Catch Me a Cowboy
Authors: Katie Lane
A Preview of
Going Cowboy Crazy
A Preview of
Make Mine a Bad Boy
To my brother, Ronny Roy.
I miss you, Bubba.
It takes a team of hard-working, dedicated people to get my Bramble stories out to the public:
My agent, Laura Bradford. My editor, Alex Logan. My editorial director, Amy Pierpont. My publicity crew, Jennifer Reese and Brianne Beers. Summer book club sweetie, Lauren Plude. My subrights guru, Salvatore Ruggiero. And all the marketing geniuses, cover designers, copyeditors, proofreaders, and retailers who help get my books into readers’ hands. Thank you for all your hard work and the pride and dedication you have for your jobs.
Speaking of dedicated people, I’m amazed by the bloggers I have met in the past year. Thank you for your love of reading and reviewing—and for putting up with a new author who stumbles around on your websites trying to figure out how to leave a comment. LOL!
And last but not least, I’d like to thank my readers. You are the ones who bring me back to my computer time and time again. The ones who send me sweet e-mails, tweets, and Facebook posts that get me through those days when I think everything I put down on paper is a pile of cow manure. Y’all are just the best, and I love you!
W
HOEVER CAME UP WITH THE SAYING
, “
You can never go home again
” was loonier than a snakebit coyote. You can go home. You just shouldn’t.
Ever.
This became crystal clear to Shirlene Grace Dalton as she stared out of the windshield of her Navigator at the beat-up trailer she’d been born and raised in. Not that her mama had done much raising. Abby Lomax preferred raising a bottle to raising her two children. And even though her mama had been dry for over eleven years, it was hard to hang on to forgiveness when memories swept through Shirlene’s mind like the west Texas wind buffeting her childhood home.
But Shirlene had never been one to live in the past—a philosophy that had gotten her through the trials and tribulations of the last year. She believed in living in the present. And at the present moment, she needed a place to sleep for the night.
“Just what kind of a low-down ornery scoundrel would evict a poor widow from her home without one word of warnin’?” she grumbled.
At the snuffled snort, she glanced over at the pig who sat next to her in the front bucket seat. The beady eyes over the soft pink snout held not one ounce of sympathy. In fact, they looked almost reproachful.
“Okay, so maybe there had been a few words of warnin’,” Shirlene conceded. She reached down and grabbed her Hermès Birkin handbag off the floor and scrounged around until she found the Snickers candy bar. Since she had gained a few pounds over the last nine months, she probably shouldn’t. But willpower had never been one of her strong suits.
“But for the love of Pete, how can that new bank owner expect me to know about managing money when Lyle,” she glanced up, “God rest his soul, took care of all the financial details? I never had to worry about late fees and overdraft charges… and eviction notices.” Her green eyes narrowed as she peeled off the candy wrapper and took a big bite. “
Eviction
. Even the word sounds like it comes straight from Satan himself.”
A high-pitched squeal resounded through the interior of the Navigator, and Shirlene pinched off a piece of candy bar and held it out to the pig, who exuberantly attacked the chocolate as if he hadn’t just downed two of Josephine’s bean burritos and a bag of extra-crispy Tater Tots. Being the other white meat, Sherman was a devout vegetarian.
“You realize, don’t you, that Colt and Hope would skin me alive if they found out what I’ve been feeding you, especially after the fiasco with the margaritas.” She shook her head. “As if I were responsible for you helping yourself, or for the drunken rampage you went on afterwards. Considering it took two days for you to sober up, I’m
surprised they allowed me to watch you while they’re in California.”
At the thought of her brother, Shirlene took another bite of chocolate. If she thought Colt would be unhappy about her feeding Hope’s pig Tater Tots and candy, it would be nothing compared to how upset he would be when he found out she had blown through the money her late husband had left her like a tornado through the panhandle. Especially after she had insisted she could handle her finances all by herself. She just hadn’t realized how bad her compulsive spending had become, and her depression over Lyle’s death had only made it worse. But shopping trips to Austin and Dallas hadn’t made her feel any better. All they had done was fill her home with a bunch of pretty but useless things—things she couldn’t even get into her sprawling estate to see.
Which explained what she was doing back on Grover Road.
Her old trailer was the only place in Bramble, Texas where she could spend the night without the nosy townsfolk finding out and tattling to her brother. And one night was all she needed. First thing in the morning, she was going to pay a little visit to the new bank president and set him straight. By nightfall, she would be right back where she belonged—in a big mansion with a pitcher of margaritas.
But until then…
She opened the door and stepped out. A blast of ninety-degree wind slapped her in the face, and she teetered on her four-inch Manolo Blahniks before she grabbed onto the side mirror and caught her balance. Pushing the thick strands of blond hair out of her face, she staggered around
the front of the SUV to let Sherman out. The pig didn’t like being out in the wind any more than she did. He took his time climbing down, then huddled against her legs as she walked around the piles of rusted junk.
A few feet from the front door, the Navigator lights clicked off, leaving her and Sherman in thick darkness. Shirlene had never much cared for the dark—or the eerie sound of tree branches creaking in the wind.
She glanced around at the sinister shadows. “This night isn’t fit for man nor beast.” Sherman grunted his agreement as they climbed up the sloping front steps that looked as if they were seconds away from becoming nothing more than kindling.
Wanting out of the ferocious wind as quickly as possible, Shirlene reached for the battered doorknob. It took numerous twists and a couple of stunned seconds before she realized it was locked. And no one locked their doors in Bramble except the librarian, Ms. Murphy, and only because she lived next door to Elmer Tate, who had trouble remembering where his house was after seven or more shots of Jack Daniel’s. Of course, no one had been out to the trailer in years so maybe Lyle had locked it against looters.
The thought made Shirlene smile. Her late husband had been so sure she would want to hang on to her childhood home. So sure that one day the bad memories would be replaced with good ones.
Pushing down the sadness that threatened, Shirlene searched for the key that Lyle had given her on their first anniversary—along with a diamond and ruby bracelet. At the time, the jewelry had been much more appreciated. But now, with the darkness and wind pressing against her, she took the time to be grateful for the gift.
“Thank you, honey,” she whispered up at the moonless sky. “You always did know what I needed, even before I needed it.”
She unlocked the door, but it still refused to open—almost as if something held it from the inside. Leaning her five-foot-ten-inch frame against the cheap plywood, Shirlene shoved. The door cracked open just wide enough to see a figure in white float past before it slammed shut.
The keys slipped from Shirlene’s fingers and clunked on the steps, followed by her purse, as a chill tiptoed down her spine. Frozen in place, she stared at the door with its fist-sized imprint put there by Colt during his belligerent teenage years and tried to figure out what she’d seen. Or what she thought she’d seen.
If she’d had her nightly margaritas, she could’ve blamed it on Jose Cuervo. But since being evicted from her home, the only thing swirling around in her stomach was Josephine’s chicken fried steak—something that could give you indigestion but not hallucinations. Which meant one of two things: Someone had moved into the trailer without her knowing it… or her childhood home was haunted. And since very few things happened in Bramble without Shirlene hearing about it, she was leaning toward the latter.
Her heart started to thump like the Bramble High drum corps. There might not be a person on the face of God’s green earth that she feared, but the macabre was a different matter. Be it ghosts, demons, or the boogie man, the thought of something she couldn’t flirt into submission scared the bejesus out of her. But before she could retrieve her purse and keys and get the hell out of there, Sherman lost patience with the weather and his
chicken-livered pig-sitter. With a frustrated grunt, he lowered his head and plowed into the door.
Plywood splintered as the door flew open. With a triumphant toss of his head, Sherman trotted in. Shirlene, on the other hand, moved a tad bit slower. The room was dark but familiar. For a second, she could almost smell her mother’s Avon perfume and cigarettes.
She reached for the switch on the wall and released a sigh of relief when the eye-squinting overhead light came on. The living room was smaller than she remembered, especially with the fold-out couch opened up, the couch with the same paper-thin mattress Colt had slept on every night. In fact, with the rumpled sheets and blankets, it looked as if her brother had just climbed out of it.
“Hello?” she said, hopeful that a living, breathing human being would step out of one of the two bedrooms and cordially explain their presence in her trailer.
Sherman had no such illusions. Hopping up on the low mattress, he proceeded to root around in the blankets until he’d made himself a comfortable nest. With one exasperated look from those beady eyes, he flopped down.
“Oh, no,” Shirlene whispered. “I’m not staying here after—”
The wind whistled in through an open window, fluttering the dingy sheet that served as a curtain and slamming the door closed. At the loud bang, Shirlene almost peed her designer jeans. But it only took a second for the proof of her foolishness to have her chuckling with relief.
“Silly goose,” she breathed. “It was just the wind.” She walked over and pushed her phantom ghostly sheet aside as she slammed the window closed. When she glanced over at Sherman, it almost looked as if he rolled his little
piggy eyes. “Okay, so I’m getting as nutty as the Widow Jones,” she said, as she walked back and opened the door so she could collect her purse and keys. “Pretty soon I’ll own twenty-five cats and wear my bathrobe and slippers to Sunday services. But I’ll still be the only one who feeds you chocolate and tequila, so I wouldn’t be acting too snooty if I was you.”