The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride (8 page)

She looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too. For both of us. They left big boots for us to fill.”

***

Her small hand felt fragile in his, as if it would break like her heart if he squeezed too hard. He swallowed the lump in his throat and changed the subject. “So did the old girls bitch and argue the whole way into town?”

He could feel the tension leaving her body slowly.

“They told me about Jeremiah. They have secrets like little school girls, and they whisper a lot.”

“Jeremiah and I are really good friends. We were together a lot in the summertime when I came to the ranch. Dotty worked for Nana some back then because when school was out she didn’t have a job and Jeremiah always came with her. When he got old enough, Grandpa put us both on the summer payroll. And they always whisper and tell secrets. It’s just the way they are.”

As if on cue, the rain stopped, the clouds moved on to the south, and the sun lit up the inside of the van.

“Looks like the rain is over,” he said.

Using the back of his hand, he brushed the last of the tears from her cheeks. “And they told me about why Dotty lives at the ranch.”

“That’s a good thing for her and for Nana. She needed someone to need her, and Nana needed someone to boss and keep her company. Want to go to McDonald’s and get a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“I’d love one,” she whispered.

“I’ll drive. When the ladies call we can swing back by here and I’ll get my truck.” He nodded to his truck parked right beside the van.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“I didn’t. I drive past here on the way to the tractor supply and saw the van. Thought you might have had some trouble, so I stopped to check.”

He hit the button and the side door slid open. He swung his feet around, set his boots on the ground, and carried her around the van to the passenger’s side where he settled her into the seat. Then he trotted around the back of the van and crawled into the driver’s seat.

“Does it take long before the numbness goes away?” she asked.

“A while, and it’s not in an instant. One day you’ll just wake up and it will be filled with memories that are good rather than sadness,” he answered.

“Thank you, Greg.”

“You are welcome, Emily.”

“The ladies told me about the intervention to stop Dotty from drinking and all about how they were kind of like mail-order brides, except Clarice,” she said.

“I guess that was kind of like the forerunner of all this eHarmony.com and all that stuff today. Women wrote. Men proposed and they got married. Nowadays it’s text, call, and then get married.”

He parked as close to the McDonald’s entrance as possible and hustled around the van to open the door for Emily. He ushered her to the counter with his hand on the small of her back.

It didn’t feel right to be so sexually attracted to a man when she was grieving, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Her skin was tingly, her face flushed, and her breath shallow. It was a pure wonder that another lightning bolt didn’t strike her dead right there under the dollar menu at the McDonald’s checkout counter.

“Two coffees, one black,” he told the lady taking orders and then looked down at Emily with a question in his eyes.

“Just black for me too,” Emily answered.

“Did they tell you why she drank?” He carried two full cups toward the nearest booth.

Emily nodded. “Because her husband died.”

He waited for her to slide into one side before he slipped into the opposite one. Their knees touched under the table, but he didn’t move and neither did she.

“They’d been married more than fifty years. They never had any kids of their own. Probably a good thing since she had to work to support them both, and she did a good job of it. Worked in the kitchen at the school until she retired and for Nana in the summertime. Then Jeremiah grew up and moved away and her husband died. She hit the bottle pretty hard until Nana, Rose, and Madge took charge. Nana brought her to the ranch and put her to work full-time, and Jeremiah came home from Conroe and sold the trailer. He didn’t want his momma to ever go back to that place because he was afraid she’d drink herself into the grave. He says that Nana saved Dotty’s life when she gave her a purpose in life. He thinks that as long as Dotty had to provide for her husband and him that she was alright. It was when she wasn’t needed that things fell apart.”

“Sounds like he’s a smart man.”

Greg nodded. “Real smart.”

***

She looked across the table and reached out her hand. “Give me your glasses. There are rain smudges on them.”

He handed them across the table and she blew warm breath on each lens before wiping it clean with a McDonald’s paper napkin. “There, that’s better.”

“Thanks. I wish I could wear contacts, but my eyes are shaped funny. I could have that surgery, but I’m a big chicken when it comes to needles, so I’ll just wear my glasses.” He put them back on and took a sip of coffee. “Besides, there are some things I’d just as soon not see real plain and I can always take them off.”

“Too bad we don’t have life glasses that we can take off and put on at will. When we had them on they’d show us what we needed to do with our lives and help us make hard decisions,” she said.

He raised his coffee in a toast and nodded. “Amen! You invent them and I’ll pay for the patent. We’ll make a fortune.”

She touched her cup with his and they both sipped at the same time.

Yesterday they’d had a make-out session like a couple of high school kids. And today she’d mourned her grandfather all curled up in his arms during a vicious thunderstorm. If she believed in reincarnation, she’d swear that they were both old souls who had known each other in a past life.

Right then she would give half her ranch for a pair of those glasses that she’d mentioned. She’d put them on and maybe she could get a clear vision of why her grandfather insisted she take some time away from Happy, and why she felt like he was really glad that she was where she was that day.

“Earth to Emily.” Greg grinned. “Your phone is ringing.”

She grabbed it out of her purse and answered without looking at the ID. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be right there.” She touched the screen and tossed it back in her purse.

“They must be all dolled up for the weekend and ready to go home,” Greg said.

“Looks like it,” she said.

“Don’t expect miracles. They’ll look the same, but they’ll have a new spring in their step because they feel all better when they’ve been to see Shelly,” he said. “At least it’s quit raining, so it won’t mess up their hairdos for Sunday. Did Nana tell you that if you live under her roof that you will go to church on Sunday morning?”

She slid out of the booth and he followed her to the door.

“She didn’t, but I’m not surprised. That’s exactly what Gramps preached all the time. When I first went to college I didn’t go home for two weekends just so I wouldn’t have to go to church, but then I missed him and the folks at church so much that I went home the next week.”

Greg chuckled.

She smiled. “You too?”

“Oh, yeah! But don’t tell Nana. She thinks I just came home to raid the refrigerator and get my laundry done for free.”

He drove to the park and walked with her to the van. At the door she turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck. She rolled up on her toes and kissed him hard. He tasted like coffee, smelled like a mixture of shaving lotion and rain, and the kiss came near to frying a hole in the ground.

“Thank you for helping me get through the tears,” she mumbled when she pulled away.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said hoarsely.

Rose was not a hoarder. Everything in her house was well dusted and arranged, which made her a serious collector. A small table flanked every one of the seven rocking chairs in her living room. Each one had a fancy lamp sitting on a snow-white crocheted doily and surrounded by a matching arrangement of ceramic or china ducks, pigs, chickens, fancy miniature shoes, or snowmen. And that was just at first glance. After she’d taken a seat on the sofa, Emily noticed even more collections on shelves, two corner cabinets, and there was even a group of ceramic cats on a pretty knitted blanket under the coffee table.

The coffee table sported a long white table runner and was covered with crystal plates of finger foods: cheese and summer sausage on long toothpicks with cute little green paper fans on the ends, cookies, and crackers spread with a cream cheese mixture and topped with an olive or a tiny pickle.

A pitcher of lemonade and one of sweet tea and eight glasses waited on top of one of those antique pushcarts with three shelves. A pretty crystal ice bucket took up the middle shelf with extra paper plates and napkins on the bottom one.

Seven ladies each claimed a rocking chair, set a colorful tote bag at their feet, and pulled out their craft for the day. Emily folded her hands in her lap and watched Clarice and Dotty’s crochet hooks working in a blur as the ball of white cotton thread bounced around in their bags.

Rose was knitting just as fast as Dotty and Clarice crocheted, but evidently it did not affect her ability to talk. “Clarice, have you explained this to Emily?”

“We have our bazaar the last Saturday in February every year. We make crafts all year, meeting here at Rose’s on Saturday afternoons when we can. It’s not set in stone and sometimes all of us can’t be here, but we try, and ‘I don’t want to’ is not an acceptable excuse. We use the money we make to put into our fund for the ladies’ auxiliary to give a scholarship to one senior girl from Ravenna. Sometimes we can give a five-hundred-dollar scholarship; sometimes we can only do half that much. But it all adds up.”

Rose chimed in when Clarice stopped. “The economy isn’t what it used to be. One year we gave a girl a thousand-dollar-scholarship, but folks don’t come out to a bazaar and bean supper like they used to. I’d love to see the day when we could offer one of our country girls at least a two-year ride.”

“Then make it a bigger affair,” Emily said.

“How?” Dotty asked. “Our mommas did the bazaar before us and probably our grandmas before them. If it could be crocheted, stitched, sewn, or knitted the months comin’ up to the bazaar or baked on the day before, we’ve done it. Folks just ain’t interested in little church bazaars like they used to be.”

“Offer something that people will get all excited about even during a bad economy. Ever thought about an auction in addition to all the things you make?”

Dotty looked up. “What would we auction off?”

Emily’s first thought was a million dollars’ worth of knickknacks from Rose’s house, but she asked, “How much trouble would it be to clean up the sale barn?”

“What are we going to auction? Tractors or cattle?” Clarice asked.

“Cowboys,” Emily said.

All seven rockers stopped moving and she had their undivided attention.

She took a deep breath and went on, “We did this in Happy one time to raise money for a local family when their house burned. Only we did it at the town park because it was in the hot summertime. Cowboys volunteered their time, and at that auction folks bid on the cowboys to work for them for an eight-hour day, and all the money went to the family. Raised enough for a down payment on a really nice double-wide trailer. The next week they were living in it and most of the cowboys had already worked off their debt.”

Clarice clapped her hands. “I love it.”

“We’ve only got two weeks,” Dotty said.

“We could move mountains in two weeks,” Clarice said. “Tell us more, Emily.”

“You could have barbecue sandwiches and chips, and all the ladies could bring desserts. Charge five dollars at the door and the price includes the supper. Then anyone who wants to bid on a cowboy has to buy a ten-dollar fan. You can make those out of card stock and ice cream sticks that you get at the craft store. Put a cowboy’s picture on one side of the fan and a number on the other. That makes even more money. I can print them off the computer. Most of the cowboys will have a usable picture from their ranch websites. Then put out your bazaar stuff for people to buy while they are waiting on the auction. You need a dozen or so cowboys, an auctioneer, and a bunch of tables so people can sit around and talk while they’re eating and waiting and, of course, buying all your beautiful handcrafted items. More folks would be there, so more would get sold, right?”

“And the cowboys? Do they work for eight hours?” Rose asked.

“I saw a movie once where they were auctioning off really rich men in Louisiana.”

“You could make the cowboy go on a date with the lady who buys him, or work eight hours if it’s a rancher who wins. We could make a few posters in the office at the ranch and put them up in all the surrounding areas to draw in the single women,” Emily suggested.

Clarice’s smile got bigger. “I like it.”

Madge raised her hand and waved it around like a little girl in first grade who knew the answer to the question the teacher had asked. “Oh, oh! I’ve got a cousin in Dallas who went to one of those date auctions a few years ago. This famous painter was there and she gave a painting to be auctioned, but then they auctioned the men at the party off and they had to spend the evening with whoever bought them. They could have dinner with them right there and leave with them or whatever. She said it was really a lot of fun, and it brought a lot of money.”

Dotty was nodding furiously and getting into the idea now. “Only instead of a date auction, it could be a cowboy auction and we could tell… well, shit, Clarice, we’re going to have to tell Emily since she’s going to be a part of this. Hell, maybe she could even fill in for Prissy when we get in a jam.”

“Tell me what?” Emily asked.

Clarice nodded at Dotty, and the four ladies exchanged a long look. The air was pregnant with tension while they decided what they were going to do, and then finally Dotty smiled.

“It’s like this,” Dotty said. “We tried to fix Greg up with Prissy when he first came to live on the ranch, but it didn’t work. So we hired her to help us out and we’ve been lookin’ for the right wife for him for more than a year. We’ve got her under one of them gag order things so she can’t tell him.”

Rose took up the conversation. “He’s real busy and he don’t have a lot of time to socialize, so we’re helping him out. Prissy told us to tell him about these dating sites, and he laughed at Dotty when she mentioned it, so we just took things in our own hands. I’ve got the Western Match dating site. It’s my job to be Greg an hour a day and meet all the women who think his profile is wonderful. Prissy helped me set it up, and we made a little book with all that OMG and WTF in it. I about died when I found out what some of them stand for, but God ain’t zapped me dead for writing it yet. I figure it’s not such a big sin if you just use the letters, and in my mind, I always say what the fizzle instead of that naughty word.”

Emily gulped half a glass of tea before she came up for air. Greg would just die if he knew what they were up to.

“And I’m in charge of Christian Mingle,” Clarice said. “Rose put on her profile that Greg is a rancher who is available to single women ages twenty-five to thirty-four. I put on mine that he’s a good Christian man lookin’ for a good woman who loves the land.”

Emily felt her eyes popping dangerously open. Could eyeballs be put back in her head if they fell out in her lap?

“It’s secret and nobody can know. We call each other every day and report on the women who look good to us,” Rose said. “If you tell, Clarice will fire you on the spot.”

“She won’t tell. She’s one of us now,” Clarice said.

“Well, we could make her raise her right hand and put the other one on the Bible and swear to God,” Dotty said.

“It isn’t necessary. What is said at bazaar meetings stays at bazaar meetings, and anyone who tells, God just strikes them dead on the spot,” Madge said. “I’m in charge of Farmers Only. The women who throw up their profiles when I’m Greg are supposed to know about farmin’, but some of them are just flat-out lyin’. It ain’t very many who I’d bring out here to meet him.”

Emily was still speechless when she looked at Dotty.

“I got Plenty of Fish. Hell, I don’t care if they are ranchers or Christian. We can bring them to Jesus and make them ranchin’ women. I just want to have a bunch of them so I can choose which one might work as a wife.”

Rose nodded toward the tea and lemonade. “Emily, would you be bartender and bring us something to drink? Now, whoever buys the cowboy gets him for the evening, right? So we’d need to have the auction at, say, six o’clock? And are we going to tell about it on our dating sites so Greg can have lots and lots of women bidding on him?”

Emily filled seven glasses and handed one to each of the ladies. Then she picked up the lemonade in one hand and the sweet tea in the other. Her hands were shaking so bad that she gripped the pitchers until her knuckles turned white.

Clarice pointed at the lemonade when Emily crossed the floor toward her. “Let’s each invite our top four ladies and open the doors at four for the bazaar. Serve barbecue at five and then have the auction at six. How much do you think Greg will go for?”

“Or Mason? I can talk him into it for sure. Hey, if we find Greg a wife, then we should get Prissy or Emily to help us make a profile for Mason. We could be the marriage angels of Fannin County,” Rose said.

The next lady pointed at the tea. “Oh, my nephew, Carson, has been trying to outrun one lady over in Savoy for months. I bet she’d pay big bucks to own him for the whole evening. This is a great idea, Clarice, and if we find a wife for Greg, I’d sure be tossing Carson’s name in the hat for y’all four to work on next year,” another said. “We’ll all come about noon and help set up things, and we’ll stay and help clean up afterward. I bet we can offer a two-year scholarship this year, and more folks will turn out if it’s on Lightning Ridge rather than in the fellowship hall at the church.”

“Hmmph!” Madge went back to her knitting. “Folks think if they walk into a church religion is going to jump out from the corners and attack them.”

“Ain’t it the truth.” Rose nodded.

Clarice set her glass on a cute little paper coaster on the table beside her. “I love this idea. And y’all can help set up, but the hired hands can clean out the barn and tear it all down afterward. We’re too old to be hustlin’ folding tables and sweeping down cobwebs. And Max can be our auctioneer—that way we won’t have to be out any money paying one. He does that for our cattle sale in the fall. Doors open at four with our wares on display, and that includes the cowboys for sale. They can all be sitting in a chair in the middle of the sale ring. We won’t make them stay in stalls. At five the auction starts and whoever buys that cowboy has to buy his supper. She owns him for the night. What do y’all think of that?”

“Great idea, Clarice,” Emily said.

Lemonade lady followed Clarice’s lead and set her glass to the side and picked up her embroidery. “Hey, y’all want to have a dance too? I got a niece I can get to play for free. She and her band gear up on Saturday night just to practice when they don’t have a real job. They can practice for a crowd as well as in her barn. And Emily, let me introduce the rest of us to you. I’m sorry I didn’t think to do it before now. We’ve all heard so much about you that we felt like we knew you, but I forgot you didn’t know us. I’m Ivy. That lady working with the pink baby yarn is Edna, and the one beside her is June. We’re glad you are working for Clarice. If you stay around these parts we’ll have to entice you into the auxiliary. We need new blood and new ideas.”

Dotty talked as she worked. “Is there some way we could make the cowboy give us money for the dances?”

“How about we don’t have the auction until the end of the evening and the ladies with the fans have to pay a dollar a song to dance with them all evening?” Madge said.

“I like that. It’ll make even more money.” Clarice’s eyes twinkled. “The auction will close out the bazaar. The cowboys all sit in the sale ring when the band starts playing and they only dance with the ladies who pay their dollar. Only the women with a bidding fan can dance with them.”

“Kind of like one of them speed dating things on television, only it’ll be speed dancin’.” Madge nodded.

Emily returned the pitchers and sat back down. By the end of the afternoon, they’d have it all worked out and some lucky high school senior girl would wind up with a full scholarship from the ladies’ auxiliary that year.

“And what does the lucky girl get who wins the bid on her cowboy? It will be too late for a date with them at that time of night,” Emily asked.

“A date the next Friday night. She gets to plan it and he has to pay for it,” Edna said.

Emily figured it out in her head. If the bazaar was held on the last Saturday night in the month, then the cowboy dates would be on the last day of February. She’d told Taylor when she drove away from her ranch that she’d be home by the first day of March. If she had enough money to outbid at least sixteen dating site women plus all the other ladies in the area would be the billion-dollar question.

***

Clarice was rereading one of the letters she’d written to Marvin when she heard a familiar knock on her door. Two short raps followed by three speedy ones.

“Come in, Dotty,” she called out.

Dotty carried two cups of coffee on a tray into the room and set them down on the end table beside Clarice’s rocker. “Reading them again, are you?”

“Thank you. After all that nibbling at Rose’s place, I’m ready for coffee. And yes, I’m reading again. It’s a good thing that I didn’t buy a bus ticket to go see him. I was so young and naive, and he was so romantic. He could have sweet-talked me into believing anything.”