The Counterfeit Cowgirl (18 page)

He touched her chin gently with one big finger. “Don’t look so shocked. You’ve been good for us. For me, especially. You’re a real cowgirl — a woman of true courage.”

She looked at him in blank surprise but made no protest when he gathered her into his arms and stood holding her. The feel of his big, strong body against hers made her rest her head on his shoulder and slide her arms around his waist. Reminding herself that she ought to head back to those junked-up kitchen cabinets did nothing to ease the urge to run her hands over his shoulders and smooth her fingers over his back muscles.

Felicity stared into Aaron’s dark blue eyes and was lost. He cupped her jaw with both his hands and brought his lips to hers slowly, slowly. By the time he made contact with her mouth, Felicity quivered with anticipation. She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him hard against her, glorying in the hard strength of his body.

Aaron groaned aloud and locked her against him while he kissed her with a desire that threatened to burst the bounds she had set. In fact, Felicity feared that if a bed or a fluffy haystack had been within sight, she might have tumbled him down and had her way with him.

“Ssshhhh,” Pete said. “Uncle Aaron’s kissing Felicity.”

“Why?” Joey asked.

“I dunno. It’s just something grown-ups do. It means they like each other.”

“Then why doesn’t Felicity kiss us?” Joey asked, injured.

Felicity tried to push Aaron away, but he held her against him, chuckling softly.

“Felicity does kiss you,” he said.

“Not like that,” Joey asserted.

“That’s because it’s a kind of kissing only grown-ups do,” Aaron explained. “You’re both still a little short yet.”

Felicity tried to pretend her face didn’t resemble a fresh radish. If she was lucky, the boys would forget all about this little interlude in another few hours.

On the other hand, when had she ever been lucky?

Joey considered the matter a moment. “Come on, Pete. Let’s go get the stool in the kitchen to stand on so Felicity can kiss us.”

“Sorry, boys,” Aaron said, grinning. He locked Felicity against him. “I saw her first.”

• • •

Aaron managed to get Felicity to agree to eat dinner with them, although she insisted on heading back to her own home so she could make a start on cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. Altogether, he was not displeased with her reaction to him, and he intended to take his courtship to the next level just as soon as he could get her alone. Given that the boys considered her their special property, he figured he’d have to take her back to her own home before he could be alone with her.

His instincts proved correct. Pete and Joey appropriated Felicity the moment she arrived for dinner. She wore a long, slim black denim skirt with those ridiculous red-fringed black cowboy boots and a red western shirt with coral and silver cufflinks. With it, she wore a silver, Native American necklace inlaid with red coral and dangling earrings of silver strands tipped with beads of red coral. Although he couldn’t have described one single item of her outfit, he admitted the overall effect was one of eye-catching high fashion.

“Come on in, honey,” Aaron said. Pete had one of her hands and Joey tugged at the other. “Ordinarily, we’re more calm around here, but we’ve had an exciting evening.”

“My daddy called,” Joey said. “He’s coming to see us.”

“Next weekend,” Pete added. “He’s going to talk to Uncle Aaron about bringing our ponies to Fort Worth. We can put them in our garage and buy them some hay.”

“Don’t forget the oats,” Felicity said. “That’s wonderful news, Joey. I’m so glad to hear that.”

She gave Aaron a questioning look and he shook his head. No need to tell her that Deborah had taken to her bed with a wet cloth on her forehead, and that she had continued refusing to talk to her husband. She claimed she had nothing to say to him.

“He’s coming next weekend,” Joey said. “How soon is that, Uncle Aaron?”

“It’s eight days from now,” Aaron specified. “Don’t worry, Joey. I’ll make sure you’re ready to meet him.”

Both Joey and Pete appeared satisfied by this, although their excitement remained unabated. They chattered all through the excellent supper of beef stew and vegetables about how they would fix their garage up for their ponies. After Polly had served them dishes of ice cream and apple pie, they put their heads together over a sheet of drawing paper and plotted out just where in the garage they intended to build each pony a stall.

Felicity looked at Aaron with a smile and lifted her brows. “It’s quite an engineering feat to turn a garage into a stable. I’ll bet they sleep really well tonight.”

“I’m counting on it.” He understood her unspoken intent. “All else has been forgotten in the excitement. If Deb can manage to pull herself together over the next few days, any otherworldly visitors will be long forgotten.”

“Maybe she’d like to come help me turn out the dining room and kitchen.” Felicity spooned up ice cream in a way that riveted his attention. “Now that I’ve gotten the living room fairly cleaned out, I’m no longer afraid to let anyone walk into the house.”

“You’ve got quite a pile of plastic bags on the porch.” Aaron watched her full lips close around the spoon and was rewarded with a glimpse of the silver bands on her teeth. “Maybe you’d like me to haul them to the dump for you.”

“I have a truck scheduled to arrive in two more days,” Felicity said. “That’s why I could use some extra help. He’s going to haul off most of the furniture, along with all the bags of trash.”

“We’ll all help.” He watched with fascination as she forked up a bite of apple pie. “In fact, I’ll walk you back home after supper. We’ll get those kitchen cabinets done tonight.”

He tried not to think about what he’d like to do with her in the bedroom. Otherwise, he was likely to rush her straight to the bed without even a pause in the kitchen. To his gratification, Felicity looked at him as though she might like to be rushed straight back to her bedroom.

“Thanks, cowboy,” she said. “That would be such a big help, I can’t even tell you.”

“No sign yet of your mother’s songs?”

“Nothing.” Felicity frowned over her next forkful of Polly’s excellent apple pie. “What’s worse is that before I can even have all that old furniture hauled off, I’ll have to check each piece over for hidden compartments and hollow legs. There’s no telling where Grandma Lureen could have hidden those songs, as paranoid as she was.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll go over everything and chop into it with an ax if we have to.” Didn’t she know he would do anything he could to help her? “She didn’t have a safety deposit box or a storage room anywhere, did she?”

“If she did, she probably forgot about it and let the payments lapse.” Felicity bit her lip. “I’m hoping that’s not what happened, but who knows? Mama thinks those songs are gone forever, but I can’t help feeling they’re hidden somewhere in that house, in the middle of all that junk.”

“If they are, we’ll find them,” Aaron promised, vowing to scour the house from top to bottom himself, if that was what it took.

After supper, he and Felicity sat in the living room with cups of coffee and listened while Pete and Joey each explained in detail just how they intended to care for their ponies when they got stalls built into their Fort Worth garage.

Deborah, as he had expected, did not appear, but he hoped that by tomorrow morning, she might have gotten her courage back. Every time he had urged her to face Tony and have it out with him, she had moaned that she just couldn’t talk to him yet, and buried her face again in a white tissue.

At eight o’clock, he sent the little boys to bed, pleased when they made no protest. It was as if the ghost Felicity had exorcised the night before had never existed, although they did beg Felicity to come help Aaron turn out their bedroom light for the night.

At last he had the two children in their beds. His breath quickened with anticipation as he escorted Felicity out the front door and shut it carefully behind him.

“Well, Miss Clayton,” he said softly. “I have to admit, you do good work. That ghost is now out of sight and out of mind.”

“It’ll stay that way if their dad makes it here to see them,” she agreed. “Do you think your sister is going to be all right with that?”

Aaron grinned with wry humor. “I’m afraid not, but there’s not a lot she can do about it unless she wants to get a job and move into her own place. I’ve told her she doesn’t have any right to keep Tony from seeing the boys, and that as long as they’re under this roof, they’re completely safe.”

Felicity walked beside him in the dark, glancing up at the starlit skies in appreciation. “I don’t understand why she hasn’t confronted him yet if she really believes he’s seeing another woman.”

“Neither can I, but Deb — ” He shrugged. “Our father was an alcoholic, very volatile, and scary to someone like Deb. After he died, I did what I could, but no doubt about it, that affected her. Tony may have gotten angry and said a few things he shouldn’t have said.” He shrugged and watched her profile, dimly visible against the distant porch light that glowed from her house. “From everything Tony says, it sounds as if he has no idea what caused all this. I’m staying strictly out of it. Deb is going to have to handle this on her own.”

“I think you’re right.” Felicity quickened her pace, staring towards her front porch. “Something’s happened to all my trash bags.”

“What?”

Aaron studied the porch, dimly visible in the yellowish glow of the porch light Felicity had left burning. As they drew nearer, he realized the trash bags had been slashed open and scattered all over the porch.

“Hold up, honey,” he said, narrowing his eyes against the gloom. “Looks like your front door is standing open. You’d better stop right here.”

Felicity gasped. “Someone’s in my house.”

She sounded so outraged, Aaron grabbed her arm. “Forget it. You call the sheriff while I go check things out. Whoever it is may still be in there.”

As he expected, Felicity followed him almost to the front porch, stopping only when he turned and forcibly blocked her. He waited while she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and pecked in the Foxe emergency number then he walked slowly toward the front steps, peering inside the front door.

He saw no sign of anyone, but he did note that the front door had been kicked open. A big scrape decorated the center panel, as if someone’s boot heel had scuffed it, and Felicity’s brand-new lock gleamed amidst splinters of wood where the door had been shattered.

Inside was even more chaotic. The neat living room had been reduced to rubble. The old sofa had been slashed open so that its stuffing protruded, and the chairs and coffee table were upended and broken.

Felicity stared inside, looking shocked while she spoke to the sheriff’s office, but she made no move to come inside. Aaron motioned for her to stay put.

The kitchen cabinets had been thrown open and their contents emptied onto the floor. Aaron glanced in and saw that even the drawers had been pulled out and upended.

Every room of the small house had been trashed, he realized, as if whoever had done it clearly intended to send Felicity a message. He moved cautiously toward her bedroom and pushed open the half-closed door.

The message was very clear, and it had been hand-printed on a sheet of paper that lay on the bedspread.

Call off the dogs
, it read, in huge block letters.

Felicity did not argue when Aaron emerged from checking through the house and told her she was either coming home with him or he was staying with her. She waited with him on the front porch until the sheriff and one of his deputies arrived to photograph the mess and take down information.

“Thank goodness he didn’t trash my bedroom or slash up my clothes,” Felicity said as she packed up her suitcase. “I’d have really been upset.” She glanced around the untouched room. “I wonder why he didn’t.”

“Probably because he wants to scare you a little, not infuriate you.” Aaron grinned, watching her reach carefully into the closet and lift out several fringed, colorful blouses. “I’d say this guy is playing things very carefully. He wants you concerned enough to take action, but not so concerned, you’ll sic even more ‘dogs’ on him.”

“Mama being the biggest ‘dog,’ I suppose,” Felicity said, sounding resigned. “She’s still hot on his trail. The last word she had is that he was hiding out in Arkansas.”

“I’d say he’s in Texas now.” Aaron stood in the door and watched as she hung the garments back in the closet. “That means you’d better have someone with you every time you go anywhere in town.”

“Are you volunteering, cowboy?” she asked, tossing him a sidelong glance.

“You’d better believe it. I’d like nothing better than to get my hands on this guy.” Aaron looked pointedly around at the destruction.

“If you’ll notice, he hadn’t hurt anything that I didn’t intend to get rid of in the first place,” she observed. “In fact, it’s odd the way he carefully avoided my bedroom. I really, really expected to find all my clothes slashed into ribbons, but he didn’t touch anything in here.”

“Don’t start feeling sorry for the guy,” Aaron said, scowling. “He’s still dangerous. The fact that he’d threaten you says it all as far as I’m concerned.”

“Don’t worry. I’m still mad at him for undoing all the careful work I’ve done these past few days.” Assuming it was Gary Carlisle, he’d emptied several of the trash bags from the front porch over the floors around the house. The rest had been slashed open to shed their contents throughout the surrounding pastureland. “I’ll re-bag the trash and pack the bags into my truck bed tonight. I’m afraid trash will be all over the landscape if I wait until tomorrow.”

Aaron followed Felicity into the living room and reached down to right the old sofa. “Sit down a minute, honey. I’ll see if I can find some more trash bags.”

“There’s a box lying on the floor by the cabinets.” She sat down carefully in her slim, black skirt, avoiding the yellowish cotton stuffing poking through the slashes.

Aaron righted the coffee table and sat down beside her, propping his boot heels on the table. He combed his fingers through his hair and caught her gaze upon him. “Are you all right?”