Cowboy, It's Cold Outside

by Lori Wilde

  Layered on top of the cattle decor were Christmas decorations. Mistletoe hung from the chandeliers, pine-scented candles flickered on the tables. The life-sized, fiberglass Holstein standing beside the door wore a red nose and a Santa hat.

  Cute. Quaint. Crazy.

  Amber handed them menus before she disappeared back to the hostess stand with a parting, “Enjoy, y’all.”

  If the place was whimsical, their server was the opposite.

  From his head (shaved) to his build (ancient oak tree) to the lurid skull tattoo covering his neck, he gave off a Halloween-might-be-ten-months-away-but-I’m-ever-ready vibe. One arm held a breadbasket covered with a white linen cloth, and in the other, a dish of individually wrapped, tablespoon pats of Irish butter.

  His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. Nothing impressed this muscled wall of flesh. “Welcome to the Funny Farm,” he intoned, and glanced up.

  His gaze settled on Cash. Startled, his eyes flew wide open. He cocked his head, leaned in, and grinned like Forrest Gump. “Flying cats! It’s Cash Colton. You’re him. I mean, you’re you.”

  “Last time I checked,” Cash drawled. The guy shook his head so hard Cash worried it might swivel right off his thick neck.

  “Man, you screwed up. How the hell did you let a hottie like Simone Bishop slip through your fingers? If she were my woman I’d ruin her for any other man.” He chortled, winked. “If you get my drift.”

  “Stanley.” Emma cleared her throat, and wiggled a finger at Lauren. “There are seven-year-old ears at the table.”

  “I didn’t catch his drift,” Lauren said, sounding ages older than her tender years. “What is his drift?”

  “Far away from appropriate dinner conversation,” Emma said. “Stanley, how’s your mama?”

  At the mention of his mother, Stanley wiped the lewd expression off his face, deposited the bread and butter on the table, took their drink orders, and rushed off.

  “Sorry for that.” Emma gave Cash a plucky smile. “Are you still taking a lot of blowback over Simone?”

  “Don’t worry about Stanley. I’m used to it. Simone leaving me was the best thing that could have happened.” Well, except for the fact it had broken up the band. “I wish her nothing but the best.”

  “TMZ says she’s getting married on New Year’s Eve to your former drummer.”

  “So I heard.”

  Emma reached over and wrapped a hand around his arm. “How do you feel about that?”

  “Just dandy.”

  “Pinky swear?” She stuck out her pinky.

  He wrapped his little finger around hers. “Pinky swear.”

  They grinned at each other, shook their pinkies. He was lucky to have a friend like Emma. He’d made at least one right call in his life.

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” Emma asked, smoothing her napkin on her lap.

  “Haven’t much thought about it.”

  “You should stay in Twilight. Spend Christmas with us,” Emma said.

  “Nah, Sam’s got such a big family and you’ve got so much going on. I’d just get in the way.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, you wouldn’t be a bit of trouble. And you don’t have anywhere else to be. Do you?”

  No. No, he did not.

  He’d never been much of one to celebrate holidays. He’d not really felt it, the spirit of Christmas everyone carried on about. Just seemed liked a lot of fuss and bother for little payoff.

  His main MO for surviving the holidays? Hunker down and gut it out from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.

  “If I stay in town,” he said, “I’ll get my own place. I can’t intrude on your hospitality.”

  Emma beamed. “All right.”

  Cash narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. I’ve seen that look on your face before. You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

  “What look?” Emma blinked, rearranged her smile into angelic innocence.

  “That matchmaking look,” Sam supplied. “Leave the man alone, Emma.”

  “I just want him to be as happy as we are,” she said, leaning into her husband.

  Sam kissed the top of her head. “Leave him be.”

  “Spoilsports.” Emma sighed. “But I’ll lay off the matchmaking if you agree to stay in town for the holidays.”

  “Do you know any vacation rentals available?” Cash asked. He’d blown into town at noon without a reservation, thinking he’d stay a couple of nights with Emma and be gone by Monday, but if he stayed longer, he’d need his own place to work. “I’d like something more homey than a motel.”

  “Twilight is so popular at Christmas I’m sure the B and Bs are all booked up,” Emma said. “But honestly, stay with us.”

  “Nope. Not for three weeks. It’s too much. You know what they say: ‘fish and visitors stink after three days.’”

  Lauren crinkled her nose. “You don’t stink.”

  Cash grinned at her. “Not yet. It hasn’t been three days.”

  “The owner of one of my patients has a houseboat on the lake,” Sam said. “He’s in Sweden through the new year. Do you want me to see if he’d be willing to rent it?”

  Cash shrugged. Did he really want to spend the next three weeks in happy-happy-joy-joy land? He loved Emma and her family, but there was only so much sappy sentimentality a cynical man could take.

  Then again, he had nowhere else to be.

  As if the universe was conspiring against him, he caught the strains of a Christmas song through the sound system. It was The Truthful Desperadoes singing their version of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” He could hear Simone’s husky voice curling around the words, soft and seductive.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Emma said, reading his mind.

  “I know.” He smiled and something jagged and ugly coiled in the pit of his stomach.

  “You’ll get your creativity back. You don’t need Simone.”

  “I know.” This afternoon when his eyes had met Paige’s and he’d heard the music again for the first time in over a year, he felt a stirring of hope.

  And fear.

  He dropped Emma’s gaze, suddenly breathless. Chest tightening, throat squeezing, pulse pounding. He wanted to sprint back to the Twilight Playhouse, hunt down Paige, tell her what she did to him, and see if this was for real. At the same time he wanted to jump into his Land Rover and zoom away from this town as fast as he could drive.

  But mostly, he wanted to believe in the magic of Christmas. That for once in his life he could fully, completely, feel like he belonged somewhere.

  And that, friends and neighbors, was where the terror came in.

  “Please stay.” Emma’s voice was slow and low, full of kindness and compassion. “You need this.”

  Cash took a deep breath, snatched air into his lungs, slowly let it out. Emma was his one true friend. For the third time in the conversation, he murmured, “I know.”

  Chapter 4

  Accessible: Music that is easy to listen to and understand.

  It was nine-thirty that same evening when Paige left the theater in her street clothes. She’d scrubbed off her makeup and pulled her hair back from her face with a candy-cane barrette.

  The crowd in the square had lightened considerably with nightfall, but there was still plenty of activity. People were lined up at Santa’s workshop. Guides dressed in period clothing led a group of tourists on a ghost tour. Kids in nightclothes, holding stuffed animals tucked under their arms, were leaving the storytelling pajama party event at Ye Olde Book Nook.

  Christmas karaoke spilled out of the wine bar, Fruit of the Vine. Paige snuggled deeper into her duster, bunched her shoulders up around her ears, and hummed along to “Frosty the Snowman.”

  The song, and kids in pajamas, reminded her of her job at the day care center. She loved children and considered herself lucky to have landed the position even though the pay was barely above minimum wage. Just thinking about the children brought a smile to her face.

  The prev
ious day, she and the day care owner, Kiley Bullock, had taken the class on a field trip to the Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose to see dinosaur footprints and have a picnic. The outing had been the most fun she’d had since . . . well . . . she couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun.

  The children’s giddy excitement lit her own dormant joy, reminding her of the childhood she’d missed out on. She’d scrambled over the tops of rocks, leaped over river basin puddles, and breathlessly played hide-and-seek among cedar elms, Texas sugarberries, bur oaks, and green ash of the bottomlands where dinosaurs had once frolicked.

  Her hamstrings were telling her about it, aching in unusual places, but maybe that was from the stiletto boots. Somehow, she’d managed not to fall and bust her butt in them.

  “You did great today.” She gave herself a pep talk. “Good job.”

  She left the merry holiday lights of the town square, headed west down a side street toward Shady Hills Nursing Home. Hurrying to get there before they locked the doors at ten. She passed by a family pulling a wagon decorated like a sleigh and filled with packages and a sleeping toddler.

  The older kids were in pajamas. The girl, about six, carried a copy of The Magic Christmas Cookie written by a local children’s author, who was also a friend of Flynn’s. The boy, a year or two younger, toted The Polar Express. The whole family was laughing and singing an off-key version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

  Somewhere in the region of her heart, Paige felt a sharp knife of loss. She stopped, pressed a palm to her chest. Exhaled.

  The family saw her watching them, smiled, and waved.

  Offering up a smile, she waved back and scurried on her way.

  She skirted a nativity scene that extended out onto the sidewalk, tiptoeing around a spotlight shining on the baby Jesus swaddled in his cradle. Crunched through fallen leaves in the gutter. Cut across the lawn of the First Baptist Church of Twilight. Walked past the fire-ambulance station on Eton Street, and tried to ignore the hop-skip of her pulse as her memory dragged her into the past.

  Paige recalled being two or three years old, her father in his turnout gear, hoisting her onto his shoulders as he took her into the firehouse. She remembered laughter and the deep rumble of men’s voices.

  They teased her dad, telling him there was no way a girl as pretty as she was could possibly be his child. They let her climb on the fire trucks, and gave her sticks of gum to chew. They smelled of spicy cologne, Lava soap, and smoke.

  Then came the shriek of an alarm. Men running. Her mother taking her from her father as he joined his crew and raced off on the screaming red fire engine.

  Danger. Excitement. Solid. Strong. That was how she’d thought of her vibrant father.

  Until the day came when the combination of his job, heredity, a stint as a rescue worker at Ground Zero in 2001 when the twin towers in New York City were struck by airplanes in a foreign attack on American soil, and a cigar habit formed the perfect storm of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The condition robbed him of his health, his livelihood, and finally his life.

  Tears pushed at the backs of her eyelids. Quickly, she blinked them away, rushed down the alleyway to the rear entrance to Shady Hills, pushed open the gate, hurried up the stone steps, and rang the back door buzzer.

  In the room closest to the back door, the TV was turned up loud on a hockey game. The Dallas Stars versus somebody that had the room’s resident, ninety-six-year-old Mr. Gentry, fussing loudly. “Block ’em, block ’em, you sumbitches!”

  Paige checked her duster pocket to make sure she had the bag of pigskins she’d promised him.

  “Punch him in the throat!” Mr. Gentry howled.

  Anyone listening to the murderous sports talk would never guess the elderly man was a former Methodist preacher who’d served in the peace corps in the sixties, donated a kidney to a friend on dialysis, and raised a flock of children—biological, adopted, and foster.

  “That’s it! That’s it. Smack down!” Something about hockey threw the otherwise kindhearted man into bloodlust.

  The door opened and Addie Small, one of the nurse’s aides, smiled down at Paige.

  Addie was a big-boned, red-faced girl of Swedish descent. The top of her head barely missed brushing the doorframe. Her golden, waist-length hair was wound into a braided bun and pinned up, tendrils of flyaway hair illuminated in the yellow-glow of fluorescent hallway light behind her. She wore a blue ruffled pinafore that hit just above ample kneecaps and revealed a small semicolon tattoo on her right knee, and an exclamation point on her left.

  She motioned Paige inside with a beefy hand and shut the door behind her. “Cutting it close.”

  “First day at the playhouse. I had to stay late to vacuum the auditorium.”

  “Emma doesn’t have a cleaning service?”

  “Popcorn was everywhere. I didn’t want to leave a mess for janitorial.”

  “People are animals,” Addie pronounced. “And you’re too nice.”

  It wasn’t the first time Paige had heard that.

  “Turn-the-Page!” Mr. Gentry called, laughing like he was the first person to ever use that pun. “Is that you?” His door opened a crack and the skinny nonagenarian poked his head out. The sound of the hockey game blared into the corridor.

  “Evening, Mr. G.” She fished around for his treat.

  “Got my pigskins?” He rubbed his palms together like he was trying to start a fire.

  “You can get away with smuggling contraband because you have such an innocent face,” Addie said.

  Paige startled. “Contraband? He’s not supposed to have pigskins?”

  “Low sodium diet,” Addie said.

  “Gimme.” He snatched the fried pork rinds from her hand. “Thanky kindly.”

  “But you’re not supposed to have them,” Paige protested.

  “Too late.” He cackled like a cartoon villain. From the TV, the crowd cheered wildly. “Oh shoot! Stevenson got a hat trick. Gotta go catch the replay.” He slammed the door.

  “Should I try to wrestle them away from him?” Paige gnawed her bottom lip.

  “Nah.” Addie waved a hand. “He’s ninety-six.”

  “But if he’s on a low sodium diet . . . I didn’t mean to violate the rules.”

  “I’d be more worried that he didn’t pay you for those illegal pigskins,” Addie said.

  “He’s on a budget.”

  “And you’re not?”

  “Like you said, he’s ninety-six.”

  “And you’re extraordinarily nice.” Addie said it as if that was a bad thing.

  “How is she tonight?” Paige asked, shifting the topic away from Mr. Gentry, the pigskins, and her foolish niceness.

  “It was a good day.” Addie nodded, leading the way down the corridor. “When I asked her who the president was, she said, ‘Please don’t make me say that name.’”

  “She says that because she doesn’t remember, and she’s hoping you’ll think she just doesn’t like whoever is in office.”

  “Still, it was a good day.” Addie shrugged. “Besides, who cares what goofball is in office? Nothing ever changes. I work hard every day and I’m still broke.”

  Paige couldn’t argue with that last part. But the fault of her misfortune didn’t lie with politicians. Rather, she was the architect of her own bad luck, no one else to blame. She’d made bad choices. Gotten involved with the wrong man.

  Boy, had she paid for that mistake.

  They stopped outside the door of room number eleven. “The med nurse gave her a sleeping pill at nine,” Addie said. “She might already be out.”

  “If she’s having trouble sleeping, hot herbal tea with milk usually does the trick.”

  Addie shook her head in a slow swish. “We tried that. She wakes up in the middle of the night and keeps trying to get out of bed.”

  “Oh dear.” Paige made a mental note to talk to the doctor.

  Addie knocked lightly, and then pushed open the door. “D
on’t stay long. It’s almost ten.”

  “Thanks for letting me see her this late.”

  “No prob.” Addie went on down the hall and Paige eased into her grandmother’s room.

  Grammie MacGregor was propped up in bed; the bedside lamp above her head was on, reading glasses riding the end of her nose, an infamous tabloid magazine clutched in her hands. The pages curled from many readings.

  Her snow-white hair stuck straight up in the back, the bedcovers dropping catty-cornered. On the bedside table, the Christmas cactus Paige had brought her on Thanksgiving was blooming.

  “Well, well.” Grammie set the magazine aside, pushed her reading glasses up on her forehead, and broke into a wide grin. “Look what the cat blew in.”

  Paige didn’t bother to tell her that she was mixing her metaphors. The fact she was even attempting metaphors was a good sign.

  “Hey, Grammie.” She moved to the bed, bent to kiss her grandmother’s forehead, smelled lemon cough drops and Vicks VapoRub.

  Grammie reached up to cup Paige’s cheek. “You look exhausted, sweet pea.”

  “Just finished my first day on the job at the Twilight Playhouse.”

  “And you still came by to see me?” Grammie clicked her tongue, shook her head. “You should be in bed.”

  “Can’t go to sleep without seeing my most favorite person in the whole world.” Paige straightened the scrambled covers.

  Grammie yawned.

  Paige leaned over and eased the reading glasses off her grandmother’s forehead.

  “Wait,” Grammie protested, yawned again. “I wasn’t finished reading my paper.”

  “You can hardly hold your eyes open.”

  “I gotta find out who is Wayne Newton’s secret new love.”

  Paige picked up the gossip magazine with the headline “Wayne Newton’s Secret Mistress.” “Grammie, this magazine is a year old.”

  “Did I ever tell you that I once dated Wayne Newton?”

  She had, but Paige didn’t interrupt her.

  “It was 1965.” Grammie’s eyes turned dreamy. “Vegas was in its heyday and I was dancing in the chorus at the Flamingo.”

  The old photograph on the dressing table featured Grammie draped over a chaise longue wearing sequins and pearls and pink flamingo feathers attached to her costume like wings. She looked both sweet and sultry. Her hair was dyed platinum blond, her fingernails and lipstick the color of bing cherries. When she was a kid, Paige would gaze at the picture and sigh because she knew she’d never be that adventuresome, glamorous, or exotic.