she had wanted was sitting right in front of her looking at her with tender blue eyes and she was having a hard time saying yes.
“You’d want me to give up my swim team, wouldn’t you?”
He sat back in his chair, his expression still serious. She winced inside, couldn’t prevent the frown that tugged at her brow. “I know you love that job, Mandy, but is it more important than we are?”
“I’ve always felt the school needs me. I—I wanted to get scholarships for those two girls I told you about.”
“How’re you gonna do that if you’re in Odessa?”
She cringed. How indeed? “I haven’t thought about that yet.
“I’ll make a deal with you, Amanda. I know the school needs you, too. But the way things are going, who knows how long we’ll even have a school in this county? Plenty of counties have lost their schools. So go ahead and do the school year coming up. Try to get those scholarships. I know those two girls’ families can’t afford to send them to college. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll arrange for Dad’s foundation to fund scholarships for them. As for the future, can we say we’ll look at it again at the end of the school year?”
She believed the girls in question would get the scholarships if she diligently helped through the year. She also believed Bill Junior’s foundation, Future Hope, would fund them if need be. He was always looking for places to give away money.
“Would you ever get around to telling me you love me?”
“I just did, Amanda. Love’s just a word. It doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you. I have a hard time saying it.”
She knew that. Witnessing the lifetime of brawling, scheming and cheating that had gone on between his parents had affected him deeply. “And Betty? I don’t suppose you’ve consulted her.”
“I don’t feel a need to consult her. She’s already made her choices. And I’ve made mine.”
“Where would we live?”
“In the ranch house. I’ve already discussed it with Dad. There’s plenty of room for us and him both. Even if we had a passle of kids, there’s still plenty of room. Or if you don’t want to be roomies with Dad, I’ll build us a house somewhere else on the ranch. I can put a house and a swimming pool anywhere.”
“You’d do that?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’ve always loved that ranch house. When I was a teenager, I used to fantasize about living in it.”
“Then where we’ll live is settled.” He leaned forward and took both of her hands in his, rubbing her knuckles with his thumbs. “Nothing’s changed between you and me, Mandy. We started out liking each other when we were just little kids. We’ve taken a couple of detours. I blame myself for that. But veering off the path doesn’t mean we can’t finish up together. After all we’ve been through, we’ve still managed to get back to
this place. I gotta think we were meant to be. Whatever this little bump in the road is that’s got you upset, we’ll get it worked out. If it’s Zochi, or if it’s the money—”
“I don’t care about your money, Pic. I was in love with you before I knew what rich meant. All I’ve ever wanted is you. It wouldn’t matter to me if you didn’t have a dime.”
“I know that, Mandy. I’ve always known that. You never had dollar signs in your eyes when you looked at me. And believe me, I’ve seen enough of those looks to recognize them.”
“Oh, Pic.” She leaned across the table and they kissed. His big hand cupper her jaw and she drank in the taste of him, the scent of him, couldn’t begin to imagine him being all hers for the rest of their lives. The kiss was long and sweet, full of hope and promise. When they parted, she looked into his eyes. “I never stopped loving you, Pic. Even when we were both with someone else.”
“I believe that, Mandy.”
“If we went to Las Vegas, would those security guys go with us?”
“The way things are right now, they probably would. After I told them I might want to fly somewhere, a couple of them went to Fort Worth to check out the airport and the pilot.”
She couldn’t hold back a gasp. “Good grief.”
“I know. It’s a pain in the ass. But maybe it’ll be over soon….I’ve been thinking about something else, too, Mandy. Maybe we oughtta quit worrying about the calendar and take life as it comes.”
THE END
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