Best of Cowboys Bundle

by Vicki Lewis Thompson, Barbara White Daille, Judy Christenberry, Christine Wenger, Shirley Rogers, Crystal Green, Nina Bruhns, Candance Schuler, Carole Mortimer

  Chapter Two

  T hrough a haze of fascination, Felicia watched Jack North amble out of the crowd then disappear.

  Wow.

  It wasn’t that he was handsome. Not in a traditional sense, with those squinting dark eyes that were caged by emerging wrinkles and heavy brows. Eyes that were unfathomable and magnetic, drawing her into their depths. Underneath his hat, she’d even caught a glimpse of silver in his black hair.

  What was so appealing about him then?

  Felicia was normally drawn to men who were younger, more accessible, their skin unlined instead of rough-hewn, their smiles ready and eager instead of nonexistent.

  Jackson North wasn’t normal crush material. He was a cowpoke carved into an uneven length of pine, sturdy and lean, stoic and hard edged.

  So why was her body singing? Okay, maybe it was just humming—and she really shouldn’t be getting carried away with a guy so fast again—but…

  Carlota Verde came to stand next to her, yet Felicia barely registered her best friend and fellow maid because she was so deep in this dopey instant attraction.

  “Wow,” Felicia whispered.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Slowly, Carlota assumed solid form in Felicia’s sights. She had one hand propped on her skirted hip and one palm against her scarf-covered head, almost as if she’d gotten one of her horrible headaches.

  This was how Carlota’s premonitions always came—via migraine. Felicia and their good friend Emmy had lived with Carlota’s touch of magic all their lives. The random psychic vibes were just a part of her personality, as unremarkable as her taste for Chet Baker’s music or her driven, yet ultimately doomed, need to play the guitar.

  She’d decided to lend her visionary talents to today’s charity event after a little persuasion from their boss, Mrs. Rhodes. Even if Carlota’s predictions couldn’t be summoned with the regularity of clockwork, she still had a quick mind and the wit of an entertainer. The Leukemia Society patrons would love her, Mrs. Rhodes had said, even if she were slinging bull instead of always dishing out the real thing.

  But now, as Carlota shook off whatever was bothering her, Felicia touched her friend’s shoulder, concerned.

  “You okay?”

  “Sí, no problem. Just a twinge of something.” Carlota took a big breath, then grinned, sticking a thumb toward the departed Jack. “Are you drooling over…?”

  “Drooling?” Felicia tried the clueless act. “Me?”

  “You’ve got that crazy smile and stars in your eyes. Again.”

  “Right. Again.” Crush number l,036. She was excellent at cultivating schoolgirl dreams, but when it came to hanging on to a man…

  “He’s much too old for you,” Carlota said. “Maybe not in years, but in mileage. I felt his energy. He’s dark inside, like an empty room with the lights turned off.”

  “Are you warning me away from him, Madame Carlota?”

  “Of course not. I can’t tell a stubborn twenty-five-year-old woman who’s supposedly reached maturity what to do.” And with that, the sassy maid nudged Felicia in amusement, took her break sign down, sat in her chair and opened for business, putting an end to the conversation.

  Right away, patrons lined up to hear their fortunes, and Felicia busied herself by collecting money and chatting with the waiting crowd. Several of them had obviously seen her with Jack North, and they were a tad too zealous in questioning her about the newest Hanging R employee.

  Dear old busybodies.

  Everyone knew about Felicia’s business and she knew about theirs in return. Wycliffe was a tight-knit community, and her relatives and neighbors were always offering advice.

  And they all knew about Felicia’s deepest pain, even if she did her darnedest to avoid it.

  Even now, women strolled down the modest midway, their arms linked with husbands while their sons and daughters followed in their parents’ tracks. Watching them, Felicia once again felt so alone, circled by women with their children and the men who wanted wives who could have those children.

  Her heart wrenched, almost as if it were bending backward to look away.

  When someone’s arm wrapped around Felicia’s shoulders, she cheered up, telling herself that mulling over her problems wouldn’t do any good.

  It was Emmy, one of the best friends Felicia had ever known. She, Carlota and Felicia had been raised together here at Oakvale, the daughters of servants who’d worked for the Rhodes family generation after generation. They’d banded together, three of a kind, supporting each other through broken dreams and the changes brought on by passing years.

  Now, here stood petite Emmy, holding Felicia with the utmost care, just the same as always. Even though she’d been married for almost a year and had recently given birth to her first child, she was still a newlywed at heart, glowing while wearing her white chef’s suit.

  Heck, she’d definitely earned the right to glow, Felicia thought, bending to hug Emmy right back.

  In the process of falling in love with her husband, Emmy had launched quite the scandal here at Oakvale, catching the eye of the Deston Rhodes—yes, the millionaire son of Texas royalty who had been raised on this estate—after he’d mistaken Emmy for another woman. She’d been Oakvale’s cook-in-training, and he’d been the resident prince who’d found his Cinderella. Even though Emmy had dug herself a deep hole with her accidental masquerade, their romance had resulted in a happy marriage after all.

  Emmy held Felicia at arm’s length, assessing her as Carlota finished pretending to tell the fortune of the last customer in line.

  “No need to frown, Charlie Brown,” Emmy said, smiling with those slightly crooked teeth. “What’s going on?”

  Felicia squeezed Emmy to her one last time, catching the comforting scent of wood smoke and spices in her friend’s short auburn hair. “Done with the chili cook-off?”

  “Yup. It’ll be the best stuff in the county, no doubt about it.” Emmy slid Felicia a sidelong glance. “I thought I’d see if you two needed help while the judges do their thing, but I guess there’s something else that needs looking after here.”

  “We’re all out of customers for now,” Carlota said, motioning to the empty chairs in front of the table. “Take a load off and listen to Felicia’s love song, why don’t you?”

  “Ah,” Emmy said, suddenly understanding why Felicia seemed so glum.

  Lovely. As if Felicia wanted to go through this exhausting ritual: meeting a man, sharing it with her friends, getting her hopes up, then standing helplessly by while he got serious ideas about her. She just didn’t have the energy for this anymore, especially since that last devastating breakup two months ago.

  Toby, there’s something I need to tell you….

  Her voice echoed in her memory. The out-of-town cowboy had taken her to a posh restaurant, pulling out all the stops in his efforts to tell her that he wanted to bring their relationship to the next level. Sex. Commitment to a future.

  By the end of dinner, he’d left her, obviously disappointed by what she’d confessed to him: her shortcomings, the physical imperfections that made having a family a near impossibility for the man she would marry.

  Felicia had never been able to voice the details of Toby’s breakup to her friends. Maybe it was because part of her felt like giving up from here on out. Maybe it was because telling Emmy and Carlota would bring it all back too painfully.

  At any rate, as they sat in front of Carlota, Felicia couldn’t work up the bravery to talk about Jack North or her ever-rekindled hopes for a man who would love her no matter what she was lacking.

  Even if there was a tiny spark inside her growing with every vivid recollection of him.

  “Well,” Carlota said to Felicia, her eyes shining with I-hope-this-man-works-for-you verve, “tell Emmy all about him.”

  “It’s no biggie,” Felicia said. But even as she uttered it, she smiled, thinking of the way Jack had tipped his hat to her like a gentleman. Thinking of his work-callused han
ds and how he kept them still and quiet—a man of few words and gestures.

  She still didn’t understand the attraction, but at this moment, she would’ve sworn that he was the most handsome, intriguing male in God’s creation.

  “All right.” Carlota sent a firm nod to Emmy. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  Felicia stopped her friend before Carlota could comment on Jack’s standoffishness again.

  “Okay, okay.” She held back a grin. “He’s…real interesting.”

  “Aha.” Emmy was clearly bursting at the seams with the need to know more. “Who is he?”

  Felicia felt a flush warm her face. “Jackson North.”

  No one said anything for a moment, maybe because of the way his name still lingered in the air, just like the crackling aftermath of white lightning.

  “Jackson North,” Carlota repeated. There was a speculative gleam in her gaze. As usual.

  Before Felicia knew it, her friend had grabbed her hand, closed her eyes.

  “Oh, powers that be,” Carlota said in a mock-serious tone, channeling the carnival gypsy—the one who was only here to entertain for charity.

  “Carlota, cut it out.” Felicia couldn’t help laughing. Emmy, too.

  The faux fortune-teller continued. “Give me a sign of this woman’s future. Show me if Old Rip’s new wrangler is Felicia’s destiny.”

  In spite of herself, Felicia held her breath, praying. Though Carlota had received only a few visions about Felicia before—the death of a favorite aunt when she was ten came to mind—she had mainly divined the futures of other people. Near strangers. Random flashes of enlightenment.

  Ironic, really, that Felicia and Emmy had rarely been the focus of Carlota’s powers. In fact, one of the few times Carlota had predicted anything about Emmy, it had been about Deston and how he was going to pursue their friend until he won her over.

  But Felicia had never gotten advance word about her own happily-ever-afters. Maybe because there hadn’t been any.

  “What do you see, Great One?” Emmy said, playing along.

  Dramatically, Carlota opened her eyes. “There will be wonderful love for our Felicia. It’ll just take the right man to see past everything that troubles her.”

  Exactly. Felicia finally exhaled. See, she was back to square one. Unlucky in love but wealthy in friendship.

  Not a bad place to be.

  Desperate to change the subject, Felicia quickly asked Emmy for a daily update on Nigel, her newborn son. Without pause, Emmy started to gush about her baby and how Deston was even now conducting playtime with Grandma and Grandpa over at “the big house”—Oakvale’s regal mansion where Felicia and Carlota still worked as maids. Deston and Emmy had made it a point to bring Nigel over a couple of times per week since Mr. Rhodes—a Texas-sized man with Lone Star–huge appetites—had suffered a minor stroke a couple of months ago. Deston had been devastated, believing that time was their enemy and that he needed to make amends with his domineering father before it was too late.

  Felicia listened, enraptured. She loved Nigel like her own and enjoyed hearing every detail about him, especially when the stories pertained to how the powerful, formerly ruthless Mr. Rhodes had been reduced to a baby-talking fool with the child.

  Somewhere along the line, they noticed that Carlota was oddly silent.

  They turned to their friend, recognizing the closed eyes, the furrowed brow.

  A migraine or…?

  Felicia got up. “Aspirin.”

  “No.” Carlota rubbed her temple, her golden bracelets clanking like eerie music. “That was no normal headache.”

  Emmy pulled a cautious Felicia back down to her seat.

  “Weird,” Carlota said. “Usually I see what’s happening after I touch someone, right? But this time, there was just fire. Heat. Words.” Perplexed, she looked at Felicia. “‘The last cowboy’s going to make you a mother.’”

  Felicia’s stomach fluttered as she leaned forward. Questions scratched at her throat.

  No, Carlota had to be wrong. The doctors had already told her she might not be able to have a baby. Not with her endometriosis. In fact, odds were so abysmally low that everyone knew Felicia as “the unlucky Markowski”—a label she tried her best to live with.

  “The last cowboy,” Carlota whispered. “A mother, Felicia. A mother.”

  Hope started to race around Felicia’s veins. She didn’t want to start chasing it. It’d just break her heart in the end.

  Emmy’s eyes were wide and excited. “Are you sure, Carlota?”

  Their friend nodded, but Emmy needn’t have asked anyway. Carlota took power from touch, reading the skin. Even though she didn’t always get a vibe—especially from her friends—she was careful about physical contact. It put a real damper on her own personal life because, more often than not, the act of touching told her more than she wanted to know about a person.

  Emmy bit her lip and caught Felicia’s gaze, her eyes tearing up. As for Felicia, she could barely even move.

  Gulping, Emmy squeezed Felicia’s arm. She was probably thinking the same thing. A mom? How?

  Maybe Carlota was wrong this time. She very rarely was, but still…

  Felicia’s heart wouldn’t stop pumping, building, priming itself for another crash she would only pretend to recover from.

  “I’m not sure how this is going to happen,” she said, trying to stay sunny even though doubts were pulling her down. “We all know I won’t be having babies.”

  No one said anything for a moment. Felicia’s endometriosis—which could cause infertility—was something she’d lived with for about two years now, ever since it’d been diagnosed. In her own mind, the stigma defined her, even if her neighbors and friends never talked about it to outsiders—especially the men she often met at rodeos, men outside the community. Yup, Wycliffe made sure she had a chance to find a good man who wouldn’t be biased against her shortcomings, bless them.

  But that didn’t change how the doctors had told her she’d probably developed the condition, where scar tissue ultimately formed on her reproductive organs and disabled them, when she was a teen. She should’ve known, with all those painful periods, the tenderness in her right ovary during her first exam.

  But that hadn’t been the worst of it. Her “problem” had become especially painful in light of her wildly breeding family and the way they tried to sneak those sympathetic glances past Felicia when they thought she wasn’t looking.

  “Maybe surgery will work for you after all,” Emmy said, “no matter what the doctors say.”

  Felicia was scheduled for laser treatment in a few months, for better or worse. Heck, she had to try, even if the odds weren’t good. Even if the doctors said her symptoms would probably reoccur afterward—if the experts were even successful in healing her in the first place.

  Brushing away the thread of emptiness winding through her, Felicia said, “More than one doctor has told me it probably won’t help my birthing gear. They should know.”

  Her friends looked so crushed for her.

  “I’ll adopt someday,” she continued, brightening, repeating her mantra.

  And she didn’t mind the thought of it. Really. She could love someone else’s natural child just as much as her own.

  Emmy reached for her hand, laid her own over it. “But what Carlota said—”

  “—I’m always right.” Their friend tightened her jaw.

  Maybe not, this time, Felicia thought. After all, how could Carlota know more than doctors?

  “Where’s the girl who believes in angels?” Emmy asked, squeezing Felicia’s fingers, transferring some hope through her friend’s skin.

  She was right. Where was that girl? Was she with the last piece of her broken heart on that trail of crumbled relationships she’d left behind?

  Carlota had fisted her own hands, confident in her abilities to the end. “All we need to do is find out who this last cowboy is. Then everything will fall into place.”

  T
hey wanted to believe this prediction as much as she did. God, this was cruel, to hang hope in front of her like a carrot she’d be chasing for the rest of her life.

  But, at the same time, she knew Carlota wouldn’t joke about this.

  She was dead serious.

  “I’ve got it,” Emmy said, brown eyes alight. “Toby. Toby Baker is the last cowboy Felicia dated. What if…?”

  No, Felicia thought. Not Toby.

  They didn’t know about the disgust on his face when Felicia had told him about her condition.

  “He’s not my biological savior, you all. Carlota’s got her wires crossed.”

  “Last cowboy,” Carlota mumbled, determined to solve this, hardly even part of the conversation anymore.

  Inside, Felicia started to quiver, her body so tired of wishing, of holding in all the dreams. Of feeling incomplete.

  Last cowboy.

  Mother.

  Could it really happen? All her life, she’d tried to “do unto others,” to be an optimist. Was this fate’s way of ending the games and rewarding her patience?

  Of giving her children who’d make her smile like the rest of her healthy family?

  “My best bet,” Felicia said, wanting to cheer up her friends—cheer up herself—“is to find that special someone who’s going to love me no matter what. Just like you all have pointed out.”

  “Maybe Jackson North?” Carlota smiled broadly.

  Felicia’s heart tweenged at the thought of those dark eyes of his. Soulful. Layered with experience.

  “I wish he’d be interested.” Felicia tried to calm the shimmer of her pulse, tried to get a hold of her common sense.

  “Oh, come on,” Carlota continued, “you know he’s over at the Hanging R mooning over you already. You’ve got that immediate effect on men.”

  “Hanging R?” Emmy asked. “Is that where he works?”

  Felicia nodded, unexplained optimism boiling, tickling her veins.

  “Actually, Deston talked to Rip McCain this week,” Emmy added, the sentence coming out in a rush. “The Hanging R’s definitely worse off than anyone thought. The cook quit because he hadn’t been paid in weeks, and Rip hired another hand to replace the ones who’ve left. One last hand, Deston thinks.”