The Sweet Spot (24 page)

“Oh, Bella, I’m so happy for you.” Char ignored the tiny needle of pain somewhere
around her heart. “I can help with the plans. I know the owner of the Elks Lodge in
town.”

Bella shook her head. “This time I want intimate. Here, on the ranch, with just Russ,
me, the priest. And you and JB as witnesses, if that’s okay?”

“I can’t speak for Jimmy, but I would be honored.”
Char sniffed back tears. “God, I know it’s sappy, but I love happy endings.”

“They do still happen, Charla.” Bella hugged her hard. “I have one more favor to ask.”

She took Char’s hand and led her to the huge country kitchen. “It would be such crime
to waste all this.” She touched the apron. “And this. Would you teach me to cook?”

Char laughed at her friend’s worried frown. “Bella Donovan. If a city girl like you
can learn to cut a calf, you can certainly learn to cook! I’ll make you a deal. You
call your grandma, have her send out a passel of her recipes. That way I can learn
Italian cooking too.”

“That’s a great idea. In fact, I bet when I tell Nonna, she’ll insist on a trip out,
and she’ll teach us both.”

“You’re not getting off that easy. There’s one more thing.” Char felt blood flood
her cheeks and rushed on before she could chicken out. “Would you teach me that strut?”

Bella cocked her head, but the doorbell chimed, sparing Char more embarrassment. With
a wicked smile, Bella strolled, hips rolling as if on casters, all the way to the
door.

Jane Buxton stood on the other side of the screen, a wine bottle resting on either
ample hip. “A little bird flew by and told me you were moving in today. I’m here to
help.”

Bella stood in the doorway, mouth hanging open.

Char reached around her to push the screen door wide. “Come on in, Jane. Forgive the
Yankee. She doesn’t understand southern hospitality.”

Jane walked past them into the box-strewn living room.

Bella muttered under her breath, “More likely a witch flew by on her broom.”

“Hey, don’t knock it. Didn’t I tell you that having Toni Bergstrom the wicked witch
of the Clip ’n Curl as a realtor would be your invitation to Fredericksburg society?”

“Hold the door, Charla Rae!”

They looked up to see three couples coming up the walk, arms full of casserole dishes,
cake keepers, and wine.

The furniture truck had shown up shortly after the reinforcements, and they’d slaved
all afternoon, putting the house to rights. It was long after sundown when they quit,
fell on the food, and opened the wine.

“You know, sometimes you have to take the bridle off, throw the skillet away, and
let the panther scream.” Charla raised her plastic wineglass in a salute to the couples
lounging about the living room.

“I can get behind that.” Sam Baldry raised his beer bottle, his other arm around his
wife. He leaned over to buss her cheek.

“Looks like the panther’s gonna scream at that ranch tonight.” Char slapped a hand
over her mouth and turned a pretty pink. Everyone chuckled.

JB leaned back in the chocolate suede chair, propped his feet on the ottoman, and,
as the conversation flowed around him, studied her. Char had always been a lightweight.
One glass of wine, and anything she’d been thinking fell out of her mouth. It embarrassed
her no end, but he’d always found it endearing.

Char kept such a tight rein on herself. She’d always been that way. She sat on the
leather couch across from him, chatting with Sam’s wife. He enjoyed seeing small signs
of her letting go: her head reclined on the couch’s
high back, one knee rested on the cushion, a stocking foot tucked under her. Catching
Char still was as rare as seeing a hummingbird on a branch, resting. JB’s chest muscles
tightened.
Damn fine-looking woman.

He watched emotion flicker across the face he knew better than his own. He’d traced
those features in the dark, imprinting them on his fingertips and in his mind, so
many times that he could sculpt that face from clay with his eyes closed. The tired
lines still bracketed her mouth, probably always would. After all, what she’d been
through the past year and a half was bound to leave its mark. But her skin had lost
that scary gray cast, and her eyes and hair shone. She was the girl he’d fallen in
love with back in high school. It was as if the years had worn away the superfluous,
distilling her personality down to an essence.

And like any distillation, the result was potent. Char turned, laughing at something
someone next to him said. Her shorter hair swung, brushing her open mouth. A flush
of heat rushed to his groin and up his chest. He swallowed.

She’s no longer your wife.
He crossed an ankle over his knee to give some room in his Wranglers. Maybe not,
but her pheromones still called to him from across a room, touching him places no
other woman’s ever had.

He wanted her. Sexually, obviously, but also in ways he’d forgotten until he found
himself outside her world looking in. He missed the way she used to look at him, a
corner of her mouth lifted in a girl-next-door-centerfold way. He missed the sight
of her dancing in the kitchen when she thought herself alone. He missed having the
home she’d created wrapped around him, giving him strength to go out in the world
and do things.

Char glanced at her watch, straightened, and pulled her shoes from under the couch.

He missed all those things. It was the changes in her that kept him awake, staring
out of the screened walls to the night. She was stronger now. Stronger than before
the accident. Stronger than he’d ever seen her. And he liked it.

It was time he let her know, before some local buck noticed what was right under his
nose.

Char stood and glanced across the room at him with that new, guarded-detached look
that tore him up every time. He dropped his feet from the ottoman and pushed himself
out of the chair.

God, I was blind.
What difference did it make if the whole world looked up to JB Denny if the only
one who mattered didn’t?

They said their good-byes and walked down the porch steps, out of the warm pool of
light, into the dark. When Char stumbled on an unseen lip of sidewalk, he took her
elbow, grateful that, this time, she didn’t flinch away.

“I know better than to have more than a half glass of wine. It’s a good thing you’re
driving.” She chattered all the way to the car about normal things: joy and happy
gossip.

Just like she used to.

He opened her door and handed her in. When she reached for the handle to pull it closed,
he held it, resting his forearms on it and the car hood. Were those butterflies in
his stomach? Must be beer fizz. “Charla Rae, would you go to dinner with me?”

She looked up, her face porcelain pale in the light of the fingernail moon. The night
was so still he could hear the faint yip-yip-howl of a coyote. She regarded him for
what seemed like minutes as he hung dangling, waiting.

“I read in a
Cosmo
magazine at the Clip ’n Curl that when you sleep with someone nowadays, you’re sleeping
with everyone they ever slept with.” Her eyes narrowed. “I think your bed would be
a little crowded for my tastes, JB Denny.”

He reared back, as shocked as if she’d slapped him. “Jesus, Charla. I was only talking
about sharing a meat loaf plate down at the diner.”

The night didn’t hide her flaming blush. “Oh.” She looked down, fidgeting with the
handle on her purse. “I’ll have to think on that, Jimmy.”

C
ome on, Charla Rae, we’re gonna be late!” her dad yelled down the hall for the third
time in ten minutes. How could he remember where they were going, but not what time?
Both she and Rosa had reminded him for the past two hours that Travis’s first competition
didn’t start until four, but it didn’t seem to stick. She closed out of the American
Bucking Bull’s website. At first look, Bodacious’s bloodlines seemed like a good match
for Tricks’s. She’d have to remember to ask Jimmy what he thought about that.

She stood and checked the clock on the bookshelf above the computer. Two-thirty.

“Charla Rae!” Her dad’s strident tone bordered on panic.

She sighed. Well, they’d just be early then. She wasn’t having Daddy working himself
into a dither.

Thirty minutes later, Char turned off the farm road
onto the graveled parking lot of Junior’s domain. Only a couple of battered ranch
trucks sat sidled up to the feed store, but a truck and horse trailer turned in after
them, rolling slowly to the arena. When her dad released his seat belt and pulled
the door handle before the car came to a full stop, Rosa reached from the back seat
to hold his shoulder.

Char put the car in park. “See, Daddy? We’re not late.” She patted his hand.

Rosa said, “Besides, they couldn’t start without
el profesor
.”

Attention riveted on the knot of men behind the chutes, her dad leapt out of the car
and hurried away as fast as his bowed legs and gimpy knee would allow, leaving the
door hanging open behind.

Char smiled. “Helping with Travis sure has perked him up.”

Rosa gathered her massive purse and got out. “JB did a good thing. He gave Ben purpose.
It’s good for a man to have a reason to get out of bed every morning. Even if he can’t
always remember what it is.” She stepped from the car, closed both doors, and followed
Ben.

Char’s mind skittered from the memory of lying in bed, reaching from under the covers
for the meager comfort of Valium. “Amen to that, sister.”

After locking the car, Char skirted the outside of the arena to where metal bleachers
stood empty under a lip of shade provided by the metal roof. She climbed the five
risers to sit at the top on the end closest to the chutes and scanned the crowd of
men for her dad.

He stood with his arm around a fidgety Travis’s shoulders. What was that on Travis’s
head? It looked like a
cowboy hat, only uglier. Jimmy stood alongside, hands in back pockets, listening to
something Travis said. Throwing his head back, he laughed, his teeth flashing white
against his tan. He clapped Travis on the back and strode away, his broad shoulders
showcased in a starched Western shirt. It was tucked into a pair of Wranglers hugging
that tight butt she’d always been sweet on. From deep in her womb, something stirred,
as if awakening. Char put a hand over her stomach to lull the feeling back to sleep.
So what if JB Denny could still make her nether regions twitch from fifty yards away?
Lacing her hands in her lap, she sat up straight. I’m a grown woman. Her good judgment
trumped her body’s wants.

Funny, it didn’t look that way in Bella’s driveway two weeks ago, Charla.

She dropped her face into her hands. Mom could always cut through a smoke screen to
the fire. God, she could have crawled under the car seat that night. She hadn’t meant
the sexual comment about Jimmy specifically, but it sure sounded that way coming out
of her mouth.

As her eyes followed Jimmy’s loose-hipped walk, she twitched again.
Okay, I can admit it; I miss sex.
Sweaty, back-to-her-animal-origins sex that swept through in a wave, leaving her
body spent and her mind gentled. She squirmed on the seat and pried her gaze away
to watch cars pull into the parking lot.

They’d always been relaxed with each other about sex. She remembered one weekend,
when Daddy traveled with Junior to a stock convention. They’d tried their best to
have sex in every room in the house. JB had come up with some pretty inventive ideas.
One night she’d cooked
dinner in nothing but an apron. Well, she’d tried to. They ended up giggling and flour
covered, making love on the kitchen counter in the middle of her biscuit dough.

As much as the sex, though, she missed the intimacy she shared with JB. Sitting silently
at the kitchen table in the morning, sipping coffee, trading sections of the newspaper.
Never having to search for a key, because he always hung them on the peg next to the
back door. Knowing without looking, when he came in the mudroom door, he’d use the
boot-jack to pry off his boots before padding in his socks to the kitchen to say “What’s
cookin’, Baby?”

There’s comfort in knowing someone as well as you know yourself.

Her new life was so precarious. At any time, a prize cow could die or a hay crop could
fail. She was one bad decision, one unlucky break away from disaster. Char propped
her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in one palm. Oh, she knew a relationship
was a flimsy shield against life’s pain. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. But
it would be nice to be half a team in the traces, sharing the yoke of responsibility.
The sweet burden of power is better shared.

Yeah, right. You sound like a Disney movie.

Disaster had hit them like a Kansas cyclone, and instead of her and Jimmy hunkering
down together to weather the storm, it had torn them apart. She’d poked her head in
a Valium bottle, and Jimmy’d lit out for another woman’s bed. Worse yet, a
girl’s
bed. Frozen frame pictures of Jimmy knocking boots with the little blonde shot through
Char’s brain like machine gunfire.

Hearing a rapid tapping, she looked down to see her foot bouncing on the bleacher.
She made it stop.
Besides, I
like being my own woman, working outdoors, not having to ask anyone for anything.
Being my own boss.
The last thing she needed was one more person to take care of.

JB stepped up to a desk on the opposite side of the arena, behind a sound board. She
should have known they’d ask him to announce today’s event. He picked up the mike.

“Test. One, two. Test. Junior, can you hear me?” A fat arm waved from the rapidly
filling yard behind the chutes. Bulls milled in the holding pens, and saddled horses
stood tied to the corral fence. Jimmy’s deep, singing voice flowed from the speakers
as he fiddled with knobs.