"I've already got Elsie's recipe for homemade picante written down," Melinda said from the doorway.
Griffin, Lizzy, Annie, Chuck, and Sally all filed in next. Melinda's husband, Matt, and their two sons, Houston and Austin, followed them. Talk went to how prosperous the sale had been and how much fun the party was. Laura talked about Milli and Jane and how they had fit right into Slade and Beau's lifestyle. Jimmy talked about that bull he should have bought but let Alvie outbid him.
"Dad, if you wanted the bull, you should have let me know. I wouldn't have even put him in the sale," Griffin said. How could Julie act as if nothing had happened the night before? She and Sally kept serving breakfast and talking about their family. He kept one ear tuned to their conversation and the other to what his father was saying.
"I don't need him. Didn't even realize what a good animal he was until Alvie started bidding. That man has a third sense about cattle. You ever been up to his ranch?"
Griffin noticed that Julie and Sally had stopped talking and were listening. He wondered why men were drawn to Sally instead of Julie. Of the two, Julie was by far the more striking, to his way of seeing it.
Jimmy went on. "It's amazing. Most beautiful place I've ever seen outside of Texas. House faces the mountains. I was there in May and there was still snow even in some low places. It's made of logs and glass. If I ever had a hankering to move anywhere, it would be to Wyoming. I swear it's the last frontier," Jimmy said.
"I should have married him but alas, I was already in love with this cowboy right here." Melinda patted Matt's leg.
Matt turned a little pink. He had prematurely gray hair, a tanned face with no wrinkles, and gorgeous green eyes. No wonder Melinda had fallen for him the first time she visited the ranch near Conroe.
"So how did it go with you and Alvie?" Melinda asked Julie.
"He offered me his kingdom if I'd run away with him," Julie said. Sally's slight green cast didn't escape her.
"And what did you tell him?" Laura asked.
"That I didn't rush into anything these days. It gets me into trouble every single time I do. But my glory only lasted a few minutes. I was pushed aside in a hurry when Sally made it to the party," Julie said.
"I saw him dancing with you," Melinda said. "Did he offer you his kingdom?"
"He stuttered," Julie said.
"We definitely have got to talk. This isn't fair. I'm leaving in ten minutes. The car is packed and I'm just waiting on these bottomless pits to fill their stomachs. I'll call you as soon as I get home," Melinda told Sally.
"You like my sister?" Julie was amazed.
"Of course. We have a lot in common. She's not trying to take my baby brother for a cheap ride to the altar," Melinda said.
Julie held up two fingers.
"I'm glad I'm going home. I've had to grow three new tongues just to keep from biting mine off to keep you off my back. I want this baby girl and if we fight I might lose her." She touched her flat stomach.
Julie giggled.
"What are you two talking about?" Sally asked.
"We don't like each other," Melinda said.
"Honey, if you say ugly things about my sister, I'll take you on. I might not be big enough to whip you, but I'll give it my best shot," Sally said.
Melinda winked. "I think we all might get along fine and I've
got
to talk to you about Alvie. I'll call when I get home and things quiet down."
"Alvie is picking me up in half an hour. We're going to explore the county today," Sally said.
Melinda brushed back an errant strand of blonde hair. "He's staying in Texas?"
"For a week," Julie answered. Sally and Alvie's romance could take center stage and she'd be more than happy to let it.
"I'm hurt. Alvie is finally over me. Now I have no backup plan if this man gets tired of my bossiness and tosses me out on my ear," Melinda intoned dramatically, one hand over her forehead and one over her heart.
"Come on, Miss Drama Queen. I hope this new baby is a boy. I couldn't take another one of you," Matt said.
Melinda swatted at him. "Bite your tongue. I can still try to win Alvie's favor."
Hugs were given. Promises made. Kids gathered up. Kids left on the porch to wave. And then they were all gone. Griffin went to the sale barn to oversee the crew turning it back into a place to store equipment. He left without so much as a wink of acknowledgement that they'd had the most amazing sex the night before. Lizzy, Annie, and Chuck put a board game on the table.
Alvie arrived right on time in a big white dual cab truck and carried Sally off to look at happily-ever-after. And Julie went upstairs to find something to do that would take her mind off Griffin.
She'd thrown herself across the bed with a romance book when Griffin filled the doorway.
"We alone in here?" he asked.
"Right now we are," she answered.
"Want to analyze last night?" He came into the room and leaned on the door jamb.
"Not particularly. I fell off the wagon. I promise to go back to WSA meetings tonight."
"WSA?"
"Wild Sex Anonymous," she said.
"You call that wild?" He shut the door.
"You don't?"
"Honey, you ain't seen nothing yet, but it's on the way. Don't waste your time going to WSA meetings just yet," he said.
She popped up onto her feet and put her hands on her hips. "I've seen all I intend to see. I'm six years older than you and a hundred years wiser. It was very, very good but it ain't happenin' again."
"You wouldn't know wise if it bit you on the ass. See you at dinner," he threw over his shoulder as he opened the door and walked out. She heard him say something to the kids and then something else to Elsie, who'd just arrived for the day.
He whistled all the way to the barn. So she thought it was very, very good, did she? Well, that little foray into sin the previous night had arrived on the heels of a six-year drought. She'd think wonderful when she saw the real Griffin at his best.
"Very good, my ass," he murmured. "I'd call what we shared damned amazing, woman. And who gives a royal rat's ass about age? It's just numbers on paper."
Sally came through the house in a whirlwind at supper time but didn't even stop long enough for a glass of tea. She yelled at Julie to bring a beer to the bathroom if she had time and hugged the kids on the way up the steps.
Julie popped the lids off two longneck bottles of icy Coors and carried them up to the bathroom where she found Sally submerged in a foot of frothy bubbles. She put the toilet seat down and propped her feet on the edge of the tub. She handed Sally a beer and watched as she guzzled half of it before coming up for air with a noisy burp.
"I'm in love," she said.
"Love or lust?" Julie asked.
"Both. I had to have a cold bath just to cool off my hormones. Lord, that man is the sexiest thing ever put on this earth. Why did it take fate so long to put us together?"
"You're seriously not thinking about…"
"Yes ma'am, I seriously am," Sally said.
"It's crazy, girl. It's a road to disaster."
"What if it's not? What if it's one of those roads less traveled and I turned the other way because of fear?"
"You afraid? Girl, you'd attack a rattlesnake with nothing but a Sugarland CD and a piece of chocolate candy."
"There's different ways to catch a rattlesnake. Good music and good chocolate will tame most wild critters," Sally retorted. "How's Griffin behaving today?"
"Don't turn this around. This is about you. How on earth would you tell Momma if you decided to go to Wyoming after only knowing a man a week?"
"I wouldn't. You would," Sally said.
"Not no, honey. But hell, no. You decide that and you're on the hot griddle. I already had my turn when Annie was born with a white streak in her hair."
"It didn't kill you, did it? I don't expect it will kill me to sit in the fire. We're going to Dallas tonight for supper at the Dixie Stampede. Don't wait up for me, but if there's a light under the door I'll slip in and we can compare notes. If you don't want me in there, hang your bra on the doorknob," Sally said.
"Good God, Sally, we aren't in college. We're adults. I'm thirty-four years old. Griffin is twenty-eight. I'm too damned old for him. Alvie is forty. He's bordering on too old for you."
"Fine wine gets better with age. I don't give a damn if Alvie is sixty. I'm in love and lust and I'm so glad I quit my job. I've never felt so alive in all my thirty-two years."
"Wyoming is lonely. You like action and the city," Julie said.
"Downtown New York could be lonely, sister. It's all in how you look at it and how you study it. No place is lonely if you are happy there and there's different kinds of action, isn't there? " Sally asked.
Julie threw a washcloth at her sister. "Who died and made you a sage?"
"I don't know, but I'm damn sure glad they did."
"You sure do cuss a lot for a preacher's daughter," Julie laughed.
"Preachers' kids are the worst of the lot. You might tell your friend, Mamie, that when she comes around all moony-eyed over Eli. He was always the good one of us three, but that ain't sayin' much, is it?"
"How'd he get to be so good and us so bad?" Julie mused.
Sally rose up from the water with bubbles hanging on her. "Now that's a question the angels would have trouble answering."
"Be careful, sister. Promise me you'll be careful?"
"No, ma'am. I promise I'll take full responsibility for my actions. I won't promise I'll be careful, not if it keeps me from having Alvie. I've never wanted anything worse in my life," Sally said.
Julie left Sally as she dried bubbles off her near perfect body and searched in her makeup kit for an eyelash curler. She heard the kids giggling at the movie
Land Before Time
in Chuck's room.
Julie watched her sister pad barefoot with only a towel around her to the bedroom. In a few minutes she emerged, a butterfly in emerald green and spike heels where a cocoon had been minutes before. Her red hair swung around her shoulders and she wore happy even better than the green dress. Julie hoped it lasted the rest of her life. Every woman deserved that kind of happiness. Sally dropped a kiss on Julie's forehead and skipped down the stairs to answer the doorbell.
Julie slid down to the floor in the hallway and drew her knees up. She could hear Lizzy laugh at some antic of the dinosaur in the movie and Annie joined her. Chuck was telling them that dinosaurs were real animals a long, long time ago. Three kids. Different mothers and fathers. But brothers and sisters in every sense of the word. Maybe fate did exist.
"So what's going on up here?" Griffin appeared at the top of the steps and sat down beside her before she even realized he was in the house. Everything was topsy-turvy in her world. Not a single thing was set according to the plumb line and everything confused her.
"Sally's off to Dallas for supper with Alvie. The kids are watching a movie. Elsie is cooking."
"No, she's gone home for the day. She made a casse role for us to eat for lunch and supper. It's tradition. After the sale everyone helps clean up and then they get the rest of the weekend off. Talk to me."
"About what?" Julie asked. What she had in mind to do to him did not involve many words.
"The day. My folks. How you feel. Anything," he said. What he wanted to hear was her voice, mainly with a hint of a moan, but that wouldn't be happening anytime soon if she held to her I'm-wiser-than-you attitude.
"Do you believe in fate?" she asked.
"I believe that things happen for a reason," he said.
"My sister thinks the past six years are culminating right here this day on the Lucky Clover," she said.
"How's that?"
"Eli and Mamie. Alvie and Sally."
Griffin raised an eyebrow. "Eli and Mamie?"
He'd showered already and he smelled heavenly. She noticed that a few drops of water hung on the longer lengths of his black hair and one little dewdrop floated on his long, dark lashes. She reached up and brushed it away, a proprietary gesture that felt so right, and made her want to do so much more. "That's what Sally tells me. Momma knew but thought I'd meddle so she didn't tell me. Likewise, I'm not telling Momma about Alvie because she might meddle."
"The world of women. I'll never understand it," Griffin said.
"That's all right, honey. Men folks all get to start out as brand new souls. Women are old souls. We under stand life better than you do," she teased.
"Don't give me that Oprah shit. Tell me about Eli and Mamie."
"They've had a few dinner dates and Eli is happy again. His wife died ten years ago and he's never gotten over it. Blamed God for a couple of years and refused to preach. Now he's moving to Bowie and he and Mamie are an item. Sally and Alvie are in lust or love or some thing in the middle of both. So therefore, my moving to Saint Jo must be fate, because my actions are giving cupid lots of business," she said.
"Jealous?"
"Maybe."
"Reckon they're having hot wild sex?" Griffin asked.
She blushed. "Griffin!"
"An honest question. Have they?"
"I doubt if Eli and Mamie have. Sally is glowing so I don't know about her. Ask me again tomorrow and I'm sure I can give you a positive answer."