Boots and Twisters (13 page)

Yeah, no dieting, stiletto-wearing, frou-frou woman with more hairspray than brains. Lucky was the real deal.

Isaac studied her and his brother as they ate in silence. Tonight he would step up the pace on his goal to woo the fair Lucky into committing to him. He had more charm in his little finger than Trent had in his entire body, and he cared about Lucky. That his brother had taken her in the creek had him scratching his head. Was Lucky like so many other women and preferred the bad boy to the boy next door?

Well, hell. He could be just as bad as the next guy. Lucky wouldn’t know what hit her. Isaac went after what he wanted, and he wanted Lucky for his own.

Chapter Seven

Lucky drove to Temptation on her way to the Ugly Stick Saloon with Isaac and Trent crowded onto the front bench seat beside her. She couldn’t convince them that she was used to doing things on her own, and they insisted they were going to the Ugly Stick anyway. Right. Two nights in a row. They didn’t strike her as big partiers.

Her truck might not be the newest, cleanest, best truck on the road. It coughed black smoke and the engine was sluggish when it started, but it was hers. She didn’t have much left from her life growing up as the daughter of a ranch foreman. When her father had died of cancer four years ago, he’d used up all his savings on doctors’ bills. All he’d had to leave her was the old truck.

“Since you’re going to be early at the Ugly Stick, could we swing by the grocery store? I need razors and shaving cream,” Trent said. “Anything you need, Lucky?”

She needed shampoo and something besides the harsh soaps the men used, but she refused to ask. It would be one more thing she’d need to pay back. At this point she was quickly becoming an indentured servant with the IOUs she was racking up. “No, thank you.”

She parked out front of the grocery store and got out.

“Are you coming in?” Trent asked.

“No. I thought I’d spend the time checking out the town.”

He snorted. “That won’t take long.”

Isaac hooked her arm with a charming smile. “I can show you around if you’d like.”

The man was hard to resist when he smiled like that. “That would be nice.”

Trent grunted, glared at his brother and entered the grocery store by himself.

Isaac proved to be a good tour guide, mentioning the historic buildings, the shops along Main Street, and he gave her tidbits about the people who owned them.

Small, quaint and homey. A community she could grow to love.

In the center of town, they passed a beauty salon called the Shear Safari, decorated like an African savanna with lions, giraffes and water buffalo painted on the windows. A woman waved from inside.

Isaac paused and waited for her to emerge from the salon.

Lucky recognized the woman as Mona, one of the two tipsy women who’d witnessed her knocking Audrey’s truck into the ditch.

“Isaac, honey, who’ve you got there?” Mona hooked her arm through Isaac’s and smiled all friendly-like at Lucky.

Lucky felt a little stab of anger at the way the woman clung to Isaac. Not that she was jealous or anything. After all, she’d almost made love to the man’s brother in a pool earlier that day. She had no claim over the Jameson men. Warmth spread over her breasts and up her neck. Wow. She got hot just
thinking
about them.

Isaac waved toward the woman dressed in leopard-print Lycra stretch pants. “Lucky Albright, this is Mona Daley, our resident beautician.”

“Cosmetologist,” Mona corrected, and held out her hand.

Lucky shook her hand and shifted in her cowboy boots. For the first time ever, she wished she could wear girlie clothes and do her hair like Mona’s.

“How’s Grant doing on the Rafter R since his retirement?” Isaac leaned close to Lucky. “Grant was the best bronc rider on the rodeo circuit until he quit this past year.”

Lucky relaxed. Apparently the woman had a man.

Mona gushed, “He’s lovin’ every minute of it. Although when the rodeo comes back to town, I’m sure he’ll be itching to ride. I know
I’m
loving it. I get
my
itch scratched a lot more often with him at home.” She smiled again at Lucky. “So are you as lucky as your name?”

Lucky stiffened. “No.” She looked away, the pain of too many people hating her for her bad luck rushing in on her. “It was nice meeting you. If you’ll excuse me…” She crossed the street and walked back toward the truck.

A large, lanky, spotted hound dog darted out of the gap between the real estate office and the hardware store and ran right in front of her with what looked like a hunk of charred meat in its mouth.

A woman wearing tailored slacks and sporting gray-blue hair ran after the dog, shaking a long, wicked-looking two-pronged fork at the animal. “Stop! Thief! I’ll kill that dog. I swear I’ll kill it.” She stopped, bent double and wheezed, then gathered herself and ran again.

Lucky didn’t like the livid look on the woman’s face. She followed, sure the dog would outrun the woman, but worried in case it didn’t.

“Wait up, Lucky!” Isaac called out.

Lucky couldn’t. If the dog slowed, the woman would skewer him like a kabob.

“Come back here, you bandit, you poor excuse for a canine,” the woman yelled.

The hound ducked down an alley between buildings on Main Street, crossed a street, then slipped through a gap in some hedges.

“I’ve got you now,” Crazy Lady screamed. “You can’t get away from me.”

Run, dog
, Lucky urged. She glanced over the top of the hedges at the backyard of a three-story home with Grecian columns and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The dog stood beside the pool, tearing at the meat, gobbling it as fast as he could, his ribs sticking out of his sides.

Lucky’s heart went out to the dog. He was hungry.

The woman pushed through the hedges and waved her fork at the animal. “Now I have you. You won’t be stealing food anymore.” She stalked the dog, marching across the pristine lawn, murder in her eyes.

“No!” Lucky couldn’t stand back and let it happen. “He only did what he had to.”

“He’s stolen his last steak.” The woman jabbed with her fork as she backed the dog into a corner where the pool took a ninety-degree turn to a deeper end.

“Mrs. Rutledge, what are you doing?” a man called out from a window on the second floor of the home.

“I’m killing this dog,” she said.

“No, you’re not.” Lucky raced around the woman, blocking her path to the hound. “He doesn’t know he was wrong. He’s thin, he’s hungry and he’s only trying to survive.”

“He’s a stray and should be put down. I’d be doing the town a favor.”

“I won’t let you.” Lucky crossed her arms. “He’s not a stray…” She glanced behind her at the dog that continued to tear into the thick steak, swallowing huge chunks whole. “He’s
my
dog.”

“Then you can pay me for the steak he just consumed.”

“I will.” How, she didn’t know. But she wasn’t letting this woman kill a dog someone had tossed out on the streets to die.

Mrs. Rutledge held out her hand. “I’m waiting for my payment.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Then move aside.” The woman advanced, poking the fork at Lucky.

Lucky swung her arm up in one of the moves her father had taught her to defend herself against unwanted advances from randy men. She knocked the woman’s hand away. The fork flew from her fingers and she teetered on the edge of the pool.

Oh no.
Lucky lunged for her, but missed her hand, bumped her arm and sent her the rest of the way over.

The older woman hit the water with a huge splash and sank like a rock.

Lucky slipped off her boots and dove in after her.

Mrs. Rutledge kicked, thrashed and couldn’t seem to find her way to the surface.

Her eyes stinging from the chlorine, Lucky grabbed the woman from behind, hooked her arm over her shoulder and under the opposite arm and surfaced, bringing her head above water.

Mrs. Rutledge gasped and fought, making them sink below again.

As Lucky surfaced, she spoke in a firm, calm tone. “Stop fighting it. I’ve got you. I’m going to swim to the shallow end. Stop fighting.”

As if she hadn’t heard a word Lucky had said, she continued to kick and struggle. Lucky managed to swim to the shallow end. “It’s shallow here. Put your feet down.”

“I can’t…swim!” Mrs. Rutledge said, her eyes wide, scared.

“You don’t have to. Put your feet down. The water is only waist-deep.”

“Can’t swim,” she muttered, her feet drifting to the bottom. Once she had them under her, she scrambled for the edge, Lucky holding her arm the whole way.

Once she’d climbed up the steps, she collapsed into a lounge chair, dragging in deep breaths and coughing out the water she’d sucked into her lungs.

An older man with gray hair and clear blue eyes ran out of the stately mansion. “Mrs. Rutledge, are you all right?”

“I am, no thanks to this fool!” She pointed her finger at Lucky. “She tried to kill me.”

“No, she didn’t.” Isaac pushed through the hedge. “Dang, woman. I wouldn’t have found you if not for all the ruckus.” He faced the older man and nodded. “Judge Stephens, I got here just in time to see Lucky drag Mrs. Rutledge
out
of the pool.”

“I wouldn’t have needed to be dragged out of the pool if she hadn’t pushed me into it.” Mrs. Rutledge waved her finger, her lips curled back in a snarl. “She tried to drown me, knowing I couldn’t swim.”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t,” Lucky retorted. “It was an accident.”

Mrs. Rutledge pulled herself up to her full height, dripping wet. “Judge Stephens, be so kind as to call the police. This woman should be arrested.”

“Now, Barbara. I witnessed most of what happened from my library upstairs.”

“Then you saw her knock me into the water. You can bear witness to her assault.”

“I didn’t assault her,” Lucky insisted.

“From what I saw, Barbara, you were waving a sharp object. I’m sure she was only defending herself.”

“Defending herself? Against a woman of sixty-seven? Like I could harm anyone.” She curled up on the lounge, making herself look older, feebler than the crazed woman of moments before threatening to kill a helpless dog.

“She was going to kill that dog,” Lucky said.

“Isaac?” Trent burst through the hedges into Judge Stephen’s backyard. “I heard you were in some trouble. Where’s Lucky?” His gaze swept over the two wet women and he did a double take. “Mrs. Rutledge? Lucky? What’s going on?”

A police siren wailed into the neighborhood and stopped somewhere on the other side of the huge mansion.

Lucky moaned.
Not again
. Why couldn’t she just live a quiet life? One where people weren’t quick to judge or place blame.

A sheriff’s deputy rounded the side of the mansion and was almost knocked over by the frightened hound that’d finished his dinner and knew when to hide.

“Catch that dog! He’s a thief!” Mrs. Rutledge screamed. “And arrest this woman. She attacked me.”

The deputy took out a notepad and pen. “Now, Mrs. Rutledge, please explain to me which one was the attacker and which one was the thief.”

“You idiot, you let the dog get away. Call in animal control.”

“Ma’am, we don’t have a separate animal control. I’m your animal control officer as well, and since there is only one of me, which thief or attacker would you like to catch most?”

“Her!” The older woman pointed at Lucky, and then shifted her finger to where the dog had disappeared. “No, catch the dog! He stole Mr. Rutledge’s dinner.”

The deputy glanced around. “I’m sorry, but it seems the animal has disappeared.”

While the deputy took stock of the premises and checked behind bushes, Lucky stood. “I have to get to work.”

“Hold on just a moment, young lady. You’re as guilty as that mangy dog.” The woman pushed to her feet and poked a finger in Lucky’s chest. “Arrest her.”

“On what grounds?” the deputy asked.

“Because I told you to.” Mrs. Rutledge shook her finger at the young deputy. “Billy Joe Frazier, don’t make me call your mother.”

“Ma’am, my mother is on a cruise in the Caribbean. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”

“Don’t smart-mouth me, young man. Arrest that woman. She’s a threat to the community.”

The deputy sighed and glanced at Judge Stephens. “Sir, did you see what happened?”

“I did.”

“Did this woman shove Mrs. Rutledge into the pool?”

The judge frowned. “Well, now. I saw Mrs. Rutledge shaking something at her and the next thing I know, Barbara’s in the pool.”

“See? She tried to kill me.”

The judge frowned and continued, “The young lady dove in after her.”

“To make sure I stayed under,” Mrs. Rutledge lied.

“She sank like a stone,” Lucky said. “I went in to get her out.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rutledge, it’s your word against hers. And since you’re not dead and the judge saw her pull you out, I’ll have to let her go.”