Cowboy Boots for Christmas (8 page)

“There now. That’ll warm us both up while we run,” he teased. “But I’m still not waiting for you.”

“Wait, hell! O’Donnell, you’ll have to catch me,” she smarted off.

She ran through the house, jerked on her running gear, added a hooded sweatshirt to it, and was heading out the back door when she saw him a few feet ahead of her. She sprinted until she was beside him and he started the cadence.

“One mile,” he called out the first line.

“No sweat,” she came in behind him.

“Two mile—better yet,” he said.

“Three miles—gotta run,” she singsonged.

“Four miles—just for fun.”

They both yelled the next lines: “Come on—let’s go. We can go—through the snow. We can run—to the sun.”

Then he started the countdown. “S-N.”

She chimed in with, “I-P.”

He yelled, “E-R.”

And they both yelled, “Can you be—like me? Sniper, yes, sir.”

By then they’d both found their pace, and their feet hit the ground at the same time on every step. It was exhilarating running outside again, pushing herself until she only thought about making the end of the line, but she wasn’t expecting to find a damn rope hanging in a tree when she got there. Finn grabbed it and, using the knots for handholds, hauled his body up to the high limb of the cottonwood tree then, using the same rope, rappelled down the backside.

When his combat boots hit the ground, she jumped and grabbed the first knot, made her way up it, and did the same thing he did. He ran in place until she was ready. “Ready for the return trip?”

“I thought this was a loop.”

“It is. This is the turnaround on the loop.” He took off and she kept up.

“That’s more than five miles,” she said.

“Eight, actually. We did this much in training before breakfast,” he reminded her. “One mile,” he called out the beginning of the cadence.

“You’re full of shit,” she yelled.

“Two miles,” he said.

“You’re a slave driver.”

“Three miles.”

“You are going to hell for this.”

He chuckled without even losing his breath. “Callie is a wuss.”

“Callie is an S-P-O-T-T-E-R.”

He stepped up the pace a notch, but neither snowflakes in her eyes or sleet collecting on her jacket was going to let her fall behind. They hit the bunkhouse porch at the same time, and he held the door for her. Once inside, he tossed a bottle of water at her. She caught it in the air, twisted off the lid, and downed half of it before coming up for air. He pulled his jacket off, drank the whole bottle of water, and fell down on a floor mat.

She hated sit-ups every bit as bad as push-ups, but with her competitive spirit, she wasn’t losing to Finn the very first day of workouts. She did the same one hundred that he did then flipped over on her stomach and did a hundred push-ups. When he popped up and headed for the weights, she was right behind him.

“You want to spot or go first?” he asked.

“I’ll go first,” she said. If she stopped even for a few minutes, she’d collapse. The only thing that kept her going was the idea of a long soaking bath in that big tub back at the house.

She did ten reps and then traded places with Finn. “We going to shoot after this, or is that after dinner?”

“I thought we’d wait until it’s snowing harder to make it more fun.” He grinned. “Did you bring a ghillie suit? We could play real war.”

“Hell no! I don’t care if I never see one of those things again,” she said. “But rest assured, darlin’, I can outshoot you even in blinding snow. All you had to do was pull the trigger. I had to do the work.”

“But you’ve been practicing inside and I’ve kept up my skills in the weather.” He finished his reps and sat up on the end of the bench.

She threw him a towel, and he wiped sweat from his face. He combed his wet dark hair back with his fingers and looked up at her. “So what’s for dinner, darlin’?”

She slapped him with her towel. “Apple pie after that shitty comment.”

“Joe wants apple pie.” The bird pranced from one end of his rod to the other. Angel sat on the back of the sofa, watching his every move.

“I’m going to fry that foulmouthed fowl if he doesn’t learn to shut up,” Callie said.

“You are a wicked woman, but your kisses are straight from heaven. They’re hot as hellfire, but nothing that passionate could come from anywhere but the courts of heaven.”

“You are full of shit, Finn, but I like that pickup line real well. We’re having a light dinner and a big supper on school nights. I don’t think Martin eats enough in the school cafeteria, and he refuses to take his lunch with him.”

“I’m not bitchin’. If you weren’t here, honey, I’d be eating soup out of cans and bologna sandwiches,” he answered.

“Don’t call me by that bitch’s name. You can call me anything but that.”

He jumped up, squared his shoulders, and stood at stiff attention, then saluted. “Yes, ma’am. I bet I can beat you to the house.”

“Not in your wildest dreams.” She grabbed her jacket and was gone before he could bend over and pick his up from the floor. She barely slowed down enough to open the door when she reached the porch. She rushed inside and headed straight for the bathroom. He was only two steps behind her, but she turned on the hot water and didn’t know whether he collapsed on the sofa or went straight for the shower in his end of the house.

“Kidney bean soup for dinner,” she mumbled as she left her clothing on the floor and slid into the steaming hot bath. “Fried chicken and biscuits for supper. There’s plenty of chocolate cake left over from yesterday and store-bought cookies in the jar for after-school snacks.”

She leaned back in the tub, letting the warm water work the kinks out of her body. She hadn’t had a workout like that since she’d been home. The gym seemed like a pansy cop-out after the paces Finn had just put her through, but he’d been right. It had damn sure taken her mind off Martin’s first day at a new school. She waited until the water went lukewarm before she crawled out and wrapped a towel around her body. She peeked out the door to be sure Finn wasn’t in sight and darted across the hallway to her room.

She’d barely gotten her jeans and shirt pulled on when she heard the crunch of tires out front. That put her into fast mode as she started to worry. Martin had gotten sick and they’d been away from the house phone, so Tamara had driven him home. Or, worse yet, that damn convict had connections on the outside and he’d sent someone to make sure Martin did not testify. She opened the top drawer in the dresser and pulled out a small locked safe. Two minutes later she was shoving a clip into a Glock Gen4 pistol and heading out toward the door.

The front door was wide open, and Finn was nowhere around. If someone was bringing Martin home, then the door wouldn’t be hanging open. She pressed the gun against her leg. Then the screaming began and she put on the speed.

“You damn bitch. You’ve ruined my pie.”

Holy shit! That was Betsy and she’d really brought Finn an apple pie. Where in the hell was he, anyway?

Callie threw open the storm door to see Finn, arms crossed over his chest, standing there like a statue in his thermal shirt, jeans, and boots while Honey and Betsy squared off for another match. Only this time it damn sure didn’t look like it was going to be words only.

Good
, she thought.
Maybe
they’ll snatch each other baldheaded and scratch each other’s eyes plumb
out.

“Well, look what you did to my cookies!” Honey yelled.

Shotgun was making short order of the pie, and Pistol was gobbling down the cookies. Joe had set up a howl in the dining room squawking, “Cat. Cat. Run. Run,” over and over.

Betsy threw the first punch, landing it square in Honey’s right eye, and the fight was on. They pulled hair, screamed obscenities, and slapped or punched wherever they could find a place to hit.

“You going to put a stop to this?” she asked Finn.

He shook his head. “I’m going in the house. They can roll around in the snow until they freeze for all I care. I didn’t know that Shotgun liked apple pie. Guess he does.”

Pistol picked up the final cookie and carried it in the house. Shotgun slurped up the last bit of pie and paraded past them to his warm spot in front of the fire. Now Joe was screaming that he wanted a cracker.

“I don’t want to deal with the undertaker or frozen dead bodies,” she said. She aimed the gun at the mesquite tree nearest to the women and fired off six shots, sending bark flying everywhere.

They both jumped up and covered their heads with their hands. “Why in the hell are you shooting at us?” Honey screamed.

“If I was shooting at you, you’d be graveyard dead, woman. Get your sorry asses off this ranch, and don’t come back or I might miss that ’squite tree next time and put a bullet in your boobs. I mean it, get out of here.” She brought the gun up to aim right at Honey’s big breasts.

“You going to let her talk like that to me?” Honey asked Finn.

“I’m not crossin’ her,” he answered.

“This ain’t over,” Betsy declared on her way to her truck.

Callie fired one more shot that landed two feet from the front tire of the truck. “You want to fight among yourselves, then get on with your sorry-assed feud, but when you step on Salt Draw, you leave your fightin’ behind.”

They spun out of the driveway and slipped and slid all the way out to the road in their hurry to get away. She jacked the magazine out of her gun and carried it to the kitchen table. Damned old bitches, anyway. Now she’d have to tear it down and clean it before she put it away.

“I’ve got to make a fast run to Gainesville for a load of feed. You want to go or stay here and calm down?” Finn asked.

“I’d best stay here. You’ll be back in time for dinner, right?”

“Joe wants a cracker,” the bird yelled.

Pistol picked up the cookie he’d brought inside and carried it to the newspaper under Joe’s makeshift tree house.

“I’ll be damned. That dog saved a cookie for his buddy. Guess I’d best help him get it up to the bird. I’ll run by Walmart for some parrot food. Anything you need?” Finn said.

Leave it to a man to act like nothing had just happened. She’d fired her gun seven times and taken care of the catfight over him. A thank-you would be nice; a hug would be even better.

“Not a damned thing.” She laid the gun down with the clip right beside it.

He spun her around, wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. “That was some fancy target practice out there, Brewster. But I got to admit, I was wonderin’ just where we were going to bury two bodies in this kind of weather and if the feud wouldn’t get worse when both sides thought the other one had killed one of their own.”

“Well, shit fire! If I’d thought of that, I wouldn’t have shot the tree, I’d have stopped them from sniffing around you for good. And I’d have gotten away with murder, Finn.” She laughed. “But I don’t reckon we’ll have any more problems with their damned old feud, not on Salt Draw.”

His lips found hers at the same time she uttered the last word. The feud, the shooting, and all thought of the two feuding women left her mind immediately. She pressed her body tightly to his, wanting to keep the heat going, to take it further, but it ended and gave her something more to be angry about.

“I’ll see you at dinnertime,” he said.

All she could do was shake her head and then he was gone.

Leaving the gun on the table, she plopped down on the sofa, and Angel hopped up into her lap. Pistol was too chubby to get from floor to sofa so she had to help him, and soon he and Angel were both sound asleep. She rubbed Pistol’s ears and then Angel’s, giving them equal time.

Her phone rang and she pushed the two animals to the side, hurrying to the kitchen table, where she’d set her purse. Thousands of images ran through her head. Martin had a broken nose and two black eyes from fighting with some kid like Keith. Or Finn had fallen and broken a leg out there on the slippery grass.

She grabbed it and answered without even looking at the caller ID, only to hear it still ringing. “Well, shit!” she said.

The house phone and her cell phone had the same tone. She trotted across the kitchen and picked up the receiver from the old land line hanging on the wall in the utility room.

“Hello,” she said.

“I just heard that you tried to kill Honey and Betsy.” Gladys laughed.

“Like I told Honey, if I’d have wanted her dead, she would be stretched out on the undertaker’s table. They were going at it in the front yard, and I gave them a little frozen tree bark bath is all,” Callie said.

“Well, you might be interested to know that the sheriff is on the way to talk to you. Honey called him,” Gladys said. “Looks like it’s going to be a good day in the store. Nothing like the feud firin’ up to bring in customers. Talk to you later.”

The phone went dead and the doorbell rang at the same time.

She sighed as she padded to answer it. Sure enough there stood an officer with a box of doughnuts in his hand.

“Yes, sir?” she said.

“Mind if I come inside?” he asked. “It’s pretty cold out here.”

His voice was high-pitched, but it matched him to a tee. His round baby face was red from the cold and probably a dose of high blood pressure. There was definitely a spare tire around his middle, probably from too many sweets, too little exercise, and way too much sitting behind a desk.

She stood back and opened the door wide for him. He quickly removed his hat, revealing a narrow rim of light brown hair circling a bald head above it. His green eyes darted around the room when Joe yelled, “Cat. Cat. Run.”

“It’s the parrot,” she said.

He unzipped his jacket and said, “Birds and me don’t get along too good, and I’m allergic to cats.”

“There’s one of them around here, too, but she’s skittish around strangers,” she said. “Would you like a cup of coffee? There’s some made.”

“I’d love one. I got two doughnuts left in this box. We can share.”

“No, thanks, but you’re welcome to have one.”

“Gun?” he said.

“It’s registered and I have a permit to carry,” she said quickly.