Cowboy Take Me Away (16 page)

“I can’t tell anybody?” he said, giving her a sarcastic smile, even as his heart was breaking. “Are you sure?”

“That’s not funny.”

“But this is just too good,” he said, pulling out a cigarette. “Surely I could let a word or two slip here or there, couldn’t I?” He lit the cigarette and took a drag, hoping his hands weren’t shaking.

A look of desperation flooded her face. “No! You can’t do that to me!”

Luke felt a stab of anguish. As if the world knowing he loved her would
hurt
her?

“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” he said, a mocking tone inching into his voice. “Nobody would ever believe a girl like you gave it up for anyone, much less the likes of me.”

“Don’t
say
that!”

“This isn’t about the sex, is it? It’s about who the sex was with. If you’d done it with some rich boy, your mother would probably throw a party.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

She pulled her boots on, then stood up. “We can talk about this tomorrow.”

“Sure, Shannon,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “No problem. Meet me back up here tomorrow night and we’ll ‘talk.’”

“Luke,
please
! You know what my mother is like. Can you at least try to understand?”

He took another drag on his cigarette in the most disinterested way he could. “Go home, Shannon. Mommy’s waiting for you.”

“But—”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” he muttered. “Will you just get the hell
out
of here?”

Shannon paused a moment more, looking at him plaintively. He thought for a moment she was going to come rushing back to him, telling him she didn’t give a damn who knew they’d been together. That she cared about him. Loved him, even. Instead, she turned and rushed down the ladder, and he was drenched in misery all over again.

He dropped his head to his hands, every word she’d spoken filling him with the kind of humiliation that made him want to crawl into a hole and die. A minute later, he could just make out Shannon’s voice outside the barn telling her mother she’d stayed late to take care of an injured horse. When her mother asked why Luke’s car was there, Shannon told her it wouldn’t start, so he’d walked home hours ago.

Lies, all lies, to cover up the fact that she’d been with him. The overwhelming pleasure he’d felt only minutes before had become incapacitating pain, the pain of knowing what she really thought of him. She said they’d talk tomorrow. Why? So she could tell him if he happened to pass her on the street, he’d better act as if they didn’t know each other? In that moment, he locked down his heart with yet one more layer of steel around it, so tightly nobody could ever get inside again.

Then, as he started to leave the hayloft, he looked down to see something glinting in the dim light. Leaning over, he picked up the diamond necklace he’d found for her, the one she’d dropped the moment he kissed her. He wondered why the sparkle of the diamond wavered as if he’d dipped it in water, only to realize he was looking at it through his own tears.

He left the necklace in the office where Shannon would find it. Then he packed up everything he owned in the world and blew out of town. The only person he told was Rita. She’d tried to stop him, but he was beyond listening. He had nowhere to go, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t care if he had to sleep in the street, as long as that street wasn’t in Rainbow Valley.

Now, eleven years later, Luke stood in the barn and looked up at that hayloft, feeling the pain of that night all over again. Back then he swore she would never know what had been going through his mind that night. How weak and pitiful he’d felt in the face of her rejection. How dumb he’d been to think it had meant something more to her.

Nothing had changed in that regard. No matter what happened between him and Shannon in the coming weeks, he’d make sure she never knew any of that. He’d spent his entire adult life getting past those kinds of feelings, the ones that told him he was just a few notches below the rest of the human race, and he’d be damned if he was going to stir them up all over again.

O
n Monday morning, Russell went to the kitchen at his clinic to get a cup of coffee. Cynthia was grabbing a Diet Coke from the fridge, and Velma was washing her hands for the sixty-seventh time that day even though it was only nine o’clock. All weekend Russell had thought about how Luke was around Shannon every day and he wasn’t. He’d tried to stop obsessing about it, but it was a battle he was losing miserably.

Russell filled his mug with coffee. “I was at the shelter the other day,” he said nonchalantly. “While I was there, I met Luke Dawson, Shannon’s new caretaker.” He inserted a well-placed shrug of indifference. “He seems like a nice guy.”

Velma’s head swiveled around, her hands still dripping over the sink. “Nice guy?
Luke Dawson?
”

If either of them snapped at his bait, he’d expected it to be Cynthia. But Velma?

“So he’s not a nice guy?” Russell said.

“If you think he is, you obviously haven’t heard anything about him.”

“Well, I hear he does have a reputation…”

“He was one year ahead of my daughter in school,” Velma said, grabbing a paper towel and drying her hands. “One time he took shoe polish and painted curse words on the windows of the cars in the church parking lot on bingo night.
The church parking lot
.”

“Oh, my,” Cynthia said. “That’s terrible.” But for some reason there didn’t seem to be a lot of conviction in her voice.

“After that,” Velma went on, “I heard my daughter tell her best friend that Luke Dawson was all kinds of sin wrapped up in a smokin’ hot bod, and if he was going to hell, she might just skip heaven and go with him. I washed her mouth out with soap and grounded her for a month.”

Truth be told, Russell didn’t care about the cars and the shoe polish. It was the “smokin’ hot bod” thing he couldn’t get out of his mind.

“It was that father of his,” Velma said. “How could a boy raised by a man like Glenn Dawson turn out any other way?”

Velma tossed the paper towel into the trash and walked out of the room, her orthopedic shoes squeaking on the tile floor. Those might have been the most words she’d spoken in one stretch since she’d gone to work for him. What was it about Luke Dawson that drove even a semi-mute person to talk?

“Well, I can’t say what he was like back then,” Cynthia said. “But he sure is fun now.”

“Fun? What are you talking about?”

“I was at the City Limits on Friday with Shannon and Eve and Tasha. Wow. That man can really dance.”

Russell froze. “Luke was there?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And you danced with him?”

“I think every woman in the place danced with him.”

Russell started to ask if he danced with Shannon, then bit his tongue. He couldn’t think of a covert way to say it without looking as if he was jealous.

“Except Shannon, of course,” Cynthia said. “She doesn’t dance. But I guess you know that.”

Relief surged through him. Actually, he didn’t know that because he didn’t dance himself, but it was only one more piece of proof that he and Shannon were made for each other, wasn’t it?

But he still couldn’t get Luke Dawson out of his mind.

Sooner or later, that man was going to be a problem. Russell could feel it in his bones. The more he thought about that, the more his stomach turned over with apprehension. Didn’t it always happen like this? Always?

No. Not this time. This time Russell was coming out on top. Wasn’t he the one who could take Shannon to elegant places like the Majestic? He doubted Luke even knew a Pinot Noir from a Pinot Grigio. And Russell was hedging his bets by sponsoring the petting zoo. Let Luke Dawson try to pull
that
off on a caretaker’s salary.

He grabbed his coffee and went into his office. Right away he smelled something funny. Lavender?

“Cynthia!”

After a moment, she came to his office door, a Starlight mint clacking against her teeth. Damned candy. She was going to have a mouthful of cavities before she turned thirty.

“Yes?”

“Why do I smell lavender?”

“Well, Jessie had another…issue.”

“Issue?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I thought I told you to use the pine carpet cleaner.”

“Pine? Really?” She blinked those Betty Boop eyes. “I’m sorry. I could have sworn you said lavender.”

“
Lavender
sounds nothing like
pine
.”

“I’ll use pine next time.”

“
Next
time?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have a word with Jessie.”

“A word with her? She’s a
cat
.”

“Hmm. I see what you mean.” Cynthia smiled brightly. “So I guess that’d be kinda pointless, wouldn’t it?”

Before he could say anything else, she left his office, closing the door behind her.

Talking with Cynthia was like playing Whack-A-Mole. Just as he followed the conversation in one direction, she whipped around and took it in another. Drove him nuts. And he knew for a fact she’d heard him say pine and not lavender, because she told him the lavender smelled better.

Insubordination, plain and simple.

But when it came to organizing his practice, at least she was competent. Because competency was a hard thing to find in a town the size of Rainbow Valley, he gave her some latitude. But if she pushed him too far, she’d better look out. He’d find himself another office manager
pronto
.

Russell sat down in his desk chair, and for just a moment, he allowed himself to engage in one of his favorite activities, which consisted of closing his eyes and imagining the day he’d propose to Shannon. Jerome would clap him on the back and tell him he was the son he’d never had. Loucinda would tell all her friends what a wonderful match her lucky daughter had made, then plan a wedding that would be the biggest social event Rainbow Valley had ever seen. Other men would secretly be jealous that he’d married such a beautiful and accomplished woman. And when their kids came along, they’d be the smartest, best-dressed, most well-behaved progeny anyone in this town had ever given birth to.

Then he envisioned the day he’d tell his parents he was marrying a beautiful, intelligent woman from the best family in Rainbow Valley. He imagined his mother in the midst of selling high-priced real estate to multimillionaires, and his father reaching for a scalpel to save somebody’s life. But for once they would stop what they were doing. They would turn around, look at him…

And smile with approval.

Russell sighed with satisfaction. He was going to marry Shannon. No doubt about that. And then his life was going to come together exactly as he’d always dreamed it would.

That afternoon Luke stepped into one of the dog runs, and three of the four dogs converged on him. He gave each of them a scratch behind the ears and a pat on the ribs. It took Angus longer to come over than the rest of the dogs, and Luke gave him a little extra attention. He was an old Scottish terrier with some health problems and had been there for several months. Angela told Luke somebody had just dropped him off by the front gate one day, so they took him in. Luke couldn’t imagine that. Had somebody just looked at the dog one day and said,
Okay, we’re done with you now. Time for you to go?

Luke accepted the fact that Angus might be around for a while. At least at this shelter, even if he was never adopted, he had a home for life. But as for the rest of them, they seemed like perfectly normal dogs. Why hadn’t somebody adopted them?

A few minutes later, Luke looked up to see Shannon coming down the path with a little brown dog on a leash. She’d just brought the pooch back from the vet, and now she released him into an adjoining run. Luke stepped back inside the kennel with her.

“Walt said the skin thing isn’t contagious,” she said. “He just needs a bath every few days with some special shampoo.”

She held out a bottle, and Luke took it from her. He should have been thinking about bathing dogs. Instead, he thought about standing in the parking lot of a small-town honky tonk kissing the daylights out of a woman who was way hotter than her rigid, all-business body language was telling him now. She didn’t seem inclined to bring up the issue, which was exactly what he would have expected. He doubted there was an uncomfortable, foolish, or ill-advised moment of her life she couldn’t put into a box, then close the lid, tape it shut, and stick it on an out-of-reach shelf so she wouldn’t have to deal with it. He wondered just how thick a layer of dust was on the box that contained that summer they’d worked together. The hinges were likely rusted shut.

He decided he’d stick with the all work and no play thing, at least during business hours. But he’d meant what he’d said last night. After business hours, all bets were off.

“Question,” he said.

“What?”

“I get why you still have a few llamas hanging around, and horses may be hard to place, but the dogs and cats? What’s the deal there?”

“What do you mean?”

“A lot of these dogs seem perfectly nice. Why haven’t they been adopted?”

“Well, let’s see. Samson has his skin condition. We’ll get it worked out, but until we do, it’s hard to get people to even look at him.”

“But he’s a great dog.”

“People won’t look past that. And Ginger, the Chihuahua, barks. And barks and barks and
barks
. Lots of sound comes out of that tiny package. If you’re in here and not paying attention to her, she’s usually going at it.”

Luke was learning to tune her out, but Shannon was correct. Right then she was definitely going at it.

“Then she needs somebody who’ll pay attention to her,” he said.

“A lot of people work during the day. She’d probably tear a sofa to shreds if you left her alone too long. And has it escaped your attention that Barney, that little mutt over there, is missing a leg?”

“So what? He runs faster than most of the dogs in this place. Throw a ball and you’ll see just how handicapped he is.”

“You’re not being realistic,” Shannon said. “People want perfection. And that usually means puppies. They like to get them before somebody else has messed them up.”

“So convince them otherwise.”

“That’s a hard sell.”

“It shouldn’t be. That little brown dachshund, for instance,” he said, pointing to one of the dogs. “No problems there that I can see. And the other two with him? Perfectly sane and adoptable.”

“Sometimes it’s just supply and demand.”

“Yeah? Maybe it’s more than that. What about that family that came through here a few days ago looking for a dog?”

“What about them?”

“Did they go home with a dog?”

“Well…no.”

“They were interested in that boxer over there,” Luke said. “Why didn’t they adopt him?”

“Nobody would have been home with him on weekdays. He’s a little neurotic to start with, so—”

“They said they have a huge backyard. He would have gotten along just fine.”

“I didn’t think Dad was too thrilled about getting a dog.”

“Dad wasn’t the type to be thrilled about anything. You need to stop second guessing everybody’s motives.”

“It just wasn’t a good match.”

“So which one would have been a good match? God knows we have plenty to pick from.”

“They weren’t interested in any of the other dogs.”

“Hell, no, they weren’t. You were so serious about it that you sucked all the fun out of it. Do you even want these animals to get homes?”

“Of course I do!”

“Uh-huh. As long as it’s Mother Teresa who adopts them.”

Shannon glared at him. “She’s dead.”

“Even better. The dogs would get to live with her in heaven. I hear they’re pretty responsible up there.”

“Listen, Luke,” she said. “My job is to move animals through here. Get one adopted before the next one shows up. And I do a damn fine job of it. So why don’t you just do your job and let me worry about everything else?”

With that, she turned and walked out of the kennel, leaving Luke frustrated about the whole situation.

He remembered back when he was just a kid working there, watching the more disadvantaged animals. He never would have told a solitary soul, but the injustice he felt when nobody seemed to want them had been overwhelming. He remembered an old cocker spaniel, a lot like Angus, who’d been abandoned there because of a host of health problems and ended up a permanent resident. He’d been well taken care of. Rita had made sure of that. But had he been loved the way a family would have loved him?

As a teenager, Luke had been way more screwed up than all of the animals put together, so helping them had been a burden he hadn’t been able to take on. But he wasn’t that kid anymore. He was convinced a lot of these animals were adoptable if the problem was approached the right way. And he just might be the guy who could pull it off.

When lunchtime came, Luke hopped into his truck and headed downtown. He parked on the square two doors down from Tasha’s shop. He saw her through the window sweeping up after her last customer. He remembered her as the girl in high school who spent hours reading fashion magazines and drawing faceless ultrathin models, wearing weird dresses, all over her notebooks. Now she was a hair stylist who wore ridiculous clothes herself, dressing as if she’d gone into her closet in the dark and put on the first three or four things she touched.

When Luke came through the door, she turned around, those big eyes widening with surprise. “Luke? I don’t have any appointments today. In fact, it’ll be Wednesday before—”

“I don’t need a haircut.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

He walked over to Tasha’s chair. “Do you have a dog?”

“Uh…no.”

“Why not?”

Tasha blinked with surprise. “I’m just not a dog lover. Or a cat lover, for that matter.”

“This is Rainbow Valley. All the downtown businesses have shop pets.”

“I have shop pets.”

“Where?”

“Over there,” she said, nodding at an aquarium sitting on a counter near the front desk.

Luke glanced over his shoulder. “Hermit crabs?”

“Hey, they’re pets. You know. Technically.”