Blame It On Texas (11 page)

“What do you think?” Gert was asking, looking across the room at him while he took one step backward, closer to the kitchen and freedom. “Should I start with the town’s beginnings or should I start from the present—me at ninety—and work back?”

“Flashbacks,” Kate mused, sitting cross-legged on the floor while she emptied a trunk. “That could be interesting.”

“Well,” Dustin said, moving another step closer to the kitchen. “I guess you could do it either way, Gert. I don’t think it matters a whole lot.” He was
a rancher, not a writer, for God’s sake. And he didn’t want to be within touching distance of Kate McIntosh. He’d gone down that road once and it had cost him.

“It matters,” the old woman said. “Kate says I have to ‘hook the reader.”’

“Oh.” He resettled his hat on his head. “I’d better check on Danny.”

“He’s coming toward the back door now,” Gert said. “I can see him from this chair.” Dustin turned and, sure enough, the boy was just about to knock on the door. “That’s why I like this chair the way it is,” Gert added. “I can see just about everything that goes on, from who’s coming up the road to who’s coming to the door. It’s a pretty good view of the world when your feet hurt.”

Kate looked up. “Do your feet hurt?”

“Honey, everyone’s feet hurt once in a while. Dustin?” She looked at him and Dustin could swear her eyes twinkled. The old lady was enjoying this. “Your feet hurt?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Sometimes they do.”

“I like a good foot rub,” Gert declared. “My second husband was sure good at that.” She raised her voice. “Come on in, Danny!”

The boy didn’t need to be told twice. Dustin watched the kid hurry toward them. He’d left the truck outside the way Dustin had told him, which was good. He was catching on to all sorts of things:
manners, conversation, chewing with his mouth closed and remembering to flush. His mother hadn’t spent much time teaching him the basics; she couldn’t raise a kid and drink herself into a stupor at the same time.

“Did you wipe your feet?”

“Yep.” Danny smiled up at him, one of those rare smiles that made Dustin wonder how the boy had survived living with Lisa and her assorted boyfriends. “I sure did. There was mud and everything.” He looked past his father to Gert. “Wow, you’ve made a mess.”

“We’re working on my book,” Gert told him. “I’m telling my stories to Kate and she’s going to type them into her computer for me.”

“Cool.”

“Well,” Dustin said, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder to keep him from entering the room, “if there’s nothing else to carry, we should get going.”

“You could help sort.” Gert pointed to an unopened trunk. “We’re dividing things by decades.”

“Decades?” Danny frowned. “I don’t know much about ‘decades.”’

“That means every ten years,” Kate said, giving the child the kind of smile that Dustin had taken for granted nine years ago. “Like 1970s, 1980s…”

“1960s?” he asked. “We learned that in school.”

“I didn’t like the sixties much,” Gert said. “I can’t say that was my favorite time, except for Martha’s wedding. Now
that
was a nice day.”

“That was in 1969, right?” Kate rifled through the stack of papers on her lap. “I think I have some of those ranch records here. I could tell you the price of beef in August 1969.”

“Doesn’t matter,” her grandmother said. “No one wants to know about business. They’ll want the human interest stuff. That’s what they’ll want to talk about on the
Today
show. I’m going to have to write about your uncle Hank, and my first husband, and what it was like to grow up without cars and toilets and CNN.” She shook her head and looked over to Dustin. “My grandfathers were some of the first men to ranch this territory, you know.”

Now there was something interesting. In spite of all the things he had to do, Dustin found himself curious. “You’re related to R. J. Calhoun somehow, aren’t you?”

“Oh,” Gert said, those blue eyes twinkling at him. “The Calhouns. Now there’s a story for you.”

“Wait,” Kate said, leaning over to grab her laptop computer. “Let me type while you talk.”

Dustin released the boy, who tiptoed through the
piles of papers and sat at Gert’s feet. Dustin leaned in the doorway, content to stay on the opposite side of the room from Kate. She looked too good, even if she was a little too thin and too pale. He liked his women robust, blond and holding a beer. Of course, since he’d become a father there hadn’t been any women at all, robust or otherwise. The Last Chance Saloon was off-limits, as were late nights and female companionship. Maybe that’s why Kate unnerved him the way she did. Just touching her hands sent him into thoughts of bedding her. Several times. In a split second of madness, he’d wanted to lift her onto one of those old chairs, spread her legs and take her right then and there.

He had to get a grip.

“I’ve got work to do,” he muttered.

“I thought you got the barn all cleaned up, Dad,” the boy said. “You said you were done.”

“Yeah,” he said, realizing that fathers didn’t have any privacy. “But there’s always something to do around here, and I have plenty of barn left to paint whenever I run out of chores.”

“It’s too hot,” Gert said. “Kate fixed you a nice glass of ice water. It’s there on the table behind you.” Dustin had no choice but to turn around and pick up the glass. He took a few swallows of water and cleared the dust from his throat while he tried to think up a way to get out of this house and away
from Kate. He wished like hell she would go back to New York and leave him alone.

He hadn’t thought of her much these past years, except once in a while. Like when he passed the Good Night Drive-In on his way to Marysville. Once or twice he’d awakened next to a woman whose name he couldn’t remember and he wondered—just a few times—what it would have been like to wake up next to Kate. She’d been eighteen; there had been no beds in their summer romance.

“Dustin?”

He jerked back to attention. “What?”

“I said you shouldn’t be working in this heat.”

“Not a problem, Gert. Really.” He smiled at her. “I know what I’m doing. Thanks for the water. Danny? Come on, it’s time we were on our way.”

“He can stay,” Gert said. “Come back for dinner. We’re eating at four.”

“Thanks, Gert, but we’re all set.” He ignored the disappointed expression on the boy’s face as Danny stood up and crossed the room. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning, unless you need me before that.”

And that, he figured, leaving the house, was that. All he had to do was keep his mind off work and his body away from Kate’s. Two weeks was all.

Not much could happen in two weeks.

“W
OULD YOU LIKE
a beer, Carl?” Gert opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle. “We’ve got an extra.”

“It’s Sunday, Mother,” Martha said, hurrying over to return the beer to the refrigerator and shut the door. “And it’s not your beer, remember?”

“I borrowed a couple from my foreman,” her mother explained, looking entirely too pleased with herself, “for my birthday.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Knepper, but I’ll take a rain check on the beer. Your foreman, is that one of the Jones brothers?”

“Dustin,” Martha said.

“Those boys sure had their share of trouble,” Carl said, looking every inch the successful Texas gentleman in his beige suit. Martha especially liked the turquoise and silver bolero at his collar. “That party was quite a celebration. There should be some good pictures in the newspaper tomorrow.”

“I hope they got my good side,” Gert said, winking at him as she walked past them into the parlor. Or what used to be the parlor. The room was filled with trunks, papers, boxes and some opened maps. It looked as if her mother had dumped the contents of her closet into the middle of the room.

“Mother, what are you doing?”

“Research,” was the reply, “for my book.”

“You’re writing a book?” Carl looked intrigued.

Martha was real sorry she’d let Carl bring her here. She’d thought they might take a drive to Marysville after lunch, but Carl wouldn’t hear of her missing a minute more of her daughter’s visit home. She suspected he might be a little starstruck over Kate’s job since he’d just started talking about making television commercials for the villas. “How about some iced tea, Carl?”

“Excellent, Martha, excellent,” he said, rubbing his hands together as if he couldn’t wait. That’s what she liked about him. Enthusiasm. A willingness to do interesting things.

“Coming right up,” she said. “Mother, what about you?”

“I’m having coffee right now. Kate brewed us a fresh pot.”

“And where is Kate?”

“Back up in the attic,” her mother said, “looking for old yearbooks.”

“Yearbooks,” Martha echoed. “Whatever for?”

“Because she thought she’d like to see what people looked like, so she could help me write about them better.”

“I don’t think you should write about them at all,” she declared, getting out the good glasses from above the stove. They looked a little dusty,
so she gave them a good rinse before filling them with ice cubes. She really should ignore her mother and come down and clean out these cupboards one of these days. “Why stir up trouble?”

“Trouble?” Carl shook his head and made himself comfortable in a kitchen chair. “It’s history, Martha. And who better to tell it than the oldest woman in town?”

“I’d like to think I have more to recommend me than my ninety years, Carl,” Gert sniffed. “Like my steel-trap memory and my scintillating storytelling ability.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I’m going to call it
My Beauville—A Woman Remembers.
”

“Hmm,” Carl said. “Sounds literary.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Well, I guess it could be either, but—”

“Ridiculous,” was all Martha could think to say. “No one’s going to want to read about Beauville. We’re boring.”

“No, we’re not,” her mother said. “We’ve had range wars and droughts, war heroes and love stories, buried treasure and mysterious deaths—all the things that make good reading.”

“Scandals, too,” Carl said. “We’ve had our share of scandals. Remember when that body was found out by the river? And the time the sheriff’s deputy got shot and no one ever found out who
did it? Old Bishop went to his grave not telling anyone the true story.”

“He was messing around on his wife,” Martha said. “I think she shot him and he was too embarrassed to tell. Besides, she only took his big toe off.”

“I think she was aiming higher.” Gert chuckled.

“Mother, please,” Martha begged, handing Carl his drink.

“I should put that story in,” the old woman muttered. She fished around the seat cushion and pulled out a pen. “I think that was in the 1970s.” She scribbled something on a legal pad, ripped off the page and handed it to Carl. “Put that on the pile next to your feet, Carl. Last time I looked that pile was the seventies.”

“Sure.” He did as he was told and took a sip of his iced tea. “I must say, Mrs. Knepper, you have quite a collection of historical information arranged here. Are you getting ready to move?”

“The Lazy K isn’t for sale,” Gert declared. “Dustin and I are going back in the cattle business.”

“The cattle business,” Martha groaned. “Good Lord.”

“I think it’s nice your mother still keeps active,” the man said. “Writing books and raising cattle at her age is remarkable.”

She’d show him remarkable, Martha thought, if
she could get him alone and out of that nicely pressed suit. Nine years without sex was starting to make her cranky. She was getting more lines around her face and she worried that the insides of her body had dried up and disappeared from disuse.

Menopause hadn’t fazed her, but loneliness and boredom were about to do her in.

“T
AKE SOME OF THAT
over to Jake’s,” Gert said, pointing to the oven-fried chicken breasts left in the pan. “I imagine Elizabeth isn’t doing much cooking these days, poor thing.”

“All right. I’ll do it on my way home.” Kate set one aside on a plate and covered it with plastic wrap. “I’m leaving you one for lunch tomorrow, or in case you get hungry later.”

“I don’t eat much,” Gran confessed. “Gives your mother fits, but that’s the way it is.”

“Is she serious about Carl, do you think?” She put the rest of the chicken on one of Gran’s scarred plastic dinner plates and wrapped it tightly with plastic wrap. Her mother had accepted a ride home from the real estate king instead of staying for dinner, which suited everyone. Gert wanted to talk about her book and Kate hoped to avoid any more scenes of her mother making eyes at Carl Jackson. What on earth was wrong with the woman?

“Hard to tell, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Gran turned on the hot water and squirted dish detergent into the sink. “Your father’s been gone nine years now. Maybe she’s looking for a new husband. A woman gets lonely.”

“She’d be better off getting a dog.”

“Now, Kate,” her grandmother said in that warning tone Kate had heard many times before. “You can’t expect your mother to live alone in that fancy house for the rest of her life.”

“Yes, I can,” she said, but she laughed at herself. “I depend on her—and you—to stay the same. It’s comforting to know that the two people I love most in the world are right here—you here on the ranch making cinnamon rolls and Mom fussing over the dust on the mahogany banister. I can’t picture anything else.”

“That’s plain ridiculous. Round up the silverware and toss it in here.” She squeezed the water out of a sponge and wiped off a section of the counter closest to her, then spread a clean flour sack towel over it. “Things change.”

Kate did as she was told and stacked the remaining dishes next to the sink. “People don’t.”

Gran gave her a sharp look and then turned her attention back to dishwashing. “Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. That’s what keeps life interesting. What about you? Is there a man there in New York who makes your heart beat fast when you look at him?”

“Not right now.”

“It’s time you started looking, you know,” Gran said. “You’re not getting any younger and it’s time you settled down and started having a family.”