“Look at them go after it,” he said.
“To the cows, hay is steak. That stuff is chocolate cheesecake,” she said.
“That your favorite dessert?”
She shook her head. “I like it just fine, but it’s not my favorite.”
“What is?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say that he’d do just fine for dessert and she’d take it before dinner, after supper, or even for breakfast. She wasn’t even particular about where. It could be in the hayloft, in a nice warm bed, or in the backseat of his truck. But she was the one who’d laid out the rules. A whole week and then a big party where lots of pretty women would be all dressed up and flirting with Greg. And that would be nothing compared to the bazaar auction.
“Well, what is your favorite dessert?” Greg dumped the final bag into the trough and tossed the empty bags in the back of the truck.
She jumped over the side, landed square on her feet, and beat him inside the cab. “I guess it would be pecan pie with ice cream. Or maybe chocolate sheet cake like my grandma used to make when I was a little girl. What is yours?”
“Peach cobbler and Dotty’s cinnamon rolls right out of the oven when they’re so gooey and hot that you have to blow on them before you can take the first bite.”
Gooey.
Hot.
First bite.
Damn! Those words put pictures in her mind that shouldn’t be there, visions that would make a sailor blush and a cowboy kick at the dirt in embarrassment. But by damn, it would sure enough warm her up.
Whoa, girl!
She brought her thoughts to an abrupt halt.
“What are you thinking? It looks like you are fighting with yourself or an imaginary person. You seeing ghosts or something?” Greg chuckled.
“You might say that. Tell me more about the Valentine’s party. Clarice and Dotty are all excited about going shopping for it, so it must be a big deal, but Dotty says that wild horses couldn’t drag her to the thing. Rose and Madge are going, so why isn’t she?”
“We belong to the North Texas Angus Association and they have a few parties a year. Sometimes they do a Valentine’s party; sometimes not. This year they’re having one. It’s not a sit-down dinner but a dance with an open bar and refreshment table. The guys wear their Sunday getups, usually a jacket, and the ladies get all dolled up. Rose and Madge were married to ranchers, so they are still honorary members. Dotty wasn’t, and it’s hard to explain, but she wouldn’t go if she could. She doesn’t like big parties like that,” he said.
“But she’s all excited about the bazaar party.”
“That’s different. It’s got to do with the church. That puts it in her ballpark.” He parked at the next lot. “Ready to fight the cold again?”
“Might as well be. Don’t want the cows to starve. Guess we could move them all into barns and take the baby calves in the house.” She grinned.
“You tell Dotty that.” He laughed.
Just before noon, they met Max and Louis, who drove up with a load of feed. Max hopped out and yelled, “Go on to the house. We’ll get this one since we’re loaded. When we got to the end of the line with the hay, we started working our way back with the feed. We get this one done and it’s finished for the day, thank goodness. I can’t feel my fingers anymore. Who would’ve thought we’d have this kind of weather in February? It ain’t normal.”
“Thanks! You’ll get no argument from me. Louis, come on to dinner with him. Dotty will have enough to feed an army today. She’s making tortilla soup,” Greg hollered back.
Louis waved over his shoulder and nodded.
“Looks like we get to call it a day after all,” Greg said.
“The snow is coming down harder. Maybe the weatherman was wrong,” she said.
“Emily…”
“Greg…”
They both started at the same time.
“You go first,” he said.
She didn’t hesitate. “You ever think that maybe you should think of settling down?”
He turned on the windshield wipers and looked at her. “You askin’ me to marry you?”
“No, sir,” she said before she turned and looked out the window.
Tangy tortilla soup served with warm, freshly made corn tortillas tasted good after spending the day out in the blowing snow. But what tasted even better to Emily was the hot, freshly fried sopapillas. She made a hole in piping-hot, cinnamon-dusted Mexican bread and was in the process of filling it with honey when Dotty announced that she and Clarice would be working on their bazaar projects that afternoon.
“Speaking of which…” Clarice looked at Emily. “Did you tell Greg?”
“Tell me what, and pass the sopapillas,” he said.
“That’s way above my pay grade.” Emily picked up the platter and handed it his way, their fingertips barely touching in the transfer. She let go before he had a good grip, and it took both of them doing some fancy juggling to keep from dropping the platter on the floor.
Clarice tucked her chin down and looked up at Emily. “Then I’ll give you a raise.”
Greg looked at Max. “What are they talkin’ about?”
The older man shrugged. “Don’t know what is going on, but if it’s above Emily’s pay grade, then I’m not sure I want to know.”
Emily caught Clarice’s eye and mouthed, “How much?”
Dotty nodded slightly and said, “Okay, okay! The new plan for the bazaar this year is that we’re having it at the ranch on the last Saturday in this month.”
Greg cut a hole in the top of the Mexican pastry and picked up the honey jar. “In the house?”
Emily took a sip of sweet tea. Thank goodness they weren’t talking about the dating sites. She’d have to have more than one raise and pay grade jump to tell Greg that story. “We’re having it out in the sale barn. The homemade things will be displayed on tables. Folks will buy a ticket at the door for five dollars and they get supper, dancing, and visiting for their money. Dinner will be barbecue sandwiches and chips. The ladies will provide desserts.”
“Y’all must be plannin’ on sellin’ a bunch of crafts and barbecue to do that.” Greg smiled.
“Go on.” Dotty nodded at Emily.
“You can tell the rest.” She fidgeted.
Sometimes the bearer of news got strung up in the nearest pecan tree with a length of rope.
Clarice snapped her fingers. “You have been promoted and it’s now within your pay grade. Tell him about the auction.”
“We are having a cowboy auction. It goes like this…” She went on to tell about how the bachelors would sit in the middle of the floor and have to dance with the ladies who paid for a bidding fan and put up their dollar a dance.
By the time she got to the part about the auction itself, Greg was shaking his head emphatically.
“You didn’t put my name on one of those chairs, Nana? Please tell me that you didn’t.” His words were to Clarice, but his eyes didn’t leave Emily’s face.
“Yes, I did. You have the number one chair and right next to yours is Mason Harper, and Louis, you get the number three chair,” Dotty said.
Louis grinned and nodded. “My pleasure, ma’am. There’s a couple of chicas that I’ve been flirting with. It’ll be fun to see what I’m worth.”
“Max?” Greg asked.
Max was not smiling one bit when he asked Clarice, “I’m auctioneering for it, right?”
She nodded. “You can have a choice. If you want to auction, you can. If not then we’ll get Rose’s nephew and you can be a dancin’ cowboy.”
“I’ll auction,” he said quickly.
Greg groaned. “What happens if I’m bought?”
Clarice smiled. “There is no
if
. You will bring a good sum to put into the scholarship fund. Just think of it this way—a lot of my prized bulls might not want to leave Lightning Ridge, but I can’t keep them all and they go to the sale in the fall. Tell him what happens, Emily.”
“You will have a date on the next Friday night. The lady gets to plan it and you have to pay for it. The ladies pay a dollar for each dance and then they will bid on whichever cowboy they liked best. Think of it as speed dating on your toes,” she said.
“I bet he goes for big bucks,” Louis said. “There’s all kinds of women who’d like to chase him right up to the altar by summertime. I wonder why it is that brides always like to choose June for their wedding. Oh, well, it don’t matter because from February to June is long enough to plan a wedding. Who are you bidding on, Emily?”
“I might give your chicas a run for their money.” Emily winked.
Louis had thick dark hair, big brown eyes, and a round face. He was still young enough to blush and had thick dark eyelashes that most women would commit homicide to have.
“I’d rather see you give all them women after Greg a run for their money,” he said.
“Why?” Dotty asked.
“I’d hate to take orders from some of the women around these parts,” Louis said honestly.
“Dammit! I’d have to marry the woman for her to get to boss anyone on this ranch, and that ain’t happening! I do have a say in who I marry, don’t I?” Greg asked.
“I’m not so sure. A chica tells me she’s going to marry me, I’d be afraid to tell her no. She might slit my throat in my sleep,” Louis teased.
Dotty poked Clarice on the arm. “Looks to me like we’re going to have a real lively sale.”
Emily pushed her chair back. “Y’all don’t need me for the afternoon, then?”
Clarice shook her head.
“If you change your mind, call me on my cell phone. I’m going out to take some nature photographs,” she said.
Clarice looked at Greg.
“Don’t look at me. I’m not going to take up knitting for your bazaar. I’m doing my part in being a worthless bull that you are selling off,” he said.
“None of my bulls are worthless. Some are just keepers and some aren’t. I’m only selling you for one Friday evening, so stop your whining. Think of it as…” Clarice giggled.
“As stud service,” Dotty finished for her.
Jealousy, pure and simple, swept through Emily like a Texas wildfire. She didn’t want Greg going to bed with another woman, and yet she’d been the one to put the “slowdown” on their relationship.
“I’m going to drive into Bonham and pick up another load of feed. We’ll need twenty more bags to get us through tomorrow. Then hopefully it’ll clear off for the year,” Greg said.
***
Clarice and Dotty each claimed a recliner in the den and pulled a ball of white cotton thread and a number-ten crochet hook from their tote bags.
“Don’t know why in the hell we make these. Folks won’t pay what they’re worth, and the young girls don’t want them on their tables and chair backs. They’re too lazy to dust them, much less keep them starched,” Dotty grumbled.
“Let’s make snowflakes instead. I can do one in an hour, and I betcha they’ll sell better,” Clarice said.
“Why didn’t you think of that before? We can sell them as snowflakes or sew a feather in them and say they are cowboy dream catchers,” Dotty said.
Clarice kept crocheting. “I like that idea. We’ll starch them heavy, and instead of a feather, let’s sew one of those little buttons shaped like a boot that we bought last time we were in the hobby shop. And we can put a jute twine hanger on them. Did you decide on your four?”
Dotty nodded. “Yes, I did, and I already invited them and started talkin’ up the sale and how it would be so nice if they bought me… I mean Greg… so we could have a real date. Betcha we can turn out a dozen of these this afternoon and it’ll be something no one else is doing. What are we going to do if he falls for one of the women we’ve been rustling up for him?”
Clarice laid her crochet down and whispered, “Emily won’t let that happen. She’s in love with my grandson. I can see it. But if Emily runs out of money and can’t bid anymore, I’ll get Rose to buy him and then give him to Emily afterward.”
Dotty giggled like a little girl. “Sounds like fun to me. We haven’t been this naughty since way back in high school. Emily and those dating sites kind of put a bounce back in our lives, didn’t they?”
***
Emily drove to the stables, took a four-wheeler out of the shed, and slung the strap to a camera over her shoulder. She was going to take lots of pictures to show Taylor and Dusty when she went back to Shine Canyon.
The wind still rattled the limbs of the low-growing mesquite trees and the crooked scrub oaks, but the snow had finally stopped falling. Emily pulled her stocking hat lower over her ears and set out to the back of the ranch where the cabin was located. Maybe it would be remote enough that she could capture some really good pictures of deer, bunnies, or even a covey of quail.
She parked in the same spot that Greg had and started around the cabin, when she saw the deer herd right at the edge of the woods, not twenty feet ahead of her. She sat down on the back porch and held her breath as she slowly brought the camera up to eye level. The buck was an old man, sporting a rack that couldn’t be covered with a bushel basket and several scars on his neck and body. A dozen does nosed about in the snow looking for green grass, and four fawns with spots still shining milled about their mother’s long, spindly legs.
She let her breath out slowly and snapped a dozen times before the buck sniffed the air and spotted her. He bounded back into the woods with the does following him and the little fawns right behind them. She stood up slowly, looking around to see if there were any more surprises. A cottontail rabbit lit out from the edge of the porch in a blur, but if she’d tried to catch a picture, it wouldn’t have been anything but a streak of light brown fur.
Cold crept through her coat and her toes were numb within an hour, but she had more than a hundred amazing pictures of mistletoe covered in ice, a bright red cardinal pecking at the snow, a robin searching for worms, and a litter of bobcats tumbling around with each other while a mother watched from under the low branches of a cedar tree.
“Are you the same one that I saw, or was that the poppa and he’s off eyeballing one of our calves?” she whispered softly.
Our
calves? Was that a slip of the tongue or a manifestation of the way she really felt? Or maybe her brain was frozen and thought she was back at Shine Canyon. Even though the snow had stopped, the wind was still bitter and there was firewood stacked up against the back of the cabin. She’d build a fire, make good strong campfire coffee, and get warm inside and out before she went back to the ranch house.
The kindling was wet, so it took several tries before she finally got a flame started with the last matches in the box. She let out a whoosh of pent-up air when it caught.
“Better put matches on a list to bring up here or the next person will have to rub two sticks together. Now surely there is coffee and a pot in here somewhere. Dammit! I hope that the pump isn’t frozen.” She talked to herself as she started by grabbing the handle of the pump and working it for a full minute before clear, cold water came gushing out into the dishpan below it.
She found an old blue granite pot shoved back in the corner, removed her gloves to keep from getting them wet, held the pot up to the edge, and caught enough water to rinse it out, flushing out two dead spiders and a couple of flies. She rinsed it three times to be sure that it was clean before filling it.
Gramps always used a heaping cup of grounds when he filled the pot, but since she’d only filled it half-full, she measured out enough for that amount and hung it over the fire. Then she squatted in front of the blaze and held her hands out to warm them.
“I wish you were here, Gramps. I’d tell you about Clarice. I like her a lot. And you could help me sort out this thing I have for Greg. There’s something in my heart for him and it’s more than just a sexual attraction. I can’t leave Shine Canyon. I just cannot do it,” she said and then leaned back against the worn old sofa to let her thoughts wander.
***
Every single song on the country music radio station reminded Greg of Emily. Something she said. Something she did. The way her head leaned to the left when she was thinking. Her walk. Her good common sense even when he didn’t like it. He would have much rather let the relationship keep going in high gear than put the brakes on it.
Nana liked her. She and Dotty were already playing matchmaker between them, and Jeremiah had checked her out. She was the real deal, but west Texas was calling her name. If she would just think with her head instead of her heart she’d know that he was right. He leaned against the fender of the truck as the guys at the store loaded the fifty-pound sacks for him.
“You sure are quiet today,” Buster said.
“Just thinking,” Greg said.
“’Bout having to unload all this or that pretty girl out at the ranch? I heard that Miz Clarice done hired a brand-new assistant girl and that she’s real pretty.”
“Maybe I’m thinkin’ about both,” Greg said.
Buster tossed the last feed bag on the truck. “My aunt told me that y’all are plannin’ a big ranch party and the ladies from the church are puttin’ it on. She says there’s goin’ to be dancin’ and you’re goin’ to auction off cowboys for dates with the women. What do I have to do to get my name in the pot to be auctioned off?”
“Call the ranch and tell my grandmother. She’ll be tickled to put you down. You sure you want to do that? What if some old woman buys you and you have to go out with her and buy her dinner and all that?”
Buster’s eyes twinkled. “I’m hopin’ that some pretty little thing will just fall head over heels in love with me.”
“Well, good luck with that. Ranch number is in the book,” Greg said.
He left the radio on and the pickup door open as he unloaded the feed. When he finished he headed off toward the back side of the ranch. Maybe he’d light a fire and make a pot of coffee in the cabin and think about his grandpa some more. Or maybe he would sneak in a quiet afternoon nap on the sofa and not think of anything at all.
He parked behind the four-wheeler and sighed. He’d wanted to come up there to think, not listen to hunting stories from Louis or Max or anyone else who was out to flush a covey of quail. He might as well dash in, shoot the bull with them for a while, and have a cup of coffee. From the scent in the air, they already had a pot going.
He crawled out of the truck and ran across the yard, up on the front porch, and swung the door open to find Emily sitting on the floor with a cup in her hands and a smile on her face.