Texas Gothic (3 page)

I shrugged on the shirt, which was dusty and smelled like leather and horse, but I wasn’t particular at the moment. Buttoning it up just enough for it to stay closed, I started running again.

The cowboy brought his horse neatly around to head off Gordita and Taco. “Go right!” he yelled, in case I was an idiot who couldn’t figure out I needed to go the opposite way. “Get your dogs to help!”

The dogs were headed straight for me. I could see the whites of their eyes. Bear, the big, dumb coward, was moving as fast as I’d ever seen him.

I pointed to the house. “Go inside, guys! Go inside and I’ll give you a cookie!”

They knew “cookie,” and they knew that “inside” did not contain livestock. Lila, the smartest of the pack, gave an emphatic bark, and they made for the yard like greyhounds after a rabbit.

Most of the goats skipped after them, except Taco and Gordita. They seemed to consider the horse an awesome addition to their game of who-wants-to-be-barbecue-when-Amy-catches-us.

The pinto appeared to be enjoying the game, too, leaping and turning in the air to round up the stragglers, then working close to the ground, never letting them get around him. The cowboy seemed part of the horse, the way the pair worked together. I was a Texan, sure, but I was a city girl. This was new to me. I stood transfixed by the flex of the young man’s legs, the effortless shift of his weight as he controlled the horse, until the dust became too thick for me to appreciate details, only the overall aesthetic.

Taco and Gordita ran for the gate and I shook myself into action. Waving my arms—and looking, I’m sure, a hell of a lot less graceful than the rodeo ballet—I chased the goats into the yard and slammed the gate closed behind us. At the clang of the latch, the cowboy gave his horse some silent command and the pinto relaxed, blowing a deep breath of satisfaction.

No rest for me yet, not while the herd was chasing the dogs and eating Aunt Hyacinth’s zinnias. I ran to the pen and opened the feed bucket, banging the metal lid like a dinner gong. The goats trotted right in, as if they’d merely been for a stroll in the park. It was almost anticlimactic, in a way.

The cowboy had dismounted and followed me into the yard. He swung the gate of the goat pen closed, allowing me to slip out first. I latched it firmly, then leaned against the board fence, not knowing if I should laugh or cry, or just have hysterics and do both.

The dogs came running, their fear of the goats insufficient to outweigh their need for reassurance. Sadie spun in circles, and Bear, against all reason, wanted me to pick him
up. Lila avoided the crowd and tried to get the cowboy to pet her.

Awkward didn’t begin to cover it. Wrestling with goats and dogs, wearing nothing but a stranger’s shirt over my underwear? If my mother had a crystal ball, she would be on her broom (figuratively speaking) and on her way over in a heartbeat.

Unable to look at him, I busied myself getting Bear and Lila to behave. “Sorry about the dogs. They weren’t much help.”

“They’re completely worthless,” he said, in an exasperated tone to which I could totally relate. “It’s a
shepherd
and a
collie
and a—” He floundered when he got to Bear. “I don’t even know what that one is.”

“None of us do.” I staggered as the hairy lummox bumped the back of my knee. “And they’re not worthless. Lila here, she’s a search-and-rescue dog.” He looked at the border collie trying to climb into my arms like a toddler and appeared unconvinced. I assured him, “Really. They, uh, just happen to be afraid of the goats.”

“Of course they are,” he said, with a long exhale of annoyance. I caught a whiff of spearmint under the stronger smells of leather and dog and dust. “Leave it to crazy Ms. Goodnight to have a bunch of chickenshit dogs on a
ranch
, for God’s sake.”

“Excuse me?” I’d been fixing to say something else. Another apology, another inanity, I didn’t know—the spearmint had distracted me. His tone, however, brought me up short, and my eyes narrowed to reevaluate him in the harsh sunlight.

He had just been pretty decent—gentlemanly, really, giving me his shirt and all. Up close I could see that he wasn’t soft enough to be cute. He was too young to be rugged. (Which was a relief considering the underwear thing.) His eyes were very blue against his tan, and his teeth very white. But his brows were drawn down in a scowl that, even though it was aimed at the dogs, seemed to cover a lot more.

“It’s just typical,” he said, his tone a razor slice of derision, “Ms. Goodnight owning herding dogs that are afraid of goats.”

“You mean as in typically kind of her to give these useless dogs a home?” The overly sweet question should have been a warning, if he’d been paying attention, but he seemed to take it at face value.

“Doubtless.” His softly mocking snort ruined this admission. “She’s a soft touch. I’m sure these dogs had a sob story to tell her. Ms. Goodnight is notorious around here. Everybody’s kooky old aunt.”

“Oh
really
.” My voice painted a layer of ice on the Texas afternoon. Finally it sank in; his eyes flew to my red hair—a family trait—and I saw the flash of “Oh crap” on his face, even before I finished. “I just thought she was
my
kooky old aunt.”

He could have saved himself—apologized, said that he meant it in the nicest possible way. I mean, no one knew better than me how kooky the Goodnights were by any normal person’s standards.

But what he said, with an up-and-down glance that encompassed my bare legs, rubber boots, cherry-covered underwear, the dogs, the goats, and even the cow, was: “Well, that explains a lot.”

This day kept getting better and better.

Fury erased the rapier reply I
wanted
to make. Even sarcasm failed me, and all I had left was indignation. “You have a lot of nerve,” I heard myself saying, like some vapid Victorian heroine, “insulting my aunt like that.”

The accusation seemed to score a hit. His cheeks darkened under his tan, but he didn’t back down.

“Do you know what she tells people about this place?” He gestured toward the house and barn and Aunt Hyacinth’s acres of herbs and plants, and even
that
managed to express contempt. “Why she won’t sell it and move to somewhere she can have a bigger farm and decent staff to help her?” He paused, and familiar dread curdled in my stomach in the beat before he made his point. “Her dead husband doesn’t want her to.”

I knew where this was going, had to keep my head and try to steer away from the shoals. “So she’s sentimental about his wishes,” I said. “Just because some people have a
heart
—”

His snort ratcheted up my blood pressure, nearly drowning out the cautioning voice in my head. “She says his
ghost
won’t let her sell. She talks about him like he’s still living here.”

“So?”
I forced a careless shrug, as if this were the worst of our idiosyncrasies. “Lots of people believe in ghosts.”

“I know.” Sarcasm gave way to real anger, like we were getting to the root of his personality malfunction. “A lot of people now believe there’s a ghost on
our
property, thanks to your aunt. As if we didn’t have enough problems.”

“Everyone’s got problems.” That didn’t excuse his calling my aunt a nutcase. “I fail to see how your ghost is Aunt Hyacinth’s fault.”

“It’s
totally
her fault!” He ticked off the reasons on his fingers, a pompous move that infuriated me even more. “She fed the flames of these idiotic ghost rumors, which only started because we had to build a bridge, which we had to do because she won’t sell her land, and she won’t give us an easement across her back acreage to cross the river there because it messes with the feng shui of her herb farm or something.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I shook my head, my ponytail swinging. Something had short-circuited my normal instinct of self-preservation. Maybe because we were here, on Goodnight property. Maybe because he’d made me so
mad
, I wanted to return the favor, and channeled Phin at her most aggravating. “Aunt Hyacinth would never say that. She doesn’t practice feng shui. She’s a kitchen witch.”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then scrubbed his hands up and down his face. When he dropped them, his gaze had turned scathing.

“I should have known.” He looked me over, and I felt myself flush from head to toe. “From the moment I saw you standing out in the field in your underwear and gum boots, screaming at my cow, I should have known the whole family was crazier than a sack of weasels.”

This was something I’d said more than once. Not the underwear thing, the crazy part. And they
were
crazy, not because they were psychics and potion makers and ghost
whisperers, but because they couldn’t pretend to be normal. They drove
me
crazy, too. But they were
my
family. Only I was allowed to call them nuts, not this stranger who didn’t even
know
me.
Us
, I mean.

“Look, you.” Anger burned off my facade of calm, and I poked my finger at his chest, near but not quite touching, because he was bigger than me and I was new at this. I didn’t yell at people. I was snide, sometimes bitchy, but I’d never gone rubber toe to cowboy boot with a guy and glared right into his steely blue eyes, so close I could see the darker blue flecks in the irises and feel the heat of his—wow, really nicely muscled—chest through his thin undershirt. Not just in my jabbing finger but my whole body, the parts of me that were covered and the parts of me that weren’t.

Damn.

Focus, Amy
. He might not be an axe murderer, but he was definitely an asshole.

“I don’t care who you are,” I said, pushing aside all those distractions. “If Aunt Hyacinth won’t sell to you, it’s for a good reason. Maybe it’s because this ‘us’ you speak of are all as nasty as you.”

“Is that so?” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and shifted his weight so that somehow, without really moving, he was suddenly
looming
over me, as if he could tell how much that bothered me. I didn’t budge, just set my teeth against the urge to either step back or kick him in the shin. “Since I’m so
nasty
,” he drawled, “next time I’ll just leave you to round up your goats alone.”

“There won’t be a next time,” I snapped, “because I’m going to chop down that blasted tree.”

“Tree?” His brows shot down in confusion. “What the
hell
are you going on about now?”

“The goats!” I said, like he was an idiot.

If possible, he scowled even more deeply. “What does the tree have to do with it?”

“The fence!” I flapped a hand toward the pen, losing the battle for simple coherence. “They climb the tree and go over the fence.”

He eased his weight back and peered down his nose at me. “You have some very strange ideas about livestock.”

“Oh my
God
.” I dug my dirty fingers into my hair. “Why are we talking about my stupid goats at all?”

“I don’t know,” he said, more infuriatingly calm the angrier I got. “I just thought maybe you wanted to say thank you for helping you round them up.”

Despite the frustration burning my ears, I
still
felt a rush of shamed heat. Gritting my teeth, I forced a chill into my tone to hide that last degree of mortification. “Thank you,” I choked, “for rounding up my goats …”

I trailed off where I would have coldly put his name, if I’d known it. Downright smug at my forced gratitude, he supplied the belated introduction. “Ben.” He neglected to offer a handshake. “Ben McCulloch.”

“Great, now round up your cows and get off the Goodnight property, Ben McCulloch.”

His fingers tightened on his belt, self-satisfaction vanishing. “Fine. And you just keep away from
McCulloch
property, Underwear Girl.”

“Can’t think why I’d want to go there,” I said, lifting my chin and arching my brows.

Hand on the gate, he said with matching disdain, “I don’t know. To return my shirt, maybe? I’d ask for it back, but I’m a gentleman.”

Past embarrassment, I shucked off the garment in question with reckless fury and threw it at him. Of course,
he
caught it easily. “Thank you for the loan,” I said. “See you on the other side of never.”

“Here’s hoping that’s true.” Shirt balled in his fist, he slammed the gate, so hard the whole fence wobbled. The horse had been placidly cropping grass, and looked resigned when Mr. Personality swung onto his back and kicked him into a canter. It was a matinee western move that would have impressed me if I hadn’t completely, irrationally, irrevocably hated the guy’s guts.

i
n the shower, I soaped my hair with a minty green shampoo from the collection on the shelf, letting the hot water carry away my anger so I could figure out at what point I had totally lost my mind.

Sure, Ben McCulloch had been a jerk (other than lending me his shirt and helping me round up the goats, I mean). But you don’t have a family like mine without developing some defenses. So why had my umbrella of sarcasm so utterly failed me just now? I really didn’t want to think it had anything to do with the blue eyes and the biceps.

Austin, where I’d grown up, was a pretty big city, but
it could also be a bit of a small town if you lived there long enough. Everyone at my school knew about the Goodnights—possibly due to Phin’s blowing up the chemistry lab during her junior year, when trying to enchant the football team’s jerseys for indomitability. Something about batch lots and logarithmic synergism, she’d explained while Mom trimmed off the singed ends of her hair. As if I cared about anything other than having to pass the class now that my last name was mud.

Let’s get this straight. Magic is a fact. When other kids were chanting “Rain, rain, go away,” Phin and I were in the kitchen with Mom, cooking up spells to keep the tomatoes in the backyard from getting root rot. My cousin Daisy’s invisible friends were the children of a pioneer family who died of a cholera epidemic in 1849, and Violet’s crystal collection could cure a headache and pick up Mexican radio if she arranged them just right.