Going Cowboy Crazy (18 page)

Which was weird. Just plain weird. Especially since she looked nothing like the sweet little thing he’d taken to bed the night before. That sweet little thing was long gone. But it didn’t seem to make a difference. Even the new hairstyle and clothes didn’t stop his libido from popping into overdrive or his heart from seizing up.

“… So what do you think, Slate? You think this new route will work on Coolidge?”

Slate blinked down at the clipboard his offensive coach held in front of him. “Yeah, Travis, I think it’s a good one.” He turned away not knowing what he’d agreed to. But it didn’t matter; their quarterback couldn’t hit a receiver on an old route, let alone a new one.

“Hey, Coach!” One of his defensive ends pointed at the stands. “Burl Scroggs says he wants to talk with you.”

Slate glanced over at the huge, angry-looking man who leaned on the purple railing. Great. This was just what he needed. He handed his clipboard to Travis and walked across the field, trying his damnedest to keep a smile on his face as he climbed up the steps to where Burl stood.

Once he was standing next to the man, Slate didn’t beat around the bush. “So? You here to whup my ass?”

“I’d like to, I can sure tell you that.” Burl’s fists clenched as he stepped away from the railing.

“Well, I know how you feel.” Slate took a seat on the lower bleacher. “I wasn’t real happy about you barging in this morning and upsetting Faith.”

A blush ran up from the collar of Burl’s work shirt. “Is she okay?”

“Okay” wasn’t the right word. But since he couldn’t think of a word to describe Faith’s transformation, he ignored the question.

“I don’t blame her for being upset.” Burl sat down and studied his huge calloused hands. “Me and Jenna made a mistake giving that girl away.”

“So why did you do it?”

He lifted his head and stared out at the field. “The only
person we need to explain that to is Faith.” He paused. “If she ever lets us explain.”

“Well, good luck with that, Burl.” Slate rested his elbows on the bleacher behind him, even though his entire body was pulled as tight as a cramping hamstring. “After this morning, it doesn’t look like she’s going to talk to any of us. Which means, the best thing we can do for her is to convince Sheriff Winslow that she’s not Hope so she can get her car back and leave.” Except just thinking about her leaving made his chest hurt.

“Well, me and Jenna don’t see it the same way as you.”

That came as no surprise. It seemed no one in the town saw things the way he did, and he was getting pretty damned sick of it. Maybe he shouldn’t wait to get fired for not winning a state championship. Maybe he should resign as soon as the season was over and head someplace that wasn’t populated with a bunch of crazy yahoos.

“So how do you see things, Burl?” he asked.

“We think Faith needs to stay here—learn about her people. Once she gets to know us, it will be easier for her to forgive me and Jenna and accept us as her family.”

“Accept you as her family?” Slate’s fingers tightened around the cold aluminum of the bench. “Why would she want to do that when you never accepted her?”

Burl glared back over his shoulder. “It had nothing to do with accepting her. We loved her from the first moment we saw her.”

He snorted. “Damn, Burl, you sure have a funny way of showing it. And now you think by keeping her here against her will, that she’s going to forgive and forget?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“It couldn’t hurt?” Slate sat up. “The woman is spitting mad at you for giving her up at birth and me for not mentioning I dated her sister. What do you think is going to happen if she finds out we’re in cahoots with Winslow? You think that’s going to make her like us, Burl?”

“Well, she doesn’t have to find out. It’s not like we made Sam take the car. Hell, Jenna and me weren’t even in town.”

“You do realize that the town’s plan is to keep Faith—who they think is Hope—here until she marries me.”

“Yeah, we figured as much. Harley’s already organizing a painting committee for the town hall and pulling the pig centerpieces out of the boxes.”

Two months. If Slate could only hang on for two months, he would be in a Mexican paradise—far, far away from this craziness.

“Look, Slate”—Burl turned to him—“I’m not asking you to lie. All I’m asking is that you don’t talk to Sam until Faith’s had some time to get to know us. We’re not bad people. We were just doing what we thought was best.”

There was probably some truth to that. People in this town were always screwing things up by doing what they thought was best. Besides, it was hard to stay mad at a man who looked as whupped as Burl Scroggs. Slate might not think there was a chance in hell his plan would work, but he couldn’t fault the man for wanting to try. For wanting a chance to make things right.

Slate sure wanted that chance.

Releasing his breath, Slate got to his feet. “A week. That’s all I’m giving you.”

“That’s enough.”

It didn’t seem like enough to Slate. Not with the glare
Faith had shot him that afternoon. But stranger things had happened. Especially in the town of Bramble.

“Hey, Coach,” Travis yelled. “You ready to call it a day?”

Oh, yeah, he was more than ready to call it a day.

Which was exactly what he should’ve done. Called it a day and gone on home. Instead, he made the mistake of letting his coaching staff talk him into stopping by Bootlegger’s for a beer.

Slate’s day from hell continued.

“Hey, Slate.” Kenny Gene yelled at him from across the crowded bar. Of course, the bar was always crowded, except on Sunday when it was closed. Not because people in Bramble were all that religious, but because Sunday was the day the owner, Rossie Owens, went fishing.

Slate paid for his Bud and took a deep drink as he waited for Kenny to make his way over.

“How’s the team lookin’?” Kenny slipped onto the stool next to him.

“Ready to take on Coolidge.” It was the standard reply with only the name of the opposing team changing. It was also one he was getting damn sick of making.

“That’s great.” Kenny slapped him on the back. “We wouldn’t want to lose our homecomin’ game.”

“No.” Slate took another drink. “We wouldn’t want to do that.”

“So have you seen Hope?”

“Hope?” The beer stopped halfway back to his lips.

Kenny grinned. “Yeah, she’s back to being Hope.” He pointed a finger in his face. “You sure had me going with that whole twin thing.”

Slate lowered the bottle. “What do you mean, she’s back to being Hope?”

“I mean, she’s back to lettin’ us call her Hope. Accordin’ to some of the girls, it all started at the homecomin’ decoratin’ meetin’. Hope waltzed right up to the front and started talkin’ about her life in Hollywood.” He stopped, and his eyes got kind of dazed. “Did you realize that before she married Jesse, Sandra had sex with Hope in the bathroom of a Taco Bell?” He closed his eyes and released a long sigh. “It sorta makes me want to drive all the way to Odessa for a Taco Grande.” His eyes flashed open. “Hey, you want to go with me? We could be back before midnight.”

Slate couldn’t talk. All he could do was stare down in the cavernous hole of his beer bottle and try to figure out why he was still living here. Or maybe still sitting here.

“So Faith—”

“Now,” Kenny waggled a finger at him. “I’m not fallin’ for that again.”

Slate squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. “So Hope told people she’d had a lesbian encounter with a movie star?”

“I’m not sure if it was on the counter or in the stall, but it was definitely in the bathroom. Least ways, that’s what I could get from the girls. Sometimes they talk so fast it’s hard to make ends meet. But if you want to find out for sure, you should talk to Cindy Lynn.”

Slate downed the rest of his beer and slammed the bottle down before he pushed past Kenny and headed to the pool room. Kenny called after him, but he was in no mood to listen to any more craziness. And it was craziness. Even if Faith had given up trying to prove she wasn’t
Hope, there was no way that she would stand up in front of a group of women and make up stories about her sexual exploits.

No way in hell.

At least, that’s what he believed through the first game of pool. But after an entire hour of listening to detailed descriptions of Faith’s movie star fantasies, he started to believe that there was some kernel of truth to the stories. Bramble was good at elaborating, but they sucked at creativity.

“So how do you think you compare to that Matthew fella?” Tyler Jones asked as he knocked a solid into the corner pocket. “From the pictures I’ve seen in those star magazines, the guy looks pretty ripped.”

“Yeah, but a ripped stomach don’t mean he’s ripped where it counts,” Harley said.

Rye put in his two cents’ worth. “From what I hear, Hope don’t mind if you ain’t ripped in that area. I hear she did it with a movie star midget in the electronics department in Wal-Mart.”

“What do you mean?” Tyler chalked the end of his pool cue. “Just because midgets have short legs don’t mean they have short everything else.”

Slate tossed his pool cue down to the table and headed for the door.

“You leavin’, Slate?” Harley asked. “Why, it’s not even eight o’clock.”

Rye chuckled. “More than likely all that talk got him riled up, and he’s goin’ lookin’ for Hope.”

“Well, he doesn’t have far to look—she’s been on the dance floor for the last half hour.”

Harley’s last comment caused Slate’s head to jerk
toward the dance floor. And sure enough, there Faith was in all her bright red cowboy-booted glory attempting to line dance to a loud Brooks & Dunn song.

The track lighting reflected off the gold highlights in her hair, hair that didn’t look as spiky as before—just sexy and bedroom-mussed. In Duds ’N’ Such, he’d thought the western clothes made her look more like Hope. But now he realized that even with the new clothes, she looked nothing like her sister. And not just because of the short silky hair, but because of the hesitant, cautious way she moved and the softness of her smile and the delighted discovery in her eyes. She wasn’t close to getting the country line dance right, but she didn’t seem too upset by it. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled as she attempted to follow the other dancers.

Other dancers who all seemed to be men.

At least, there were no women around Faith. Just a bunch of horny cowboys who didn’t seem to mind at all when they had to guide her with a hand or nudge her with a hip to get her back on track.

Slate’s eyes narrowed, and he tried to remind himself to smile with indifference. Except he didn’t feel that indifferent. After listening to all the sex stories, he felt a little bit wild-eyed. Like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi on a slick highway. He knew he should run for his life before he was splattered all over the asphalt and his head got mounted over a fireplace, but his feet were frozen. And so was his gaze.

Frozen on Travis’s hand that had just encircled Faith’s waist.

The sight seemed to get him moving. Just not in the right direction. His feet ate up the floor as he crossed the
room, jumped up on the dance floor, skirted around the long lines of dancing fools, and grabbed Travis’s arm.

“Thanks for warmin’ her up for me, Trav.” From the surprised look on Travis’s face, Slate had probably used a little more force than was necessary to move him away from Faith. But he didn’t care.

“Sure, Slate.” Travis backed away. “Anytime.”

Slate tucked a hand around Faith’s waist and pulled her from the line of men and over to one tiny corner of the floor.

She tried to jerk away. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“What am
I
doing,” he hissed. “What the hell are
you
doing? Matthew and Tommy Lee? And now Travis! Have you lost your mind, woman?”

“Hey, Hope.” Twyla did a grapevine in front of them. “Don’t forget your appointment on Friday at four. I scheduled you for last because I’ve got big plans for that hair of yours.”

“I can hardly wait,” Faith gushed as Twyla did a stomp-kick and swiveled away.

Slate’s mouth dropped open. “Where did you get that?”

“What?” She glared at him.

He waved a finger in front of her mouth. “That country twang.”

Even in the dark bar, he could see her blush. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You
have
lost your mind.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not ridiculous. That accent is ridiculous.”

“I don’t know why. It’s exactly how you sound.”

“I do not sound like that!”

His voice rose enough to cause all lines on the dance floor to pause in mid-boot scoot and stare at him. He made an attempt at an indifferent smile, but it must’ve fallen short because their eyes widened.

“Come on.” Slate pulled Faith off the dance floor and toward the small hallway that led to the bathrooms. Once there, he sandwiched her between the pay phone and the door to the men’s room. “So explain yourself.”

“Me?” She shoved against his chest. “I’m not the one who needs to explain anything.”