She leaned over Andy’s desk and didn’t stop until her nose was barely an inch from his. “I’m not Colton’s type either. He didn’t have to tell me. His type is cheap barmaids who doctor his beer. That has nothing to do with why I’m not going.”
“If you go, I’ll call Janet and give her your new cell phone number and you can talk to her all you want from now on,” Andy said.
“You are a bastard,” Laura said.
His smile was crooked, innocent, and wicked at the same time. A devil wearing a halo and wings. “My momma and daddy were married so I think that is a false statement.”
She returned to her chair. “I wish I’d never called you for help.”
“Sweetheart, you are having a wonderful time. Admit it. It’s the first time in your entire life that you’ve gone this long without worrying if and when the phone was going to bring news that Janet was in trouble again. It’s the first time in her life that she’s had to stand on her own two feet for that long. Now say you’ll go and I’ll leave a message on her machine. She’s at a meeting right now because this is Monday and the beauty shop is closed, but you could talk to her tonight after you go shopping. I’ll give her your new cell phone number and you two can talk, text, and fuss and argue all you want from now on.”
Laura straightened papers on her desk and got ready to input numbers that boggled her brain. Colton was a billionaire but he was also a smart rancher and everything he touched turned to gold.
So she wasn’t his type and he thought she was afraid of him, did he? There was only one way to show him that he had cow chips for brains just for entertaining such insane thoughts.
“Okay, you win. But this is the last card you have to pull out for bribery. Are you sure this party is important enough to use it?” she asked.
Andy smiled. “Oh, yeah, it’s that important.”
Tressa had thinning gray hair that she wore pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Bright red lipstick had bled into the wrinkles around her mouth, and there were crow’s-feet around her deep-set green eyes. But she commanded attention when she folded her arms over her ample chest and eyed Laura.
“You are not model material, but you’ve got a lot to work with. I’ll play up the curves like you are the next Marilyn Monroe. I’ll make an appointment with Jimmy to come to the hotel room to do your hair. You got a problem with taking a few inches off so that it floats on your shoulders when he styles it?”
“I do my own hair,” Laura said.
“Not if you’re going to wear one of my creations. Roxie, darlin’, there’s a brand-new shipment of jeans over there on that rack.” Tressa talked as she made her way across the room.
Laura picked up the price tag on a cute little blue halter dress. Surely there was a mistake. No dress in the world was worth that kind of money. She looked at Maudie and shook her head.
“I am not paying this much for a dress. Let’s go,” she said.
“Colton said for me to get you outfitted and that’s what we are going to do,” Maudie whispered. “Colton is paying the bill.”
“Not here, we’re not. I’ll wait in the truck if you and Roxie want to shop here. I don’t care if he does have all the money in Texas; I’m not paying these prices for something I’ll only wear one time.”
“He and Andy said to bring you here,” Maudie said.
“Take me to that strip mall we passed by Walmart. I saw a Ross store there. I like that place.”
“But Tressa’s things are one of a kind.”
“They should be.”
“We’ll be back later in the week,” Maudie called out. “Come on, Roxie. Laura is getting a headache and we’ve got to go home.”
Tressa waved as they left the store. “Call me with your hotel and room number and I’ll make that appointment with Jimmy.”
“I really did like that pair of jeans with all the bling-bling on the pockets,” Roxie said.
“Evidently you didn’t check the price tag,” Laura said.
“I don’t understand what’s the big deal. So Tressa’s stuff is expensive. You are going to a fancy place, girl,” Maudie said. “She’s been outfitting me ever since Colton’s been on that scholarship committee. But I’ve got to admit I’m tickled pink that I don’t have to go this year.”
“I don’t care if I’m having dinner with the Queen of England. I’m not paying that much for a dress. And she is not sending some guy named Jimmy to my hotel room to cut my hair either,” Laura declared.
Maudie’s laughter rattled off the dashboard, bounced into the backseat, and hit all four windows in the club cab truck. She pulled out onto the highway heading north toward Walmart and was still chuckling a mile down the road. “Guess you aren’t going to let Ling Chi come to your room, do your nails, toes, and give you a hot oil massage, either.”
It wasn’t funny! Not a blessed bit. Laura looked straight ahead at the tailgate of an old dented-up truck with rusty spots.
Roxie sighed. “I’d just love to get to go to Dallas. The farthest I’ve ever been in my whole life is over to Sherman and to Bonham.”
“You have been over the line into Durant, Oklahoma. I took you up there for college day last spring!” Maudie looked into the rearview at the teenager.
“We didn’t shop,” Roxie said.
“Did you look at the price on those jeans?” Laura asked.
Roxie shook her head.
“They were over two hundred dollars.”
“Holy shit!” Roxie gasped.
“Roxie!” Maudie said.
Roxie slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I didn’t know anything cost that much. How much was the dress?”
“Two thousand,” Laura answered.
“Aunt Maudie, do you really have things that came from there?”
“I do and it was money well spent. Colton is going to be mad, let me tell you. He might play like she’s his girlfriend in her jeans and cotton dresses on the ranch, but in Dallas, he’s going to want a trophy girlfriend.”
Laura turned as far as her seat belt would allow. “Two thousand dollars for a dress with only a yard and a half of material in it is ridiculous. I’m not that kind of woman.”
“What if you had as much money as Colton? Would you spend that much on a one-of-a-kind dress?” Roxie asked.
“I would not. But I’m not rich. And I won’t ever be rich. And I’m not impressed by rich people or money. There’s the Ross store, Maudie. That’s where I want to go.”
She pulled off onto an access road and parked in front of the store.
Roxie smiled. “I love this store. Momma let me shop in there sometimes. And Aunt Maudie took me there when I went to live at the ranch, but I can’t believe Aunt Maudie is going to let you buy something for the big party here.”
“Honey, I’d take her to the Goodwill store to get out of having to go to this affair,” Maudie said.
Laura unfastened her seat belt. “You might have to if I can’t find something in here. Why is the party such a big deal anyway?”
“He’s a big contributor to a scholarship fund for kids who want to be ranchers and this is the annual meeting and formal dinner. You going to take very long in there?” Maudie said.
“No, ma’am. One hour tops and I’ll have what I need,” Laura answered.
Roxie groaned. “We can’t even see one rack in an hour.”
Laura slung an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “I’ll teach you how to shop in a hurry and you can have ten pairs of jeans in this store and still not pay what that one pair cost at Tressa’s place.”
Roxie’s shy smile grew bigger. “Do I really get ten pair today, Aunt Maudie?”
“You can have one pair and one shirt on the ranch ticket because Colton promised that much to you, unless you want to take the money out of your next Friday’s paycheck. I’m going to that bookstore on the corner down there while you two shop. I’ll come back in one hour with the ranch credit card to pay for what y’all buy. If you get finished before that, call my cell phone.”
Roxie flipped through a rack of jeans at the front of the store. “They don’t have as much shiny stuff on them as the pair did at Tressa’s.”
“Would all that shine make you a better person?” Laura asked.
“No, but they’d make Rosalee Roche stop lookin’ at me like I’m trash,” she said. “Oh, look at that dress. You’d look great in it. They’re showing those in all the magazines for the spring.”
Rosalee Roche.
Dee Darnell.
Dee had been the thorn in Laura’s side during her high school years. Maybe being a bitch had to do with double initials.
Laura snagged a cart and draped the bright blue floral dress over the side. “We are allowed eight garments at a time in the dressing room. Choose your eight while I get mine and then we’ll try on. If nothing works, we’ll start again.”
“Aunt Maudie says I can only have two things, a shirt and a pair of jeans.”
“That don’t mean you can’t try on lots of things. Woman has to see which one looks best before she chooses, right?”
***
Maudie picked out four romance books, three new mysteries, and a cookbook. She’d barely gotten through the checkout line and was looking forward to half an hour of perusing the cookbook in one of the store’s comfortable chairs when her phone rang. She dug it out of her purse and looked at the ID. Roxie could beg until the sun fell out of the sky; she was not getting more than one pair of jeans and one shirt that day.
“The answer is no before you even ask,” Maudie said.
“No, that you won’t come get us or no that I can’t even have an ice cream on the way home because it will ruin my supper?”
“You can’t be finished. Am I really going to have to take Laura to the Goodwill store? Colton is going to have a fit.”
“We’re finished and you don’t have to take us to the Goodwill, but Laura says she wants to go by the greenhouse she saw on the way here. There’s a Braum’s store right next to it where I can get an ice cream cone. She promises she won’t take up too much time because she already knows what she wants. We are standing beside the truck.”
When Maudie stepped out into the warm sunny day, sure enough there was Roxie in her bright yellow shirt, blond hair tied back with a ribbon, denim shorts, long dangling hoop earrings, looking very much like a little gypsy child leaning on the back fender of the truck. And Laura right beside her in worn boots, tight jeans, bright blue tank top, and a chambray work shirt tied around her waist.
Neither of them had a single sack in their hands, which meant that she’d be wasting another afternoon that week. Laura had to be ready for the weekend. She couldn’t begin to know how important it was that she look good for Colton, and there was no way she’d found anything in that store in that length of time. In the past, Maudie had seen Roxie run around dress racks for two hours and agonize over which shirt would look best with jeans. In Maudie’s opinion, anything went with jeans so it didn’t matter which one the child bought.
She opened the truck door from across the parking lot with the remote. Roxie and Laura were inside when she tossed her books through the door on the driver’s side. “So y’all didn’t find a thing in there?”
“Oh, yes we did,” Roxie said cheerfully. “See.” She waved a hand over several bags resting beside her in the backseat of the truck.
“But…” Maudie looked at Laura.
“Oh, I guess you didn’t see the bags. We had them stacked up on the other side,” Roxie said. “When you unlocked the car we shoved them all inside.”
“But…” Maudie started again.
“But I pay for my own clothing,” Laura said.
Maudie looked into the rearview at Roxie. “And you?”
Laura laid a hand on Maudie’s shoulder. “I bought her a pair of jeans and a shirt for the party, and a new pair of shorts and a shirt for school. And she is going to pay me.”
Maudie started up the truck. “How?”
“I’m a bought woman.” Roxie giggled.
The sound was music to Laura’s ears. She would have bought twice that much just to see Roxie happy and acting like a sassy teenager.
Roxie went on. “I have agreed to do Laura’s nails and toenails and iron her outfits for the Dallas weekend. It’s my second job and I won’t let it interfere with my first job, which is doing whatever you say on the ranch. I’ll iron her jeans and outfits on Thursday night and we’re out of school on Friday, so I can do her mani-pedi in the afternoon.”
“It looks like you two have things all worked out then, so we are ready to go to the greenhouse?” Maudie asked.
Laura put her hand back in her lap and said softly, “Thank you.”
***
Flats of green plants and brightly colored flowers along with buckets of bigger plants were lined up beside the back door when Colton came in from the fields that evening. He kicked off his dirty boots, hung his hat on a nail, and caught the tail end of something Roxie was saying.
“You should’ve seen Maudie’s face, Sally. I don’t think she believed us until we got home.”
“Well, Miz Roxie, I can’t say as I blame her. Laura, you sure got that shopping business down to get it all done that quick. You must do a lot of it,” Sally said.
“Not me. I hate to shop so I’ve got a system and it works. It was a whole lot harder to leave the garden shop. It was three times the size of the one where I used to work and the plants were all so pretty.”
Colton leaned against the cabinet. “So Tressa fixed y’all up, did she?”
Maudie shook her head. “Afraid not. Laura says her prices are too high.”
“But we are both fixed up and she’s got a pretty dress for the big party and it don’t even look like it came from a cheap store,” Roxie said quickly.
Colton tucked his chin and rolled his eyes up at Maudie. “You want to explain.”
Laura took a step toward him. “Look at me, not at her. I’m right here. I can talk for myself. I got everything I need for a tenth of the price of what Tressa charges, and FYI, darlin’, I paid for it with my money.”
“And she paid for my stuff too, and I’m going to work for her to pay off the debt,” Roxie said.
“I told you…” Colton looked from her to Maudie.
Laura took another step forward. “I said to look at me. Even if we are dating you don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m ready for your party and Chester is putting the final touches on supper. Afterwards I’m planting all those flowers in the yard. You can help or go play in your gym. It doesn’t make a bit of difference to me.”
“You get bitchy every time you get hungry?” Colton asked.
“Yes, I do, and if you don’t like it, keep me fed.”
“The ranch paid for the flowers,” Maudie said.
“Looks like she ain’t after your money like folks is sayin’,” Sally said seriously.
Laura whipped around. “Is that what they say?”
Sally tilted her chin down in half a bob. “Wouldn’t matter who you are, that’s what the people would say, so either prove ’em wrong some more or else live with it.”
A smile turned the corners of Laura’s mouth up in an impish grin. “How do you know what people say, Sally?”
“I got ears, don’t I?”
Rusty came in from the foyer and dramatically swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Is this the first fight in paradise?”
“I believe it might be, so we’ll have to make up later, won’t we?” Colton put his hands on Laura’s waist and picked her up like a bag of chicken feed. When he’d set her down a foot to his right, he stepped around her and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to clean up a little bit for supper. I’ll only be a few minutes. Don’t start without me.”
He’d never wanted to kiss a woman so much in his entire life. Her blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight flowing in from the kitchen windows. Her upturned chin dared him to say another word. If fighting with her created this much sexual energy, he couldn’t imagine what would happen if they ever had sex.
His hands trembled when he filled them with water to wash his face. The pressure behind his zipper testified that she’d just flat turned him on with her sassiness. He straightened up and looked into the mirror above the sink. Drops of water hung to his dark eyebrows and Roxie was right. He had a moony-eyed look about him.
***
Laura held the shovel with both hands and stomped it into the ground. It sunk easier than she’d hoped, seeing as how the yard didn’t look like it had seen a good tilling in years. She turned over the dirt, chopped it up with the shovel’s sharp edge, and repeated the motions until she had loosened all the soil in the four-by-sixteen-foot flower bed. From the looks of the place, someone had once thought about making a mini-maze in the yard with landscaping timbers defining flower beds. It was downright sinful the way it had been neglected. There were even stepping-stones down under the grass between the flower beds and cute little wrought-iron benches placed in just the right places to watch the sunrise. One evening with a Weed eater would uncover the stones and a good washing would make the benches shine.