The Cowboy on Her Trail

by Janis Reams Hudson

  The only other alternative to support her theory that he didn’t actually love her, if he wasn’t outright lying, was that he didn’t know his own mind and heart.

  That was much more likely, to her mind. Both of his brothers had married in the past few months. He was wrapped up in the romance of weddings and babies and thought he was in love with her.

  That wasn’t enough for her. She would not take advantage of his kind heart and his sense of family. Those two things were not enough upon which to build a marriage.

  She was going to prove him right, much to her shame. She was going to show her cowardice by leaving town, just as he had predicted. If not for the health insurance coverage she enjoyed by working for her father, she would leave town permanently. But she could not afford to lose her insurance with a baby on the way. She wasn’t that big a fool.

  When dawn came the next morning her eyes were red streaked, red rimmed and swollen. Her morning sickness attacked with a vengeance.

  She was growing to hate that toilet. When she was good and done with morning sickness she was going to have it replaced. Maybe she’d get a pink one this time instead of the utilitarian white she’d been hugging every morning lately.

  A new duffel bag—maybe even an actual suit-case—would soon be in order if she continued to travel so much. She was going to Gayle’s in Stillwater this time. She had called her last night to make sure her cousin would be home and could accommodate her.

  Telling her parents she was leaving had been difficult. Like climbing Mount Everest might be difficult.

  Insurance or no insurance, Blaire had some serious thinking to do about how she was going to raise her child out from under the influence of her parents. She wanted them to be a part of her child’s life, but not every day, and not in a way that gave them the idea that they had some sort of say over the baby. She had no intention of fighting that battle every day of her life, and knowing her mother, it would be a battle royal.

  But first things first, and that meant getting out of town long enough to let her parents and Justin know that she meant business.

  She was putting the last of her things into her duffel when her phone rang. Surprised, she glanced at the clock. It was barely 8:00 a.m. No one she knew would call that early, except family. Or maybe Justin, she thought with a frown.

  She thought about letting her answering machine get it, but finally grabbed up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “Blaire, is that you? It’s Nadine. Nadine White.”

  “Nadine?” They’d been in the same class in high school. Nadine now ran a beauty shop on Main near the grocery store. “What’s up?”

  Nadine laughed. “That’s what I want to know. Have you been outside yet this morning?”

  “Outside? No, why?”

  Nadine shrieked something into the phone that Blaire didn’t quite make out.

  “What? Did you say something about a banner?”

  “On Main. Go! Get your butt out the door and down the street, girlfriend. You won’t believe it! Or maybe you will, but it ’bout knocked my socks off.”

  “Nadine, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m taking about the banner strung across Main Street. Get out there and have a look. Then call me back and tell me what the devil’s going on that I’ve been missing out on.”

  Before Blaire could comment, Nadine had hung up. No sooner had Blaire replaced the receiver than the phone rang again. This time it was Blaire’s mother.

  “Bunny Gonzales just called.”

  “And?” Bunny Gonzales worked at the hardware store and had been her mother’s best friend for years. A call from Bunny didn’t usually cause the quiver of excitement Blaire heard in her mother’s voice, nor did it require that Blaire’s mother report to Blaire.

  “Before you leave town,” her mother said breathlessly, “you need to drive east down Main until you can see the water tower.”

  Blaire frowned. “Whatever for?”

  “Just do it! And take your camera!”

  “Mama, what are you talking about? I’m not going to drive around looking at the stupid water tower.”

  “You will if you know what’s good for you. There’s not a girl alive who won’t be pea green with envy of you. Now you go look, and then you come back here and tell me what you think.”

  As with Nadine, the phone went dead in her ear.

  What was the matter with everyone? Had they all gone crazy? What could they possibly be talking about?

  Truly curious now, Blaire pulled on her coat, then grabbed her duffel and overnight case. There was no sense coming back upstairs just to get them after she’d seen the stupid water tower.

  She was halfway down the outside stairs when she glanced at her car and noticed someone had stuck a piece of white paper beneath her windshield wiper.

  It gave her a shiver to think that someone had been right there at the foot of her stairs during the night and she hadn’t been aware of it.

  For that matter, she thought, coming to an abrupt halt at the foot of the stairs, someone had done a whole lot more than put a piece of paper under her wiper blade. A row of signs, about two-foot square, each on a wooden stake about three feet tall, marched from the foot of her stairs, along the edge of the parking lot, clear out to the street.

  There must have been…six. She counted six signs, all white with red lettering, all saying the same thing:

  JUSTIN LOVES BLAIRE

  Blaire’s heart gave a little leap in her chest. Justin had done this? He had come to her apartment during the night and planted these signs like a teenager trying to impress his girl?

  She slapped a hand over her mouth and blinked. Oh, Justin.

  With knees trembling, she walked around her car and set her duffel and overnighter on the ground. Her fingers weren’t as nimble as they should have been when she plucked the paper from beneath her wiper blade and unfolded it.

  BLAIRE, I REALLY DO LOVEYOU. JUSTIN

  She pressed the note to her lips and looked around frantically, wondering if he was there, somewhere close, watching her reaction to his outrageous deeds.

  “Oh, my God, the banner! The water tower! He wouldn’t!”

  Scrambling in her purse for her keys, Blaire jumped into her car and tore out of the parking lot, completely forgetting the belongings she’d left sitting in the gravel.

  “Justin,” she muttered to herself, “what have you done? What are you doing, you crazy man?”

  She was three blocks from the center of town when she saw the banner. Strung across the intersection three blocks ahead, it was three feet high and white, with giant purple letters.

  JUSTIN LOVES BLAIRE

  Blaire braked to a halt in the middle of the street and stared, her mouth hanging open. Someone drove by and honked, but she couldn’t look away from the banner to see who it was.

  What had she said to him that day of the picnic? You could take out a sign with two-foot letters and I wouldn’t believe it.

  “Oh, my God.” Justin had done her one better. Those letters had to be taller than two feet.

  “The water tower!” Oh, good heavens! She stomped on the gas pedal and ran the red light without a care. There were sometimes more important things than obeying traffic laws, and this was one of those times. Besides, she looked first and there were no cars coming from either direction. This was Rose Rock, after all, not the big city.

  Neither the water tower nor Justin Chisholm let Blaire down. Way up there on the tank at the top of the town’s only water tower, in three-foot purple letters painted over the silver tank:

  BLAIRE, WILL YOU MARRY ME? JUSTIN

  “Oh!” She sat in the middle of the side street that gave her the best view of the tower and felt tears stream down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them and didn’t try. If ever there was a time for tears, this was it.

  “Oh, Justin.” How could she possibly think he wasn’t really in love with her now? What was a woman to do with a man like him? She must have hurt him terri
bly yesterday when she’d essentially told him to get lost.

  “Oh, Justin.” From her purse she pulled out her new cell phone and called the Cherokee Rose Ranch. Emily, Sloan’s wife, answered.

  “This is Blaire Harding.”

  “Blaire! Hello. It’s so good to hear from you. I’ve been meaning to get into town to visit you, but haven’t been able to get away lately. How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing fine. I’m looking for Justin. Is he around?”

  “No, he’s out and about somewhere. I notice his pickup is gone, so there’s no telling where he is. Did you try his cell?”

  Blaire felt like an idiot. He’d given her his cell number. She should have called it first. “No,” she told Emily, “but I will. Thanks.”

  She didn’t give Emily time to say anything. She had to find Justin.

  But he wasn’t answering his cell. She left him a message and asked him to call her back.

  With nothing else to do but wait to hear from him, Blaire drove home, astounded to find her duffel and overnight case sitting in the gravel, where she’d left them. She parked her car and carried her bags back upstairs.

  When a half hour went by and Justin hadn’t called, she tried his cell number again. Still no answer. “Call me, Justin. Please?”

  But another half hour went by and he didn’t call.

  Suddenly Blaire couldn’t wait around any longer. She knew what she had to do.

  She went outside and crossed to the warehouse. From there she loaded the items she needed into her trunk.

  “If Justin calls or comes by,” she called to her father in the warehouse, “tell him I’ve gone on a picnic.”

  “A what?” her father yelled back.

  “A picnic!”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” she called back. “Just tell him.”

  Blaire pulled up at the spot where Justin wanted to build a house and felt her chest tighten. He wasn’t there. She’d been so sure, after she’d driven out of town, that this was where she would find him. That he would be waiting here for her to come and say she was sorry she hadn’t believed him when he’d said he loved her.

  Well, there was no sense sitting around feeling sorry for herself. He wanted to make her sweat, that was his right. She had turned him away how many times?

  She tugged on an old pair of leather work gloves, popped open her trunk, and got to work.

  It was midmorning before Justin worked up the nerve to listen to the voice mail on his cell phone.

  No relief there. “Call me.” What the hell did that mean? Did it mean she believed him now? Or did it mean she was going to take out a restraining order against him if he went near her again?

  Her second message wasn’t much better, but at least on that one she’d said please.

  There was no help for it. If he wanted to know how she was taking his little messages, he would have to go see her, face-to-face. If he could manage to avoid running into anyone he knew. He was going to take a serious ribbing for this, he knew. But if it won him Blaire, it would all be worth it.

  But when he pulled in at the feed store, her car wasn’t there. By God, if she’d left town without even seeing what he’d done—

  Not possible. She would have seen the signs along her driveway and the note under her wiper blade. If she left town after that, the banner and the water tower wouldn’t have mattered. Her leaving would mean she didn’t care.

  Gritting his teeth, he used his cell phone to return her call. When she answered, he asked, “Where are you?”

  “Where am I? Where are you? I’ve been calling all over looking for you.”

  “And I’m calling you back, aren’t I?”

  “You took your own sweet time about it,” she complained.

  “Blaire, where are you?”

  “I’m working on a landscaping project.”

  “Since when are you a landscaper? And what the hell do you plant in February?”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “since I’m planting it at your place, you should probably come see for yourself.”

  “My place? The house?”

  “There’s no house here yet, but I expect there will be before long.”

  Justin’s heart gave a giant thud. “Don’t move. You hear me, Blaire? Don’t you move. I’m on my way.”

  He made the thirty-minute drive in twenty-two minutes. He found her on the other side of the fence, on her knees in the dirt. When he pulled over onto the shoulder and killed the engine, he was gratified by the way she darted through the fence and ran to greet him.

  Perhaps, he thought as she neared, gratified was too tame a word. Overjoyed. Ecstatic. Grateful.

  “Justin!”

  He held out his arms and she ran into them as though she’d been waiting to do just that for her entire life. “Justin, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  He took her by the shoulders and held her slightly away from him so he could see her face. “Do you believe me now?”

  She gave him a smile that wobbled. “How can I not?”

  “And what is it that you believe?”

  Her lips pursed. “Is this a test?”

  “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

  “I believe,” she told him carefully, “that you love me. Maybe as much as I love you.”

  That stopped him. He’d thought she loved him, but she’d never said so. “You love me?”

  “I love you.”

  “Then what are we going to do about it?” he asked.

  “Well, first you should kiss me.”

  “I can do that.” He kissed her, deeply and slowly, until they were both breathing hard. “Now what?”

  “Now, we get married.”

  Justin tried to swallow past the sudden, huge knot of emotion in his throat and couldn’t. “Married?” he managed.

  “Married. If you’re still willing.”

  With his knees turning weak, he leaned back against his pickup and pulled her with him. “I’m more than willing. How fast can we do it?”

  Blaire threw her head back and laughed in sheer joy and relief. She hadn’t ruined things with her fears. He still loved her, and she felt her love for him well up inside and fill her to the brim.

  “We could elope,” she said, “but our families would never forgive us.”

  “You’re right. Two weeks?” he asked. “How does that sound?”

  “It sounds like a lifetime,” she told him. “But I doubt we can get it done any faster. Justin?”

  He pulled her close and hugged her. “What is it?”

  “Will you tell me again?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “You know.”

  “That I love you?” He peered down into her golden brown eyes.

  She nodded. “I need to hear it again.”

  “You’re going to hear it until you’re sick of it, and then you’re going to hear it some more. For the rest of our lives. I love you, Blaire. I love you.”

  “And I love you, Justin. Be my husband, help me raise our child. Help me raise purple pansies.”

  “What?” he frowned and blinked.

  “Pansies.” With a huge grin Blaire motioned toward the flowerbeds she had been planting with his favorite flowers. “Purple ones.” His favorite color.

  Justin swallowed around the huge lump in his throat. “I would be honored to marry you and raise babies—and flowers.”

  Epilogue

  In the end it was three full weeks before they were able to stand before God and their families and exchange their vows.

  The whole county was buzzing about how all three Chisholm men had taken the plunge in a matter of months.

  The general consensus seemed to be that when those Chisholms fell, they fell hard and fast.

  The Chisholms in question could find nothing in that statement to argue against.

  During the three weeks that Blaire spent holding her mother back from putting on a huge production instead of the small ceremony Blai
re and Justin wanted, Justin was not idle. He purchased—with Blaire’s approval—a three-bedroom mobile home and had it moved in near the persimmon grove. He’d purposely left the crest of the hill vacant, so the builders could get to work as soon as Blaire and Justin had picked out the plans for the house they wanted.

  It also being calving season, Justin was kept more than busy. Since the calves didn’t stop being born just because the youngest Chisholm got married, a honeymoon would have to wait. But Blaire was not disappointed by that. She moved into the mobile home and continued to work at the feed store, but only part-time.

  The new house was finished in July, leaving plenty of time for Blaire to outfit the nursery before the baby came.

  As summer drew to a close, Blaire, now covered under Justin’s insurance plan, left the bookkeeping at the feed store once again to her mother, for good this time. Blaire had more than enough to do to put the final decorating touches on the house and get ready for the baby. And think about her new teaching job next year.

  One of the local elementary teachers just found out she was expecting her first child. Come next February she planned to quit working. The school board offered the mid-year position to Blaire, who snapped it up.

  Knowing how much she missed teaching, Justin fully supported her decision to go back to work next winter. By February they might have a handle on this baby business. Maybe.

  The baby chose Labor Day weekend to put in an appearance. The entire Chisholm clan, plus Blaire’s parents and cousins, were on hand for the blessed event.

  Justin proudly played catch during the birth and got to make the announcement: “It’s a boy!” If there were tears in his eyes, that was okay, as they went with the ones in his voice.

  Blaire could barely tell through the sheen of her own tears.

  They named him John, after Justin’s grandfather, and Thomas, after his great-grandfather.

  Upon learning that her first great-grandson was being named for her husband John and her father, Thomas, Cherokee Rose Chisholm cried.

  “Hello, John Thomas Chisholm,” she whispered. “Welcome to the world.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-2943-3

  THE COWBOY ON HER TRAIL