The Cowboy Takes a Bride (12 page)

“I pay my debts.” Ila put an arm around Joe’s shoulder, leaned in, and whispered something.

“Yeah, okay,” Joe said.

Mariah squirmed, feeling out of sync with these two and their familiarity. She wondered if they were sleeping together.

“Will I see you tomorrow night at the billiards tournament?” Ila asked him.

“Maybe. I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Joe said.

“C’mon, you’ve got to give me a chance to earn my money back.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Ila got up, tipped her cowboy hat to Mariah, and strolled away.

“What was that all about?” Mariah asked.

Joe shrugged, tucked the hundred-dollar bill into his wallet. “Nothing.”

Fine. Great. Okay. Be secretive. Have an affair with the Amazon deputy. She didn’t care.

She might be stuck in Jubilee, but that didn’t mean she had to get sucked into small-town drama, politics, and gossip. She’d view this as simply marking time and keep from getting close to anyone.

It was safer that way. The few times she’d ignored that policy and let herself get deeply involved with someone, she’d gotten hurt. Keeping an emotional distance had always kept her safe. It was the one truth she’d been able to rely on.

She wasn’t about to change now.

I
la sat in her cruiser and watched Joe and Mariah leave the Mesquite Spit. They were keeping their distance from each other—Joe on the outside of the sidewalk, Dutch’s daughter nearly hugging the old stone buildings—a good three feet of space between them. Even so, Ila could almost see the sexual chemistry jumping from Joe to Mariah and back again. That’s why they were staying so far apart. The current was too strong to cross.

She gritted her teeth against the anxiety knotting her stomach, resisted the urge to spring from the car and take Joe’s arm, claim him as her man and make it clear to Mariah that he belonged to her. Ila narrowed her eyes at the interloper—petite, blond, vulnerable. Sweet little waif. She was a damsel in distress, and the last thing Joe needed was to get saddled with some helpless female. Especially a city girl who was bound to break his heart.

A knock at her window made Ila jump. Irritated, she jerked her head around to see Joe’s foreman, Cordy Whiteside, grinning at her. She rolled down her window. “What?”

“How you doin’, Ila?” His earnest eyes searched her face.

But Ila wasn’t looking at Cordy. She was watching Joe hold the door of his truck open for Mariah. “What do you want, Cordy?”

“You.”

“What?” That got her attention. Cordy was good-looking. Not Joe handsome, by any means, but certainly attractive. He was an honest guy. She’d never known him to lie. He was a volunteer fireman and ran a side business as a farrier. Too bad he was so short.

“As my billiards partner,” Cordy said quickly. “For the tournament tomorrow night. You’re the best pool player I know.”

“Maybe.”

“Ila? You okay?”

She shook her head. “Just got a lot on my mind. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“It’s Joe, isn’t it?”

“Joe?” She made a dismissive noise. What did Cordy know? Had he picked up on her feelings for Joe? Was she that transparent? God, she was going to have to be more careful. She couldn’t let her love flag fly. Not until Joe felt the same for her as she did for him. “ ’Course not. We’re just friends.”

Cordy looked skeptical. “What is it then? You’ve been distracted for the last two days.”

“Possums.”

“Huh?”

“It’s possums,” she said, grasping at any excuse. Lame. Truly lame. Why had she thought of possums?

“Possums?”

“Yeah.”

“The marsupial possum?”

“Yes.”

“What about possums?”

“They’re ugly.”

“What’s your point?”

“They’re just big rats who hang upside down from trees and carry their babies around in a pouch. The females have two wombs and the males have bifurcated penises. It’s unnatural.”

“Not to the female possum. Can you imagine if he showed up with a regular penis? She’d be all like, ‘Freak,’ ” Cordy said.

Ila pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. “Possums are obnoxious. A family of them lives in the oak tree above my roof. They scamper around all hours of the night keeping me awake.”

“So this has got nothing to do with Joe?”

“Maybe. If I named one of the possums Joe.”

“That’s all your moodiness is about? Possums?”

“Yep.”

“I could come over,” Cordy offered. “Get rid of them for you.”

“Cordy, I’m an officer of the law. I carry a gun. If I really wanted to get rid of them I’d shoot them.”

“So you don’t want to get rid of them?” Cordy sounded confused.

“If I got rid of them, what excuse would I have for being bitchy?”

“Good point.” Cordy’s soulful eyes met her. Those eyes said,
I get you, Ila Brackeen.
“So . . . um . . . possums, huh?”

A hard shiver gripped Ila. Shit. Was it true? Could Cordy see straight through her? Well, she wasn’t about to let him know it. “Yep. Possums.”

Chapter Seven

Tug on enough reins, eventually one of them will give.

—Dutch Callahan

F
ollowing her lunch with Joe, Mariah spent the rest of the day scrubbing and dusting, sweeping and mopping the disheveled cabin. She made room in the dresser drawers and unpacked her clothes with more than a smidge of reluctance. Unpacking her things felt like she was moving in, and moving in felt like resignation.

It felt like defeat.

To drown out her feelings, she turned on the old transistor radio she’d found on the windowsill in Dutch’s bedroom. She’d sold her iPod on eBay weeks ago—along with most of her other extraneous possessions—when she was desperate for rent money. It was tuned to a country-and-western station, not Mariah’s cup of tea, but when she went to turn the dial, the worn-out old plastic knob broke off in her hand. She tossed the knob in the trash. She was stuck listening to WBAP.

Stuck.

That seemed to be her current life theme.

Dolly Parton came over the airwaves, singing “I Will Always Love You.”

She remembered that Dolly had been one of Dutch’s favorites. She reached out to the picture on the wall of Dutch and Joe. She traced an index finger over her father’s face and listened to Dolly singing about lost love and her heart hurt so badly she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t cry. She wanted to cry. Wanted to fully mourn her lost father, but the tears refused to fall.

Resolutely, she turned from the picture, closed her eyes against the pain, and mentally shook herself.

Okay then. She was here. This was the situation. No more wallowing in self-pity. She needed to accept things as they were, get any job she could land, and just ride it out until Joe had the money to purchase the ranch from her. After that, after that . . .

After that, what?

One step at a time.

She’d seen the help wanted sign in the window of the Silver Horseshoe when they drove past it. Clover, the woman on horseback she’d met the day before, said she owned the place.

Why not start there?

T
he next morning, Mariah got up, showered, and started to dress in the one decent interview suit she still owned, but thought better of it. Talk about standing out like a sore thumb. The Chanel suit might have worked in Chicago, but what closed a deal here in Jubilee were cowboy clothes. Of which she had none.

She stood peering into the closet, wrapped in a thin cotton towel, her damp hair curling over her shoulders, as if something would materialize if she simply stared long enough. Finally, she put on the clothes she’d worn to lunch with Joe the day before. Black slacks and simple sweater. As the one concession to her true self, she put on the one indulgent item of clothing she had left. A pair of Manolo Blahniks.

As Mariah drove into Jubilee, past all the horse-oriented businesses, it occurred to her that she already had a connection here whether she wanted it or not. That she wasn’t absolutely alone.

Because of who her father had been, everyone made assumptions about her. They saw her as an extension of him, even though she and Dutch had nothing in common. The thought was both comforting and worrisome.

Mariah parked Dutch’s dually in the empty parking lot of the Silver Horseshoe that sat parallel to the interstate. This hour of the morning, the place wasn’t open for business, but there was an old green pickup parked near the side exit door and she was hoping to find Clover here, or at least talk to someone who could tell her where to find the woman.

Her heels clicked against the asphalt. It was a big place, at least ten thousand square feet, part honky-tonk, part restaurant. Posters of upcoming bands adorned the walls along with a menu advertising the daily specials, an announcement that the Silver Horseshoe was closed on Sundays, and the help wanted sign.

She walked around to the exit door and knocked. Waited. Then knocked again. Just when she was about to leave, the door creaked open and Clover poked her head out. “Yes?”

“Do you remember me, Mrs. Dempsey?”

“ ’Course I do, Flaxey. I’m old but my mind’s still pumping on all cylinders.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise, but I do prefer to be called Mariah.”

“Sure you do.”

Somehow that sounded like an indictment, but maybe she was just being sensitive.

“Well, c’mon in.” Clover motioned her inside the darkened building and led her down a narrow corridor to a cluttered office with deer heads mounted on the wall.

“Do you hunt?” Mariah asked to make small talk, and stared at a glassy-eyed buck.

“Carl did. They’re his trophies.” Clover waved a hand at a brown leather sofa that had seen more prosperous days. “Have a seat. Just push that horse tack over.”

She was getting accustomed to furniture that served as a clearinghouse for horse supplies. She eased the bridles and bits aside and perched on the edge of the sofa.

Clover sat on the corner of her desk, one leg on the ground, the other dangling over the edge. She rested one hand on her thigh, braced the other hand against the desktop to stabilize herself. “What’s up?”

“I need a job,” Mariah said. “I saw your help wanted sign.”

Clover gave her the once-over, narrowing her eyes. “You ever wait tables?”

“In college. And for a few weeks a couple of months ago.”

“Let me guess. You waited tables at one of those high-class joints in downtown Chicago.”

Mariah widened her eyes. “How did you know?”

Clover shook her gray head. “Honey, it’s written all over your face. You might have been born to a cutter, but you were raised around luxury.”

“Not my luxury,” she said. “I picked rich people’s clothes up off the floor and did their laundry. I swept their floors and washed their dishes and scrubbed their toilets.”

“But along the way you did learn how to appreciate nice things.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Clover studied Mariah for a long moment. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

“So you’ll hire me?”

“You ever wait tables in a honky-tonk?”

“No,” she admitted.

“We’re packed every single night that we’re open from five until two in the morning. You’ll be on your feet the whole time, carrying heavy trays, getting sloshed with beer, getting thrown up on, getting your ass pinched.”

The picture Clover painted wasn’t pretty, but Mariah was desperate. And although she might not look it, she was tough. Besides, she’d had Destiny for a boss. After that, the Silver Horseshoe would be a stroll through the garden. “I’m a hard worker.”

“It’s a long sight from Hyde Park. If you don’t want to get razzed by every cowboy in town, you’re going to have to change your look.” Clover swept a hand at Mariah’s clothes. “Get you some cowboy boots, and Wranglers, the tighter the better. That is if you’re angling for tips.”

Hope fluttered. “You’ll give me a job?”

“Maybe.” Clover narrowed her eyes. “How long you planning on staying in town?”

“Just until Christmas,” she confessed.

Clover folded her arms over her chest. “So why should I bother training a waitress who’s only planning on hanging around for two and a half months?”

“I need money.”

“That’s really not my problem.”

“But you knew my parents. You used to babysit for me.”

Suddenly, Clover smiled. “You’re just like your dad. You’ll tug on any rein to see if it gives.”

“Is that bad?”

“Tell you what,” Clover said, “come back tonight just as a visitor. Have the blue-plate special, play a game of pool, take in the clientele, and then you come tell me if you still think you can handle the job.”