Tears hung on Laura’s lashes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. It would be wonderful if by magic a person could pour a little bleach or some kind of miracle drug into their gene pool. Roxie would always be plagued by genetics just like Laura was. Neither of them had much to offer when it came to reaching into the DNA pool for parenting role models. But maybe, just maybe, with Maudie’s firm hand and gentle love, environment could override the murky gene puddle enough that Roxie would be a well-rounded woman when she grew up.
“Are you crying?” Roxie asked.
“I rubbed my eyes with lotion on my hands and they’re watering. Let me see that crimson red you were talking about.” Laura nodded toward the lineup of polish on the dresser.
“Okay, but you got to look at a bunch so you know you made the right decision. Starting here, they’re rated from one through ten. I tried to match your dress from memory but red is such a fickle color. This is my favorite.” Roxie held up the first one.
Laura pulled her dress out of the closet and laid it out on the bed. “Put the bottles right on the dress and see which one is the true match,” she suggested.
Roxie clapped her hands. “Look at that. I got it right.”
“Perfect match. You’ve got an eye for fashion.”
Roxie beamed. “No one says a ranchin’ woman has to look all trashy!”
Laura giggled. “No, they don’t. And you might turn out to be the first woman in Texas who can work on a ranch and design clothing, too. Tomorrow right after school, I’ll be ready for a manicure and pedicure. Colton says we’re leaving the ranch at five. Does that give you enough time?”
Roxie frowned. “Remember, we don’t have school tomorrow. We are going to start the beautification at one o’clock. I’ve got it all lined out, step by step.”
“I’m in your capable hands, but right now let’s look through those magazines over there and see what I should do with my hair,” Laura said.
The frown turned into a grin and for the next hour they turned page after page, earmarking some to look at later and giggling over some that looked downright ridiculous. It was a few minutes until six when Laura stretched and said that she’d better change into jeans and put on some shoes so that they could go to the big house for supper.
“I am hungry. I didn’t eat much lunch and we got to talking and I forgot all about an after-school snack,” Roxie said.
She continued to chatter on and on about what she had planned for the next day as they left Laura’s apartment and went arm in arm across the yard. But Laura heard little of it. Something had triggered a faint memory of Janet standing on a stool, making sandwiches for them. It had to have been before Aunt Dotty took them to Texas because their mother was lying asleep on the sofa.
Laura tried to hang on to the vision but it faded. The lady on the sofa had long, curly blond hair, and light brown lashes fanned out on a delicate face.
Colton winked at her from the buffet. Standing there in snug-fitting jeans, a plaid Western shirt, and freshly shaven, he looked like a magazine advertisement for Stetson or maybe Jack Daniel’s. She inhaled deeply and caught a whiff of shaving lotion. All that, plus the sexy wink, was enough to put her firmly in Rosalee’s boots: she wanted what she could not have.
Laura was nervous but she didn’t panic until the elevator doors slid open. Straight ahead a glass wall gave them a gorgeous view of the sunset behind the Dallas skyline. The bellboy rolled the luggage carrier into the sitting room and set the suitcases beside a brass and glass table with two chairs pushed up under it.
Colton handed him a bill and he pushed the carrier back into the elevator. Both of them looked at Laura, who was still in the elevator. She managed to take a step forward but it wasn’t without great effort. She wasn’t one to let anything intimidate her but the sight of that room did a fine job of doing so. She did not belong there and worry wrapped its cold arms around her like a blanket of ice.
The bellboy smiled brightly and pushed the carrier back into the elevator. The doors shut behind her and she whipped around. Yes, there were buttons to open it again if she wanted to run away.
“It is a two-bedroom suite. Both are exactly the same.” Colton threw open the door to the right of the glass wall. “You got a preference?”
Laura shook her head. She did but it had nothing to do with which bedroom was hers for the weekend.
“Then you can have this one.” He picked up her suitcase and carried it inside with her following behind him.
It was a lovely room with a king-sized bed and a huge bathroom with a Jacuzzi, separate shower, and enormous mirror above a two-sink vanity. It wasn’t the room, the view, or the bathroom that struck her mute. It was a sudden case of acute anxiety about what was in her suitcases.
She shouldn’t have been so quick to leave Tressa’s Boutique in a snit about the prices. She would look like Cinderella had come to the ball in her scrub rags. She glanced at her hair in the mirror above the dresser and bit back a moan. Jimmy was probably already booked solid so she’d have to manage on her own. Thank God Roxie had helped her pack a curling iron and hair dryer.
“Is something wrong?” Colton asked.
“Not a thing. I wasn’t expecting all this.” She took the whole suite in with a wide sweep of her hands.
“It is a little overpowering, isn’t it? But since I’m the biggest contributor in their scholarship fund, they give me the penthouse suite each year. Granny says it’s sinful to stay in a room that costs more a night than she made in two months when she was cooking at the school, and you got to admit, it’s not nearly as big as the ranch house.” He laughed.
“I agree with her,” she said.
“I’ve already ordered room service to be brought up at six.” He looked at the clock beside her bed. “Ten minutes from right now. Then I have a meeting at seven which will last until at least ten. You are invited to go with the wives and girlfriends for drinks at the hotel bar. I’ll introduce you to Karen. She’s the one who plans the itinerary for the ladies. You will like her.”
“How many ladies are there?” Laura asked.
“Seven usually, but I understand two didn’t come this year. One is getting over a heart attack and another one just had a baby last week. So that makes five. There are seven on the board of directors. Number has to be an odd one so we can’t hang up a vote. They are all over fifty except me. Most of the women are middle-aged. The one that had a heart attack is about seventy. You will be the youngest one among them.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “A new baby at fifty?”
“She’s the third or maybe fourth wife. He’s sixty. She’s about thirty.”
“Are they all billionaires?”
“I’m the poor kid on the block amongst them.” He laughed.
“Are you joking?”
“Not a bit.”
“What do their suites look like?” she whispered.
He laughed so hard that they didn’t hear room service arriving.
“Excuse me…” a lady said loudly from the elevator doors.
Laura peeked out around into the sitting room. “Yes?”
“Your supper, ma’am.”
Colton brushed past her and pulled a money clip from the pocket of his jeans. He handed the woman a tip and she removed the silver domes from the plates after she set the plates on the small table. “Just let me know if you need anything else, Mr. Nelson, and I’ll get it up here within minutes.”
“Thank you.” He was already pulling out Laura’s chair when the woman disappeared into the elevator.
The butterflies in her stomach had to have been feeding on pure sugar, the way they flitted around. There was a steak the size of a plate, baked potato dressed up with sour cream, butter, bacon, and cheese, and steamed broccoli—and she didn’t think she could swallow a single bite.
“I hope steak is all right? I remembered that you like yours medium well.”
“It looks delicious.”
“Butter?” He held up a dinner roll.
“Yes, please.”
He split the roll and slathered the inside with softened butter from a crystal dish in the middle of the table.
She cut off a small bite of the steak and surprisingly enough it chased the butterflies away when she swallowed. “Tomorrow? Tell me what’s going on tomorrow. I feel like I just walked into another world.”
“I’ll be in meetings all day. Karen plans the day for you ladies so I can’t help you out there. Ask her tonight. Meetings end at five and we’ll have a snack in the room, then at eight we have the formal dinner. After that, there is a dance. Sunday we sleep late and go home in the afternoon. Checkout is at noon.”
She fidgeted with her hair, curling the ends and putting on makeup. Roxie said that she’d picked Maudie’s brain and on the first night jeans and boots were acceptable. So Laura dressed in starched jeans, a Western-cut shirt in brown silk with lace inserts on the yoke, and brown boots that had been shined.
Colton whistled when she walked out into the sitting room which helped so much that she wanted to kiss him.
“Well, don’t you look stunning,” he said.
“Thank you. I wasn’t sure what your girlfriend would wear to one of these things,” she said. “So I asked Roxie to talk to Maudie.”
“Honey, you are going to turn heads, believe me.” He smiled.
She stole glances at him in the mirrored sides of the elevator on the way down to the lobby. She wouldn’t turn nearly as many heads as he would in his creased black dress jeans, eel boots, and white shirt topped with a Western-cut sports jacket. He was today’s modern cowboy all decked out to rub elbows with the Texas elite.
The doors opened and he threw an arm around her shoulder. It amazed her how well she fit there beside him as they crossed the floor to a table where four women waited.
“Well, would you look at this, girls,” the oldest of the women said. “Our Colton has done grown up and brought a guest with him. This should be interesting.”
He said their names but not a one of them stuck in Laura’s head, and she was usually really good at putting names and faces together. Then he said, “Karen, sweetheart, I’m going to leave Laura in your hands. Don’t y’all scare her off now. I kind of like her.”
He brushed a sweet kiss across Laura’s lips. “See you later, darlin’.”
She was so nervous that her hands were shaking and his kiss, however sweet, didn’t help a bit when it turned her knees into jelly. A real relationship couldn’t be one damn bit hotter than the false one had been since day one. She watched him disappear behind double doors into a conference room and then turned to face the other women.
Karen looped an arm through hers and led her to the bar. “I’m Karen and you’ve been left in my care. We’ll take two longneck Coors,” she told the bartender who had stopped at their table. “I hope I’m right in assuming you drink beer.”
Laura nodded.
“Good. Then me and you are going to get along just fine, honey.”
Karen wasn’t any taller than Laura. Her red hair was ratted up into a French twist and her eyebrows were painted on, expertly arched halfway to her hairline. “These other broads like their Kool-Aid drinks but give me a beer or a double shot of Jim Beam any day of the week.”
“Don’t pay no attention to her. She’s full of shit. And as fast as Colton said our names I bet you don’t remember a damn one of them. He probably introduced me as Barbara but I’m Bunny to my friends. Bartender, make me a White Russian. Kool-Aid drinks my ass.”
With her three chins and beady little eyes she looked more like a bulldog than a bunny. Besides, bunnies never prop a boot heel on the bar rail and order up a White Russian.
“And then whip up two margaritas,” a third woman said before turning to Laura. “I’m Tootsie. That’s not my real name but the only people who know that information is the courthouse personnel where my birth certificate is registered and my parents, and they are both dead. And this is Melanie. Pull up a chair, honey, and tell us how you landed that sexy cowboy. Or maybe tell us how he landed you—that might be a better story.”
Tootsie was tall, thin, and had blond hair. The wrinkles in her face said that the hair color was right out of a bottle. Next to Laura, Melanie was probably the youngest one of the four and she had to be close to fifty. Her brown hair was cut in chin-length layers, and her hazel eyes were enormous behind thick lenses in her glasses.
Laura stole a chair from a nearby table.
Tootsie scooted over to make room for her. “How did all this come about? We figured no one was fast enough to catch Colton Nelson. Lord, that boy has been outrunning women so long, we’d begun to wonder if he was straight.”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Laura stammered.
“We ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Bunny said.
“My cousin is his financial advisor. His name is Andy and he hired me to be his assistant. I met Colton when I went to work at the ranch and this just kind of happened.”
“Oh, we thought he might have bought you.” Tootsie giggled at her own joke.
“Honey, there ain’t enough money in the world for any man to buy me,” Laura said.
Bunny giggled. “I like a good sense of humor. If a man did try to buy you, how much would it take?”
“A hundred grand.” Laura smiled.
“You work cheap.” Melanie laughed. “That wouldn’t support my shoe habit for a year.”
“I’m low maintenance.”
“Yeah, right. Anyone built like you can’t sell that brand of bullshit, darlin’. If he offers to buy you, hold out for a cool million, and that’s just to date you,” Karen said.
“Well, thank you. I understand you are the one who has planned the day tomorrow. What are we doing?” Laura changed the subject.
Karen picked up her bottle of beer and took a long draw. “We’re meeting right here at ten o’clock and getting drunk.”
Tootsie air slapped Karen’s arm. “As good as that sounds, it’s not you. Now what are we doing?”
Karen smiled. “We’re having a day of beauty. We’ll start at ten with a brunch here in the hotel. Then I’ve got a limo ordered to take us to a spa where we will be pampered and spoiled all day. Massages, hot oil baths, hair, and nails. We’ll get back here at five, only slightly tipsy but enough to get through that boring-as-the-devil dinner.”
“And the dance?” Laura asked.
“That’s the best part,” Tootsie said.
“But there’s only what? Ten of us?”
“Oh, no, there will be a couple of hundred at the dinner. We’ll have to sit at the head table with the husbands since they are the committee heads, but as soon as dinner is over and the band strikes up, we get to mingle and dance,” Tootsie answered. “At least this year we won’t have to steer clear of the stampede toward Colton.”
Bunny almost snorted in her White Russian. “Karen, you best order a truckload of hankies brought in and set beside all the single women’s plates. There is going to be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Laura raised her shoulders in a semi-shrug and asked, “Do you think I should order some Kevlar?”
“Wouldn’t hurt, darlin’. Wouldn’t hurt one bit. I can already tell you that Mindy Colbert is going to be the number one bitch you’ll have to contend with. She’s had her sights on Colton for a whole year.”
“How much would he have had to pay for her?” Laura asked.
Melanie laid a hand on Laura’s arm. “Honey, he couldn’t have bought her underpants for a hundred grand.”
Laura leaned forward and whispered, “How much to get into her underpants?”
Tootsie howled. “I like this girl. She’s one of us.”
Bunny nodded in agreement. “Darlin’, Mindy’s underpants go to crawlin’ down around her ankles when she sees more than six zeros after a number. Poor old Colton did good to stay up there in the boondocks or she would have pushed him backwards and mounted him before he knew what happened. But she hates cows and hay and tractors, so as long as he stayed out of the city, he was in pretty good shape.”
***
Colton listened to figures, facts, and the budget for the next year. With the donations and the dinner the next night, funds would let them give at least twenty more scholarships than they had the previous year. That was wonderful, but his mind kept sneaking out the door to the bar where he’d left Laura.
It seemed like they’d been together forever and that it was real, not a sham. He wondered if she was doing all right out there with the rich hens. He felt bad about throwing her in the mix without sticking around to see that she got settled, but it couldn’t be helped.
Willis closed his laptop. “That’s the end of the business. Everyone want a shot of whiskey to celebrate?”
The other six committee members all nodded. A waiter who’d been keeping their water glasses filled loaded a tray with glasses, an ice bucket, and a crystal decanter of whiskey. He set a glass in front of Willis and poured until the man held up a hand. Then he proceeded around the table doing the same thing at each chair.
Willis held up his glass. “To another good year.”
They touched glasses and sipped the whiskey.
“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” Colton asked.
“Meeting right here at ten with the essay committee for this year’s entries. We’ll break for an hour at noon to eat and then listen to more essays. Y’all ever get tired of hearing why kids think they deserve our scholarships?”
Colton shook his head.
“Well, by the time you’ve heard fifty years’ worth of them, you will. Hey, I heard that you brought a girlfriend along this year. Congratulations. I got a text message from Bunny a few minutes ago that said that they all liked her. She must be special. Bunny don’t give out high praise to just anyone.”