Counterfeit Cowgirl (Love and Laughter) (7 page)

“Better than most I’ve met.”

He snorted. “You’re from California then?” he guessed.

“No. Still Colorado, I’m afraid.”

“Uh-huh. Nate,” he said, turning his attention to his brother who was still on the floor, “we got a calf coming backward.”

“I think I broke my tailbone.”

“Well, get off it and come help out. She’s been at it awhile.”

“First calfer?”

“You got it.”

“God help us.”

“You had breakfast?”

“I watched the eggs fly past my head. That count?”

“You bet. Hannah, I need you to go to town.”

“What?” she managed.

“The 4240 won’t start. Can’t feed without it.”

“Forty-two-four-oh?”

“The John Deere. Go to Ellingson’s in Valley Green. Tell them I need a new hose.”

“Ellingson’s?”

“Yeah. Here,” he said. Digging around in the overflowing laundry basket, he pulled out a scrap of paper and the stub of a carpenter’s pencil. “I’m writing down the number of the part I need. Ellingson’ll know what to do. Take the Jimmy.”

“Jimmy?”

“My black pickup.”

“Pickup?”

“You know how to shift it into four-wheel drive?”

“Four-wheel drive?”

“Did you split a personality with a myna bird or something?” Tyrel asked, scowling at her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised his hand.

“Just…get your coat and I’ll show you.”

He led the way through the snow to a tan, steel building on the north side of the house. Pushing open a huge, sliding door, he flipped on the lights and made his way between several pieces of huge unidentifiable machinery to a black pickup truck.

“Get in,” he said, pulling the door open.

She stepped past him and climbed into the truck. It was built like a tank.

“Shifts just like a car,” he said, “only here…” He reached
past her to a lever on the floor. His arm brushed her knee. His words stopped.

Her breath stopped. Their gazes met.

“You, um…” He cleared his throat. “You smell pretty good.”

For one rash moment she considered apologizing for the eggs, the microwave, the kitchen fire. But then she came to her senses. She raised one brow.

“You smell good, too. For a bull in heat,” she said.

He snorted and pulled back. “Honey, bulls don’t come in heat. But even if they did, you could freeze ‘em up with one flick of your tongue.”

“Fiddle dee dee.”

“I’d tell you to be careful in town, but I think I’ll just issue an all-state warning to the male population. Careful, freezer burn on contact.”

She opened her mouth to retaliate, but his face was too close and his eyes as dark as fresh ground coffee. Suddenly she could think of nothing to say.

“How…how do I shift it?” she asked, pulling her gaze away.

“Figure it out,” he said, drawing back as if for safety’s sake. “You’re a smart girl.”

Her breath stopped. “I am?” The words came unbidden. Not in two-plus decades of life had anyone ever told her that.

“Yeah, you are,” he said. They were staring at each other again. But he ripped his attention away and began digging around in his jeans pocket, came up with a note. “You just
act
like an idiot,” he said. “Here. A list of groceries we need. We’re going to have to give Daniel a calcium IV if we don’t get him milk soon.”

She tried to jerk herself back to her senses, but they were still reeling.

He prodded her arm with the list. “You’ll find this stuff at a grocery store.”

“I know how to buy groceries.”

“Well, good. That’ll be a first then.”

She gritted her teeth. “What do I use for money?”

“Oh. Here.” He drew out his billfold and pulled out several twenties. “You’re the cook. Get whatever you need.”

She raised her brows at him. “A little short for an airline ticket, isn’t it? But wait. I’ve got the
Jimmy.
”

His face turned serious. Maybe even a little pale. And as she drove through the brightening day, the memory of his dire expression made her smile.

T
HE TRIP TO
V
ALLEY
G
REEN
was uneventful. Boring, in fact Hannah flipped on the radio. Country music blasted out at her. Wincing, she trolled for stations. But her only alternatives were the grain futures and a detailed report on the health of the residents of Shady Tree Rest Home. Snapping off the radio, she cruised for a while, but finally switched it on again and let someone named Vince Gill croon at her from a dusty speaker.

Valley Green was neither green nor much of a valley. But Hannah had to admit the white, tree-dotted slopes had a sort of serene beauty. The snow-spattered sign just outside city limits boasted 12,845 people.

Ellingson’s Farm Deere and Implement was not hard to find.

Only one employee stood behind the counter. Still in his teens, he was fighting a losing battle against acne and a tendency to let his jaw drop open when he looked at her.

She offered him the smile she used to charm peasants and handed him the note. Still, he didn’t focus on the paper.

“I need one of those,” she said, tapping the slip.

“Oh. Yes, ma’am,” he said, and catapulting back to the business at hand, turned too quickly and ran smack into the wall behind him. Rubber belts of various sizes showered down like acid rain.

After that, things went more smoothly, but then came the grocery store.

Hannah swallowed. Regardless of her words to
Tyrant
Fox, she didn’t know the first thing about shopping for groceries.
She could shop for dresses. She was good with shoes. And she was hell on wheels when looking for hats. But
groceries…
That was Maria’s department. Or maybe it was Natalie’s.

Glancing at the list, Hannah began wandering down a narrow aisle. It wasn’t a big store, and yet…

Where did one find peaches? Peaches. She scowled, pattered around and eventually came to a sign extolling the virtues of fresh produce. She regarded the refrigerated shelves. Produce, possibly, she thought. But fresh? Highly unlikely. Picking up one of the smattering of strawberries, she scowled at its faded, wrinkled face before dropping it back down. There was not a peach to be seen. And right now she’d just about die for a papaya. But she supposed she’d have to fly to Hawaii for that. And until she won this current bet, her flying days were through.

“They call these fresh?” said a gravelly voice beside her.

Hannah looked down on a bent head. The woman beside her barely topped four feet tall. Dressed in immaculate white pants and a down coat big enough to protect a Clydesdale from the bitter elements, she raised her face to glare myopically at an orange.

“He calls this a citrus!” complained the tiny woman. “I could grow better oranges on my Christmas cactus.” She had a face like a dehydrated apricot.

Hannah didn’t even attempt a smile. “Might you know where I could find peaches?” she asked.

“Peaches!” The woman reared back as if zapped by a cattle prod. “Here?” She snorted. “You won’t find no peaches here.”

Hannah scowled at her list. “I was told to buy peaches.”

The old woman scowled. Her features turned from wizened to frightening. “Who told ya?”

Hannah considered that an instant. “A barbarian.”

The woman’s laugh sounded like a road grader on a bad day, the effects of a cigarette habit cured too late. “A cowboy, huh?”

Now Hannah did smile. The real thing. Straight from the heart. Here was a kindred spirit. “Yes. You might call him that.”

“He didn’t mean for you to get no fresh peaches. He meant canned.”

“They can them?” She shivered. “How awful. Where might I find them?”

The old woman chuckled again. “You’re not from around here, huh?”

“No.”

Silence as the woman stared up past her bifocals.

“I’m, um…” A lie didn’t seem smart, or even safe with a woman like this. “I’m from a lot of places,” Hannah said.

“Ahh. What’s your name?”

“Hannah.” There comes a time when only a lie will do. “Hannah Nelson.” She extended her hand, gloved as it was in lambskin cuffed with silver fox. “And you?”

“Mrs. Puttipiece,” said the tiny person, reaching out a leathery hand. “Widow Puttipiece. Pansy’s my Christian name.”

Pansy Puttipiece. She must have really loved her husband to marry into that name. And she’d thought. “Hannah Nelson” was bad.

They shook hands. Pansy’s grip was as delicate as a road mender’s.

“Come on,” she said, still carrying the slandered orange.

Hannah followed her slightly bent figure along the dairy section before turning right.

“Here’s the canned department.”

Hannah gazed in flummoxed wonder. “They have an entire department devoted to abused fruit?”

Pansy chuckled. “You got your Libby’s, your Del Monte, your Dole.”

“Which is best?”

A shrug. “Canned fruit’s all right for Jell-Os and the like. Makes pretty fair muffins. And cowboys can manage to eat
’em straight outta the can. But when I make my tarts and such, I gotta have fresh.”

“You bake fresh tarts?” She was beginning to salivate like Pavlov’s dog. “By yourself?”

“My Peter—Melvin!” she barked suddenly.

Beside Hannah, a tall, stooped-shouldered man stopped as if shot. She turned to watch his face turn red, and his paunch disappear as he straightened to face the widow.

“What is it, Mrs. Puttipiece?” he asked as if pained.

“What is it? It’s this thing you call an orange. This ain’t no orange. It’s a sad excuse. I need my fruits and—”

“Listen here, Mrs. Puttipiece, you can’t come in here every day complaining about my produce,” said Melvin, leaning toward her. “My oranges is just fine.”

Pansy reared back as if struck. “At thirty cents apiece. I can’t afford no thirty cents on my security check. For thirty cents I could feed caviar to the king of England.”

“It’s thirty cents and it’ll stay thirty cents!”

“Then I’ll be back tomorrow and we can discuss it again,” she said, stretching up on her toes so that their noses nearly met. “Since my Peter passed on I got all the time in the world.”

Melvin opened his mouth, gritted his teeth, and said, “Twenty cents then?”

Settling back on her heels, Pansy nodded. “That’ll do me fine.”

Melvin huffed, then stormed off.

Hannah stood in dumbfounded amazement, then catching Pansy’s eye, she said, “Mrs. Puttipiece, I have a proposition for you.”

T
Y PACED AROUND
the diameter of the living room one more time. “Where the hell is she?”

“Don’t know,” said Nate, and strummed a chord on the guitar he was holding cradled on his lap. “You in a hurry to lose that bet we made?”

“It’s past noon. I shouldn’t have let her go alone. I should
have showed her how to use the four-wheel drive. Dammit! She could be stuck somewhere and freezing to death right now.”

“Freezing to death?” Nate struck a G chord and hummed a few notes. “It’s twenty-five degrees out there. Near tropical.”

“Wearing that little scrap of leather she calls a coat with her head bare and—”

“Shit, Ty, relax,” Nathan said. “Keep hyperventilating like that and you’re gonna pass out. Hey. That’s it. I watch her walk across the room…” he sang. “No, wait. I watch her from across the room. The feelings nearly make me swoon.”

“Shut up, Nate.”

“Hair as bright as harvest gold,” he crooned. “I’d give my very soul to hold—her in my arms for one sweet night. To see her face fill up with light. To feel her sun-kissed satin skin. But I’ll not risk my heart again.”

“Nathan, shut the hell up!” Tyrel yelled, then, hearing the door open, he swung toward it. “It’s about damn time, Hannah…” he began, then stumbled back a pace as an old woman entered with a bag of groceries.

She was about two feet tall and had a face like a dried apple.

“Hannah,” he said, “you shrunk.”

“Listen, young man.” She glared up at him. “So long as I’m employed here, you’ll not be taking the Lord’s name in vain.”

Tyrel felt his jaw drop, and in that instant Hannah stepped through the doorway.

“Gentlemen,” she said, nodding to them. “And I use that term lightly. This is Mrs. Pansy Puttipiece. She’s your new housekeeper.”

“Housekeeper?” the brothers echoed in harmony.

“And cook,” the midget added. “Where’s the kitchen?”

“It’s in, uh…there,” Ty said, motioning lamely.

Puttipiece strode across the cracked linoleum, then stopped in the doorway and raised her brows into her gray, tightcurled
hair. “That ain’t no kitchen. It’s a national disaster. Looks like you got me here just in time.”

“It’s, uh…it’s usually not this bad,” Ty said, lying badly.

Pansy snorted, then disappeared into the bowels of the kitchen.

“Um…Miss Nelson, can I talk to you a minute?”

“Certainly, Mr. Fox,” Hannah said, meeting his gaze dead-on.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.

“Hey! Watch your language!” roared a voice from the kitchen.

“Yes…yes, ma’am,” said Ty, then lowered his voice and tried again. “What the…” He glanced toward the kitchen. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You told me to get whatever I need,” she explained, her tone perfectly unruffled. “I got what was needed.”

“If I’d just wanted someone to do a little work around the house I got a hundred women who would beg to do the job.”

“Really?” Her left brow rose to a surprising height. “The pork queen, maybe?”

“She’s a pork princess, and she’s not the only one I date.”

“Really? Any of them human?”

“You—”

“Ty…Ty,” Nate interrupted. “You’d do best to stick to the subject.”

Tyrel scowled down at his brother then raised his glare to Hannah. “I can’t afford a housekeeper. And even if I could I wouldn’t hire
her,
” he whispered. “She’s a hundred years old.”

Hannah smiled like the proverbial cat. “Believe me, Mr. Fox, she’ll do the job I hired her for, and she’ll save you money doing it.”

“Really!”

“Really.”

“And what do
you
plan to do? Sit around and polish your toenails?”

“I don’t polish my toenails, Mr. Fox. I buff them. And I believe you hired me to care for your stock.”

Exasperated, Ty glanced at his brother. Nate shrugged and strummed a chord. “I never do know what to say,” he crooned, “when she looks at me that way. The urge to kiss her—”

“Shut the hell up!”

“Hey!” yelled Pansy.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said Ty, then continued, “All right, Ms. Nelson, you want to be just another hand, you’ll be just another hand. No more pussyfooting.”

“No more pussy,” Nate crooned.

“You’ll feed stock. You’ll clean yards. You’ll take your night shifts.”

“Whatever you say,
Mr.
Fox,” she said.

“Yeah.” His anger deflated slightly.

“But I can never stay mad,” sang Nate.

“You’ll have to have some decent clothes,” Ty said. “Here.” He led her to the hall closet and dragged out a pair of camel-colored insulated overalls. “They’re mine, but they should do the job all right.” He almost grinned when he said it, because he was five inches taller and outweighed her by seventy pounds, even when he was doing his own cooking. But, hey, the uglier she looked, the better he’d sleep.

Pushing the overalls into her hands, he stepped back a pace. “You ready to work now, Ms. Nelson?”

“Ready when you are,” she said.

And the day began.

B
Y DARK THEY HAD
cleaned the horse barn, fed everything that was breathing and once again bedded the cattle shed.

By seven o’clock Hannah had fed Daniel twice and taken on chores that hadn’t been thought of since fall. Still the woman didn’t slow down.

She was dressed like a tan snowman. Wearing a man’s
billed cap that stuck out from under a faded red hood, she slogged from one job to the next like a bullheaded linebacker.

Ty drooped against the barn doorjamb for a moment, watching as she shoveled out a gate.

“Yeah,” Nate said, gazing through the doorway as he passed by with a calf in his arms, “I think you’re wearing her down all right The ice princess on her knees. Pretty soon she’ll be kissing your—”

“Shut the hell up, Nate,” Ty said. “If I want to know what she’ll be kissing, I’ll sure enough ask you.”

“Well, she sure as hell won’t be kissing you.”

“You’ll see,” said Ty.

Nate chuckled, and whistling a tune he called “Old Dogs and Idiots,” sauntered off toward the south end of the barn.

By 7:30 Ty thought he would die and half hoped he would.

“Let’s call it a night,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the wind.

Hannah looked up from where she was dumping a bucket of grain into the bunk for the bulls. “Already?” she asked, and Ty considered strangling her as he dragged himself off to the house.

Stepping inside, he saw that the entryway was clean.

“You’re not planning on wearing them boots in here, are ya?” blasted a voice from the kitchen.

“No, ma’am,” he said, and stepping back onto the porch, left his offensive footgear behind.

Hannah and Nate joined him by the time he reached the kitchen. He stopped, let his jaw drop and his taste buds ached.

The place shone like a fresh-scrubbed milking parlor and smelled like culinary heaven.

“What’s cooking?” he asked, feeling weak.

“Fried chicken, green beans and baked potatoes.”

“How much am I paying you?” Ty asked.

“Six bucks an hour plus free board till I get this place fumigated,” she said, looking belligerent.

“If I marry you, will you stay forever?” Nathan asked, looking dreamy.

“There’ll be none of that kind of talk!” the widow ordered, but when she turned away, her mouth seemed to have almost turned up. “Sit down.”

They did so eagerly. Even Hannah was silent for once, and when the food was delivered all that could be heard was reverent chewing.

Somehow Hannah had become positioned to Ty’s left, just inches away. Once the hardest edge of his appetite had been sated, he noticed her proximity like forbidden fruit.